No More War-Reporting

In recent weeks, some editors asked why I would do no reports from the Ukraine, because it would be pretty similar to my work from the former Yugoslavia. No, and I repeat, no . Quite categorically! It is not the same situation. And not only that NATO gave the promise to Gorbachev not to expand into former countries of the Warsaw pact.

In Yugoslavia, NATO was desperately seeking to find a new role because their actual task ended with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. Taxpayer begun to ask their governments why they continue to buy tanks, vessels and fighter-jets, so NATO begun to play to role of a "humanitarian worrier". But to be clear about the situation in Ukraine: there we have to deal with the attempt by NATO testing the ground for expansion at the expense of the Ukrainian population. Look at Bosnia or Kosovo today with their 70% unemployment. What is this for a freedom?

In addition, people in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia had behaved much more civilized. Not so the fascist KLA / UCK in Kosovo... Still, even their demonstrations were never forcibly and violent as in Kiev. There, the demonstrations were a coup. Like after this "orange revolution" and Madame Timochenko, this will become clear in the next few weeks when it comes to elections there. Already, candidates were intimidated. And the tax payer in Europe and USA are paying Ukraine's bills to Putins Gazprom.  

After all my experiences in conflicts like Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan NATO is playing with fire. We know the results from the outcomes of our humanitarian wars these countries.As a few days ago Anja was assassinated in Afghanistan. She always said "if I'm doing these photographs of people in these war, no one sees their suffering." Who knows Anja knows that she had freed herself with this work from something else and she had grown very much in the following years after Bosnia. She still have had journalistic ethics in place!

Even more crucial for me: the Western mass media are biased: The situation for war reporting has chanced radically: Syria has become a grave chamber for photojournalists, if they do not have the luck just to be kidnapped by fanatical religious worriers who are supported by the "West" and their despotic puppet regimes in the Middle East with weapons... 

With the "embedded" journalism in Iraq died also objective reporting. Think-Tank-pundits are bending every fact till it is fitting their version of a conflict. And last, but not least the scandalous conditions that are imposed from the "reality-monopoly" of mass media and especially news agencies regarding copyright and usage rights are making any attempt to report facts impossible. The times to earn enough with that crucial photo to pay translators, car hires and hotels are irretrievably gone.

That is today the reason why I prefer to work in commercial photography and not for propaganda.