<nettime> balkan agenda (zuerich)

[Marion von Osten <marionvonosten@gmx.ch>]

BALKANAGENDA

Positions and background information about the war -- where does the left
stand? Adhoc group against the war, in collaboration with the Konzeptbüro
of the Rote Fabrik

Rote Fabrik 3-11 September

Program:

Friday 3 September 1999, 8pm

Ethnicizing the social fabric in Ex-Yugoslavia - NATO strategies - a view
from Africa with: Glenda Loebell-Ryan, Judith Mirkinson, Adam Novak and
Frank Borris Glenda Loebell-Ryan, a member of the anti-apartheid movement
AAB, now lives in Yurich and was previously active in the South African
liberation and women's movement. Her experience, among others, with the
refugee movements in Southern Africa or with the "silent social massacre" 
based on the apartheid debt break through the eurocentric point of view
without which a "progressive" support for the NATO war would not have been
possible. Judith Mirkinson, political activist and feminist in San
Francisco, USA, analyzes the world power politics of the USA and reports
on debates of the US left on the Kosovo war. Adam Novak, Paris, editor of
International Viewpoint, has been following the NATO politics for years. 
Frank Borris, an author living in Bremen, member of the authors' group
"Materials for a new antiimperialism" that has intensively followed the
developments in Ex-Yugoslavia for many years. The strategy of local elites
of imposing the EU and IMF blueprints against resistant parts of the
population through a national-chauvinist mobilization has led to the
series of wars that we all know. 

Saturday, 4 September 1999, 4pm Leftist perspectives in South-East Europe? 
Participating in the discussion: one person from the left-libertarian
Zaginflatch group in Zagreb, a Croatian deserter who has fled to
Switzerland, Kosovo Albanian refugees critical of NATO, the documentary
filmer Zelimir Zilnik from Novi Sad and the journalist and documentary
researcher Jeta Xharra from Prishtina. Moderation: Alain Kessi, South-East
Europe collaborator of leftist publications. 

The idea is not to give a platform to those groups in Serbia and
Montenegro who in their "dissidence" follow the line drawn by the
civil-society blueprint of the EU planners. However, we have to expose
ourselves to the positions held by feminist organizations in Belgrade or
grassroots groups under repression in Zagreb. This is not a simple event,
but a piece of collective work. All the participants have proved their
courage and their honesty: the Women in Black in their struggle against
the war-mongering in Belgrade, the libertarians from Zagreb against a
afascistoid regime, the people from Kosova who have not let their
resisstance against Milosevic be bought up by NATO or the KLA. This seems
like a good basis for approaching the question of whether and how leftist
politics could be developed after its being discredited in "real
socialism". 

Saturday 4 September 1999, 8pm Patriarchy and War with: Susanne Kappeler,
Judith Mirkinson Judith Mirkinson (see above), Susanne Kappeler has just
published a text on "Military machism and women's movement" in Widerspruch
No. 37. With a view on the patriarchal logic of domination, war always has
to be reflected upon also in its patriarchal dimension. The modern wars
are inevitable consequences of globalization.  How do they reflect the
gender relations, and to what aim are the gender relations being used
strategically? Warmaking would not be possible without the readiness to
violence of a society in so-called times of peace. The two presentations
and the consecutive discussion focus on various aspects on war and its
consequences for women: New World Order, globalization and war. War and
gendered divisions of roles. War and sexist violence. War and
reconstruction in Kosov@/Yugoslavia and its consequences for women. This
event is exclusively aimed at women. 

Friday 10 September 1999, 8pm The “progressive" accomplices with: Susanne
Kappeler, Detlef Hartmann. Moderation: Res Strehle, author and economic
editor at Weltwoche. Susanne Kappeler (see above) on: Readiness for war as
a sign of progressive radicality? To view the leftist/feminist/green
opposition as a stronghold of resistance was wrong even before the NATO
war. For example, we have seen a large part of the women public demanding
an international military intervention in Bosnia already in 1992, in order
to “stop the mass rapes" -- which can be considered a dress rehearsal for
the line of argument demanding a "humanitarian war" or bombs in the name
of human or women's rights. A plea for the clarification of political
principles, even "within" identity groups. Detlef Hartmann, lawyer in
Cologne and a radical theorist of the Left, analyzes the Kosovo war as a
part of a new international cycle of accumulation. The new appropriation
of people in South-East Europe relies, without remaining limited to them,
on historical precedenbts of the German appropriation of the Balkans. The
boundless support for the war of significant parts of the 68 generation
shows an explosive situation in which the capital whose strategy is
innovation through destruction unites with the modernized military
structures and the social-technocratic progressive intelligence in a new
social-military campaign both to the outside and to the inside. 

Saturday 11 September 1999, 2pm Resistance against the Swiss refugee and
migration policies With representatives of charity organizations (among
others Urs Jäggi, Movimento contro il Razzismo e la Xenofobia, Vera
Marignoni, SAH Ticino) and organized people from among migrants (among
others Namba Locher, LoRa, mujeres) The war around Kosova and Yugoslavia
shows in exemplary fashion how fleeing people are made to playballs of the
respective interests. For the Swiss government the refugees came right on
time for the pre-vote campaign around the tightening of the asylum
legislation. Besides, it continued its policy of seal-off, among other
things with a scandalous practice of deportation at the Ticino-Italian
border. The people from Kosova are also useful to legitimize the Swiss
racism, once as perpetrators (drug dealers), temporarily as poor victims,
they soon again will be called profiteers. We are looking for a position
that accepts fleeing people and migrants as active people with a life
perspective of their own. We are looking for a refugee and migration
politics that does not play into the hands of the powerful and racists and
nevertheless discovers and puts to use room for manoeuvre for concrete
improvement (or the defense of existing rights). 

Saturday 11 September 1999, 5pm Swiss strategies of militarization and the
war around Kosova Workshop with Hans Hartmann (GSOA, collaborator of WoZ
weekly) Since the end orf the Cold War the Swiss Army also has been
working on a strategic reorientation. With the new security report, the
renewed projects for armed interventions abroad, the guarding of embassies
after the arrest of Abdullah Oecalan, the installation of refugee camps
guarded by the military, etc., this reorientation has in the past few
months entered a decisive phase, reinforced by the intervention of army
helicopters in the framework of the NATO refugee measures in Kosova. Where
is the journey of the Swiss army going? Why is a large part of the Left
indifferent to this reform of the army while the national conservative
Right is fighting against it? What conclusions do the Swiss military draw
from the NATO attacks on Serbia and Montenegro? Is a NATO accession of
Switzerland and a participation in coming wars on the agenda? 

Saturday 11 Setember 1999, 8pm Concluding discussion Hardly ever can
linear recommendations for action be deducted from organized events. On
the other hand we do not indulge in art for art's sake. The cycle of
events guarantees enough material even for self-critical reflections. 
“Progressive" war propaganda shall not again be able to produce so much
confusion and inhibition. The disturbances of consciousness in which
suddenly war was to appear as an alternative to "Auschwitz" or "looking
after refugees" as complementing cruise missiles, are signs of a defeat in
a fundamental field -- in that of the hope for emancipation, the utopia,
the absoluteness for a different life. We want to bring together what
belongs together -- for instance war against the outside and brutality
against migrants here -- and separate, what doesn't belong together -- for
instance liberation and the command of capital accumulation disguised as
civil society. Another time like this time shall not be possible -- we
have to be more, clearer and more apt to act. 

kosov@kino in Shedhalle at Rote Fabrik Accompanying program for the cycle
of events

Saturday 4 September starting at 11am brunch and critical review of the
discussion of the previous night (ethnicizing the social fabric,
antiimperialist perspectives) starting at 1pm "ethnicizing TV reporting" 
with Jeta Xharra (Media Project Pristina): In its TV documentation “Kosov@
- A View Inside" the women's collective "Media Project Pristina" has tried
to convey to the viewers an everyday, non-ethnicizing impression of life
and problems in Kosov@. We contrast this with a Channel 4 production with
its Western view. English with German translation. 

starting 6pm "Masculinity and violence in Yugoslavia" Zelimir Zilnik
(Terra Film, Novi Sad): Through the portrait of the transvestite scene in
Novi Sad Zelimir's film "Marble Ass" tries to show structures of violence
of a militarized, patriarchal society after the war in Bosnia. In the
second part of the event we will see excerpts from video works by students
of Zelimir's concerning the male role after the war in Bosnia. English
with German translation. 

starting 8pm "Masculinities/Violence/War" workshop and discussion on
antipatriarchal and antimilitarist perspectives, among others with the
autonomist men's group Zürich, deserters and conscientious objectors. 
Primarily for men! 

Saturday 11 September starting at 11am brunch and critical review of the
dicscussions of the previous night (the Left and the war) starting at 6pm
"The peace movement in Belgrade": The three-part video documentation "I
thought that the world was coming to an end" by Sandrina Andic
(Berlin/Belgrade) shows the situation of the peace movement in Belgrade
shortly before the war broke out in late automn 1998. In the two telephone
interviews with activists, in the first days of the war and shortly before
the so-called peace treaty, frustrations, disappointments and helplessness
about the dynamics of the conflict and the NATO attacks come to the fore. 
Serbocroat with German subtitles. 

3/4/5 and 10/11 September Bar, video library, internet stations,
documentation center, exhibition, book stand -- for more information,
informal exchange and heated discussions. 

Do not divert the attention from the shock! On the cycle of events against
the war in Ex-Yugoslavia at the Rote Fabrik Ad-hoc group against the war
In a strategy paper by a EU think-tank written during the Kosova war the
authors emphasize that it is essential to put "the shock of the current
conflict to positive use" for putting the region into line with the EU
greater area. With their precise blueprint for all of South-East Europe
the strategists are aiming at an integration which "allows production
processes to move through a series of countries as cascades of added
value" (meaning the "dependent" production of goods in steps of production
distributed among several countries of the EU greater area). The concept
of "positive shock" makes us listen up -- this “ruthless" readiness for
innovation corresponds to a world of ideas in which the suffering of
people is evaluated according to its usefulness for modernization. The
shock of surviving Kosovo Albanians in the camps or of Serb patients in a
hostpital attacked with cluster bombs, the panic-like flight of Roma from
the "liberated" areas speak a different language. The aweful nation
builders from Brussels have hope there, where complete populations are
being forced to flee. In Switzerland also we were shocked -- of course not
in a way comparable to that of the people in Ex-Yugoslavia. We saw how
constituting parts of everyday social life were bombed away with
untouchable and brutally used technology. We saw how daily war crimes of
NATO -- endangering masses of people through the destruction of chemical
and other factories, the use of radioactive weapons, the successive
destruction of the water system of complete cities -- did not even need an
explanation in view of the not less inhuman way of acting of the opponent.
It is precisely the apparent gap between the humanitarian-civil-societal
self-representation and real-life liquidation of people or the cynical
instrumentalizing of refugee misery that gave us a glimpse of the
escalation of brutality of the capitalist world society. 

How parlyzed we were by the spectacle of "leftist, humanitarian" applause
for the cold killing. Those who politically have always stood for
massacres, hunger and dehumanizing were celebrated and served in
"pacifist" and "antifascist" speeches, with the explicit readiness to
choose the new-style rather than the old-fashioned murder. That too is an
exercise of violence. Now the violence of the war in the brutality of a
"reconstruction" on the lines of the interests of an EU greater area and
the destruction of society structures that are not functional in this
respect. The Balkan thus in a final way draws close to the tricontinental
reality (three continents = Africa, Asia, Latin America) with its never
ending series of massacres for "market democracy". NATO announces "peace",
the attention is already being diverted from the shock. What to do? Who to
speak to, how to understand the processes? What to build upon? 

On Mayday in Berne and Zurich we had distributed a leaflet against the
support for this war, there was stagnation in the question of organizing a
demonstration, and now we concentrate on the cycle of events in September
in the Rote Fabrik, Zürich. It is aimed at critical and self-critical
leftists. It is an attempt at understanding elements of the developments
in the war area and their relation to social dynamics here in order to be
better prepared for bracing ourselves for the next moments of the new
development through violence. This includes a precise assessment of
"leftist" support work for the new discourse of power. We think this is
both necessary and feasible. 


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