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23 Feb 08 - 10:02 AM (#2270286) Subject: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger If I was a Serbian national, I'd be trying to burn down the American embassy too. |
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23 Feb 08 - 11:25 AM (#2270335) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Metchosin Believing is easy, Thinking is hard. That's why there are so many believers in the world and so few thinkers. Unfortunately it would seem that the folks that have come up with US foreign policy, in the past decade or so, have behaved like an ADD kid going around poking sharp sticks in hornet's nests. |
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23 Feb 08 - 11:39 AM (#2270353) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Metchosin ........and I've demonstrated this aptly by bothering to post a comment to this thread. LOL |
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23 Feb 08 - 01:04 PM (#2270418) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: artbrooks The roots of the conflict in Kosovo go back at least 600+ years, to the great battle in 1389. The current troubles descend directly from the Yugoslavian government's decision, precipitated by the Serbian majority, to rescind Kosovo's autonomy after Tito's death and redesignate the region as a province of Serbia. Serbia, in turn and especially after the rise of the nationalist leader Slobodon Melosovich (sp?), took active steps to suppress the Albanian majority (by, among other things, imposing direct rule from Serbia proper, banning Albanian as an official language and effectively closing Kosovo's only university) and to encourage Serbs to relocate to their "ancestral homeland". Active warfare broke out between the Kosovars and the Serbs in 1996. NATO, perhaps visualizing a repeat of the war in Bosnia and Croatia that had recently ended (and maybe feeling some guilt for not stopping it before it became the bloody mess that it did) declared peace in early 1999. It is entirely untrue that either the air war or the introduction of peacekeepers on the ground (KFOR) was an American military operation, although US forces were certainly major participants. |
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23 Feb 08 - 02:23 PM (#2270469) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger The 600 year history of Kosovo has little to do with US involvement. The reality is, President Clinton, desperate to get Monica Lewinsky's picture off the front pages of the newspapers pressured NATO to engage in a bombing campaign. Serbian media were calling it "Monica's War" at the time. George W. Bush, happy to have something at hand to irritate the Russians, simply continued and escalated the situation. |
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23 Feb 08 - 03:15 PM (#2270495) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: artbrooks Interesting point of view. Lewinsky was long off of the front pages in the US by that time. |
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23 Feb 08 - 04:59 PM (#2270544) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: number 6 Ringslinger ... I think your getting "Monica's War" mixed up with the December 1998 air bombardment ..... this four-day bombing campaign occurred at the same time the U.S. House of Representatives was conducting the impeachment hearing Clinton. Clinton was impeached on December 19, the last day of this air bombing campaign. biLL |
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23 Feb 08 - 05:00 PM (#2270545) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: number 6 Air bombrdment of Baghdad BTW |
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23 Feb 08 - 05:50 PM (#2270574) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger This from AIM, is pretty much the way I remember it. ...as Communist rule weakened, Slobodan Milosevic, a Serb, became the President of Serbia, only to crack down on the Albanian extremists bent on seeking independence through force of arms which led to bloody confrontations in 1998 between the Serbian troops and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a largely Albanian terrorist outfit. A ceasefire negotiated by NATO fell apart, setting the stage for the NATO air strikes that started in March 1999, designed to bring Milosevic to heel. ...(US) participation in the effort was premised on our being part of NATO; we ignored Russian arguments in favor of the Serbs. Some have called this "Monica's War" because it came soon after the Clinton impeachment. |
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23 Feb 08 - 06:21 PM (#2270596) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: artbrooks An awful lot happened leading up to those "bloody confrontations". I'd recommend Kosovo, A Brief History by Noel Malcolm for a good historical review - I'd add that "Brief" is a dirty lie. Malcolm is pretty neutral; he dislikes both the Serbs and the Kosovars. I think it goes up to about 1996. BTW, I'd say that AIM is about as objective a news source as the NY Times. |
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23 Feb 08 - 08:38 PM (#2270685) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger Yes, a lot led up to the confrontations, but they wouldn't be burning the US embassy now, if the US hadn't butted in to begin with. It had no interest there, and it had no business there. |
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23 Feb 08 - 11:26 PM (#2270755) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Kent Davis You tell 'em, Riginslinger. That bad ol' U.S. is always butting in, butting in just like it did back in 1917 and again in 1941. If you were a German, would you be trying to burn down the American embassy there? Kent |
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24 Feb 08 - 09:18 AM (#2270917) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger Did the US have an interest in 1917 and 1941? It had none in Kosovo, and only made the situation worse. |
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24 Feb 08 - 09:40 AM (#2270931) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,Guest These days, I get most my news coverage from online sources, and the main one I use is Democracy Now. If you go to their website & watch the streaming video on the Kosovo story, it is almost bizarre beyond belief, in that believers vs thinkers vein. There is an interview with Samantha Powers, a brilliant woman who wrote a Pulitzer prize winning book about genocide, and Jeffrey Scahill, an indie reporter who works for Democracy Now, the Nation, the Progressive, etc etc, who is every bit as smart as Samantha Powers. Now, at the time Samantha Powers book on genocide came out, I listened to her a lot, and read the book. I found her very well informed, if not a little too Harvard "we define what a genocide is, what an atrocity is". I didn't agree with everything she said, and I certainly am not comfortable letting Harvard scholars define genocide and atrocity for the rest of the world, so I didn't think she was perfect, or anything. But she was one of the few academics who got out of their cozy Cambridge offices and actually went into the field to do their research, and come to some very provocative conclusions. That was back in 2003. Fast forward to 2008, and I can't for the life of me figure out where she is coming from anymore, and why Jeffrey Scahill is making mincemeat out of her in the interview. Suddenly she is defending the NATO war in Kosovo in ways she never did before, she is denying that what is occurring in Iraq at the hands of the US military occupation qualifies as genocide, and on and on. I was absolutely gobsmacked by what seemed to be a 180 by her, and I couldn't figure out why an academic and a writer would do that. Spoiler note, in case any of you intend to go watch the interview. At the beginning of the interview, Amy Goodman did give a disclaimer that Powers was now working for the Obama campaign. However, I missed the very first part of the interview when she said that, so I was listening to Powers, just stunned. While I couldn't recall exactly what her positions were from the previous times I had heard her and what she had said in her book, it did seem to me she was practically denouncing much of what she herself had been saying just a few years ago. So, off googling I went, and that was when I discovered the roots to her turnaround: she has gone into presidential politics with Obama. But man, I was really disappointed to see it. Not that she is on his team, but that the woman was so opportunistic on such a big issue as genocide. She was spinning so madly, it showed. Rarely have I ever seen that kind of sell out before my very eyes. She is still as smart as ever, of course. But like I said, Jeffrey Scahill made mincemeat out of her. |
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24 Feb 08 - 11:23 AM (#2270977) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger "I was absolutely gobsmacked by what seemed to be a 180 by her," Sounds Irish. That's one of the funny things about Kosovo and American politics. Because Bill Clinton hailed it as a triumph, one would have thought that Dubya would have been down on it. But it gave him a chance to take a poke at the Russians, and I'd just supposed that that was enough to win him over. Now, what you are saying about Powers doing a 180 on it, tells us where Obama would be with it, but it doesn't really tell us why. One of the most interesting elements of the whole thing, during the build up to bombing the Serbs, Madaline Albright discovered she was Jewish. I always thought that was an interesting side-line event, but I've never been able to connect the dots on that either. |
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24 Feb 08 - 11:39 AM (#2270988) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,Guest I never heard the Madeline Albright is Jewish thing. I don't know what it tells us about Obama's position on Kosovo and Serbia either. I just know it sure looks like they decided to support the Clinton administration policy angle, maybe because Obama's campaign is short on foreign policy expertise and Clinton is an expert on her husband's policies. Powers had been very critical of the Clinton administration in her book. Which is why I was so shocked to see her spinning this week's events according to the conventional party wisdom. I just never thought she was that partisan, but I guess I was wrong about that. Which is yet another problem with our current political status quo. All the academics and their think tanks are in the pocket of either the red team or the blue team. We don't have any indie thinkers and policy wonks working inside the Beltway or on the Commons. |
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24 Feb 08 - 11:39 AM (#2270990) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: number 6 Oh come on Ringslinger ... "Madaline Albright discovered she was Jewish. I always thought that was an interesting side-line event, but I've never been able to connect the dots on that either."\ That's just total gibberish. biLL |
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24 Feb 08 - 11:42 AM (#2270994) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: pdq "...gave him a chance to take a poke at the Russians..." Russia was an Orthodox Christian country at one time. So were Serbia and Albania. The last thing Russia wants is for Kosovo to fall to the relentless march of Islam. Bosnia, Albania, now Kosovo. On another front, Thailand fell recently. Neither Russia nor China is happy about losing their buffer zones between themselves and Islam. Each step brings the other two superpowers (there are three of us) closer to a full scale war with Islam. When it happen, and it will, it will be ugly. |
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24 Feb 08 - 12:01 PM (#2271007) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,Guest And Turkey just invaded Iraq with the US' blessing too. All in the same week. Something very dangerous is afoot, and I really can't suss out what it is Bush/Cheney, Inc. are getting ready to do. But I know it can't be anything good. |
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24 Feb 08 - 01:00 PM (#2271059) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger "That's just total gibberish." Maybe, the news media made a great big deal out of it at the time. "Neither Russia nor China is happy about losing their buffer zones between themselves and Islam. Each step brings the other two superpowers (there are three of us) closer to a full scale war with Islam." Any predictions on how it will come out? |
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24 Feb 08 - 02:02 PM (#2271115) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,Shimrod I too would recommend Noel Malcolm's book for a fairly 'dispassionate' view of the situation in Kosovo. It must be remembered that all ethnic groups in the Balkans have 'mythologised' their histories to a greater or lesser extent. The fact that the battle of Kosovo was fought, between the Serbs and the Ottoman Turks, in 1389, has really got very little real relevance to today's situation - and yet Serb nationalists would have us believe that that battle, together with a few monastries, gives them some sort of absolute right to rule Kosovo and to discriminate against the Albanian majority to the point of ethnic cleansing. We could do without that sort of wicked nonsense in modern Europe. |
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24 Feb 08 - 02:07 PM (#2271120) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,Guest It is somewhat similar to the Unionist/Loyalist rule in Ireland--same sorts of triumphalist arguments used to rationalize their hold on power at the expense of the will of the Irish people. The history of genocide in the region isn't the same, of course. Outside the Great Famine, we didn't see death and destruction on the scale in Ireland we have historically in the Balkans. |
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24 Feb 08 - 05:52 PM (#2271324) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger For some observers, Kosovo typifies an urgent problem that faces much of the world. You have a lesser developed society with much of its citizenry badly addicted to an ancient superstition that tells them to "go forth and procreate" living next to a more modern society that has recognized the disaster of uncontrolled human population growth. If the growing population is allowed to spill over into the stabilized population, unchecked, progress goes into reverse and there's not much future for anybody. |
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24 Feb 08 - 06:23 PM (#2271353) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,Guest No, I don't think that's the trouble in the Balkans this morning. Not even close. |
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24 Feb 08 - 06:41 PM (#2271369) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: artbrooks Reginslinger, the Kosovars are about as moderate as the Turks as far as their "addiction to an ancient superstition" is concerned...assuming that you are referring to the Muslim religion (which is some 800 years less ancient than the Christian |
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24 Feb 08 - 07:09 PM (#2271384) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger Yes, of course Islam is more recent than the ancient superstition of Christianity. One's as bad as the other. But Serbia had a more modern social structure and a much lower birth rate than Albania in the years leading up to the Monica Lewinsky fiasco. |
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24 Feb 08 - 08:13 PM (#2271425) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: pdq Riginslinger, I don't know where it fits in the context of this thread, but never stop bringing up the subject of overpopulation. It is the main source of envionmental problems and many political problems as well. You are correct if you suggest that the least productive people are the most prolific reproducers. Once these people see what others have, they move in and take it. This leads to conflict, even war. Mexicans have been on a crusade to re-populate North America with their kind of people. They were down to about 16 million after their awful Revolution, about 1910-20. They are now up to about 150 million, with over 32 million living un-invited in the United States. Mexico is one of the 10 richest countries on Earth and has more natural beauty (as well as natural resources) than most. They choose to migrate and take what belongs to other. Easier than fixing what is broken. |
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24 Feb 08 - 08:28 PM (#2271437) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger pdq - It's amazing to me how few people seem to realize what's going on. It fits into this thread exactly because of what you say here. There are a number of silimarities between what went on in Kosovo and what is going on in California every day of the week. Lack of understanding, I think, is at the root of the problem. |
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24 Feb 08 - 08:31 PM (#2271439) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,Guest Overpopulation is a major world problem, and the cause of it is most often religion, but also poverty and how many babies it takes to grow to a wage earning age that contributes to the family income in the third world. The answer: lots. Especially when so many end up in child slavery of one sort or another. |
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24 Feb 08 - 08:36 PM (#2271444) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: pdq Now that we have established that overpopulation is an issue, when will Ralph Nader bring it up? Just asking. |
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24 Feb 08 - 08:40 PM (#2271451) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,Guest Good question. Why not go to his website and see if he has written about it. If he hasn't, write to him and ask him why not? I know I've heard him speak about it being a major cause of poverty, so I'm guessing you can find what he has to say about specifically somewhere. |
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24 Feb 08 - 08:49 PM (#2271464) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: pdq I think I will do just that. BTW, 'poverty' is "too many people competing for too little wealth" ~ me You can fix the problem with more money or fewer people. Not that I want the current crop of folks reduced, but a huge drop in population growth will lead to more wealth per capita. Eventually. Un-checked population growth will not. |
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24 Feb 08 - 08:56 PM (#2271473) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,Guest I agree, pdq. But I don't think overpopulation is at the heart of this conflict. It's far more complicated than that. |
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24 Feb 08 - 09:21 PM (#2271496) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: pdq True. I was agreeing with Riginslinger 'in general', but trying to point out that Kosovo is not a good example. |
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24 Feb 08 - 11:14 PM (#2271556) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger It's only a good example in so far as the US involvement is concerned, and maybe a decade or so leading up to it. Other countries around Albania have been forced to take their overflow of people, Serbia just acted more forcefully than Macadonia and some of the others did. While we're on the subject, however, have you ever looked into the Sierra Club. They have an ongoing conversation to warn the world about human population growth, but when they are asked about runaway immigration into North America, they refuse to take a position. It's amazing to me. Either they care about the environment or they don't. One would have to assume that they don't. |
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24 Feb 08 - 11:45 PM (#2271565) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Kent Davis Riginslinger, I thought you condemned the U.S. when it intervened in other countries to further its own interests. Don't you? Yet you condemn the U.S. for intervening in Kosovo on the opposite grounds, on the grounds that it has no interest in Kosovo. Logically, wouldn't that mean that you oppose all U.S. interventions? If that's what you mean, say it. Go ahead and condemn the interventions of 1917 and 1941 too. If you don't condemn those interventions, on what grounds do you condemn the others? Kent |
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25 Feb 08 - 10:17 AM (#2271790) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger Kent - I condemned the US for involving itself in other countries where it had no interests. |
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25 Feb 08 - 12:33 PM (#2271935) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,PMB You all seem to have forgotten the Bosnian war, which preceded the Kosovo intervention, and probably made it inevitable. After the secession of Slovenia, which was peaceful, racist Serbian nationalists were determined to punish further attempts to break away. This resulted in a nasty war with Croatian nationalists, which the Serbs lost, and the Bosnians, which the Serbs were winning- with well publicised atrocities- until Europe and the US intervened. This was probably the right thing to do; you can't let genocide succeed. But the tactical decision to concentrate on bombing was probably a mistake, though understandable since it's not at all certain that the public would have accepted the casualties inevitable in a physical occupation. Remember that Yugoslavia had organised its entire defence strategy around guerilla warfare, and that every male was trained in the techniques; this explains much of the sheer nastiness of the civil war. But the bombing, particularly of the Danube bridges and the TV station, was an own goal in terms of winning over the non- extremist Serbs, who were forced into the racist camp. Since its defeat in Bosnia, Serbia has been sulking like a wounded pit-bull terrier. The Kosovar rebellion was partly thickheaded nationalist, buit also partly deliberately provoked by Serbs who wanted to take out their frustration on the one minority they had left. The situation is further complicated by the mis- selling by the neocons of a broken model of capitalism to the Russians after the fall of the Soviet Union. The result of mass impoverishment and the rise of a mafiocracy based on looted State property fed boneheaded nationalism there too- added to by the humiliation of seeing former client states like Poland, Latvia, and Estonia treated more favourably by the Americans and Europeans, even when (as in Estonia) they implemented discriminatory policies against ethnic Russians. So the Serbian situatuion is an ideal opportunity for them to infect the nationalist sores in central Europe. America, and much more so Europe, have failed badly in failure to be consistent, to reward social behaviour and punish antisocial behaviour, and to prove that their commitment to democracy and human rights is real. It's not at all clear where to go from here, and starting from somewhere else would have been the better option. |
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25 Feb 08 - 01:30 PM (#2271992) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger At the end of the day, runaway human population growth has to be the greater threat. If it goes too far, the locust effect begins to take hold and we see family planning by machete like we witnessed in Rwanda. |
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25 Feb 08 - 01:38 PM (#2272001) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: artbrooks I took a vacation last month. A number of the people along were US citizens of Irish descent, all of whom seemed to have 8 or 10 children or siblings. Let's limit all families to 1 1/2 children and institute involuntary sterilization if necessary. After all, it worked so well for the Chinese... |
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25 Feb 08 - 02:01 PM (#2272033) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,Shimrod Riginslinger, Have you actually been to the Balkans? I really don't think that you can call it over-populated. I agree with you that over-population is a key problem in many parts of the world - but not in the Balkans. The claims of Serb nationalists that the INDIGENOUS Albanian population is 'out-breeding' them appears to contain more than a hint of racism to me. The INDIGENOUS Albanian population in Kosovo has just as much right to be there as the Serbs. The comparison with the US and Mexico is completely spurious and irrelevant. Fascistic, ultra-nationalism has had a disastrous history in the Balkans, and the whole of the Eastern Mediterranean region - and many, many thousands of people have died horrible, lingering deaths because of it. In my opinion 'The West' could have done a lot more to squash the re-emergence of such nationalism in the early 1990s (instead they appeased it - what's new?). |
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25 Feb 08 - 04:47 PM (#2272185) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger "After all, it worked so well for the Chinese..." Depending on your point of view. It certainly put them in the driver's seat as far as emerging economies go. "I agree with you that over-population is a key problem in many parts of the world - but not in the Balkans." Actually, if you throw in human migration, overpopulation is a key problem any place on the planet. If you want to consider global warming, you might even have to include Greenland. |
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25 Feb 08 - 05:34 PM (#2272229) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,Shimrod Riginslinger - you're talking to a person who, only last night, was accused of being "obsessed with over-population"! |
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25 Feb 08 - 09:09 PM (#2272385) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger I don't think it's possible to be obsessed with over population. The most paranoid individual on the subject is probably the most rational in the end. I think it's possible to appear to be obsessed, but only by folks who haven't taken the time to think the situation through. |
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25 Feb 08 - 10:12 PM (#2272406) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Goose Gander "Let's limit all families to 1 1/2 children and institute involuntary sterilization if necessary. After all, it worked so well for the Chinese..." Yes, it worked beautifully. Except for all the dead little girls and the millions of young men who will never have wives because of the population imbalance. |
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25 Feb 08 - 10:25 PM (#2272410) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: artbrooks That's called sarcasm, MM. |
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25 Feb 08 - 11:13 PM (#2272440) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Kent Davis The Kosovars certainly seem glad that the U.S. has extended a helping hand, as has the U.K., and as have many other nations. Self-determination is a beautiful thing. It's so much better than imperialism, don't you think? France intervened to help the 13 colonies gain self-determination. We returned the favor in 1917 and again in 1941. The U.S. and the U.K. worked together for that end, just as they did in delivering South Korea and Kuwait. Now we've helped yet another people escape subjection. All foes of imperialism should rejoice! Kent |
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26 Feb 08 - 10:34 AM (#2272728) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger Kent - Is there any chance you're trying to work out all of the worlds problems from only one side of the equation? |
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26 Feb 08 - 12:37 PM (#2272810) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,Shimrod Riginsliger, Are you being deliberately obtuse or hasn't the real point of this debate sunk in yet? Statements that you have made, like the following: "It's only a good example in so far as the US involvement is concerned, and maybe a decade or so leading up to it. Other countries around Albania have been forced to take their overflow of people, Serbia just acted more forcefully than Macadonia and some of the others did." Lead me to suspect that you think that the Kosovars are Albanians from Albania - they are NOT! They are Albanian speaking NATIVES of Kosovo and have a perfect right to be there. Macedonia also has indigenous people who speak Albanian - and they have a right to be there too. I'm not terribly sure, from your various pronouncements, what your views on Kosovo are - but you appear to have various beefs against over-population and 'illegal immigrants' - neither are relevant in the case of Kosovo. |
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26 Feb 08 - 02:30 PM (#2272911) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger This appeared in "Western World Politics" in 2005. However, as time progressed, ethnic Albanians from neighbouring Albania began immigrating en masse to the Serb province of Kosovo. This mass immigration combined with the huge Albanian birth rate, saw the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo quadruple in less than half a century! If it reminds you of Mexicans in California, I think you're on to something. |
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26 Feb 08 - 02:45 PM (#2272925) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: artbrooks I'm not at all sure about quoting a blog, even one from someone who describes himself as "politically and socially conservative, and a devout Christian", as a data source. |
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26 Feb 08 - 02:55 PM (#2272932) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger There was a lot of supporting evidence from Brittanica and other sources, but it was dated back to the 1980s and 1990s. I don't think much has changed, but used this source because it was newer. I suppose you're right, though, I should have used one of the older sources. On the other hand, it was the 1990's when the US decided to involve itself for reasons that I don't think had a lot to do with concern for the folks living there. |
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26 Feb 08 - 03:01 PM (#2272938) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger Brittanica: The Albanian population has been increasing four to five times faster than the average annual rate in other European countries. Nearly all of the growth has been due to natural increase rather than migration. The birth rate has consistently been the highest in Europe since the end of World War II, while the death rate has been one of the continent's lowest. Albania's population, consequently, is the youngest in Europe, with more than one-third of the total under 15 years of age. |
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26 Feb 08 - 04:23 PM (#2273012) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: pdq "THE ALBANIAN PEOPLE have hacked their way through history, sword in hand," proclaims the preamble to Albania's 1976 Stalinist constitution. These words were penned by the most dominant figure in Albania's modern history, the Orwellian postwar despot, Enver Hoxha. The fact that Hoxha enshrined them in Albania's supreme law is indicative of how he--like his mentor, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin--exploited his people's collective memory to enhance the might of the communist system, which he manipulated for over four decades. Supported by a group of sycophantic intellectuals, Hoxha repeateded transformed friends into hated foes in his determination to shape events. Similarly, he rewrote Albania's history so national heroes were recast, sometimes overnight, as villains. Hoxha appealed to the Albanians' xenophobia and their defensive nationalism to parry criticism and threats to communist central control and his regime and justify its brutal, arbitrary rule and economic and social folly. Only Hoxha's death, the timely downfall of communism in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s, and the collapse of the nation's economy were enough to break his spell and propel Albania fitfully toward change. The Albanians are probably an ethnic outcropping of the Illyrians, an ancient Balkan people who intermingled and made war with the Greeks, Thracians, and Macedonians before succumbing to Roman rule around the time of Christ. Eastern and Western powers, secular and religious, battled for centuries after the fall of Rome to control the lands that constitute modern-day Albania. All the Illyrian tribes except the Albanians disappeared during the Dark Ages under the waves of migrating barbarians. A forbidding mountain homeland and resilient tribal society enabled the Albanians to survive into modern times with their identity their Indo-European language intact. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Ottoman Turks swept into the western Balkans. After a quixotic defense mountedby the Albanians' greatest hero, Skanderbeg, the Albanians succumbed to the Turkish sultan's forces. During five centuries of Ottoman rule, about two-thirds of the Albanian population, including its most powerful feudal landowners, converted to Islam. Many Albanians won fame and fortune as soldiers, administrators, and merchants in far-flung parts of the empire. As the centuries passed, however, Ottoman rulers lost the capacity to command the loyalty of local pashas, who governed districts on the empire's fringes. Soon pressures created by emerging national movements among the empire's farrago of peoples threatened to shatter the empire itself. The Ottoman rulers of the nineteenth century struggled in vain to shore up central authority, introducing reforms aimed at harnessing unruly pashas and checking the spread of nationalist ideas. Albanian nationalism stirred for the first time in the late nineteenth century when it appeared that Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece would snatch up the Ottoman Empire's Albanian-populated lands. In 1878 Albanian leaders organized the Prizren League, which pressed for autonomy within the empire. After decades of unrest and the Ottoman Empire's defeat in the First Balkan War in 1912-13, Albanian leaders declared Albania an independent state, and Europe's Great Powers carved out an independent Albania after the Second Balkan War of 1913. With the complete collapse of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires after World War I, the Albanians looked to Italy for protection against predators. After 1925, however, Mussolini sought to dominate Albania. In 1928 Albania became a kingdom under Zog I, the conservative Muslim clan chief and former prime minister, but Zog failed to stave off Italian ascendancy in Albanian internal affairs. In 1939 Mussolini's troops occupied Albania, overthrew Zog, and annexed the country. Albanian communists and nationalists fought each other as well as the occupying Italian and German forces during World War II, and with Yugoslav and Allied assistance the communists triumphed. After the war, communist strongmen Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu eliminated their rivals inside the communist party and liquidated anticommunist opposition. Concentrating primarily on maintaining their grip on power, they reorganized the country's economy along strict Stalinist lines, turning first to Yugoslavia, then to the Soviet Union, and later to China for support. In pursuit of their goals, the communists repressed the Albanian people, subjecting them to isolation, propaganda, and brutal police measures. When China opened up to the West in the 1970s, Albania's rulers turned away from Beijing and implemented a policy of strict autarky, or self-sufficiency, that brought their nation economic ruin." Data as of April 1992 |
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26 Feb 08 - 06:53 PM (#2273150) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,Shimrod Congratulations, 'pdq' on cut-and-pasting a history of Albania - but NOT Kosovo. How many more times! The Albanian speaking population of Kosovo are from Kosovo - NOT Albania!! Read Noel Malcolm's 'A Short History of Kosovo' and then come back and discuss this subject. |
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26 Feb 08 - 07:18 PM (#2273170) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger Does Noel Malcolm explain why, when the announcement was made that Kosovo was delcaring its independence from Serbia, the local population in Kosovo was running about waving the Albanian flag? |
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27 Feb 08 - 05:20 AM (#2273490) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,Shimrod Because ultra-nationalists are present on both the Serbian and Albanian sides and they feed off each other - evil begets evil! |
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27 Feb 08 - 09:28 AM (#2273641) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: artbrooks Kosovo has no flag. |
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27 Feb 08 - 08:58 PM (#2274307) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger That's an interesting observation, Art. I wonder if that's the reason the illegal aliens wave Mexican flags when they demonstrate in Los Angeles, because Aztlan has no flag? |
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27 Feb 08 - 11:58 PM (#2274413) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Lepus Rex Being a busy motherfucker, I havent had time to wade into this, yet, but I've been following the thread off and on, and have a few comments and questions: pdq: ""Russia was an Orthodox Christian country at one time. So were Serbia and Albania...The last thing Russia wants is for Kosovo to fall to the relentless march of Islam. Bosnia, Albania, now Kosovo." Setting aside your whole asinine "march of Islam" thing, here's where you got it wrong, there: Russia and Serbia both remain majority Orthodox. Massively so. Bosniaks are a plurality (48%) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, not a majority. Albania was never majority Orthodox: It's always had an Orthodox minority, but it was majority Catholic for centuries, and later, under Ottoman influence/pressure, majority Muslim. pdq: "On another front, Thailand fell recently." Seriously? To "the Muslims"? You sure about that shit? pdq: ""Neither Russia nor China is happy about losing their buffer zones between themselves and Islam. Each step brings the other two superpowers (there are three of us) closer to a full scale war with Islam. When it happen, and it will, it will be ugly." Neither Russia nor China has had a "buffer zone" beween themselves and Islam for, well, as long as there's been a "Russia," and as long as there's been Muslims in China. Which, if you bothered to check, has been quite some time. Both Russia and China colonised "Islamic" lands. And so both have sizable indiginous Muslim ethnic minorities, as wells as, in the case of China, millions of descendants of Han converts and sinicised foreign Muslims. Where was this "buffer zone" you imagine existed, exactly? Riginslinger: "Does Noel Malcolm explain why, when the announcement was made that Kosovo was delcaring its independence from Serbia, the local population in Kosovo was running about waving the Albanian flag?" And why wouldn't they? Yes, it's the flag of Albania, but, as it's also the flag of Gjergj Kastrioti (Skanderbeg), it's a symbol of Albanians as a people. Much like red/blue/white flags for Slavs, or genital herpes for Canadians. Kosovar Albanians, for the most part, have abosultely no interest in merging with Albania. Seriously, look it up. Yourself. I don't like you enough to bother with a link. artbrooks: "Kosovo has no flag." Uh, yeah, it does, actually. Ugly as fuck, but it's a flag, alright. I'm not even going to go into the rest of Riginslinger's copious stream of bullshit, as Shimrod and others have already pretty much destroyed him/her. But here's a hint, Riginslinger: Next time you show up for an argument, actually do some fucking research on the subject beforehand. If you're lucky, you won't come off as such a clueless, racist knob that way. _____________________________________________________ Anyways, enough of that. I, for one, am fucking thrilled that Kosova has declared its independence. As Kent Davis wrote earlier, "self determination is a beautiful thing." All peoples deserve to live in the country of their choosing, whether they're Kurds, Basques, Chechens, Acehnese, Karen, or yes, even the Serb majority in the northern border regions of Kosova. Or, at the very least, have guaranteed regional autonomy in the regions where they constitute a majority. Whether this is convenient for the ruling ethnic group or not is irrelevant. These are basic human rights, here. In the case of the Albanians of Kosova, staying part of a nation that only a few years before attempted to "ethnically cleanse" them, even with their autonomy restored, simply wasn't an option. What would have stopped another Miloševiæ, backed by Russia, from taking it away again? And I don't really care why America/NATO, intervened in Kosova when Miloševiæ whipped up his racist hordes against the Kosovar Albanians. I certainly don't agree with the ham-handed way the intervention was carried out, but an intervention was necessary nonetheless. Without it, ethnic cleansing would have become genocide. And all you "I'd burn the embassy, too" types would be blaming the carnage on "Clinton," or "the Democrats," or maybe "Bush" or the "Republicans." As if your personal political grudges have anything to do with human fucking rights. So, yeah, like, yay an' shit, Kosova! :) ---Will |
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28 Feb 08 - 10:07 AM (#2274712) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger Lepus - Your're obviously too busy to deal with reality! |
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28 Feb 08 - 10:48 AM (#2274764) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: pdq Lupus Wrecks, "Russia was an Orthodox Christian country at one time. So were Serbia and Albania" "Serbia " was a typo. Should have been "Bosnia" as it was correctly stated in the next line. You said: "Albania was never majority Orthodox...it was majority Catholic for centuries" Can you support that statement, especially the never part? I will get back on the Thailand issue. |
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28 Feb 08 - 12:10 PM (#2274865) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,Shimrod "Lepus - Your're obviously too busy to deal with reality!" But at least Lepus isn't a "clueless, racist knob" like you, Friginsliger. |
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28 Feb 08 - 12:47 PM (#2274903) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger The contemporary way to get somebody with whom you disagree to shut up is to call them "racist." It works most of the time because nobody wants that label. Usually, the accusation is unfounded, like it is in this case. Thankfully, it's beginning not to work anymore. People are becoming wise to these tactics. In any event, as long as there are mental midgets out there who continue to hide in dark corners and ambush forward thinking individuals with pointless name-calling, it's going to be hard to solve many of the world's most pressing problems. |
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28 Feb 08 - 02:16 PM (#2274985) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,Shimrod F**ck off, Friginsliger and go and do some research before shouting your mouth off! Your ignorant posts are beneath contempt and don't deserve anything better. |
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28 Feb 08 - 02:31 PM (#2274999) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger Shimrod - If you think runaway population growth and the continued degradation of the planet is a good idea, I can see that there's not much hope in changing your mind. Obviously that's your opinion and you're sticking to it. |
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29 Feb 08 - 04:38 AM (#2275504) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,Shimrod I care PASSIONATELY about those things - but the situation in Kosovo has very little, if any, connection! That's like telling me, during a discussion on motor cars, that I obviously have no interest in cream cakes! What planet are you on, Riginslinger? |
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29 Feb 08 - 07:07 AM (#2275561) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger Okay, I don't think the fact support that position, but let's agree on everything else and drop Kosovo. |
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29 Feb 08 - 07:09 AM (#2275563) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,PMB The level of sheer, boneheaded, wilful ignorance displayed in this thread is astounding. Do you never go and try to research things a bit, rather than just waving your porejudices around? |
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29 Feb 08 - 09:55 AM (#2275693) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Mr Happy Artbrooks, Kosovo does have a flag!http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Flag_of_Kosovo.svg |
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29 Feb 08 - 10:09 AM (#2275710) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,Shimrod No, I don't think that we should "drop Kosovo"! And I don't think that you, Riginslinger, should be allowed to get away with demonising an entire population of people that it is patently obvious that you know nothing about. You have arbitrarily decided that, on the basis of extremely limited knowledge and a small stock of 'opinions' (mainly rank prejudices) that the Albanian population of Kosovo are to be held responsible for some of the greatest dangers which face the human race because they are: (i) 'Illegal immigrants' (absolutely and categorically WRONG). (ii) Muslim (so what?) You also seem, by implication, to condemn them because they are poor and have a high birthrate (got any evidence for that, by the way?). What you have ignored, probably because it doesn't with your prejudices, is that they have recently been subjected to a vicious, genocidal assault by their neighbours, the Serbs. Blaming the poor, the dispossessed and the victims of persecution (or Muslims, for that matter) for the ills of the world does nothing for social justice or the environment. Now go away and do what several people on this thread have suggested you do - some f**king HOMEWORK!! |
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29 Feb 08 - 10:35 AM (#2275733) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger Shimrod - You seem to be eager to take sides in this conflict. I think it makes a lot more sense to take a broder view of the issues. That seems to be where we differ. I found this on Wikkipedia. Maybe they're wrong. If they are, you might want to correct them. "The Kosovo Liberation Army or KLA (Albanian: Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës or UÇK) was an Albanian paramilitary guerrilla organization which sought independence for the province of Kosovo from Yugoslavia and Serbia in the late 1990s." |
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29 Feb 08 - 10:43 AM (#2275739) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: artbrooks Yes, Kosovo now has a flag. It is very new. |
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29 Feb 08 - 11:16 AM (#2275759) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: pdq "In 2001, Macedonia was gripped by fighting that pitted the country's ethnic Albanians —who make up a quarter of Macedonia's 2 million population and live mostly in the northwestern Tetovo region —against government troops. The fighting ended in a Western brokered peace deal that upgraded ethnic Albanian rights, including the right to university education in the Albanian language." Source: Baku Sun" Albania will annex the Tetovo region as soon as it can, just like it annexed Kosovo. This is rather the "manifest destiny" of the ethnic Albanians. Eventually, the fences will be built and borders declared, formalising this conquest and making it permanent . (no Tetovar flag yet, eh?) |
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29 Feb 08 - 11:41 AM (#2275783) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: artbrooks pdq, please tell us when Albania annexed Kosovo. That is missing from the news media. |
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29 Feb 08 - 11:55 AM (#2275796) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: pdq If it was not clear, I will repeat. The (ethnic) Albanians will soon take a portion of Macedonia and add it, as well as Kosovo, to their existing state called Albania. |
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29 Feb 08 - 12:05 PM (#2275802) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger pdq - It's amazing to me that so many people are unable to see what's going on there. I think you've got it exactly right. I think it just takes a little more vision... |
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29 Feb 08 - 12:10 PM (#2275803) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: pdq Just because Oprah Winfrey doesn't talk about it doesn't mean it isn't happening. |
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29 Feb 08 - 12:15 PM (#2275813) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger Good point! |
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29 Feb 08 - 12:19 PM (#2275818) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: GUEST,Shimrod "Shimrod - You seem to be eager to take sides in this conflict. I think it makes a lot more sense to take a broder view of the issues. That seems to be where we differ." No, we differ because you (and pdq) have got your facts wrong! More accurately you are too idle and prejudiced to check your facts in the first place! One of the few 'facts' that you have got right, in this entire discussion, is that you have 'discovered' that the Kosovo Liberation Army exists (ooh, I bet your poor mouse-hand really aches from all that Wikkipedia-ing). Frankly, I find the existence of such organisations to be very problematical, but they usually evolve in response to intolerable external pressures - in this case the extreme prejudices of the Serbs. Are you determined to get the last word (however fatuous and ill-informed that might be) or are you going to go away and do that homework? |
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29 Feb 08 - 12:55 PM (#2275856) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger Shimrod - No, I don't need to have the last word. I kind of suspect we arguing different things here. But in the interest of returning the conversation back to level of civil discourse, I'll look up the Malcomb book and review it. |
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26 Mar 08 - 09:42 PM (#2298451) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger Okay - I am in possession of Noel Malcom's book "Kosovo: A Short History." I got a used copy through Amazon for 12 bucks, but when it got here, it didn't look used at all. I didn't check sources, but the scholarship looks to be impeccable. There is a glossary and 43 pages of references. This volume has a preface that is dated later than the date of original publication, so this must be a more recent edition. The first thing I did was to turn to the later chapters, chapters that bear on the issues that have been discussed in this thread. Then I went back to the front and started reading the book in its entirety. I don't have a lot of time to read right now, so I'm only about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way through. The way the problems play out as they relate to the discussion put forward by various posters to this point, I would say much of it depends on one's point of view. To date, I've come away with an understanding--rightly or wrongly--that the provence of Kosovo has been a kind of "political football" that has been kicked back and forth between Serbia and Albania for a very long time. Shimrod and others were right to point out that there are no easy solutions here, but to try to make the case that one side or the other is totally right, or totally wrong, I think would be very hard to do. |
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28 Mar 08 - 10:35 AM (#2299563) Subject: RE: BS: US in Kosovo From: Riginslinger I will just conclude with the observation that Noel Malcolm seems to leave one with the impression that he thinks "ethnic cleansing" is the worst thing that can happen. |
