The Perils of Kosovo’s Independence

by Srdja Trifkovic

July 11th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under

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Italy’s political forces of all color and hue are alarmed by the possibility of Kosovo’s proposed independence even though some prefer to pretend otherwise, Alleanza Nazionale Senator Alfredo Mantica, deputy chairman of the Commission on Foreign Affairs, told me in Rome earlier this month. Mantica, a veteran politician who was Italy’s deputy foreign minister in Berlusconi’s coalition government, favors a pause of several months “to reflect on this issue, and to consider the consequences of opening what may well prove to be Pandora’s box.” Mantica has no doubt that Kosovo’s independence would establish an important precedent, regardless of various assurances from Washington and Brussels to the contrary. He fears that this precedent would have the potential to destabilize Europe: the “right to self-determination” would be invoked by every dissatisfied minority, especially in the eastern half of the Old Continent.

Alfredo Mantica Senator Mantica regrets the fact that the position of Italy in the European debate on Kosovo is weak, which reflects the lack of either principled courage or imagination within the ruling leftist coalition. In the beginning, he points out, the position of the Italian government was totally different. Initially, after the end of the intervention by NATO in 1999, that position was based on the need to devise a form of specific autonomy for Kosovo but not to consider independence as a viable option, let alone support it. The focus at that time was on the well-known “109 Standards” for Kosovo, standards concerning the respect for human rights of the Province’s minority communities, the rule of law, the return of refugees, and so on, before any “final status” could be considered.

“The problem of Kosovo was perceived in Rome as a problem of Italy’s national security,” Mantica says, “because we considered Kosovo a territory incapable of introducing the rule of law. We realized that Kosovo was a criminal would-be state whose criminality was largely directed against Italy.” And yet, today, only Slovakia, Romania, Greece and Spain are voicing unease with the proposed independence of Kosovo—and within the European Union as a whole there is no focused resistance to the U.S. position on the desirability of independence.

“We met recently with the U.N. mediator Marti Ahtisaari here in Rome,” Mantica goes on, “and he insisted that Kosovo’s independence would not set a precedent” for other countries with compact minority populations that wish to secede:

We asked him about Abkhasia, Ossetia, Transdnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh, northern Cyprus—and we found Mr. Ahtisaari very compliant with the American perspective. Neither he nor the current Italian government are taking any account of the position of Serbia. We have responded to Ahtisaari by pointing out that the current ethnic balance between Kosovo’s Serbs and Albanians is the result of the Albanians’ ethnic invasion, with only ten percent of the population being Serbian. Ahtisaari even rejected the suggestion that more time should be allowed for negotiations, saying that too much time had passed already with no new ideas on the table. I asked him personally, if the northern part of Kosovo should be allowed to remain with Serbia, or if the Serbian Republic in Bosnia, the Republika Srpska, should be able to join the Republic of Serbia. Is it not the case that Kosovo’s independence would open a host of new problems? I have also noted that the current borders of Serbia are not natural and historical but administrative-political, and that—by contrast—the current borders of Croatia have created a state far greater in geographic extent than the historical Croatia.

Senator Mantica insists that Italy should not recognize any unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo that would seek to bypass the Security Council, “not only for legal and political reasons, but also because of the long historic ties between Italy and Serbia that hark back to World War I and before.” The pressure from the United States is strong, he says, but in Washington they cannot walk and chew gum at the same time: “Their absolute priority right now is Iraq and Afghanistan, and Kosovo is low on their list of priorities.”

When all is said and done, Manica continues, is it possible to imagine Kosovo as a functional sovereign state? He thinks not, and would therefore suggest a creative alternative: Kosovo as a province of Europe: “If we assume that all of the Balkan countries will eventually enter the European Union, it should be possible to envisage Kosovo entering Europe in a different way, like a province administered by the Union itself.” He nevertheless warns that is not in the capacity and authority of the EU to make such a decision:

Personally I hold that we are still stuck with the destructive legacy of Madeleine Albright. The policies pursued by the United States in her tenure [as Secretary of State] have helped Al Qaeda in Europe. But the same spirit is still present in Mr. Ahtisaari’s insistence that the Serbs of the Krajina are not a problem, while the Albanians of Kosovo are a problem—although in both cases the number of refugees was more or less the same.

The Italian government that agreed to NATO’s attack on Serbia in 1999 was a government of the Left, Mantica points out, just as the current government, which supports the Ahtisaari Plan is of the Left. Its prime minister at that time is now foreign minister; and it is noteworthy that this government has been notably supportive of the American position thus far. “The problem it faces is that our Parliament would not support the government if it tried to extend recognition of Kosovo’s independence that would bypass the UN Security Council,” he concludes. “It is no longer possible to steamroll decisions by asserting that Milosevic is a criminal and Tudjman or Izetbegovic is a saint.”

Comments

There Are 139 Responses So Far. »

1 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 11 July 2007:

Just as it happened in all prior centuries: the lack of historical perspective will lead to history (especially the unpleasant parts of history) repeating itself.

All the poor students of history need such a spanking. Albanian demographic (or birth rate) invasion has succeeded in creating a false sense of imbalance.

If anybody is foolish enough to take this artificially induced state as fact, s/he will find it very regrettable in the nearest future. Not only does the forcible conversion from Christian lands into Islam hold a particular curse, but there will (in all probability) be some ground based armed struggle – that none of the present day “geniuses” (Ahtisari and his paymasters) – will ever be able to answer or explain. They know full well (they must know if they had spent so much time studying Kosovo), that such a forceful conversion will be not only met with resistance, further animosity, hostility and provide fertile ground for future conflicts – aside from showing the world that Pontius Pilate is still living.

Everybody (and their mothers) will wash their hands of all the future Kosovo nightmares which are guaranteed to ensue (as well as, far beyond the borders of Kosovo). Republika Srpska will probably be the first next client with their anticipated demand to withdraw from “Bosnian Federation” – gain independence or join Serbia proper. It was that exact warped sense of logic and poor knowledge of history that created the Bosnia Frankenstein out of nothing and rewarded Islam.

So the horrible lessons of history are already in their cyclical motion at present, this Ahtisari (and U.S.A.) plan will only provide additional acceleration to the already doomed ideas and further cement the prior horrors. The stupidity of such an anticipated action is beyond most other political miscarriages. The same authors should simultaneously proclaim independence of Punjab, Nagorno-Karbah, Abhkazia, Osetia, Chechnya, Catalonia and Basque lands. Come to think of it, return of Corsica to Italy wouldn’t be out of the question, nor the return of Gibraltar to Spain.

Human stupidity is truly infinite. In this case it is far more than human stupidity – by implementing any of the above foolish actions there is a virtual guarantee of armed struggle (wars) on the southern portion of the Balkans. Only the future beneficiaries of such a conflict can be actively involved in such a miscarriage of justice and common sense.
2 Comment by Nomen Nescio on 11 July 2007:

Dr. Trifkovic brings us some most interesting information. Let us only hope that senatore Mantica’s position will be shared by a decisive portion of Italian power structure.

As for

“… the lack of historical perspective will lead to history (especially the unpleasant parts of history) repeating itself …”

well said, Iliya, well said indeed. Regrettably, a solid historical perspective is, shall we say it politely, a bit too much to expect in this “nation” of fast-track businessmen where we happen to dwell.

As usual, I agree with E. (of E.A.). Incidentally, what will happen with Russia when (if) Vladimir departs next year? The transformation to the present Russia from that of his alcoholic predecessor has been truly spectacular. Hence my question.
3 Comment by Michael Kenny on 11 July 2007:

The interesting think about Senator Mantica’s remarks is that he doesn’t actually propose anything (the “EU province” idea is unrealistic, as I’m sure he’s aware), but that precisely reflects the realtiy of the situation! There is no solution! The US has painted itself into a corner, discrediting itself in Europe and discrediting NATO. It’s not a happy situation for the people caught up in it, but it’s a blessing in disguise for Europe, forcing it to stand on its own two feet and showing it that it can.
4 Comment by R. V. M. on 12 July 2007:

“EU Province” idea is both appalling and dangerous. And it could be quite realistic unfortunately. It has friends in Germany as well, not suprisingly among those nummerous supporters of disintegration of Yugoslavia, – in the 90es they often described Yugoslavia as an “artificial” (“künstlich”) state (now it is Israel being described as “artificial”). They never reflected admitting “artificial” Yugoslavia in the EU (or Israel), but now that they portioned Serbia in tidbits and little canapes, they say we all should peacefully live together in the EU and the borders really don´t matter, we´re all Europeans.

Unfortunately, pro-EU propaganda is very strong in Serbia too and unfortunately it is appealing to a relatively large number of Serbs. Serbia is actually very lucky that the EU is currently still managed by arrogant Serb-eaters who are offering nothing but humiliation to Serbia while offering everything to its enemies at the expence of Serbia. My estimation is that app 50% of Serbs would vote pro-EU, in case the EU would offer an immediate full membership, even without Kosovo.

And this scenario is unfortunately not unrealistic. Due to demographic development, European metropolises will be very soon in dramatic need of skilled and educated people and those will be looked for in the European periphery (even more after Muhammedan doctors showed what they are capable of) – Poland is already experiencing an enormous brain drain of the much needed nation´s young and enterpreneurial generation.
5 Comment by Michael Averko on 12 July 2007:

As Dr. T’s article shows, it’s not just Russia and Serbia which haven’t embraced the idea of Kosovo independence. A host of countries are apprehensive about such an occurrence.

A newly released article noting the NATO kangaroo court like antics relative to the likes of Kosovo Albanian leaders:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-hero12jul12,0,5413344.story?coll=la-home-world

Of course, the referenced Carla Del Ponte is far from perfect when it comes to advocating justice.
6 Comment by Nebojsa Malic on 12 July 2007:

As I’ve said previously, Kosovo is a finger-trap of the Empire’s own making. No one forced the U.S. or the EU to develop an independence agenda and invest their credibility, authority and face in it. Now that the agenda has hit the wall, so has everything else. Would Russia give up a key principle of international law just to save George W. Bush’s already pathetic reputation? Would Serbia sacrifice its territory to spare the “West” the much-deserved embarrassment? Much as I fear there are all too many leaders who would do just that, I still hope they will not.
7 Comment by Michael Averko on 12 July 2007:

Because of their respective funding and-or constituency, some politicians like Tom Lantos and Eliot Engel will continue to overlook the flawed pro-Kosovo independence position. Others are like sheep, who follow whatever is the perceived safe direction.

As time passes with Kosovo’s fate undecided, the greater the likelihood that independence will not happen. Over time, it can become increasingly more difficult to hide certain realities.

“What can be delayed, can be defeated.” James Jatras at the 11/05/06 Njegos Foundation gathering at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute.

The recently posted (at this thread) LA Times article along with a recent US-Russia panel discussing Kosovo are examples of how the high profile presentation of diverse ideas can eventually influence change for the better.
8 Comment by svetlana on 12 July 2007:

I’m curious to read the original text of Senator Mantica. Can anyone provide a link
9 Comment by svetlana on 12 July 2007:

even if it is in Italian
10 Comment by Johan Dieckmann on 13 July 2007:

Svetlana,

Judging by the first sentence of the above article, namely the portion

“… Alleanza Nazionale Senator Alfredo Mantica, deputy chairman of the Commission on Foreign Affairs, told me in Rome earlier this month …”,

Mantica’s statement would seem to be a personal communication to Dr. Trifkovic’, who I believe should help us here.

My own searching http://www.alleanzanazionale.it, both in Italian and in English produced no results.
11 Comment by just_a_serb on 13 July 2007:

Pro EU sentiments in Serbia are merely product both of propaganda and the fact that Russia was perceived as nearly non-existent in international relations.

Russia’s present stance has still not been fully perceived among the Serbs and public opinion is mainly influenced by “Resistence is futile” message we were getting for some seven years.

Now, having French FM Mr. Cochoner (sp? said we’ll have to choose between EU membership and Kosovo, and with Russia saying “nyet”, you bet perception of Serbs will change.

I’m already enjoying the image of the next campaign, the fact that Serbia won’t get into EU if it doesn’t renounce Kosovo, and the campaign slogan: “What wilt thou now choose to be thy kingdom?
Say, dost thou desire a heav’nly kingdom, Or dost thou prefer an earthly kingdom?”

If I could get it protected as a trademark, I’d run myself. No chance not to get elected with such a slogan, given the situation.

Regards to all, but specially to Nebojsa.
12 Comment by Michael Averko on 13 July 2007:

One of the Sorosian TOL blogs claimed a poll saying that 48% of Serbs would trade Kosovo for EU membership. Besides questioning its accuracy, I wonder when that poll was taken and how it would contrast to one taken in the present?

Among other EU members, a number of Poles question the benefits of EU membership. The newest EU members Bulgaria and Romania don’t enjoy the full benefits of EU membership (like the travel policy among EU members).
13 Comment by Michael Spanovic on 13 July 2007:

To what advantage would Serbia’s entry into the EU provide? I have yet to see tangible proof that joining that disfunctional, corrupt political oligarchy provides any real benefit to it’s members.
Rather, destruction of sovereignty and an increase cost (not standard) of living are the “benefits” of membership. Larger nation’s such as France, Holland and Poland cannot ratify the EU constitution as it obviously waters down their cultural identity and traditions and Italians pine for the return of the Lira.
Serbia would be much better served staying an impartial outsider. Although, the standard of living may be lower, Serbia enjoys many advantages over it’s EU neighbors including, lower costs of production and corporate ownership, less bureaucracy and more business friendly labor laws. Serbia has tremendous human resource capabilities and of course is at the cross roads of trade in Europe.
That being said, the climate for business opportunity in Serbia is not perfect but anyone doubting their potential and see entry to the EU as the only path to prosperity can look at how China has engorged itself on the U.S. market without “playing ball” or even being a WTO member until 2002.
Regardless of tariffs or lack of a trade agreement, European manufacturers will start looking at Serbia as a place to outsource production. This will not take place if Serbia “integrates” into the EU and is bound by the same costs and restrictions as other members.
14 Comment by scytale on 13 July 2007:

Same here i Macedonia. Everyday EU implements more and more standards. You got to this, you got to do that, you need to have a political dialogue (as macedonian parliament do not exist). An even worst they say we need to set agreement with Greece about name of Macedonia (maybe I am guilty if I’m born Macedonian or my country is named Republic of Macedonia?)
My point was: As I have no problem with my identity, I do not need to set up something with Greece, I will live to them to set their own problem with my identity. So Serbia should do the same with Kosovo. Serbia didn’t started a problem with Kosovo’s indipendance and shouldn’t fell in trap with the solution. Serbia just need to be on the stance of international law (it’s curent position and nothing else).
If EU thinks that we are rabbits here and will give us a carrots just to stay silent, EU is wrong.
15 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 13 July 2007:

One of those terrible simple little wisdoms (from a film MIB, no less), quoting:

Statment: “People are smart…”

counterstatement: “No, a person is smart, but people are usually dumb”

There are many smart persons in both Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, EU and elsewhere, but a warped sense of self-importance force-fead to Albanians has done miracles to increase their hunger for other lands in the neighboring regions. Any degree of Kosovo’s self-governing or any other type of even the mildest degree of dominance over the Serbian sacred lands will lead to a mutual destruction the likes of which were not foreseen during the Leonid Breznyev-Jimmy Carter SALT negotiations. Serbia’s greatest asset right now is exactly the absolute independance and non-alliance with any of the land-grabbing Germanic tribes or Arnautic inflated appetites. Due to the holes in the ozone layer many of the Serbian politicians believe that “trading with Kosovo” will bring benefits to the country – I yet have to see any one single benefit from this warped vision of the future. Additionally, as a past citizen of, (now extinct Yugoslavia) I would go out of my way to institute public hangings on Terazije (main street of Belgrade) for all those rocket scientits who are trading off major advantages to get only deeper into the dungeon of the EU’s nighmare.

I can’t help using Shakespeare in most of my daily routines, so here I’ll recollect Macbeth’s Banquo:

And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s
In deepest consequence.

Let’s not be foolish. Albanian goals can never see the light of day. Even if by some brute force or over agression there is such a deviant change – I am supremely convinced that in due corse such an injustice will be overturned (this thought, expressed in a more eloquent manner, was first pronounced by Isaak Asimov during one of his seminars in Hoboken N.J. about 1976 or so – and I remembered it for the rest of my life.
16 Comment by Indrit on 13 July 2007:

Not worth to even click the link to this article.
17 Comment by Boba Borojevic on 13 July 2007:

Hey, just_a_serb !!!

Do not despair. There are millions of Serbs in Serbia who know that the EU has not and will not offer Serbia the EU membership anytime soon, no matter what Serbs do with Kosovo. One thing is certain Kosovo will never be independent, and certainly not Albanian!

To those interested:
The Lord Byron Foundation For Balkan Studies will bring in its August issue of the newsletter Byronica a report on Dr. Trifkovic’s and his colleagues visit to Italy.

To subscribe to Byronica (12 issues) $39.-, pls. send your subscription to:
(If you live in the US) – POBox 1246, Chicago, IL 60690-1246
(If you live in Canada) – POBox 5252, Ottawa, ON, K2C 3H5
18 Comment by EMete on 13 July 2007:

Judging by the biased article and the superficial comments, I swore I would not respond, but I feel prompted to because this cheap Serbian propaganda may deceive those who have no prior knowledge of the Kosova issue. It is really sad to observe that the Serbs cannot bring themselves as yet to admit their historical blunders and the injustices they have done to other peoples. It is a pity to notice that they still live in the past, which is not as they have presented to the world. They keep harping on the same tune and repeat the same concoctions as their predecessors. They forget that the new state of Kosova is almost a closed chapter now. The problems Kosova is going through at present are the birthpangs that have always accompanied the emergence of the new states. In these short comments I’ll try to bring to the attention of the readers a few arguments and facts about Kosova. I’ll also try to answer the question of whether its independence will constitute a precedent for other regions of the world.

As is known, Serbia grabbed Kosova from the Ottomans and annexed the province militarily without the consent of its Albanian majority population during the Balkan Wars. This illegal annexation of Kosova is an argument that Kosova’s independence does not contravene international law.
Kosova’s constitutional position in the former Yugoslavia cannot help the Serbian thesis either. Historically speaking, Kosova has never been a legal part of Serbia. Although not a republic, Kosova was a constituent part of the Yugoslav Federation with clearly defined territory and borders and the prerogatives of a federal constituent part of the Yugoslav federation, which are separate political and territorial identity and constitution. The same as the Yugoslav republics, it was represented to the federal institutions not through Serbia but directly.
The Serbs, who settled the region by 630 AD, having been invited by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius to suppress the restive local populations, use history as an argument to prove their case. If history is taken into account, we would say that Greece should claim Istanbul, Bulgaria and Hungary should claim Belgrade, Germany should claim a right over Sudetenland, Sweden over Finland and Norway, Mexico over Florida and California, whereas Albania should claim the Illyrian territories which until recently were called Yugoslavia,
The relationship between Kosova and Serbia can be likened to that of Indonesia and East Timor. East Timor was annexed by Indonesia in 1975 contrary to the will of Portugal as the external sovereign, a fact that made its annexation by Indonesia illegal. Singapore is another example. It split from Malaysia and officially gained sovereignty on August 9, 1965. The case of Kosova is also similar to the case of Namibia. The Eritrea case too provides another example in this regard. The struggle for independence ended in 1991 and two years later over 99 percent of the Eritrean people voted for independence in a referendum supervised by a United Nations mission. Independence was declared on May 24 1993.
Kosova’s independence can by no means be compared to secession of territories that were not annexed in a unilateral manner against the will of the people of the original sovereigns. The separatist movements in Gagauzia and Transnistria (Dnestr Republic), Southern Osetia and Abkazia (Georgia), for instance, lack Kosova’s ethnic basis. In Kosova about 95 percent of the population is Albanian. These regions did not have an autonomous or federal status at the time of dissolution of the former Soviet Union as Kosova did at the time of breakup of the former Yugoslavia. The situation of the Kosova Albanians cannot be likened to that of the Scots, Catalonians, Welsh, Corsicans or Basques either because the latter have not been ever deported en masse or massacred by the states, which control them.
These and other arguments and facts prove squarely that Kosova meets all the criteria to become an independent state and full-fledged member of the United Nations and other international bodies. Nobody can deprive the Kosova Albanians of this inalienable historical right by turning reality upside down, misrepresenting the truth about the Serb squatters in Kosova and questioning the morality of the United States action in the Balkans.
19 Comment by S. on 13 July 2007:

What is wrong with these Albanians? Their country Albania is the most undeveloped country in Europe – culturally and economically. Yet, they insist that Serbian monasteries built by Serbian noblemen and people in Kosovo-Metohija are not Serbian but Albanian. Why couldn’t we find similar cultural monuments built in Albania?

EMate, build the bridge and get over it! Albanians from Kosovo-Metohija are free to go to Albania any time they want. You ought to know by now that Kosovo-Metohija will never become independent. Why? Because Albanians have not bribed Marti Ahtisaari (Clinton, Holbrooke, Albright and similar crooks) enough!
20 Comment by Michael Averko on 14 July 2007:

My read on history confirms Serbs predominating in Kosovo before the Albanians.

Not to get off subject, but I continue to question the claim that Moldova is the poorest country in Europe. That it can be stated as such is one reason why Pridnestrovie (Trans-Dniester) wants no part of it.

When Will Russia Apply “The Reverse Holbrooke”?
http://www.tiraspoltimes.com/news/when_will_russia_apply_the_reverse_holbrooke.html
21 Comment by just_a_serb on 14 July 2007:

Even Soros funded media still haven’t produced any poll results that would show majority of Serbs support “Kosovo for EU exchange”. No doubt they’ll be working hard to persuade the Serbs – the interest over those thirty silver coins must have been grown much over the centuries, so they have the resources.

Given the extent of propaganda and brainwashing we in Serbia were exposed during the last seven years, that’s still something. The methods and effects of that media brainwash should be carefully studied. I’m convinced once the Serbian public perceives the change of balance in position of Russia, and get assured about it, we’ll see the eruptive change of attitude here. No doubt it’s my wish, but I also do believe it will happen. Sooner, rather than latter

If there is no UNSC resolution to invalidate 1244, there will be no independent Kosovo. Required investments in energy sector, where the Empire clerks expect something for themselves, would be extremely risky without UN SC resolution, so the risk cost would prevent it. They know Serbia would return one day and would pay nothing for the investments built on our property.

I expect Russia not to apply “the reverse Holbrooke” plan as its final goal, than to raise and gather all of us together, with “the reverse Hoolbroke” only if requred as a temporal phase. We just all need to see and understand what was exactly going on with us.

Regards to all whom I’ve been reading for years – Srdja, Nebojsa, Svetlana and Boba. Regards also to Michael and to all the others here, incl. EMete, whom should not be concerned at all. Once Serbia is back, you’ll do just fine, EMete.
22 Comment by Alex Tigner on 14 July 2007:

This is off-topic but I can’t resist quoting part of an obituary, published today, of journalist Tom Walker, who covered the NATO attack on Serbia.

“With his unerring eye for a quirky angle, Walker reported during Nato’s bombardment of Belgrade that Serb peasants had jumped up and down on the wing of a downed stealth fighter, chanting: “Sorry, we didn’t know it was invisible.” He wrote that black humour was the lifeblood of Serbs and referred to a topless model in a daily newspaper who was said to be wearing a “stealth bra”.”

The one occasion on which colleagues recall Walker displaying anger came when Alastair Campbell claimed that reporters in Belgrade had become lackeys of a “Serb lie machine”. He responded with a vigorous defence of the correspondents risking their lives under fire and attacked Nato “lies” about the numbers murdered and missing in Kosovo, which he believed had been exaggerated for propaganda.
23 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 14 July 2007:

Emete,

Your should have stuck to your initial idea of “not replying” – would have made much more sense. If Serbia indeed wrestled KosovO from the Ottomans – we must conclude that Ottoman’s home was in Asia Minor not in Europe – so the Ottomans (and their servants, the Arnauts) were on foreign land. How else do we explain all the Serbian presence in Kosovo prior to 1389? It has been a cradle of Serbian natio, home to the early Christians for a good 600 years prior to the unwanted arrival of the intruders. There are documents that go much further back into the 4th, 5th and 6th Century BC. The Celtic tribes in this portion of Europe intermarried with the locals. The Roman mispronounced city of Singidunum was originaly named Sindidun by the early Celtic Scordiacs – burial sites found at the confluence of Savus and Danubius today’s Avala – showing a considerable presence of an ethnic mix. Lepenski Vir was another site where much wealth was found attesting to people living in these lands even before the arrival of the Roman conquerors. Pottery, jewlery and similar artifacts found in today’s Denmark, Normandy (France) had clearly identified artifacts hand-made on the grounds of today’s Serbia. Even the early cartographers dispatched by Alexander the Great 336-323 BC had maps made of the Morava river region – today’s Serbia and extensive contacts (sometimes even clashes) with the combined people from those regions (Celts and Serbians) – however by a series of treaties and agreements Alexander secured his Northern borders well enough so that he could go deep into Asia Minor, Egypt, Persia and India. In short the Turkish imports (Arnauts) found themselves in this part of Europe a good 1000 years after the original Serbians. The following mass migration of Slavic tribes (6th century) is mistakingly thought of as the first arrival os Slavic tribes to the Balkans. It is completely baseless to have some alien tribe (Slavs) get into some unknown lands for no apparent reason. Reason they got there was that the prior early Slavs already worked the fertile lands and welcomed their kin-Slavs into the region. If ever there was an intruder in these parts of Europe it was the Muslims (Turks and their servants Arnauts). Since Albanians are so proud of their achievements, culture, (all alien and unknown to me) they should not be prevented to returning back into Albania where they came from. There are native Arnauts, in any large numbers born on Serbian lands of Kosovo. They have been systematicaly inserted into the Serbian lands since WW1 – and their ethnic explosion (aided by the Muslim polygamy allowing for an abnormal birth rate) seemingly tilted the balance of a nominal head count.

Yes it would have definitely less traumatic for Emete not to have arrived here and not have learned that Arnauts have been inserted by their Turkish sponsors into Europe
24 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 14 July 2007:

It seems absolutely indispensable for Albanians to have some degree of poor vision. Just yesterday and today, according the Der Spiegel, Le Figaro, even the well-sanitized BBC, much prominence is given to the Associated Press clip starting like this

“MOSCOW (AP) — Russia suspended participation in a key European arms control treaty Saturday, saying it will halt NATO inspections of its military sites and no longer limit the numbers of its tanks and other heavy conventional weapons”

Some of the decisions from the West have been outright stupid, corrupt or designed in such a manner as to exploit the prior Warsaw pact countries and turn them in some fashion or another against Russia. It would be foolish to cliam that there is no Russio-phobia. And having awoken this “terrible giant”, the EU Frankenstein contraption might have to take an extra report or two before they implement new foolish or purely selfish actions.

On that note Albanians should look into the history of the European people prior to the birth of Christ (immediatelly after they master spelling – I’ll have to join them in the spelling classes, myself) try to define movements of the Slavic tribes 600 to 400 BCE, perhaps even Macedonians just before the birth of Alexander the Great. There seems to be some silly idea that Albanians came to Europe before any other nation ever set foot on the continent – I, for one, don’t quite buy into it.
25 Comment by Michael Averko on 14 July 2007:

Thanks “Just A Serb” for your comments in number 22 at this thread.

Regarding Iliya’s last set of comments, I received these thoughts from a friend:

Russia has criticised the West for failing to ratify a version amended to
take into account the new post-Cold War situation. Talks last month with
NATO states ended without progress.

Russia wants cuts in NATO troop levels in outlying regions to reflect the
accession to the alliance of eastern European states bordering Russia since
1990.

What this piece “forgets” to mention, but what is up-front in the Russian media today, is that the West got so used to expecting Russia to actually carry out what it has agreed to do, while the West does not feel obliged to honor its commitments: while troops and bases, and now the “defense shields”, as well as continuing NATO expansion go against ALL the promises and agreements made to post-communist, post-Cold War Russia by the West, it continues to expect Russia to play by the rules.

And now they are Shocked.. Shocked!…
26 Comment by EMete on 14 July 2007:

It is my opinion that the readers should be acquainted with the real history of the Kosova region. By “readers” I do not mean the Serbs, because they are agenda-driven, though they tell us otherwise, and as such, are fond of reading an upside-down version of history, written by authors who blow it completely out of proportion by twisting the facts of real life and history.
The Kosova region (ancient Dardania) has been ruled by several empires. From about the 850s until about 1014, it was ruled by Bulgaria. Being realistic and aware that invaded territory does not belong to the invader, the Bulgarians have never claimed Kosova as Serbs do. The region was subsequently overrun by Byzantium under Basil II. At this time, Serbian kingdoms lay to the north and west of Kosova. Stefan Prvovencani took full control of Kosova by 1216 accomplishing what Stefan Nemanja started in the 1180s. When Serbia grabbed Kosova from the Ottomans militarily without the consent of its Albanian majority population during the Balkans wars, it seized the same territory the Nemanjids had grabbed in the 13th century. The question is what was the population the Nemanjids took the territory from? In my opinion, it was the same population as during the Balkan wars: Albanians. Why would Serbs grab the territory from Serbs if the Serbs inhabited the region as early as the 4th century BC, according to the aberrations of a reader?
To help non-Serb readers grasp the history of the Serb invasion of the Balkans, I would point out from the very start that this region, which was once called Eastern Illyria, was overrun by Avars and Slavic tribes towards the end of the sixth century and by Croats and Serbs at the beginning of the seventh century.
As to the Serbs’ history before and after their arrival in the region, I would say that Tacitus, Plinius and Ptolemy in the 1st and 2nd centuries, who are the first to use the name Serboi, say that the Serbs were a people living north of the Caucasus or, according to another theory, they originated from the Lake Baikal area, which lies in southern Siberia, Asian Russia, close to Mongolia. Having set foot on Balkan soil by 630 AD, they settled among the other Slavic tribes that had arrived there a century earlier and mixed with them forming a medieval Serbian nation. Until early 20th century the country was referred to as Servia, a term the Serbs resented because its usage linked them to “servus”, which means a slave or servant in Latin. It is my opinion that the use of the root “servus” to denote the country, Servia, and its inhabitans, the Servians, makes sense considering the fact that the Serbs came to the Balkan region as mercenaries of Byzantium to serve the Byzantine emperor Heraclius. However, being too offensive to Serb pride, the terms “Servia” and “Servians” are no longer used.
As far as religion is concerned, the Serbs were converted to Christianity after their arrival in the region, before the Great Schism (1054) that split the Christian Church into two rival churches, whereas the Illyrians, the ancestors of today’s Albanians, received Christianity from St. Paul the Apostle, and Titus, his disciple, in the first century, that is, about six or more centuries earlier than the Servians. After the division of the Roman Empire, the Illyrian-inhabited regions formed the eastern part of the territory subject to the Pope, although politically a part of Byzantium.
Kosova as we know it today was part of the Kosova Vilayet, which was carved up as a result of the Balkan wars of 1912-1913 between the neighboring countries. The boundaries of the Kosova Vilayet had been shifting as the Ottoman Empire lost territory to neighboring states under the Treaty of Berlin following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. The Kosova Vilayet had Skopje (today’s capital city of the Republic of Macedonia) as its capital.
However, in the 15th century, Serbia covered more or less the area between the Danube, the Great (Velika) Morava and the Timok, a river in Eastern Serbia and Western Bulgaria.
According to chronicles, more members of ethnic minorities such as Serbs, Turks and Roma settled in the Albanian territory of Kosova under the Ottomans. The implementation of the Serbian colonization program in Kosova between the two world wars helped the Serb minority in Kosova to grow although it did not exceed the 10 percent share of its population. Under this program, the Serbs confiscated Albanian land at a time when more Serbian and Montenegrin colonists settled on Albanian territory. In the 1912-1918 period, thousands of Albanians were exterminated or deported to Turkey. In the span of 3 years, from 1910 to 1913, Serbia doubled its size at the expense of Albanian territories. On March 7, 1937, Dr. Vaso Cubrilovic, academician of Yugoslavia and minister in various departments in communist Yugoslavia after the war, presented the royal government of Stoyadinovic with his memorandum on “The Expulsion of the Albanians”. The outbreak of World War II brought its further application to an end although the Yugoslav leadership resumed its implementation in compliance with the changing circumstances after the war. Aleksandar Rankovic, the minister of the Interior, who also held the second highest post in the executive branch of the Yugoslav government until 1966, was mainly responsible for the brutal treatment of the Albanians and their deportation to Turkey. Vaso Cubrilovic’s memorandum draws on another wider-ranging program, the Serbian minister Ilija Garasanin’s work “Nacertanije” (1844), which from a blueprint to spread Serbian influence, became a geopolitical instruction for expansion into Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosova, the northern part of today’s Albania and Macedonia of today.
Serb politicians are used to exploiting history to serve their own needs at present. Instead of looking at the facts of today, they ignore or twist the true facts of history to prove their case and achieve the agenda they have set themselves. In Kosova, about 95 percent of the population is Albanian. This is a fact of life and nobody can reverse it. The Kosova issue should be settled on the basis of this real, tangible and solid fact.
27 Comment by S. on 14 July 2007:

EMete, Kosovo-Metohija will never become an independent Albanian state! It belongs to Serba. What part you do not understand?

Here is a question. Why would Albanians destroy Serbian monasteries and churches some dated from 11th, 12th, 14th centuries, if they were as you claim, in fact Albanian?

Take for example St. Cosmas and Damian Monastery (“Sveti Vraci Monastery”) in the village of Zociste that was destroyed by Albanians on September 13/14, 1999. The monastery was first mentioned in 1327 in the chryssobule of St. King Stephen of Decani . Its oldest preserved fresco fragments date back to the 14th century. During the war 1998-1999 the monastery was often targeted by Kosovo Liberation Army terrorists and completely destroyed on July 13, 1999. During that rampage Albanian terrorists looted, destroyed and burned all Serbian houses in the village of Zociste. All of the Serbs, two hundred of them, were expelled from this area.

This is one of countless documented facts about Albanian barbarism perpetrated against the Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija. Who would in their sound mind allow those barbarians to have their own independent country? Clinton?? Perhaps!
28 Comment by S. on 14 July 2007:

Re; post 28S

… my typo… not “on July 13″ …but on September 13, 1999
29 Comment by Alfred E. Newman on 15 July 2007:

“…It is my opinion that the readers should be acquainted with the real history of the Kosova region. By “readers” I do not mean the Serbs, because they are agenda-driven, though they tell us otherwise, and as such, are fond of reading an upside-down version of history, written by authors who blow it completely out of proportion by twisting the facts of real life and history.
The Kosova region (ancient Dardania) has been ruled by several empires…”

First you betray your intelligence, knowing fully well that the “Kosova” in Albanian language, it is meaningless. What does Kosova mean in Albanian, exactly?

—-
“Kosova” or “Kosovo”?

The name “Kosovo” By: J. P. Maher Ph. D. Professor Emeritus of Linguistics Northeastern Illinois University Chicago

“Kosovo” is a Serbian place name, more fully “kosovo polje”, meaning the ‘field (or plain) of blackbirds’. “Kosovo Polje” lies just outside the city of Prishtina. Ornithology lesson: Among North Americans, Australians, and South Africans, only ornithologists can identify the species in question. Kosovo’s “black bird” is no crow, nor raven, no starling nor grackle, but “turdus merula”, European cousin of the North American rusty-bellied thrush (“turdus migratorius”), which Yanks call the “robin”.

In Britain and Ireland “robin” is the name of another species, “erithacus rubecula”. (The “four and twenty ‘blackbirds’ baked in a pie”, of the English rhyme, were of the species “merula”, in Serbian called “kos”. From this term “kosovo” is the derived possessive adjective.

Like America’s harbinger of spring, the black bird called “kos” in Serbian language sings sweetly in the springtime and early summer. For North Americans the feel of the Serbo-Croatian place name “Kosovo” can only be had from a free translation, “Field of Robins”. Albanians have borrowed the word from the Serbs, whose once overwhelming majority was driven down, especially since the Congress of Berlin, by savage aggression from Albanians incited then and in WW I by Austria-Hungary and Germany, in World War II by Mussolini’s puppet Albanians, and after WW II by the discriminatory ethnic cleansing of the Stalinist dictator Josip Broz.

Native Indian place names in America have no meaning in English: e.g. “Michigan” means nothing in English. In Ojibwa “mishshikamaa” means “it is a big lake”. Just so the place names of Ireland have transparent meaning in Gaelic but are meaningless tags in the colonialist English, e.g. “Dublin” is Gaelic “dubh lin” ‘black pool’, and “Kildare” is “cil dara” ‘church of the oak’, Just so the names of the Serbian province of Kosovo are clear Serbian formations, but have no meaning in the Albanian language.

Proof of the Serbian origin of the name and the loanword status of the immigrant Albanian term is that the word “kosovo” has a clear etymology to anyone who knows a Slavic language, while Albanian “Kosova” is an opaque, meaningless place name in the Albanian language.

Kosovo is Serbian.

—-
As a parting comment here is what Serbian poet had to say about Kosovo (both in English and Serbian just in case you do not understand Serbian):

“Ako Kosovo nije nase, zasto od nas traze da ga damo?
Ako je njihovo, zasto ga otimaju?
A ako vec mogu da ga otmu ne znam sta se vec toliko ustrucavaju?”

As a Serbian writer once said a rough translation is “If Kosovo is not ours, why are they asking us to give it up? If it is theirs, why are they trying to take it? If they can take it I don’t know why they are so hesitant?”
30 Comment by Alex Tigner on 15 July 2007:

Mike Averko

In a recent article in the Times (of London) Anatole Kaletsky put much of the blame on the west for the starting of a new cold war.

“Why is hostility to the West so popular in Russia? Let us try to look at the West through Russian eyes. Despite all the past sentimental rhetoric of Western politicians describing Russia as a friend and “strategic partner”, US and European behaviour has consistently treated Russia more as an enemy than an ally. Russia has been told it could never join Nato or the EU and Mr Putin’s invitation to G8 summits is scant consolation for the denial of WTO membership and the continuation of US trade sanctions dating back to the Cold War. On human rights and extrajudicial assassinations, Russia’s record may be deplorable, but its abuses pale in comparison with those of Western friends such as Saudi Arabia and China, not to mention President Bush’s “boil them in oil” ally, Uzbekistan.

But far more serious from the Russian standpoint than any diplomatic conflicts is what the West has done to their country’s territorial integrity. Ever since the first Bush Administration undermined Mikhail Gorbachev by denying him the financial assistance of the International Monetary Fund and then encouraged the dissolution of the Soviet Union under Boris Yeltsin, the West has appeared, at least from Moscow’s standpoint, to seize every opportunity to weaken, isolate and encircle Russia.

Not only has Russia lost its Eastern European satellites, but the homeland itself has been dismembered. No reasonable Russian could object to the independence of Poland, Hungary and even the Baltic states, which were forcibly annexed into the Soviet Union after the Second World War. But the loss of the Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus and central Asia are a different matter. These areas or at least large swaths of them were integral parts of the Russian “motherland” long before Texas and California belonged to the United States. For Russians, the separation with Ukraine and Belarus in particular is at least as emotionally wrenching as Welsh and Scottish independence would be to Britain or Catalonian and Basque secession would be to Spain.

While Westerners see Russian resentment about these territorial losses as a throwback to 19th-century imperialist thinking, consider how the process might look when viewed from the Russian side. What Russians see is a powerful and wealthy empire expanding steadily on their Western border and swallowing all the intervening countries, first into the EU’s economic and political arrangements and then into the Nato military structure. Consider from the Russian standpoint the EU’s explicit vocation to keep growing until it embraces every European country with the sole exception of Russia itself, and the almost automatic Nato membership now granted to EU countries. Is it so very unreasonable to view this EU-Nato juggernaut as the world’s last remaining expansionist empire, or even the natural successor to previous German and French expansions that were considerably less benign?”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anatole_kaletsky/article1896029.ece
31 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 15 July 2007:

“In c. 600 B.C. the Thracian-Cimmerian and Scythian tribes moved across this area, while the Celtic tribes crossed this territory in the III century B.C. The founding of Singidunum is attributed to the Celtic tribe, the Scordiscs. As a fortified settlement, Singidunum was mentioned for the first time in 279 B.C. The first part of the word – Singi – means “round” and dunum means “fortress” or “town”. It is possible that the name originated from the name of the Thracian tribe, the Sings, which was settled on this area when the Celts came. There are almost no traces about that Celtic town, except the necropolises found at the Karaburma and Rospi Ćuprija locations. These contained valuable artistic artefacts, that belong to the warriors of the Scordiscan tribe. A considerable Celtic cultural influences have been woven into the spiritual culture of the Singidunum inhabitants, and later mixed with Roman classical cultural elements.”

It goes without saying that this part of today’s Serbia was an absolute vacuum. There were no people, no rivers, no beasts, no birds – only Albanians. That would the only acceptable answer to the Albanians subjugation seekers. Exactly so, nothing to do with any “independance” – but pure subjugation of Serbian lands and Serbian people. How likely is it that this – very desirable and very fertile portion of Europe was so vacant and devoid of all life in prechristian days? Throughout the centuries of Albanian “dominance of Kosovo” and their “earlier acceptance of Christianity” – not a single stone, not a single temple, church, song, pottery – absolutely nothing, only mosques. Something is terribly wrong with the Albanian geography and their view of the world.
32 Comment by Michael Averko on 15 July 2007:

Alex:

In a NYT letter years ago, I made the same comparison with England, Scotland and Wales vis-a-vis Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

Shortly thereafter, a person of west Ukrainian (Galician)background had a published NYT letter taking issue with my view. He wasn’t at all convincing in the series of private exchanges between the two of us.
33 Comment by Alex Tigner on 16 July 2007:

Michael

Some recent opinion polls, and the growing support for the Scottish National Party, have suggested that independence for Scotland is a real possibility. Judging by the reaction of many politicians, and of editorial writers, you’d think that the end of the world was nigh. Yet these are the same people who see nothing wrong with dismembering Serbia.
34 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 16 July 2007:

Julius Caesar, Pontius Pilate and Jesus Christ were all Albanians – as a matter of fact they were all brothers and they bequethed KosovO to Serbians for good – written on a little piece of paper in Aramaic inside of my home – end of discussion.
35 Comment by scytale on 16 July 2007:

So, let’s see some interesting facts about Albanians and their greatest hero George Kastriot from the other perspectve:

All George Kastriot ancestors were Macedonians (Slavs).
nine generations backwards:

Константин (Constantine)(1176),
Бране (Brane)(1233),
Јоан (John)(1261),
Константин (Constantine) (1279),
Бранислав (Branislav)(Бранила 1307),
Павле (Paul)(1332),
Никола (Nikola)(1354),
Иван (Ivan)(1383) и
Георгија (Georgious)(1405).

George’s father, prince Ivan Kastriot, in the marriage with Voislava, dother of prince Branislav from village of Gradec (Tetovo – Macedona), have four sons: Reposh, Stanislav, Constantine and George; and four dothers: Marija, Elena (Јеla), Angelina and Mamica.
They were married with prominent persons from that time, who have Macedonian, Serbian and Montenegrin origin, dukes and earls.
Marija was married with prince Stepan Chernoevic, Elena with Todor Joan, Angelina with Stepan Jurevich Balshich, and Mamica with Carlo Muzak – Topija.
One of the sons of Constantine, for example, beside his name Lazar, have nickname Славјанин (Slav).
36 Comment by scytale on 16 July 2007:

Sorry for my bad english. Dother = Daughter
37 Comment by Michael Averko on 16 July 2007:

Alex:

The hypocrisy of some on independence movement is quite evident.

I get the impression that Niall Ferguson might poossibly fall in that category. The Scotsman who gives rosey portrayals of the Brit. crown, as he dishes out seemingly sarcastic jabs at Scot independence enthusiasts like Sean Connery.
38 Comment by EMete on 16 July 2007:

As already known, the Serb propaganda has gone all out to distort the history of Kosova. And not only that. They are going out of their way to change the history of all the Albanians too. As in the past, today too, the Serbs are trying to misrepresent the figure of George Castriot Scanderbeg (English spelling), the Albanian national hero acclaimed by the entire progressive world.

Some time ago, a Serb reader wrote the following comment in the “Responses to the article ‘Living with the Albanians’”: “The metropolitan of Montenegro Vasilije Petrovic mentions the Serbian hero Skenderbeg. He repeats the same in his letters with Russian empress citing as his own ancestors Djuradj Kastriotic and Ivan Crnojevic. Drekalovic, the largest clan among the Kuc tribe, nurtures the history of Skenderbeg as their progenitor”.

Do you agree with him? If yes, then, you should also agree with me that the “Kuci and Bardhi tribes in Montenegro are two major Serbized Albanian tribes”. Thank you!

The Greeks also claim that Skenderbeg is Greek. They call him Yiorgos Kastriotis. You call him Djuradj Kastriotic. I think that you abide by the same principle as the Greeks. The latter’s theory is that all the Albanians who bear Orthodox names are Greeks, which is why they changed his name from Gjergj (Albanian) into Yiorgos (Greek). You, too, have done the same not only with him. You have changed his name into Djuradj because the sound of the name can help you change his nationality (!). It’s very funny, isn’t it? So, since you and the Greeks are brothers in religion, you are duty bound to resolve this issue between yourselves first. You have to decide if Skenderbeg is Greek or Serb and then, tell me about your decision.

Then, how do you explain the fact that Durad Brankovic, after betraying Hunyadi in the Kosova battle in 1448, intercepted and fought against Skenderbeg’s Albanian reinforcements delaying them when they were en route to the battle. A Serb fighting a “Serb” to help the Ottomans?

Another interesting point: Why didn’t Skenderbeg fight at the head of the Serbs or the Greeks? The Serbs and the Greeks would not follow him because he was not one of them. Skenderbeg was the Albanians’ national hero and leader. They followed him in all his battles for 25 years on end because he was one of them.
Great men always fall prey to wolves and jackals.
39 Comment by Boba Borojevic on 16 July 2007:

Skenderbeg Was a SERB!

As fate would have it Ц or, as one monastic said, someoneТs ill hand Ц Serb sacred places were on fire last month, both on Mt. Athos and in Metochia.

The hands of that “someone” have laid low the national pride of the Serbs, a celestial row of churches who gathered the spiritual wealth of a nation; preserved the old and added the new testimonies of resistance to tyranny; protected the weak, the infirm, the persecuted and the just in defending human liberty from barbaric instincts of tyrants to dominate the souls of the living with fire and sword.

Hilandar burned first, to the very walls of the УArbanas pirgФ and the tombstones of Jovan and Repos Kastriotic, Serb nobles from Albania, father and eldest brother of Djuradj (George) Kastrotic, better known as Skenderbeg. Something halted the hand of the arsonist at the very spot that shatters the lie about the origins of the “Albanian hero.” What better proof that places that preserve Serbia history are sacred?

His mother, Voisava, daughter of a respected Serbian noble from Polog, hardly had time to know her little boy before Djuradj was sent as a hostage to the court of sultan Suleyman I. There he took Islam and the name Skenderbeg (Iskander-bey), after Alexander (УIskanderФ) the Great, whose exploits were know to the Turks from eastern legends. Djuradj earned his new name in wargames on open field, besting his competitors in Уwrestling, fighting and javelin-throwing,Ф and earning on his 18th birthday the rank of sanjak-bey and command of five thousand cavalry from sultan Murat II.

He eventually took the cavalry and defected to the Christian side, fighting the SultanТs armies for the next quarter century. In exchange for support from Pope Pious II, who was more concerned with the Orthodox “schismatics” than with Turkish invasions and depredations, Djuradj converted to Catholicism. Therefore, when he died Уof strong feverФ in mid-January 1468, he was not buried next to his father and brother in Hilandar, but his body was laid to rest at an Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas, above Lles.

The fires of Hilandar did not burn the truth that Jovan Kastriotic had nine children with Voisava, four sons – Repos, Stanisa, Konstantin and Djuradj, mentioned in that order in the chronicles of Athanasios, abbot of the Hilandar monastery; and five daughters – Mara, Jela, Andjelija, Vlaitsa and Mamitsa. It was written that the eldest, Mara, married Stefan Crnojevic, Vlaitsa married Stefan Balsic. Skenderbeg’s only son, Ivan, married Irina, daughter of Lazar Brankovic and granddaughter of Djuradj Brankovic. This information was verified by Koenigsberg scholar Karl Kopf, historian, ethnographer an archeologist who researched the Kastriotic genealogy in the mid-1800s at the behest of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna.

Skenderbeg’s Serbian origin was remembered the longest in Montenegro. In his letter to the Venetian doge (1757), the metropolitan of Montenegro Vasilije Petrovic mentions “the Serbian hero Skenderbeg.” He repeats the same in his letters with Russian empress Elisabeth, citing as his own ancestors Djuradj Kastriotic and Ivan Crnojevic. Drekalovic, the largest clan among the Kuc tribe, nurtures the history of Skenderbeg as their progenitor, through his grandson Drekalo.

The Hilandar fire spared the main chapel, where in the inner narthex, surrounding the fresco or the Virgin with Christ, contains the images of St. Simeon (Stefan Nemanja) and his son St. Sava, and the inscription underneath: “presented by Lord’s servant Repos 6936 – (1431) – an authentic testimony that Skenderbeg’s eldest brother spent time as a monk in Hilandar before his death.

Little noted these days is that Albanians were involved in putting out the fire that attacked the holy mountain’s only Serb monastery. Farm hands hired by the monks to work at the monastery estate, these Albanians saved many precious treasures of the Church.

What they saved on Holy Mt. Athos, other Albanians burned in the holy land of Metochia. Of the thirty-five churches and monasteries damaged and destroyed, the first was the church of Blessed Virgin of Ljevis in Prizren. It used to be a metropolitan seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church, granted numerous estates by King Milutin. Among its contributors stands the name of Pavle Kastriotic, Skenderbeg’s grandfather, who donated fifty florins and had estates comprising several villages in the Mata river valley.

Before their rampage, the pathetic arsonists had erected a statue of Skenderbeg in Pristina’s main square. It is good that they have done so. He can remind them they are a people without history, who destroy that of others in order to forcibly conjure up their own.
40 Comment by G.S. on 16 July 2007:

So, as an American — I have to wonder: What did the American people gain from sending their sons and daughters to fight for the Albanians?

Aside from plots to murder American troops at Fort Dix, I mean.
41 Comment by G.S. on 16 July 2007:

I just find it interesting that people like EMete take for granted that American soldiers exist so as to fight for the Albanian cause.

I — and a growing number like me — operate under the quaint notion that the U.S. military’s ideal purpose is to serve and protect the AMERICAN people.

Albanian gratitude — a la Sulejman Talovic — I can do without.
42 Comment by moesian storm on 17 July 2007:

As many times before, we Serbs are at the first line of defense, against the advancing Islam while been stubbed in the back , again by the treacherous West (which is quite consistent, since, Charlemagne’s “filioque’s insertion of Credo’s bronze plaque in St. Peter, The sack of Constantinople in 1204 and its delivery to the Turks in 1913, the Allied aerial destruction of Serbian cities in WWII and complicity in “Operation Odessa”, financial destruction of Yugoslavia trough work of WMF “Genius” Jeffry Sachs and Ante Markovic in the 1980’s, recognition of secessionists republics in 1992,demonization of Milosevic and the Serbs in the 1990’s right to the Grand Finale of 1999 and “Pogrom” of 2004).
However we should feel proud that some of brightest brains and harts in that corrupt West, are on our side and they are now our most principled defenders. However weak that defense my seem at the moment, once the lid is open, it is togh to put the genie back in the bottle.

I am profoundly thankful to those illuminated souls, such as Julia Gorin, James and Stella Jatras, Amb. Bisset, Jarred Israel, just to name a few, but also to our brilliant co nationals, first of all to Nebojsa Malic, who is allways on right side of the issue, just, uncompromising and brave and thank God so politically incorrect.

We could only hope that Russia will stand firm to this opportunistic coalition of left and right fascists and islamists, which burn churches and monasteries and desecrate WWII Memorials and warrior’s graves with equal zeal. We are witnessing in front of our own eyes, the greatest reversal of history and resurrection of demons of the past, some just over the fence of our own backyard.
The coalitions are forming, the front lines are fortified, the troops are gathering, the traitors are busy.

That fatal day of St. Vitus, in 1989, standing in the mud, of last night rain, I witnessed the stupor and disbelief in the eyes of Albanian bystanders, as they observed the millions of Serbs gathering from all directions, trough still unharvested fields. Few hours later, when the spectacle was over, and serbs returned to thousands of busses crowding the side roads, there were berrely 1000 left to hear the lthurgy and requiem for Kosovo Heroes of another St. Vitus day, 600 years ago. It was hart braking and I saw people crying. I wanderd wether Albanians realized the ominous significance of this apostasy.
Today, the Serbs have mostly returned to their faith, but are in danger more tan ever to loose their identity and history. Serbian ruling elite, so called “democratic” is a coalition of traitors, payed puppets at best, which did nothing before the Moscow signaled its shift in our favor.They accepted fake negotiations and openly biased arbitration of known Nazi sympathizer.They would and still could (if Russia drops the support) deliver Kosovo in return for EU subjugation, as a prize. While hiding behind the shoulders of Russia, they are still advocating Nato membership,(in the face of its Moscow ally) destroying Serbia’s Army, compromising military and state secrets, brainwashing future officers by sending them to US Army Centers, the same who bombed us just seven years a go. They apologize to greatest psychotic butchers of Serbs and Jews of Europe, keep delivering Serbia’s heroic defenders to Nato Inquisition in Haag and that demonic caricature at its head. They are systematically wiping off anything from Milosevic Era , including the national dignity and self-sufficiency. Everything is to be sacrificed in the miopc quest of self-anihilation on the altar of the masked 4th Reich, called EU. If they changed the hart is because of unexpected re-emergence of Russia as a new world power. They are equally surprised by this as Americans are and for a while they’ll keep sitting on two chairs, just in case. While Nato is encircling Russia and all Eastern Europeans are within, an erie feeling of 1941 is in the air. Is Kosovo going to trigger WWWIII? I as probably many Serbs, am waiting the march 27.
43 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 17 July 2007:

Unfriendly note to Albanian rapists:

United States of America has to deal with the following:

abroad:

1. Iraq
2. Iran
3. Korea
4. Russia
5. EU
6. Venezuela/Chavez
7. Cuba/Castro
8. China – foreign debt
9, 10, 11 all the way to 138 other issues
139. Serbia/KosovO/Albania

at home:
1. Medicare/health insurance issues
2. Education/homelessness
3. Infrastructure/mass transit
4. Congressional struggles
5. votes
6. presidential races

In conclusion: It is not very likely that the task force “Save Albanian drug/people traffickers and grant them a state” – will take place any time in our lifetime.

Learn to live in Albania, while you still have it. The Greeks are not all that happy that their Northern chunk of land was granted to Albanians at the beginning of the 20th Century. If Albanian achievements keep developing at this rate and type – there is a good chance their county will have to be abolished and the land returned to Greece/Serbia so the rule of law can be re-established on European soil.
44 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 17 July 2007:

Future history:

A) Since the United Nation’s Charter (Chapter 1) section 4 states

“All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

B) Albania is a signatory of this Charter – so is Serbia, while Albania has done nothing to curtail the lavish aspirations of their kinfolk in Kosovo*

C) A Serbian military attack on Albania and their expulsion from European soil – Turkey would be a good host country, should not be out of order. Let’s see how well their ideas fare inside of their true homeland.

D) While embarking on a 21st Century crusade, free the other half of Cypress and return it to Greeks – that way Turkey gets a real nice influx of hard-working and “honest” people who command an in-depth knowledge of history – as long as they are back in Asia far from European soil. If the U.K. is willing to grant them one their little islands that would be acceptable too. Just wipe them out. Enough “diplomacy”. This on-going “dialogue” leads nowhere. Albanians are ready, willing and able to attack churches, women and children, burn monasteries, desecrate burial grounds – enough already. Perhaps they’ll gain a better understanding once Skadar is returned to Serbia (or Montenegro), and the mistakes of 1912/1913 are reversed.

E) Interpol would have a workload reduction of about 60% to 80%

*B. Dr. Fleming has provided in-depth views on Hellenic Greece, and I am supremely confident that he’ll agree that Persian moles among Thebans were responsible for the anti-Macedonian sentiment within the Persian attempts to destabilize and later conquer Hellas (Athens, Sparta and Macedonia). The battle of Chaeronea (338 BC) resolved the issue of long term Asian NOT belonging on European soil. I would not be opposed to the same solution, whether it is called the V crusade or whatever else. We must agree that our governments do not always (truly and wisely) represent our people. What American is that insane to find kinship with these (Albanian) criminals? – None that I ever met. Albanians from Albania have never been good neighbors to anybody and today they prove to be a good conduit for weapons trade, prostitution/white slavery and drug trafficking

Sever the ties that bind us only in hate.
45 Comment by Ljubinko Jovicic on 17 July 2007:

Second effort as per 22 Jun 2007 after “Dilettants…”
AN OPEN LETTER
To British Journalists
Kosovo, Mr Blair and Others

Unfortunatly, not-imbedded, unbiased journalists push aside Mr Blairs primordial sinn: warmongerings and 78 nights of bombing Serbia. Ethnic cleansing is still common place. May I expose my personal experice on the events.
Ten days before NATO air-raids took place, I finished my ski vacation at the Sara mountains (Sarplanina) on the Boarder to Macedonia. I can proof it with receipts, photos, audio tapes and a copy of my interview with the Free TV Station Studio B. En route to Belgrade I visited, Urosevac Drenica and Pristina, which were at peace. Some ethnic cleansing! An atypical walker sauntering without poblems among Albanian population. Police, paramilitaries not visible. On the different locations at the time, Albanian peasants used to temporary leave villages for the woods during the fights between the rebels and federal forces, only to return home with sease fire. With the initial air-raids, the local Albaninans moved toward Macedonia, Christians, Turks and Ashkenazi tried to reach the heartland of Serbia. Also some atrocities by federal troops occured, pushing the Albanians to leave the country, but that was not reason for illegal war, because it took place in aftermath of attacs. The bombing of Kosovo cities is what scared the people and put them on the road.
General Clarc was proud of “conducting and winning of a modern war”. Martial effect was lousy: some dummy tanks destroyed, one suiside pilot shot down, catastrophic demolition of industry and residential communities, casualities among civilians as consequence of “colateral damage”. Destruction of the bridges over the Danube was idiotic because contigent of the aarmy in Vojvodina was insignificant. Bombing of the technical wing of TV Belgrade (some 20 blue-collar victims) was authorised by Mr Clinton because “there was the center of lies and propaganda”. What should Almighty do to Fox News then? Invite Kristo to wrap the construct ? Atack on the Maternity Hospital, bombing of refugie trecks,, scattering cluster bombs garnished with depleted uranium on residental quarters..Targets were marked by then Bundesminister Scharping, a former Strassenjunge, later suspended for petty corruption. That character spoke at Bundestag about concentration camps in Kosovo which-as it turnd out later-were nonexistent. The other marksman was general Reinardt, scion of Prussian militaries. Later, as Albanians were slaughtering ethnic Serbs, he declared “in Kosovo is less crimes as in Hamburg”.
Nowadays, the number of casualities in combats bitween the Serbian Army and Albanian rebels is officialy fixed at about 20,000 victims on bouth sides. After the 1999 bombing the western media were talking about 20,000 dead Albanians, possibly 100,000 dead. Fortunatly it turned out that nothing of that was true. Recently, in “Free Kosova”, the christian orthodox medieval churchus and monasteries were blown up or burned down, elderly residents killed, 35,000 person expulsed, many others dislocated. As the journalists asked Mr Blair for the opinion on the events in Kosovo, he could not comment “whilst actualy dealing with global problems”. However, your colleages cried “have we bombed the rong side?”

Ljubinko Jovicic
E-mail: jovihaljubinko@yahoo.com

I mailed my text to Mr Timothy Garto Ash at Guardian.uk, to Mr Sidney Blumenthal, to academics Cavoski, Kosta and Vasilije Krestic. I asked them to help by publishing the text. They did not repond. Mr Robert Fisk at the Independent.uk was in the field during the attacs.
He confird in writing most of my reporting. Ms Smmmmmajlovic, editor of Politica, forbid the publishing
46 Comment by moesian storm on 17 July 2007:

Sorry for some late night typing errors in my blog 43. Now I want to congratulate Iliya Pavlovic for his blog 32 and Boba Borojevic for his post 45 and exellent tracing of Djuradj Kastriotic’s origins, and hinting of possible arsonist (arbanas) cause of great fire that almost destroyed the treasures of Hilandar on Mount Athos. The information on Albanian seasonal workers, saving our tresures is remarkable.
Again, Iliya in your post 44, you are quite mistaken that Kosovo is very low on US agenda, it is rather high and consistent since Bush the Elder and has more to do with Russia then Serbia. We are for a moment going to live aside the Kosovo wealth in mineral deposits, gold, silver and zink and largest reserves of lignite, easily accessible in shallow deposits and uranium veins (two alternatives for energy deprived future) and its strategic position on the rout to Asian oil reserves. Just recently, Putin masterfully outmaneuvered Europeans and Americans in their attempt to gulp the Caspian oil under the Russian nose. Kosovo is meant to destabilize Europe and irritate Russia in order to provoke another not so Cold War and bankrupt them again and possibly occupy in the aftermath. The invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan and eventually Iran is not the War on Islam but the beginning phase of War on Russia. This is why they don’t look for Osama, he is US ally since late 70’s. All his family was promptly evacuated from US following the 9-11. He is acting as a leader of attack which he didn’t plan and would have never pulled trough. The World Trade center was pulled down in a controlled demolition. No airplane ever hit the Pentagon. The evidence is overwhelming.(see the videos) It was the American “Reichstag’s Fire” and pretext to encircle Russia. Al Qaeda got free hands in Bosnia and Kosovo, in order to destabilize Europe (and perpetuate its dependence on US) and make Serbs fight on two or three fronts (don’t forget Maksimir) in US-EU vs.Russia War, thus effectively neutralize them, the only possible Russian Ally in the Region. Now you see the Croats, Muslims and Slovenians all rushing to Belgrade to se “The Stones”but those same guys are or will attend Thompson’s Nazi Spectacles, screaming “Za Dom Spremni”. Tomorrow they will shoot at us again. Even the “Stones” are instrument of Anglo-American Imperialists. You can’t fight the enemy while dancing to his music. Paul Mc Cartney prior to his Moscow Concert openly admitted his Group’s complicity in undermining Soviet Union. You cannot afford to be naively idealistic. By appealing to long time isolated, ostracized and humiliated Serbian middle and younger generations, trough their proxies in Serbia’s Government, they are blunting the edge of Serbia’s weapons and diluting its morale and will to fight. Slobodan Milosevic was most pitiful man after Michael Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. For a while he had the power to control events in Russia, Europe and America. He held the cards of greatest poker game in recent history and he blew it. The fate of Nato was in his hands and Americans new it. He might have precipitated events of unforeseeable consequences on a world level, but he got cold feet and did the great disservice to Serbia and Europe, which is still in bondage. If he just said, “Serbia is in War and we will not give up until all our brothers and sisters and all our lands are free”. It would have been over by now. There would have be many fresh graves in Serbia, but issues of Kosovo, Bosnia, Krayina and Montenegro would have been settled for good. The war in Bosnia would have lasted couple of weeks in 1992. Russia would have not been raped and humiliated and todays truncated Serbia wouldn’t have been at the mercy of the West. The Eastern Europeans would have been at least neutral today and not our (and Russian future enemies). There would not have been The Rolling Stones Concert in Belgrade, because it would have been in ruins, but you would hear the songs of many people working together with laughter and joy while reconstructing their homeland. The National Spirit is preserved in struggle. The Greeks chosed to see the city of Athens in flames and their women defiled, rather than submit to Persians, or see their country devoured piece by piece.
47 Comment by svetlana on 17 July 2007:

This is a filthy place to comment
48 Comment by EMete on 17 July 2007:

In response to the “Perils of Kosovo’s independence” by Srdja Trifkovic, who refers to statements made by one of the 315 Italian senators to back up his own theses, I shall republish an article I have written on the subject of Kosova. Some of the ideas of this article have been included in the comments I have posted on this website, but based on the reaction of the readers to my comments, I came to the conclusion that they have been unable to grasp what I have been trying to convey. I hope that the complete article, with a few changes included, published by the American and Albanian media in the USA not long ago, will help them become realists in this fast-changing world and write balanced and less passionate comments.

Bush Right on Kosovo Independence

At present, we are witnesses of Serbia’s increasing diplomatic activity to stave off the adoption of a new Security Council resolution on Kosovo’s independence under the pretext that Ahtisari’s recommendations imply “annexation of Serb territory and removal of Serbia’s sovereignty over Kosovo”. According to the Serb leaders, Kosovo’s independence would be in contravention of international law and a “classic case of secession from a sovereign state”. The Serbs and their mouthpieces have been laying greater emphasis on these theses recently, especially after the U.S. president George W. Bush’s statement in Albania on June 10, 2007 that Kosovo should have its independence now. Bush’s stance on Kosovo is a logical continuation of President Bill Clinton’s help to the Albanians during the Kosovo war in 1999 and President Woodrow Wilson’s stand at the Paris Conference in 1918-1919 against the European Powers that had planned to divide Albania up among its neighbors.

But history gives the lie to the Serb theses. Mary Edith Durham, a British scholar, points out, “the Serbs, or rather their Slav ancestors, poured into the Balkan Peninsula in vast hordes in the sixth and seventh centuries”. She says that they “overwhelmed the original inhabitant, the Albanian. But though they tried hard, they did not succeed in exterminating him. The original inhabitant, we may almost say, never is exterminated. The Albanian was a peculiarly tough customer. He withdrew to the fastnesses of the mountains, fought with his back to the wall, so to speak, and in defiance of efforts to Serbize him, retained his language and remained persistently attached to the Church of Rome.” (Mary Edith Durham, Twenty years of Balkan Tangle, p. 52)

The Nemanjids who ruled Serbia from the 12th century up to 1371 built churches and monasteries in Kosovo mainly on the ruins of Albanian Catholic churches and other religious sites, the very churches and monasteries which are used by the Serbs today as an argument to prove that Kosovo is “the cradle of their mediaeval state and the center of their Orthodox Christian faith”.

According to Noel Malcolm, “the earliest foundations were mainly in the old nucleus-territory of Rascia, to the north of Kosovo: Studenica, Nemanja’s most important foundation, which still survives today, and a monastery dedicated to St. George, the ruins of which (near Novi Pazar) are known as ‘Djudjevi Stupovi’, ‘George’s Pillars’. Further to the north, near the central Serbian town of Kraljevo, the monastery of Zica was founded by Stefan the First-crowned; this was chosen by Sava as the seat of his autocephalous Church. (Only at the end of the thirteenth century, when Zica had been burned down by a raiding expedition of Tatars and Cumans, did the seat of the archbishopric move to Pec in Western Kosovo.) After Studenica, the second most important Nemanjid monastery was Mileseva, founded by Stefan the First-Crowned’s successor; this was much further to the west, towards the Bosnian border. And the main foundation of the next-but-one Serbian king was at Sopocani, which lies just to the west of Novi Pazar. In other words, the cradle of Serbian monasticism in the first two or three generations of Nemanjid rule was located where the cradle of the Serbian state had been: not inside Kosovo, but further to the north and west. It was only later, with the development of the Patriarchate buildings at Pec, and the fourteenth-century foundations of Gracanica, Decani and the monastery of the Holy Archangels in Prizren, that Kosovo gained any real importance for the Nemanjid church-building programme”(Noel Malcolm, Kosovo – A Short History, pp 45-46).

However, in the 15th century, Serbia covered more or less the area between the Danube, the Great (Velika) Morava and the Timok, a river in Eastern Serbia and Western Bulgaria.

According to chronicles, more members of ethnic minorities such as Serbs, Turks and Roma settled in the Albanian territory of Kosovo under the Ottomans. The implementation of the Serbian colonization program in Kosovo between the two world wars helped the Serb minority in Kosovo to grow although it did not exceed the 10 percent share of its population. Under this program, the Serbs confiscated Albanian land at a time when more Serbian and Montenegrin colonists settled on Albanian territory. In the 1912-1918 period, thousands of Albanians were exterminated or deported to Turkey. In the span of 3 years, from 1910 to 1913, Serbia doubled its size at the expense of Albanian territories. On March 7, 1937, Dr. Vaso Cubrilovic, academician of Yugoslavia and minister in various departments in communist Yugoslavia after the war, presented the royal government of Stoyadinovic with his memorandum on “The Expulsion of the Albanians”. The outbreak of World War II brought its further application to an end although the Yugoslav leadership resumed its implementation in compliance with the changing circumstances after the war. Aleksandar Rankovic, the minister of the Interior, who also held the second highest post in the executive branch of the Yugoslav government until 1966, was mainly responsible for the brutal treatment of the Albanians and their deportation to Turkey. Vaso Cubrilovic’s memorandum draws on another wider-ranging program, the Serbian minister Ilija Garasanin’s work “Nacertanije” (1844), which from a blueprint to spread Serbian influence, became a geopolitical instruction for expansion into Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, the northern part of today’s Albania and Macedonia of today.

There is a host of arguments that account for the fact that Serbia’s annexation of Kosovo was illegal and that the Kosovo majority Albanian population should enjoy and exercise their right to self-determination as their national right.

Kosovo as we know it today was part of the Kosovo Vilayet, which was carved up as a result of the Balkan wars of 1912-1913 between the neighboring countries. The boundaries of the Kosovo Vilayet had been shifting as the Ottoman Empire lost territory to neighboring states under the Treaty of Berlin following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. The Kosovo Vilayet had Skopje (today’s capital city of the Republic of Macedonia) as its capital. Serbia grabbed Kosovo from the Ottomans and annexed the province militarily without the consent of its Albanian majority population during the Balkan Wars.

Serbia’s illegal annexation of Kosovo is an argument that Kosovo’s independence does not contravene international law. It would only put an end to a flagrant injustice committed against the Albanians with the connivance and tacit agreement of the European Powers. Serbs’ arguments are made up to cover up this century-old injustice.

As Esat Stavileci, member of the Kosovo Academy of Science and Arts and professor of law, points out, Kosovo’s constitutional position in the former Yugoslavia cannot help the Serbian thesis either. Historically speaking, Kosovo has never been a legal part of Serbia. Although not a republic, Kosovo was a constituent part of the Yugoslav Federation with clearly defined territory and borders. The same as the Yugoslav republics, it was represented to the federal institutions not through Serbia but directly. It boasted the prerogatives of a federal constituent part of the Yugoslav federation, which are separate political and territorial identity and constitution. Hence, Kosovo was not part of the independent sovereign state of Serbia as recognized by the 1878 Berlin Congress. Nor was it part of Serbia at the 1943 Second AVNOJ Congress (AVNOJ – “Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council of Yugoslavia”). In 1944, this same Council did not assign Kosovo to be part of Serbia, already established as a federal unit of the second Yugoslavia. Kosovo was not part of Serbia in the structure of the Constitutional Assembly of Yugoslavia in 1945 when the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, led by Josip Broz Tito, was founded. In 1945, during its military occupation, Kosovo was not included in sovereign Serbia, but in federal Serbia within federal Yugoslavia. The abolition of Kosovo’s autonomy that resulted from the amendments in the Constitution of Serbia on the 28th of March 1989 was an illegal act. Their “endorsement” in the Kosovo Assembly was also unconstitutional because of the exceptionally political pressures brought to bear on the delegates. The Serbian army had also cordoned off the Assembly with tanks and military personnel. All the proceedings took place in a very tense atmosphere and the delegates could in no way express their free will under duress.

The Serbs, who settled the region by 630 AD, having been invited by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius to suppress the local restive populations, use history as an argument to prove their case. If history is taken into account, we would say that Greece should claim Istanbul, Bulgaria and Hungary should claim Belgrade, Germany should claim a right over Sudetenland, Sweden over Finland and Norway, Mexico over Florida and California, whereas Albania should claim the Illyrian territories which until recently were called Yugoslavia, Iraq should claim a right over Kuwait and so on and so forth. Returning Kosovo to Serbia would be the same as restoring Roman provinces to Italy and Ottoman provinces to Turkey. As an occupying power, Serbia’s claim to Kosovo would also be tantamount to giving their former colonies back to Great Britain, Spain, France, the Netherlands and Portugal.

As well as this, the independence of Kosovo does not bear resemblance to secessions in other parts of the world. According to Stavileci, the relationship between Kosovo and Serbia can be likened to that of Indonesia and East Timor. East Timor was annexed by Indonesia in 1975 contrary to the will of Portugal as the external sovereign, a fact that made its annexation by Indonesia illegal. Indonesian rule in East Timor was often marked by extreme violence and brutality, a situation which was similar to that of Kosovo situation under Serbia. This injustice was redressed when the Indonesian government recognized the right to self-determination of the East Timor people. Portugal agreed to recognise East Timor’s independence on May 20, 2002 and on September 27, East Timor joined the United Nations. Singapore is another example that should be taken into consideration. It split from Malaysia and officially gained sovereignty on August 9, 1965. The case of Kosovo is also similar to the case of Namibia. South Africa occupied it in World War I and administered it as a League of Nations mandate territory until after World War II, when it unilaterally annexed the territory. In 1966 SWAPO launched a war of independence and South Africa agreed to end its rule in 1988. Namibia won its independence in 1990. The Eritrea case too provides another example in this regard. The struggle for independence ended in 1991 and two years later over 99 percent of the Eritrean people voted for independence in a referendum supervised by a United Nations mission. Independence was declared on May 24 1993.

Kosovo’s independence can by no means be compared to secession of territories that were not annexed in a unilateral manner against the will of the people of the original sovereigns. The separatist movements in Gagauzia and Transnistria (Dnestr Republic), Southern Osetia and Abkazia (Georgia), for instance, lack Kosovo’s ethnic basis. In Kosovo about 95 percent of the population is Albanian. These regions did not have an autonomous or federal status at the time of dissolution of the former Soviet Union as Kosovo did at the time of breakup of the former Yugoslavia. The situation of the Kosovo Albanians cannot be likened to that of the Scots, Catalonians, Welsh, Corsicans or Basques either because the latter have not been ever deported en masse or massacred by the states, which control them. In addition to hundreds of thousands of Albanians slaughtered and deported abroad over one century under Serbia, about ten thousand Albanians were massacred by the Serb army and paramilitary bands prior to and during the Kosovo conflict and the war in 1998-1999.

The existence of the Albanian state cannot be an obstacle to the independence and sovereignty of Kosovo. Suffice it to mention in this context that the existence of Romania did not hinder the independence of Moldavia or that of France was not an obstacle to the establishment of the canton-state of Switzerland. In fact, the establishment of an Albanian state of Kosovo would not be an advantage of the Albanians in the Balkans compared to the option of the unification of Kosovo and the present-day Albanian state.

As to the size of territory and population of Kosovo, we can well say that there are 34 United Nations member states with a smaller territory and 58 other states that enjoy the same status with a smaller population than Kosovo’s. As regards the admission of new members, it should be noted that 34 new states became members of the United Nations from 1990 to 2002.

The already quoted and other arguments and facts prove squarely that Kosovo meets all the criteria to become an independent state and full-fledged member of the United Nations and other international bodies. Nobody can deprive the Kosovo Albanians of this inalienable historical right by turning reality upside down, misrepresenting the truth about the Serb squatters in Kosovo and questioning the morality of the United States action in the Balkans. Borrowing the so-called arguments of Serb propaganda to vilify the Albanians and their liberation struggle against Serb bondage, to distort the message conveyed by the U.S. protection of the Albanian defenseless population and insult the presidents of the United States for their so-called shortsightedness is a futile effort to concoct non-existing realities.

All I have to say is that what President George W. Bush said about Kosovo’s independence during his visit to Albania on June 10, 2007 will help redress an historical injustice to the Albanians, and that a hero’s welcome they extended to him is a tribute to the United States for its help to promote democracy in the country as well as for its protection of this ancient nation in the Balkans.
49 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 17 July 2007:

I don’t doubt that Russia seems like very promissing piece of real estate for all the greedy, poor students of history (Napoleon and Hitler come to mind).

But Russia’s recently induced monopoly on natural gas and vast oil reserves made them a new “new kid on the block”.

Osama’s role I can’t figure out simply because there is always a black operation within the United States black operations (Mongoose during the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, was pure black ops inside of black ops – Manuel Noriega, Osama, possibly even Milosevic to some modest extent – but from the U.S.A standpoint these people are important as much as disposable diapers.

They throw them off the second they make a new plan with the new kid on the block. 1976/77 Shah Reza Pahlavi of Iran came to the Rockefeller Center Medical School at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center – I lived across the street, he too was installed by the British with an American blessing, as a reply Ayatollah Rullah Khomeini took American hostages and held them till Reagan took office on January 20th 1981, just so they could thumb their noses at Jimmy Carter.

You may not know it, but most Americans die 5 miles from the place where they were born, and a good 80% couldn’t even find Australia on their maps – let alone Kosovo. The people here are rather pragmatic and they worry about their familiy and friends being deployed in Iraq – they worry about their social security, healthcare and many other things before they even take a second look at anything overseas.

Once overseas there are so many burning issues that need to be addressed that Kosovo (or Serbia for that matter) take a very marginal role. Without divulging any more delicate information – I have had much first hand experiences with both the INS and the DoD – take my word for it – Kosovo is the last thing on their mind unless it becomes a token in dealings with Putin or some other poker game. There just isn’t any American firm policy in regards to Kosovo – don’t let Bush’s visit fool you. It is a daily routine of every president to go to Kuala Lumpur (if need be) and proclaim – over there only, but not elsewhere that Kuala Lumpurese are the kindest people who make the worlds best camel soup mixed with the Ghobi desert sand and serve a delicious Meryland blue stone crabs – both next to theoretically impossible.

Don’t give it much heed. None of that gook will ever take place during this administration – I can’t speak for the next one. This administration has already too much to deal with – at home and overseas. If they truly wanted Kosovo’s independance it would have happened during the Summer of 2005 – that boat came and left. I am more afraid of the Serbian politicians who don’t realize that they are stabbing the Russian efforts in the back by rushing to join the NATO’s Frankenstein for peace. No political maneouver will bring peace and stability to Kosovo as long as these criminals are there. They have to be dealt with in one form or another. I wouldn’t want to live in a country where there are potentional 2 or 3 million saboteurs, who will take every opportunity to disable the local police, court systems, education, hospitals and derail the economy in any way. They simply have to go to wherever they came from, 80% of today’s Kosovars are imported from Albania’s porous borders. USA will not react any time soon. Iraq weighs very heavily on their mind. Iran is a close second while Korea and Russia can’t be ignored.

You might have a valid point in notising that all this is accomplishing is the surrounding of Russia – the Russians know this full well. Even at the time of Leonid Brezhnev, Alexei Kosygin noted the probable expansion would affect Russian security so they rushed into Afganistan – that was premature. The intensity of American confusion is such and the involvement is so complicated that there no way in the next 10 years anybody will want a street in the city of Tyranny named after him.
50 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 17 July 2007:

I do not disagree with anybody’s military plan to get the albanians back to Albanian prosperity and straght to Asia after that, while Skadar should go back to serbia – even if it takes a platoon of girl scouts aremed with their compasses and hiking boots. All Albanain stands have been flawed and poisonous with the intent to derail any serious discussion – now that they succeeded at at let them try to organize a military effort and a way how to get to Turkey before all of Albania is given to Serbs and Greeks. Let’s see how does it feel when the shoe is on the other foot. Pure military intervention since Albania proper has not fulfilled its UN charter parts – so let them deal with each other, leave all those serbian monuments at peace. Choose what part of Turkey do you want to call home.
51 Comment by JIM BELUSHI on 17 July 2007:

Serbs! Stop bullshitting. You are intruders in the BALLKANS. Your real home is Rusia. GO THERE. Dont waste your time. A new democratik state is in making. LONG LIVE DARDANIA. DOWN WITH SERBIAN FASHISM! Dardanias SERBS WILL PACK AND GO. YOU GUESS WHERE.
52 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 17 July 2007:

Kosovo Albanians with their Albanian brethren along with an unhealthy doze of belligerence strongly indicates that Serbian, Greek and Macedonian forces should unite to wipe this scum off the Earth. So far every pro-KosovO voice has been either ill-informed (which I suspect was by design), malevolent, malicious, or grossly inaccurate in some other form. What possible friend can they ever have (except the Turks)? That’s why they should be entitled a free passage back to Turkey. Not only are Kosovar Albanians undesirable in Serbia, very soon they will be undesirable in Albania as well. You’ll see how fast a change is implemented once the truth comes out about all the Nazi affiliations of SS Skanderbeg, all the beheadings (which today you only see on Al-Jazeera – their Islamic brothers), they’ll be perfectly welcome in any of the Osama’s camps. Why do they need to be in Serbia if Serbia is such a villain? Let them go. The only solution that Kosovars are not expecting is an all out war for the Serbian Skadar and Greek Epirus. Left with Tyranny alone they will be better off moving out of Europe. Your own strategy of expelling people will suit you best.
53 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 17 July 2007:

Not that it is really important but why do you suppose that the “brave, noble, honorable” Kosovars are not using thier proper names, if they are so right?

Just counting Kosovo lies, historical twists, inaccuracies and other forms of propaganda speaks volumes of the kind of people they truly are.
54 Comment by scytale on 18 July 2007:

Yeah Jim!

Italians to go back to the Black Sea. French & German go back to the Scandinavia. English go back to the Germany. Turks go back to the Iran. Israelis go back to Egypt. Americans go back to Europe. Canadians go back to France. Etc, etc…. Maybe then and only then Albanians will live peacefully on their “own”.
55 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 18 July 2007:

Now we know full well, why there are no negotiations with the terrorists – they have no real reason to negotiate or hold any reasonable talks. In that case they have pre-selected a clash with the Serbian armed forces – since their prior armed conflicts only included elderly women, children and clergy. A nice, well organized military push – out of Kosovo – and out of Albania will do miracles for their abusive nature and criminal behavior.

The pro Nazi inclinations are visible to this day. Thaci, Cheku and other leaders all criminals – what fool would negotiate with them? Serbia should start with a series of military manouvers between Nis and Kursumlija named Saving White Angel – as the Mileseva fresco.

By the time other European Nazis come to Albanian’s aid they (the Albanians will be in Turkey). On the other hand NATO failure to set foot on Serbian soil will prevent any serious deployment of Nazi military forces against Serbia. We should enlist (and pay) for the French foreign legion, Brazilian mercenaries, Chinese volunteers and wrap this up within a week or two.

A strong, well organized effort to include shooting of any CNN and BBC troops (for their own protections). Whatever the world media wants to produce they can do it from the memory of Christiana Amanpour and other “objective reporters”.

Biggest mistake Serbians ever made is starting to negotiate with the terrorists in good faith as mandated by the West. Let the West negotiate all they want – Serbians have a legal claim on their lands and that land is not for sale – I don’t care if 99% is populated by pink rabbits it is not a land of the rabbits – it is, it was and it will remain Serbian land. We don’t necessarily wish to use a military solution but if that is the only solution left – we may be forced to apply use of armed forces – there is nothing wrong with that.

Give the Albanians a little more rope and they’ll hang themselves with it. Let’s get two schoolkids and their mother to walk to school two days in a row – Albanian animals won’t resist the opportunity to attack women and children – enough of a pretext for the Serbian military to engage.
56 Comment by pi on 18 July 2007:

@Iliya Pavlovich:

thanks for showing off to the readers of this blog, what really lies inside the serbs: hate, racism, hunger, desire to step on somebody’s face. You are giving the opportunity to people all over the world who were not so ‘lucky’ to live under serbian apartheid for more than 17 years as we kosovar albanians did, how much we have suffered. That was more than enough. You will not be offered the same pleasure again, no matter how much you want it.
We have a strong backing, because we are right, and you are wrong!
Kosovo is becoming independent. No doubt about that.
I agree that serbs will attempt to comeback, but WE ARE GOING TO BE PREPARED.

an albanian from KosovA

PS:
For your next visit to KosovA, please bring your passport with you, otherwise, a Kosovar border policement will deny your entry. We are kind enough not to impose visas on serbian citizens.
57 Comment by Milos Sobelic on 18 July 2007:

Well if there was hate inside Serbs as you imply then Albanians would no longer be a problem in Kosovo or the Balkans (there were two previous opportunities for Serbs to rid of all Albanians from Kosovo and the Balkans). You need to learn the basic unrevised history of the Balkans, before you begin to talk about things you do not know anything about. Now as far as hate, racism, and the desire to step on somebody’s face, thank you for sharing you inner thoughts, those are Albanian traits, we can also the result of the March 2004 pogrom, the whole world seen Albanian benevolence, burning Churches, and Monasteries that are over a thousand years old, killing unarmed nuns, priests, and desecrating cemeteries.

As far as apartheid, you do not know the meaning of apartheid; if you did you would not have compared it to Kosovo. What other European countries caters to migrant workers and refugees like Serbia has done, allowing an ethnic group to have its own flag, news papers, radio, television, in their own language, free education (from grade school to university) in their own language, free utilities, and free health, now does that sound like apartheid? You were lucky to live under benevolent Serbian rule for 17 years; unfortunately the world did not see this, otherwise you would have been living back in Albania and pursing your right to self determination, instead you are showing the world how you repay you hosts for their kindness.

We have all seen how you suffered, in 1999 when CNN and Christiane Amanpour made it very clear how you exited Kosovo entered Albania visited you 2nd home away form home, and then back to Kosovo, on cue…yes you have strong backing, the strongest money can buy, but justice and international law is on Serbia’s side.

So dream on about independent “Kosova”, oh and what does “Kosova” exactly mean in Albanian? I just hope your leaders make the ultimate mistake and declare unilateral independence, then we will see how prepared you are to run ahead of armed military, If I were you I would sleep with my tennis shoes on, just in case you need to run for the border, be prepared, just like you and your brethren have done before in two other great wars backed by two other powers at the time.

So you are definitely not an Albanian from Kosovo, if you were you would have know better then to say what you said, you better stay in New York, or where ever you are from it is safer, unfortunately we can see you failed to use the education resources available to you in what ever host country you are residing currently in.
58 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 18 July 2007:

Commonly when people (or countries) negotiate in good faith there is some modicum of progress. Why is there no progress with Albanians? There is a very simple answer. They do not negotiate. They simply demand full (unwarranted) independence. If the issues were so clear cut, there would be no need for any negotiations – there would have been some unilateral decision. However Albanians are (I have come to know this as a not very politically correct view, and I accept it) truly and deeply dishonest. Their ultimate goal is much greater than Kosovo’s “independence”, self-government, or any other euphemism. Their goals include greater chunks of Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and even Greece – that’s why present day negotiations are getting nowhere. This thought was reaffirmed by the Albanian responses to this and other similar articles. It is a uniform Albanian stand that Serbians must be subjugated to them at all cost and the boundaries of their intents are largely unclear, simply because they want to leave enough “negotiating room” for Presevo, Medvedja, Ivangrad, Tetovo and other portions of present day Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Macedonia. Having arrived at this conclusion (with the help of Albanian clarity in their stubborn, stupid, adamant and unacceptable views) – I arrived at the thought that only a strong military engagement would be the appropriate answer. This stage of negotiations would be best described by yet another one of Shakespeare’s characters:

“To Ireland, I; our separated fortune
Shall keep us both the safer: where we are,
There’s daggers in men’s smiles: the near in blood,
The nearer bloody.”

Hence the Fifth Crusade is close at hand.

Of course Albanians are always prepared to fight women and children or attack churches but as heroic as they are I think they wouldn’t last two weeks agains a troop of girl scouts armed with spoons and nothing else. Considering that “Albanian negotiations” were just a pretense, let’s get it over and done with. Not once has there been any honest attempt from any one single Albanian source to address the problems of Serbians under their thumb – while Serbia has demonstrated for decades that it was (and is) willing to allow a high degree of autonomy, grant education, medical and social care to Albanians in their language respecting their rights, etc. etc. – not one single trait like that from the Albanian side – that, in and of itself is a reason to wipe them out – “prepared”? They are always prepared to attack nuns and children – we saw plenty of that, but their acts of March 14 – 17, 2004 show us their true intents.
59 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 18 July 2007:

Would there be a truly heroic Albanian that never signs his posts? How is it that such heros, who are so brave (when it comes to killing nuns, women and children) don’t even have the courage to sign their posts? Is this the extent of Albanian courage that will scare somebody? Sleep with your running shoes is a good suggestion. Here is some more Shakespeare for the brave Albanians:

DUNCAN
Dismay’d not this
Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo (Serbians of course)?

Sergeant
Yes;
As sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion.
If I say sooth, I must report they were
As cannons overcharged with double cracks, so they
Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe:
Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds,
Or memorise another Golgotha,
I cannot tell.

Not that I am the world’s best speller – I am not, but the extent of Albanian hate, stupidity and gross inadequacy is too obvious to ignore. Decades of considerable autonomy was not enough, only since they want to subjugate the Serbians and all others. It is well known that the most killed Albanians died from the benevolent UCK – that’s a rare quality to have – to kill your own.
60 Comment by Jimmy CARTER on 18 July 2007:

Hi all! I just by chance read the above article. about inability of Kosova Albanians to have and run their own country. I was surprised that nobody listens, since Serbs have 200 years saying the same thing. There is no doubt Serbs know to run efficiently the state and economy matters. Take a look at” CIA factbook” on the internet and you see that , the incomes of a well run Serbian state are around $4000 annually , compared to badly run ALBANIAN state affairs, which are around $7000. Some of it goes unreported since a lot of busines is done out of banking sistem , because as we mentioned the Albanians don’t know how to run the state. I support senator Mantica. He is brilliant. As you can tell from my name I live in America and happen to know Italians. Peacefull people. They have not exported a single criminal in Amerika. Some of thier names in american crime history are an aberration. We all agree that JOHN GOTTI.,GENOVESE FAMILY. LUCIANO. AL CAPONE WERE NOT ITALIANS. We never seen Italian state overrun by criminals, who kill judges. prime ministers,presidents. This has never happened. Italian state is very stable( forget about 50 goverments in 40 years)
In spoken American language ,it is hard to tell the difference between ,Italian and criminel or mafia as they call it here. Serbs are not criminals eather. I don’t know why Hage tribunal is looking to question half of their nation. They never killed anybody in the BALLKANS. Those 300000 killed recently were not good people anyway, so they don’t count. Italians never left their country in search for economic advancement.I don’t know how 80 milion Italians ended up in North and South America, all over Europe, Australia or South AFRICA, Europian union never gave them devellopement funds. I SEE THE GUY IN THE PICTURE.For ONE THING i AM SURE .He needs thicker glass for his glasses.Thank you. ALL THE BEST. Jimmy.
61 Comment by EMete on 18 July 2007:

To Mr. Iliya Pavlovich and some others:

How do you find the article “Bush Right on Kosovo Independence”? You don’t like it, of course, because it is so blunt and crystal clear. You like to fish in muddy waters and look to Russia. “The Slavs of the South,” wrote Edith Durham, “look to the West when the days are sunny. When they are rainy, they look to the big brother, Russia, for help” That is what you did and this is what you are doing.
62 Comment by Yuri Gagarin on 18 July 2007:

Does any Albanian ever show his name, anywhere, or is it always that they are in hiding? This tells me what wonderful persons they are (honest, brave, straightforward) – not to mention truth-loving.
63 Comment by MyName on 18 July 2007:

And Yuri Gagarin, I suppose that is your real name?
64 Comment by dimitar on 19 July 2007:

OK, let’s say you get the Greater Albania, the dream of every Albanian. Enjoy it while you can, because it won’t last!! A simple spiritual law; you cannot take that which isn’t yours and expect to keep it! We’ll see how the UCK
cowards run w/out the Americans behind them. You’ve created a massive wave of hatred (your own) and it will come crashing down upon you! Sleep well!!
65 Comment by Johan Dieckmann on 19 July 2007:

More good news:

Russia rejects UN plan on Kosovo

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/16B38E27-2B94-431E-88AC-B336BBC575F0.htm
66 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 19 July 2007:

There should be an all out effort to stop the Nazi Albanian formation to take root on European soil. It is not completely out of the question to engage these criminals militarily – I can’t think of the many Nazis that would come to aid the Albanian Nazis – providing a nice Gulf of Tonkin theatrical set is designed. Albanians are naturaly prone to violence and can’t help from terrorizing women and children – so insert some rubber made women and children dressed in Serbian clothing, followed by a film crew, allow the brainless Albanians to act, and unleash an all out artilery attack. Shouldn’t be too hard to organize. I know many Serbians who would volunteer just to get rid of these criminals. Even their own country doesn’t want them – why else would they be in Serbia? Their greed will ultimately be their doom. Dimitar thank you for post 65, there is nothing but truth in it – simple but inescapable truth. Yes, I do post my name each and every time, but the Albanian “contributors” (just a nice name for LIARS) do not. I wonder how many of these names belong to the already discredited Pellumbi Velo?
67 Comment by Ljubinko Jovicic on 19 July 2007:

MORE ABOUT KOSOVO

In the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, in Kosovo lived about 450,000 Serbs, and 580.000 Albanians, Roma, Turks, Ashkenazi and somme Croats. In the cities of Pristina and Pec, there was Serbian majority. Being beleiving and practicing Moslems, Albanians respected Christian faith and values, orthodox churches and medevial monasteries. Local Albanian family was custodian og the Decani church for 200 years.

As Germany attaced Yugoslavia, Serbs took refuge from Albanian Balist horde to save their lives.

After the ”liberation” by Tito-Communists, a red bigwig Veljko Vlahovic offered Kosovo to Enver Xoxha, Albanian dictator for his joining Albanian-Jugoslav Federation with Josip Broz Tito as Tzar. Negotiation was interrupted after the ideological brake Xoxha-Moscow.

A.D. 1945 communist minister Vlado Zecevic, par de’cret de moufti, prohibited Serbian refugees to return home.

In SFR Jugoslavia, Kosovo Albanians have been given projects, schools, university, hospitals, preferences by employment. During the ten years of socialist regime, thay had not to pay for current, heating, rent, they payed zero tax. Failed assets billions of dollars!

Why were the sons of good guys Albanians rebels, killers of civilians,
incendiaries? Because they are not beleiving Moslems, the are children of the Communist Party of Jugoslavia.

As to the Albanian culture, it was discovered by Ms Vannesa Redgrave. Pristina was still in smoke in aftermath of air-raids, she appeared “to admire the great Albanian Culture”.
Cute red Redgrave.

Ljubinko Jovicic
E-mail jovihaljubinko@yahoo.com
68 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 19 July 2007:

Mr. Jovicic is being too kind to Albanians. It is not such a happenstance that the crimes and Islam both took over at about the same time. Exactly in full accordance with the Quran, the Muslims are instructed to keep “a low profile” while their numbers are in the minority. Once Muslims gain even the smallest majority – it is only at that point that the Quran clearly states that they should collect additinal taxes from the kafiri (infidels), convert them or kill them – and of course this the the will of Alah. As a Christian I have not yet met any other Christian who knows the minds inner workings of God – but there is no such shyness in Islam – they know full well what Alah thinks and feels.

To get back to your excellent overview of the slow but steady Muslim conquest of Kosovo, it took place, exactly as directed by the Quran. As they gained majority they started opressing all others (Jews, Christians, Roma, etc.). Perfectly in keeping with the teachings practiced among their masters (the Turks) from whence they were sprung onto Europe.
69 Comment by john mason on 20 July 2007:

A couple of things worth mentioning . . .

Who in the right mind can expect Kosovo to be handed over to Serbia after what took place in the war of 1999? We all saw that – It was real for all of us. I was there myself – I know what I saw and I don’t wish it on my worst enemy. Lot of people died for no reason other than being of Albanian ethnicity. So, when you say that Kosovo should remain part of Serbia, you are also saying that those 2 million Albanians don’t deserve to be free of terror. What have they done so wrong to deserve that? They are born in Kosovo – That is their home – It belongs to them and not to a bunch of long dead Serbian kings or I guess I should say Serbian Butchers. The Albanians are not asking you or anyone else to do anything for them. They just wish to live, work, and rear their families in an environment free of terror – kind of they way you and I live. What’s wrong with that? The Serbs had them under their rule since WWII. I’m not impressed with the results and neither is the rest of the free world. Thank almighty God for that.

* Since the war ended, the Albanians have worked hard to achieve every goal set by the international community. They go about their business and their daily lives and have never interfered with anything or anybody in the region. They are fully democratic with an already established rule of law in place. They have plenty of resources to maintain thier integrety and sovreignity. I say good luck to them and God Speed!!!

My question is this – What the hell is your problem?

A suggestion – Next time there’s a war going on anywhere in the world, please go a see for yourself before you sit on your ass and make unwise comments like the ones listed above. You are dealing with people’s lives here and you don’t have the decency to take the situation seriously. I would think before I speak. The steaks are way too high – people are important even if it meant that they are Albanian.
70 Comment by Alfred E. Newman on 20 July 2007:

#70 john mason

I bet you were there…and only seen what you wanted to see…

US and NATO forces are used to protect the Osama Bin Laden Mosque in Kosovo while Churches are being burned by Muslim Terrorists

This is the war that Bill Clinton lied to get us into. Not only did he lie but he had our forces bomb the wrong side.
“While under the watchful eye of NATO’s Kosovo Forces since 1999, more than 150 Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries have been destroyed or desecrated and dozens of new mosques have been built — including the Osama bin Laden mosque(pictured below) that now stands on Serbian soil. Is this why peacekeepers are in Kosovo? To protect mosques named after the prime terrorist who has vowed to destroy our country?”
They are burning the churches and building mosques

(KLA) spray-painted on a church, an Albanian Muslim in Kosovo snaps a photo of his fellow tribesman urinating on a burned-out remnant of this formerly Christian land. These are our murderous “allies”, whose terrorism we will reward in the coming weeks and months with independence — which they will unilaterally declare in any case, along with war against NATO, UN and the EU if necessary.

Devich Monastery, burned down

Church of the Holy Mother of Lyevish, burned down bell tower

Devich Monastery, tombs desecrated

Dormitories of the Monastery of the Sacred Archangel Michael,
looted, destroyed and burned.

Saint George Church, Runovica, 16th c,inside

Serbian Christians being ethnically cleansed from their burning homes
Before

After

The Holy Trinity Monastery near Musutiste. Built in the 14th century, it was looted, burned and soon afterwards blown up, July 1999. That was one month after NATO (KFOR) took over Kosovo. There have been no arrests.

St. Elias Church in Smac, near Prizren in Kosovo. Built in 1996, it was damaged by explosives and then vandalized in July 1999. Since these pictures were taken, it has been razed; rubble remains.

St. Mark’s Monastery in Korisa (near Prizren). Built in 1467. Vandalized and demolished by explosives, July 1999. It is not safe for Serbian people to visit the site.

The Presentation of the Virgin church in Dolac. Built in 1620. Vandalized and set on fire, July 1999. The altar table was smashed. At the end of August 1999 the church was completely demolished.

The Presentation of the Virgin parish church in Bijelo Polje
near Pec in Kosovo. Built in the 16th century. Reconstructed in the 19th century. Looted and set on fire shortly after NATO and the UN took over Kosovo, June 1999.

The Parish Church of the Apostles Peter and Paul in Suva Reka. Built in 1938. Vandalized and later blown up by the KLA, July 1999.

Altar area of the 16th century Church of St. Nicholas, which was looted, vandalized and seriously damaged by explosives.The initials carved into the picture are ‘UCK’. That’s Albanian for ‘KLA’, the Kosovo Liberation Army,(which if funded by Al Qaeda) which NATO and the UN have installed in power.
What We’re Fighting For in Kosovo:

Monday, May 3, 1999 “KLA finances fight with heroin sales – Terror group linked to crime network”

Tuesday, May 4, 1999 “KLA rebels train in terrorist camps – Bin Laden offers financing, too”

Clinton’s Kosovo Whopper
http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/ckincaid/2006/ck_0928p.shtml
“Of all the whoppers told by former President Clinton in his Chris Wallace interview, perhaps the most outrageous was his claim that he was involved in “trying to stop a genocide in Kosovo…” In fact, Clinton’s bombing of the former Yugoslavia killed more people than died in this “genocide.” And his policy benefited Osama bin Laden and the global Jihad.”
“The main beneficiary of the intervention was a Muslim terrorist group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), with links to bin Laden, who had declared war on America in 1996, bombed our embassies in Africa in 1998, and would later, of course, orchestrate 9/11.”
“CIA official Michael Scheuer says that the Clinton Administration “had eight to ten chances” to kill bin Laden and “they refused to try,” he is making a statement that goes far beyond acknowledging Clinton Administration incompetence or a lack of will.”
“The fact is that Clinton had a pro-Muslim foreign policy that actually benefited bin Laden and facilitated 9/11.”
“CIA Director George Tenet, who on February 2, 1999, gave testimony referring to the Serb “massacre at Raçak,” which provided the pretext for NATO intervention against Serbia but which turned out to be a hoax.”
“Tenet was, of course, kept on by President Bush. Not only were Tenet’s fingerprints all over the failed and deceptive policy in Kosovo, he told Bush that finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a slam dunk.”
“Al-Jazeera celebrated the fifth anniversary of 9/11 by airing several al-Qaeda videos, one of which showed two of the 9/11 hijackers saying their actions were designed to avenge the suffering of Muslims in Bosnia and Chechnya.”
“Nothing demonstrates the bankruptcy of the Clinton policy more than that. Not only did Clinton order the CIA to help the KLA in Kosovo, he approved Iranian arms shipments to the Bosnian Muslims, in order to help them establish a Muslim state in Bosnia.”
“The Clinton policy of supporting the same extremist Muslim forces in Europe that subsequently attacked us on 9/11 is far more controversial than the policy of regime change in Iraq, which was officially a policy of Clinton, Bush and the Congress. Kosovo was never a threat to the U.S., and Serbia didn’t even pretend to have weapons of mass destruction.”
“At least in Iraq, despite some questionable intelligence, the cause is just. The U.S. removed a dictator and is fighting for democracy and against the terrorists. Such a policy may in the short term provoke a strong anti-American reaction, as Al-Jazeera rallies the foreign fighters to Iraq to kill Americans, but it is vastly preferable to the Clinton policy of helping Muslim radicals come to power in places like Bosnia or Kosovo.”
“There is no coverage of the anti-Christian Jihad underway in Kosovo. But seven years after the illegal Kosovo intervention, the September 15 Washington Post reports on a new World Bank study on fragile or failing states that “can breed terrorism.” One of them is listed as Kosovo. Terrorism is thriving there, of course, because it was Clinton’s official policy to support the terrorist KLA and remove Kosovo from Serbian control.”
Madeline Albright “Of all that we accomplished during my time in office, I’m proudest of what we did in Kosovo because we stopped the killing, and people are back in Kosovo living a free life.”
“A free life when Christian Serbs are fleeing and their homes and churches in Kosovo are being destroyed? Albright’s outrageous comments provide the answer in stark terms to the question: Whose side was the Clinton Administration on in the clash of civilizations between Islam and the West? All of the “missed opportunities” to kill bin Laden, and the interventions on behalf of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo, didn’t give us anything but more anti-American attacks, more terrorism, and finally, 9/11.”
U.S. On The Wrong Side In Kosovo
http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=18289122&BRD=2737&PAG=461...
Your Tax Dollars at Work: State Dept. Sponsors Top Kosovo Muslim to tell American Muslims: Pray for Kosovo Independence…and spread Islam.
http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=797
The burning of churches raises questions about independence.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/krnjevicmiskovic200403190842.asp
“A pogrom started in Europe this week, with one U.N. official being quoted as saying, “Kristallnacht is under way in Kosovo.” Serbs are being murdered and their 800-year-old churches are aflame. Much of the Christian heritage in Kosovo and Metohija is on fire and could be lost forever. By these deeds too many of Kosovo’s Albanians have shown that their rhetoric about “democracy” and “multiethnicity” is false, and demonstrates also that the international community’s acceptance of them has been naïve.”
“Senator Sam Brownback (R., Kan.), after having met Bishop Artemije of Kosovo
http://www.savekosovo.org/documents/LetterformVlArtemijeEN.pdf
several weeks ago in Washington, wrote a letter to President Bush in which he concluded, “We should not consider advancing the cause of independence of a people whose first act when liberated was to ethnically cleanse a quarter of a million of their fellow citizens and destroy over a hundred of their holy sites.”
Islamic Terror in Kosovo Failure to see jihad for what it is
http://www.savekosovo.org/default.asp?p=4
http://www.bigpicweblog.com/exp/index.php/weblog/comments/islamofascists...
What GIs need to know about Kosovo
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/jatras/005.shtml
http://www.savekosovo.org/default.asp
http://www.serbianna.com/

Richard C. Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on the left, joking around with weapons smuggler Florin Krasniqi and Wesley Clark at a John Kerry fundraiser.
Florin Krasniqi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florin_Krasniqi
Clintons stooge who almost started world war 3 on two occasions
http://www.redstate.com/blogs/demophilus/2007/apr/17/starting_world_war_...
The Grdelica Passenger Train Bombing
Are Wesley Clark and Bill Clinton War Criminals?
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/088.shtml
I wonder why we never here anything in the American Press about the Kosovo Pro-Jihadist war escapades of the Bill Clinton Administration. I also wonder why we only hear talk about George Bush ,Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld being potential war criminals yet the so-called peace lovers give a free pass to the real war criminals like Wesley Clark and his master Bill Clinton. Why is the current administration continuing this dreadful policy started with a lie by Bill Clinton.
“After Sept. 11, President Bush told the American people that we would do whatever it takes to defend our country against the Islamic terrorists, yet we denied the Serbs the right to fight the same enemy that we are fighting today.”
“Am I cynical? You bet. Through our flawed foreign policies in the Balkans, we destroyed a Christian people, our ally of two world wars, in order to appease the Muslim world, a world that cannot be appeased. Sept. 11 is a case in point.”
We bombed the wrong side?
Maj-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, now retired, commanded UN troops during the Bosnian civil war of 1992.
http://www.mfa.gov.yu/FDP/np_060404_e.html
Bill Clintons grand lie for war in Kosovo
http://www.redstate.com/blogs/demophilus/2007/apr/15/bush_didnt_lie_abou...
“If Senator Kennedy wants to talk about fraud [in relation to the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq], he ought to talk….. about what he and President Clinton told us in 1999 when they told us to bomb innocent Serbs, we’d find 100 thousand mass graves. Those mass graves were never found. They lied to the America people to justify the aerial bombardment campaign.”
Congressman Curt Weldon (R) Pennsylvania on ‘Hardball with Chris Matthews’
Press Reports On False Claims Of Genocide By Serbs In Kosovo
http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpWESSEX/Documents/Kosovofalsehoods.htm
US Evangelists Join “Campaign To Keep Kosovo Within Serbia”
“Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, outspoken and influential televangelists in the US, are joining forces with Serbia’s Christian Orthodox church to campaign against independence for the mainly Muslim province of Kosovo.”
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/DinmoreKosovo.php
Eradication of an ancient culture…
The Destruction of the Churches of Kosovo
http://emperors-clothes.com/churchpics/list.htm
71 Comment by Nicholas B on 20 July 2007:

I think a visit to Kosovo would open your eyes a bit. They have done more since the war ended than all of the years combined during the Serbian rule there. Just compare the progress made in Kosovo to that in Serbia. The Albanians have proven time and again that they are worthy of self rule and they deserve no less. I for one feel honored to have had the opportunity to serve there in uniform and from my experience, there is only one problem in the Balkans – the Serbs. Let us not forget the mass killing that they did on their own citizens. Lets not let it happen again folks. We know better than that.

Congrats Kosovo on your Independence from Serbia. May God Bless your people and all those who want to be free! Good Luck!

Maj Nic B. – Operation Allied Force
72 Comment by Alfred E. Newman on 20 July 2007:

US and NATO forces are used to protect the Osama Bin Laden Mosque in Kosovo while Churches are being burned by Muslim Terrorists

This is the war that Bill Clinton lied to get us into. Not only did he lie but he had our forces bomb the wrong side.
“While under the watchful eye of NATO’s Kosovo Forces since 1999, more than 150 Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries have been destroyed or desecrated and dozens of new mosques have been built — including the Osama bin Laden mosque(pictured below) that now stands on Serbian soil. Is this why peacekeepers are in Kosovo? To protect mosques named after the prime terrorist who has vowed to destroy our country?”
They are burning the churches and building mosques

(KLA) spray-painted on a church, an Albanian Muslim in Kosovo snaps a photo of his fellow tribesman urinating on a burned-out remnant of this formerly Christian land. These are our murderous “allies”, whose terrorism we will reward in the coming weeks and months with independence — which they will unilaterally declare in any case, along with war against NATO, UN and the EU if necessary.

Devich Monastery, burned down

Church of the Holy Mother of Lyevish, burned down bell tower

Devich Monastery, tombs desecrated

Dormitories of the Monastery of the Sacred Archangel Michael,
looted, destroyed and burned.

Saint George Church, Runovica, 16th c,inside

Serbian Christians being ethnically cleansed from their burning homes
Before

After

The Holy Trinity Monastery near Musutiste. Built in the 14th century, it was looted, burned and soon afterwards blown up, July 1999. That was one month after NATO (KFOR) took over Kosovo. There have been no arrests.

St. Elias Church in Smac, near Prizren in Kosovo. Built in 1996, it was damaged by explosives and then vandalized in July 1999. Since these pictures were taken, it has been razed; rubble remains.

St. Mark’s Monastery in Korisa (near Prizren). Built in 1467. Vandalized and demolished by explosives, July 1999. It is not safe for Serbian people to visit the site.

The Presentation of the Virgin church in Dolac. Built in 1620. Vandalized and set on fire, July 1999. The altar table was smashed. At the end of August 1999 the church was completely demolished.

The Presentation of the Virgin parish church in Bijelo Polje
near Pec in Kosovo. Built in the 16th century. Reconstructed in the 19th century. Looted and set on fire shortly after NATO and the UN took over Kosovo, June 1999.

The Parish Church of the Apostles Peter and Paul in Suva Reka. Built in 1938. Vandalized and later blown up by the KLA, July 1999.

Altar area of the 16th century Church of St. Nicholas, which was looted, vandalized and seriously damaged by explosives.The initials carved into the picture are ‘UCK’. That’s Albanian for ‘KLA’, the Kosovo Liberation Army,(which if funded by Al Qaeda) which NATO and the UN have installed in power.
What We’re Fighting For in Kosovo:

Monday, May 3, 1999 “KLA finances fight with heroin sales – Terror group linked to crime network”

Tuesday, May 4, 1999 “KLA rebels train in terrorist camps – Bin Laden offers financing, too”

Clinton’s Kosovo Whopper
http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/ckincaid/2006/ck_0928p.shtml
“Of all the whoppers told by former President Clinton in his Chris Wallace interview, perhaps the most outrageous was his claim that he was involved in “trying to stop a genocide in Kosovo…” In fact, Clinton’s bombing of the former Yugoslavia killed more people than died in this “genocide.” And his policy benefited Osama bin Laden and the global Jihad.”
“The main beneficiary of the intervention was a Muslim terrorist group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), with links to bin Laden, who had declared war on America in 1996, bombed our embassies in Africa in 1998, and would later, of course, orchestrate 9/11.”
“CIA official Michael Scheuer says that the Clinton Administration “had eight to ten chances” to kill bin Laden and “they refused to try,” he is making a statement that goes far beyond acknowledging Clinton Administration incompetence or a lack of will.”
“The fact is that Clinton had a pro-Muslim foreign policy that actually benefited bin Laden and facilitated 9/11.”
“CIA Director George Tenet, who on February 2, 1999, gave testimony referring to the Serb “massacre at Raçak,” which provided the pretext for NATO intervention against Serbia but which turned out to be a hoax.”
“Tenet was, of course, kept on by President Bush. Not only were Tenet’s fingerprints all over the failed and deceptive policy in Kosovo, he told Bush that finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a slam dunk.”
“Al-Jazeera celebrated the fifth anniversary of 9/11 by airing several al-Qaeda videos, one of which showed two of the 9/11 hijackers saying their actions were designed to avenge the suffering of Muslims in Bosnia and Chechnya.”
“Nothing demonstrates the bankruptcy of the Clinton policy more than that. Not only did Clinton order the CIA to help the KLA in Kosovo, he approved Iranian arms shipments to the Bosnian Muslims, in order to help them establish a Muslim state in Bosnia.”
“The Clinton policy of supporting the same extremist Muslim forces in Europe that subsequently attacked us on 9/11 is far more controversial than the policy of regime change in Iraq, which was officially a policy of Clinton, Bush and the Congress. Kosovo was never a threat to the U.S., and Serbia didn’t even pretend to have weapons of mass destruction.”
“At least in Iraq, despite some questionable intelligence, the cause is just. The U.S. removed a dictator and is fighting for democracy and against the terrorists. Such a policy may in the short term provoke a strong anti-American reaction, as Al-Jazeera rallies the foreign fighters to Iraq to kill Americans, but it is vastly preferable to the Clinton policy of helping Muslim radicals come to power in places like Bosnia or Kosovo.”
“There is no coverage of the anti-Christian Jihad underway in Kosovo. But seven years after the illegal Kosovo intervention, the September 15 Washington Post reports on a new World Bank study on fragile or failing states that “can breed terrorism.” One of them is listed as Kosovo. Terrorism is thriving there, of course, because it was Clinton’s official policy to support the terrorist KLA and remove Kosovo from Serbian control.”
Madeline Albright “Of all that we accomplished during my time in office, I’m proudest of what we did in Kosovo because we stopped the killing, and people are back in Kosovo living a free life.”
“A free life when Christian Serbs are fleeing and their homes and churches in Kosovo are being destroyed? Albright’s outrageous comments provide the answer in stark terms to the question: Whose side was the Clinton Administration on in the clash of civilizations between Islam and the West? All of the “missed opportunities” to kill bin Laden, and the interventions on behalf of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo, didn’t give us anything but more anti-American attacks, more terrorism, and finally, 9/11.”
U.S. On The Wrong Side In Kosovo
http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=18289122&BRD=2737&PAG=461...
Your Tax Dollars at Work: State Dept. Sponsors Top Kosovo Muslim to tell American Muslims: Pray for Kosovo Independence…and spread Islam.
http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=797
The burning of churches raises questions about independence.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/krnjevicmiskovic200403190842.asp
“A pogrom started in Europe this week, with one U.N. official being quoted as saying, “Kristallnacht is under way in Kosovo.” Serbs are being murdered and their 800-year-old churches are aflame. Much of the Christian heritage in Kosovo and Metohija is on fire and could be lost forever. By these deeds too many of Kosovo’s Albanians have shown that their rhetoric about “democracy” and “multiethnicity” is false, and demonstrates also that the international community’s acceptance of them has been naïve.”
“Senator Sam Brownback (R., Kan.), after having met Bishop Artemije of Kosovo
http://www.savekosovo.org/documents/LetterformVlArtemijeEN.pdf
several weeks ago in Washington, wrote a letter to President Bush in which he concluded, “We should not consider advancing the cause of independence of a people whose first act when liberated was to ethnically cleanse a quarter of a million of their fellow citizens and destroy over a hundred of their holy sites.”
Islamic Terror in Kosovo Failure to see jihad for what it is
http://www.savekosovo.org/default.asp?p=4
http://www.bigpicweblog.com/exp/index.php/weblog/comments/islamofascists...
What GIs need to know about Kosovo
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/jatras/005.shtml
http://www.savekosovo.org/default.asp
http://www.serbianna.com/

Richard C. Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on the left, joking around with weapons smuggler Florin Krasniqi and Wesley Clark at a John Kerry fundraiser.
Florin Krasniqi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florin_Krasniqi
Clintons stooge who almost started world war 3 on two occasions
http://www.redstate.com/blogs/demophilus/2007/apr/17/starting_world_war_...
The Grdelica Passenger Train Bombing
Are Wesley Clark and Bill Clinton War Criminals?
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/088.shtml
I wonder why we never here anything in the American Press about the Kosovo Pro-Jihadist war escapades of the Bill Clinton Administration. I also wonder why we only hear talk about George Bush ,Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld being potential war criminals yet the so-called peace lovers give a free pass to the real war criminals like Wesley Clark and his master Bill Clinton. Why is the current administration continuing this dreadful policy started with a lie by Bill Clinton.
“After Sept. 11, President Bush told the American people that we would do whatever it takes to defend our country against the Islamic terrorists, yet we denied the Serbs the right to fight the same enemy that we are fighting today.”
“Am I cynical? You bet. Through our flawed foreign policies in the Balkans, we destroyed a Christian people, our ally of two world wars, in order to appease the Muslim world, a world that cannot be appeased. Sept. 11 is a case in point.”
We bombed the wrong side?
Maj-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, now retired, commanded UN troops during the Bosnian civil war of 1992.
http://www.mfa.gov.yu/FDP/np_060404_e.html
Bill Clintons grand lie for war in Kosovo
http://www.redstate.com/blogs/demophilus/2007/apr/15/bush_didnt_lie_abou...
“If Senator Kennedy wants to talk about fraud [in relation to the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq], he ought to talk….. about what he and President Clinton told us in 1999 when they told us to bomb innocent Serbs, we’d find 100 thousand mass graves. Those mass graves were never found. They lied to the America people to justify the aerial bombardment campaign.”
Congressman Curt Weldon (R) Pennsylvania on ‘Hardball with Chris Matthews’
Press Reports On False Claims Of Genocide By Serbs In Kosovo
http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpWESSEX/Documents/Kosovofalsehoods.htm
US Evangelists Join “Campaign To Keep Kosovo Within Serbia”
“Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, outspoken and influential televangelists in the US, are joining forces with Serbia’s Christian Orthodox church to campaign against independence for the mainly Muslim province of Kosovo.”
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/DinmoreKosovo.php
Eradication of an ancient culture…
The Destruction of the Churches of Kosovo
http://emperors-clothes.com/churchpics/list.htm
73 Comment by scytale on 20 July 2007:

Yeah “Major” Nic!

I want to be free too. Free from foreign armies. Maybe you will tell us something about operation “Iraqi freedom” and the will of Iraqi people to be free.

Talking about progress of Kosovo…. More than 2 billion euro is put by the west (international community) in Kosovo every year and guess what? The only progress that is made there is in corruption and nothing else. BTW We don’t live on Mars and wait for someone to tell us how is on Kosovo.

Anyway I don’t believe you that you are army person. Your post is to blunt for someone to believe you.
74 Comment by just_a_serb on 20 July 2007:

Russia is standing strong in UNSC, no resolution will pass there.

Germany is changing its position and renouncing independence.

See in German: http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/;art771,2343047
http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/;art771,2342904

By all chances, Serbia will have Russian troops and balistic missiles by the end of this year on its territory.

Congratulations to Shqipetars on independence are premature.

“Proofs” in the terms “been there, done that”, “Serbs did it wrong”, “Albanians freedom lovers” etc., are pathetic and ridicoulous. The world don’t trust U.S. anymore – the world is laughing at U.S. words, knowing they are lies, that’s what clever know even in the U.S. See: http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=14148

It would be best Albanians and Serbs reach the agreement on authonomy. Best for Albanians and Serbs, provided Russia and EU (without GB) manage to secute “the soft landing” of declining U.S. superpower. If they fail, heck, it doesn’t matter anyway.
75 Comment by Michael Averko on 20 July 2007:

Re:

“Who in the right mind can expect Kosovo to be handed over to Serbia after what took place in the war of 1999? We all saw that – It was real for all of us. I was there myself – I know what I saw and I don’t wish it on my worst enemy. Lot of people died for no reason other than being of Albanian ethnicity. So, when you say that Kosovo should remain part of Serbia, you are also saying that those 2 million Albanians don’t deserve to be free of terror. What have they done so wrong to deserve that? They are born in Kosovo – That is their home – It belongs to them and not to a bunch of long dead Serbian kings or I guess I should say Serbian Butchers. The Albanians are not asking you or anyone else to do anything for them. They just wish to live, work, and rear their families in an environment free of terror – kind of they way you and I live. What’s wrong with that? The Serbs had them under their rule since WWII. I’m not impressed with the results and neither is the rest of the free world. Thank almighty God for that.”

****

The above quoted is garbage.

Kosovo has been part of Serbia since 1912. It was also part of ancient Serbia. Kosovo was never part of Albania, or an independent entity unto itself. The Albanian majority now evident in Kosovo is the result of illegal immigration, terrorism against non-Albanians and the high birth rate of Albanians.

Turkey and Iraq haven’t lost Kurdistan because of the persecution those two inflicted on the Kurds. Far worse than what the Serbs could ever be legitimately accused of vis-a-vis the Albanians, who have a lengthy past and present of ultra-nationalist violence against Serbs and others. Present day Serbia is more democratic than Turkey and Iraq.

Pridnestrovie (Trans-Dniester) and not Kosovo is the true “special case” for independence.

Under a peaceful format, the Kosovo Albanians are being offered great self rule as a part of Serbia. Rewarding Albanian nationalist terrorism isn’t the way to move in a positively forward direction.
76 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 20 July 2007:

Fortunately for many of us – there are no laws against being stupid. I don’t have a pronounced urge to mince my words, but there is a very noticeable stupidity in the prior post number 70 from “John Mason” – if there ever is such a person. If this sentence was watered down, the original author would think it was only a slight error, but in truth, these are massive errors that require either a lobotomy of the author or a quite thorough (re)education – providing they had any prior education – which seems doubtful based on their write-up.

I have a “small” problem with:

Lot of people died for no reason other than being of Albanian ethnicity. Not only is this patently untrue, but other than a part of the U.S. Armed Forces being brain-washed by their commanders, it, further shows an advanced level of blindness/stupidity or bias.

1. If that is true, how did the Albanian population escalate from 400 thousand to two million, while Serbian population went from 500 thousand to 400 thousand in the same time. Where in the name of Christ do you get your idiotic knowledge and irresponsibility to post it on a public forum like this? Just to give you a broad stroke comparison, your statement would add up to Osama Bin Laden being one of the most prominent American patriots fighting for American values the world over. Sorry, but I hate idiots, and your post was totally and unapologetically idiotic. Read on, and if you decide to commit suicide – it won’t help. Even suicide would not wash this dirt away from you and your future generations.

2. Those Albanians that you saw die, are you absolutely certain beyond any doubt that the bullets were produced, fired and inscribed with letters “bloodthirsty Serbians”?

3. By accident I found the following which you might want to consider as a theoretical possibility:

1997: Jan. 13: Shooting Fazil Hasani, an ethnic Albanian forest worker from the
village of Brabonic (Srbica municipality) in the neck, KLA
terrorists killed him and issued a statement denouncing
Mr. Hasani as a “traitor”.

Jan. 16: Using remote-controlled explosives, the KLA attempted to assassinate the Dean of Pristina University, Mr. Papovic,
at 8 a.m. as he was driving to the University. Both he and
his driver Nikola Lalic were heavily wounded. The explosives
were set off when their car was some 50 meters from Dean Papovic’s apartment in Pristina.

Jan. 17: In the village of Reketnica (Srbica municipality), at 1 a.m., ethnic Albanian Zen Durmisi (52) was shot and killed and his son Nazmi Durmisi was heavily wounded. The Durmisi family was labeled “pro-Yugoslav” by the terrorist KLA.

4. How long since the Albanians have abandoned blood feud (besa) and stopped killing their own?

5. What of all those non-compliant Albanians that were killed by KLA – documented

6. A certain Russell Gordon claims

“Kosovo Albanians have committed armed robberies in France with automatic weapons and RPG’s, and have overtaken the Sicilian Mafia in Italy, largely due to their ruthlessness, and closed society. Their criminal rackets stretch into London and throughout the US. Their money has bought off US senators and congressmen; their revisionist history and expansionist aims made official policy of the US Congress, and State Department. In Kosovo, their heroin labs are protected and heroin transported by units of the US military. During the Albanian insurgency of 1997-1999 (and through 2001 in Macedonia and Presevo), US Special Forces and British SAS armed, trained, and gave battlefield expertise to Albanian separatists waging brutal separatist campaigns in the region. During the war in Kosovo in 1999, the US military airlifted the Albanian UCK terrorists into some Serbian villages, where every civilian was slaughtered.”

Were you in that group by any chance so you vision may have been tainted a little bit? Did you, Mr. Mason, turn a nice profit while being deployed on account of the large heroin trade?

But there is also the ingenious contribution by “Major Nic”. What exact progress did you witness in Kosovo? I had two friends assigned to the DoD as translators and I’ll be willing to bet that their views of your “humanitarian presence” are somewhat less flattering. Feel free to give me your name and rank – I’ll ask. I do have an ongoing DoD relationship, and was nearly deployed to Iraq, myself. However I do have plenty of friends and colleagues who are on active duty and veterans of past engagements so that I can inquire about any “honorably discharged” officer during the last decade. My email is iliija@comcast.net – feel free to contact me without any fear of having to be debriefed again – you already got debriefed upon your return (SOP), so you’re exempt from any atrocities you may have participated in. As you can see, I have a nasty habit of upholding true American standards of liberty, justice, truth, pursuit of happiness and all that other “stuff” from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – you, as an officer of the Armed Forces, have an even greater obligation to come clean. I openly challenge your statements – and promise not inform your superiors as not endanger your sworn oath whereby the military personnel shall not engage in politics nor pass judgment on civilian affairs (at home and overseas).
77 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 20 July 2007:

I’ll be willing to bet anything that both “Mason and Maj. B” are the same as Suleyman Schwartz, Pellumbi Velo and other Arnauts who are regular usurpers on this site. Fort Meade intelligence debriefing is quite thourgh and would not allow any such morons to neither serve nor to mention the service afterwards – let alone with a rank of a “major”. Albanian dishonesty, lack of civility, constant lies, ongoing criminal activity speak volumes of the entire nation – which is why I accepted that the military action against these liars would be the only course of action. There has never, ever in the history of Albanians present in Kosovo (mainly imports from Albania) been one instance of truth escaping their lips.
78 Comment by Jimmy CARTER on 20 July 2007:

To MICHAEL! How are you doing? I don’t really know what you are trying to say? You eather have dinned in a lot of Serbian places, or never went to school. There is no such a thing as ancient Serbia. WHen you say ancient ,one means Before Christ. And at that time Serbia was in todays Mongolia , hunting with their rusian brothers.You sound to me as Romanian. At that time emperor Augustus was deporting en mass Roman prostitutes to what today is Romania(dacia then). The roman soldiers were refusing to go and fight because they were having good time in Rome. The cause was the great number of prostitutes ,because the male population was in very low numbers from long wars.The emperor came up with the great idea, deport prostitutes, the soulders will get bored.He did so. The last Roman prostitute ended up in Romania. That where the name comes from. In latin: male Roman is called ROMANO. Female Roman is called Romane,. Compare : romane -romanea. So you guys are product of of prostitutes. I am not making it up. It is a known historical fact. It is embarrasing ,and not mentioned a lot. So what one can expect from the son of the bitch. This is why your mothers language is roman. If you need sources I will be happy to provide them.Jimmy.
79 Comment by Jimmy CARTER on 20 July 2007:

If MICHAEL is not Romanian I TAKE THE WHOLE THING BACK. It looked like I jumped the gun with the romanian thing, but I keep the ancient SERBIA IN PLACE.
80 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 20 July 2007:

If Serbia was in Mongolia there must be some evidence you have for such an accurate fact, while I on the other hand do have evidence of Vinca, Lepenski Vir and other Neolethic presence of people in the regions of today’s Danube and Morava rivers for times before Jesus Christ (620 BC to 327BC). No wonder Ayatollah Rullah Khomeini waited for Carter to leave office and free the American prisoners only after Ronald Reagan took office January 20th 1981.

Again, I have a feeling that the Jimmy Carter is the same as Suleyman Schwarts, Pellumbi Vello, Emete, Izmet or other similar subhuman form of single cell organisms (parasitic amoeba)
81 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 20 July 2007:

I guess amoebas do not have email addresses nor any real names, but that’s one thing they have in common with Albanians, and other Turkish subjects.
82 Comment by Boba Borojevic on 20 July 2007:

HIDING GENOCIDE IN KOSOVO
By Iseult Henry

At a time when the Western powers – foremost among them the United States – prepare what they hope will be an endgame for their predetermined solution to the Serbian question, now comes a searing ray of truth that cuts through the fog of lies in which Kosovo has been shrouded. The work of “Iseult Henry,” the pen name of a current member of the international mission in Kosovo, “Hiding Genocide in Kosovo: A Crime against God and Humanity” is not a typical book of the current events or international affairs genre. Nor is it a journalistic exposé. It is simply a book of stories, true stories of what has taken place in Kosovo since the end of the 1999 war: shooting, beheading, burning, bomb attack, maiming, rape, abduction, torture, desecration, theft, mutilation, and harassment. While Western policymakers (the U.S., EU, UN, NATO, OSCE, etc.) delude themselves that they are buying the goodwill of the Muslim world by the sacrifice of a small Christian community in Kosovo, the perpetrators know this is yet another step toward Islamic dominance of all Europe. This is a struggle for the soul and future not just for Kosovo, not just for Serbia, but for an entire continent.

“Hiding Genocide in Kosovo: A Crime against God and Humanity” will be sent to you with the contribution of any size to the ongoing work to the AMERICAN COUNCIL FOR KOSOVO, P.O. Box 14434, Washington, DC 20044 USA
http://www.savekosovo.org
83 Comment by Johan Dieckmann on 20 July 2007:

Friday, 20 July 2007, 21:03 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6909127.stm

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said the decision to put on hold plans to push through Kosovo’s independence at the UN was an important victory for Belgrade and Moscow.
84 Comment by svetlana on 21 July 2007:

Illia you are sicko really sicko together with your network of liers
get e klife you real hater
you belong to antiquety
85 Comment by Srba Metohijevic on 21 July 2007:

No sweat,pals.

“Albanians”shuold live in an indepent state.At the moment,that is “Albania”.
But,better to go to their motherland-turkey-.
86 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 21 July 2007:

Such a steady pattern of lies, deception and misdirection only reaffirms the prior suggestions that Albanians never had any true intent of “negotiating”. This is just a phase (one of the many steps) they need to accomplish in order to get to Greater Albania – the posturing (and faking), while “negotiating” is just a public stint. I am firmly convinced that a military intervention is in order to save the portion of Serbia which remains a part of Serbia (today’s Kosovo), but I would allow options for crossing over into Albania if there ever was such a legitimate need.
87 Comment by EMete on 21 July 2007:

“Does any Albanian ever show his name, anywhere, or is it always that they are in hiding?,” asks a person under the assumed name of Yuri Gagarin.

To identify yourself when dealing with another person means that you consider him or her your equal. Communicating openly and in good faith with a racist, a bigot or some other uncivilized person who has gone astray from God, also means that you are like him or her and everybody, who knows you, will identify you with them. No honest person would want this to happen.

What should be done in such cases? Either stop doing that or keep communicating with the above mentioned persons for the only purpose of bringing them back to the path of God without having others think that you are one of them. So, don’t identify yourself, far from that, and keep sending them God’s message. If they don’t change their ways on earth, they’ll have to repent, though too late, when in front of God.

Help those who have fallen and don’t let them infect you or cast a shadow, however little, on your good name. Try not to identify yourself with them and still convey God’s word to them. They may listen one day. If not, they know where they are heading.

Do what Mother Teresa, the Great Albanian, did in God’s name but a little differently when dealing with thugs, liars, bigots and racists
88 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 21 July 2007:

What a juicy rationalization, completely divorced from any truth or honesty – a true image of uniquely Albanian perception.

I can’t speak for others, but both Mr. Jovicic, Boba Borojevic and I, have even included our email addresses in our posts. Meanwhile the warped sense of logic dictates that it is more “honorable” to remain in hiding. Well done Mr. Amoeba Parasite. You couldn’t be equal to my grandson’s being burped after meals. People like you do manage to give us a true image of Albanian perception of values and qualities. Dishonesty, outright lies, misdirection, falsehoods, and other lack of character are your only characteristic.

Why don’t you drag Mother Theresa into this (completely unrelated topic) – and try to justify killing of Serbian nuns, or church burnings? Better yet, why don’t you fail to answer how is it that the Austrian Interpol division is dominated by 80% Albanians – see how much mother Theresa, Mohandas Gandhi, or George Washington can help your cause in those matters?

In a more balanced (honest) and NON-secretive world, people who speak the truth have nothing to fear. I have personaly had many dealings with the DoD and, knowing full well that I have not leaked, or otherwise betrayed any confidence or national interests of the United States – I challenged your Major Nic (was that you by any chance?) – who failed to respond in spite of his “pride” of having served in Kosovo.

Even when you lie, you do it badly – no wonder you can not speak any truth at any time – it would sound worse than your lies. Even in this, very modest forum, your thoughts have been completely defeated, dismantled and exposed for what they truly are: overt falsehoods, patent lies, total fabrications.

In a simplest appliction of elementary school arithmetics your views are present by about 8% to 10% – which gives about 90% to 92% of views that are sharply opposed to you (and mother Theresa).
89 Comment by Joseff Stalin on 21 July 2007:

Hi! What’s up. I know the serbs well, since I live in Rusia. And I understand their plight. What I don’t understand is how come the others continue to argue with indoctrinated people. All they know is that Serbs are the best ,chosen and christian. They don’t have in their vocabulary words like, humanity ,peace or respect. They are born criminals. We know that, Europe knows that, so U.S.A. Third world countries like china and Rusia don’t understand humanities. They live socially in middle ages, were people are slaughtered every single day. Kosova will be independent on coming November 28, in the morning.We will be drinking and dancing that day. But a lot of work remained to be done. A fashist nation made of dangereous criminals who want to join Rusia remained in Europe. Plans to send them back to RUSIA should be in place.Thank you. Josip Visarianovich STALIN
90 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 21 July 2007:

anoder from the Albanian piplz trayz a deferent name to eskepy the kurse of illiterate Albanian LIARS – how obviyos is this? If noting elsy, the righting stil is samey like nameless kowards albanians who kall moder teresa for help in their kowarice. How do ju laik my speling? Gud? Almost lik gud Albanian? tank ju.

Proof positive that there is genetic defect with Albanians.
91 Comment by EMete on 21 July 2007:

To Mr. Iliya Pavlovich and some others:

How do you find the article “Bush Right on Kosovo Independence”? You don’t like it, of course, because it is so blunt and crystal clear. You like to fish in muddy waters and look to Russia. “The Slavs of the South,” wrote Edith Durham, “look to the West when the days are sunny. When they are rainy, they look to the big brother, Russia, for help” That is what you did and this is what you are doing.

Nicholas B.
I for one feel honored to have had the opportunity to serve there [Kosova] in uniform and from my experience, there is only one problem in the Balkans – the Serbs. Let us not forget the mass killing that they did on their own citizens.

Svetlana

This is a filthy place to comment

Illia you are sicko really sicko together with your network of liers
get e klife you real hater
you belong to antiquety

Your comments on the above, Mr. Iliya Pavlovic, if this is your real name?

I would give you an advice: Be more educated, less passionate, less vulgar amd less offensive.

Your vulgarity is indication of your cultural level. And your offensive language – evidence of your lack of arguments and intelectual poverty, if you are an intelectual, of course. If not, please tell us so that we stop wasting our time.

I do not think you will ever provide any counter-arguments as regards my article “Bush Right on Kosovo Independence”. Vulgarity and insults are no arguments. You distinguish yourself for a sterile mind and volubility.

One of the reasons I answer you is to enjoy reading your racist aberrations and see how far a racist’s mind can go in his hatred of other peoples. Keep writing because the more you write the more discredited you become and the more we enjoy your “great” ideas.

I am curious to know what would you have to say to Nicholas B. and Svetlana. I am eagerly looking forward to your answers as to the above.
92 Comment by Joseff Stalin on 21 July 2007:

Hi again! Iliya you should see a doctor. You are showing yourself as a true serb. All your nation needs pills.All my regards. Joseff Visarianovich Stalin
93 Comment by Joseff Stalin on 22 July 2007:

Kosova will be independent on November 28, 2007 in the morning. I invite all Serbs to celebrate and come to visit, to see with their own eyes, what a civilisation is all about.

Josip Visarianovich STALIN.(THE author is a horse farmer)
94 Comment by Spectacles on 22 July 2007:

You know I have to be honest, the Albanians on this forum are pretty damn funny. Well thats about all they have going for them…

Grats to Serbia for winning one. Also to some of the other European Countries like Poland and Portugal that have recovered their testicles enough to speak up about the Kosovo Situation.
95 Comment by Alfred E. Newman on 22 July 2007:

Grats to Serbia for winning one.

Thank you, that is just a political battle, but Serbia is a winner in many battles…

Actually we won twice against the same competitor the US that is in the U19 Basketball World Championship.

Novi Sad Serbiaja 2007
Juniorska reprezentacija Srbije novi je prvak sveta. Plavi su u velikom finalu, u prepunom novosadskom SPENS-u selekciju Amerike sa 74:69(22:14, 21:16, 14:17, 17:22).

Plavi su vodili od prvog do poslednjeg minuta utakmice. Samo u trećoj četvrtini bilo je koliko-toliko neizvesnosti. U dresu Srbije blistao je Čačanin Mladen Jeremić, uz veliku pomoć Milana Mačvana i Stefana Stojačića.

Prelazni pehar FIBA, koji je kapitenu plavih Stefanu Markoviću ururčio generalni sekretar FIBA Patrik Bauman ostaje u vitrinama KSS četiri godine, do narednog šampionata sveta.

Bormio 1987.
Plavi su do sada jedino zlato osvojili u Bormiu 1987. godine. Bila je to generacija koju su predvodili Vlade Divac, Saša Đorđević, Luka Pavićević, Nebojša Ilić, Miroslav Pecarski, Slaviša Koprivica… Selektor je bio Svetislav Pešić.

Rezultati plavih: u grupi: SAD – Jugoslavija 95:110, Jugoslavija – Portoriko 139:100, Jugoslavija – Kina 126:79, četvrtfinale: Nigerija – Jugoslavija 82:126, polufinale: Jugoslavija – SR Nemačka 89:64, finale: Jugoslavija – SAD 86:76.

And many more in the men’s World Championships, well see table below…

FIBA World Championships medals’ table 1950-2006
MEN’S MEDALLISTS
Gold Silver Bronze Total
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 3 3 3 9
SOVIET UNION 3 3 2 8
YUSGOSLAVIA 3 3 2 8
BRAZIL 2 2 2 6
RUSSIA – 2 – 2
CHILE – - 2 2
ARGENTINA 1 1 – 2
YUGOSLAVIA (Serbia and Montenegro) 2 – - 2
CROATIA – - 1 1
PHILIPPINES – - 1 1
GERMANY – - 1 1

Swimming: Who’d Guessed Serbia is “Landlocked”

Another gold medal to Serbia today comes from the swimming’s European Junior Championships in Antwerp, Belgium, where Ivan Lendjer won the first place in the 100 meters butterfly, setting the championship record of 53.21 seconds, 0.69 sec ahead of Yauheni Lazuka, of Belarus.
96 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 22 July 2007:

Yes I must be sick but I don’t lie like the albanian parasites.
97 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 23 July 2007:

Somehow we got spared the other popular Albanian myth (first one being Skenderbeg Djuradj Kastrioti), nobody (to my surprise) claimed that Nikola Tesla, Rudjer Boskovic, Vuk Karadzic, Dositej Obradovic, Nikola Pasic, Milan Pavic, Ivo Andric, were all Albanians.

Instead of such news the Albanians must indeed sleep with their running shoes on, since all there recent developement pointing towards no resolution in favor of Greater Albania – Dardania – Tyrannia (the capital city of Albania). Even more humiliating than a diplomatic defeat is the fact that Albanians might be sanctioned in a more serious way as there indeed are Serbian volunteers getting militarily ready to defend their proper lands from any lunatic secession or unilateral proclamation.

On of the prior parasite’s posts (probably the same person all along) mentioned the life of Albanians “under the Serbians”. What is it that the life “under the Serbians” didn’t offer?

Albanians had:

Schools in their own language

Mosques (in the language of their forefathers – Arabic)

University (free of charge to any regular student)

Medical care (in their language and free of charge)

I don’t see any of that being offered to the Serbian minority in Kosovo should these criminals take over. Let’s not forget how true currage mandates that a person should never ever sign anything s/he has written
98 Comment by Ljubinko Jovicic on 23 July 2007:

ONLY ONE KOSOVO
I Know Three of them

RASKA TRANSFERZAL
EU-tactics in 19th Centrt and After

At the end of 19th century, in aftermath of Turkish-Serbian War, British members of the Commission for Boundary-line, tried with trick and abuse to grab some land to detriment of Kingdom of Serbia.
After the war 1n 1912, Pierre Loti, French author of heartbreaking novels (Les Pe’cheur d’Island), lamented expatriating Turks and accused ‘wilde Serbs’. In French press Loti dragged Christians through mire,
Austro-Hungarian Empire percieved the danger of possible liberation of South-Serbs, particulary in Raska-usually named Sandzak in communist Jugoslavia-and countered. Austro-Hungarian Intelligence Service-Nachrichtendienst-designed masterplan, lobbied and payed to convert Christians, mostly poor devils into Islam. They hastened operation bruttish, reckless and swift from 1910 trough 1912.

Islamic transversal was carved trough the Serbian ethnisity. Why was the operation so succesful in short Time?
Seton Watson, British historian and intelligence agent , in his opus, in German transcript “Nationalit’ten Frage in Ungarn” wrote aproximately:
In 1860 with “Zeter und mordio” was initiated compresson of the heterogeneos Panonic horde into the Hungarian nation. Jews, mostly intelectuals and enterpreneurs had to change last name, then were adapted minorities, Slowaks and Cheks. Romenians and Serbs, being not Catholics, have gotten special treatment.
Serbs in Hungary had religious, cultural and bussines centers in Buda-Budapest-on the hill- St. Andrea, Szegedin and elsevere. They were not survival heroes, peu a peu they dissapeared.

The Raska transverzal was drafted to cut off occupied Serbs from Serbian State for ever. In Balkans, the boundary stones were not the outcome of peaceful competition, cultural dialog, relegious tollerance, traditional terroirs but were forcefuly drawn by imperial bullies at their own’s discretion or imploded by agents of intruded
ideology. An Individual born 1920, coud have had orthodox icon in grandmothers room, Koran at his desk, pictures of emperor Franz Josef and later of J.B. Tito on the Wall.

Nowadays, Western interpretation of modern history is double-faced.
Imperial outreach for Lebensraum is would be logical consequence of global trends and developement of world economy.

Struggle of small nation to keep head above wate and to save its own brethren from slaughter could be only “Aspiration for Greater Serbia”.

Ljubinko Jovicic
E-mail jovihaljubinko@ahoo.com

to be continued: Fürst Schwarzenberg. Slavonia, Archbishopric of Agram
99 Comment by Illir Dardania on 23 July 2007:

Albanians are used to run their own affairs from ancient times to modern times. At old greek times, We had Alexander running greece for us , in ROMAN TIMES we had 15 Albanian Emperors running Rome, in ottoman times 46 grand vesirs from Albania including Attaturk. You Serbs are so dumb, we are born to lead not follow. There is no way an albanian could accept to do, what a thick headed Serb is looking to. You guys are so dumb that not a single Eurpian country want to support you , including other slavik europian one,except for Asiatic Mongoloid Rusia. You mongol serbs belong to north of China on a horseback killing something, from animals to people. Such an ugly negative nation is an embarrasement for the humanity. May God curse you cave men.
100 Comment by EMete on 23 July 2007:

To Ljubinko Jovicic:

To read your comments is a little difficult. Please, have someone else who knows English better than you, make a few corrections. Your ideas may be brilliant, but they are hard to grasp.

To Ilir Dardania:

Judging by your name, you must be an Albanian and I would like all Albanians who reply to Serb propaganda, to give intelligent answers to the Serbs’ calumnies and lies because thugs, bigots and racists want us to behave like them and keep them company.

You are right as concerns Albanians leading empires. It is because of this ability of theirs that the Slav world is dead set against them and doing everything possible to keep them down. As to the number of Illyrian (Albanian) emperors of Rome, I would say that there were more than 40 and not 15.

I don’t share your opinion as to the Asian (Mongolian) origin of the Serbs being the cause of their evils, sins, shortsightedness and historic blunders. They are not dumb and thickheaded because they hail from the Baikal Lake area near Mongolia. They look and sound dumb and thickheaded because they have been brainwashed and imbued with hatred for others. Ultranationalism has benumbed their minds and feelings and made them shortsighted. They see only enemies around. Anyways, I don’t want you to sink to the level of Iliya Pavlovich and the likes of him who are fond of obscene vocabulary and hate e-mails.

As to the Serbs riding on horseback north of China killing something, from animals to people, I would say that this way of life was natural because of the stage of development of their tribe at that time before coming to the Balkans as mercenaries of the Byzantine emperor. You cannot blame people for something they have no say on. It is true that because of the low level of their civilization they were very aggressive, a trait which they still retain today, as compared to the civilized onduct of the local populations in the Balkans. Being civilized at that time in the face of aggressive Serbs was not an advantage. This accounts for the territorial gains of the Serbs at the expense of the Albanians.

The Serbs of today have a veneer of European civilization on the outside, which is not that thick, and an aggressive mentality that runs very deep in their veins. The Europeans and the West in general find it difficult to see that aggression always has the upper hand in this insidious combination because they have no first-hand experience of this Serb mindset as the Albanians do.
101 Comment by Illir Dardania on 23 July 2007:

Emete! My english ,other than some spelling mistakes, is fine. I have proven myself to be so, in some of the toughest tests available in english speaking world. As for Serbian territorial gains at the expence of albanian territories there is another explanation. Not their lack of civility alone. It was their destiny as well. It is well documented that beetween 4-5 century a.d, a plague killed allmost from half, to 2/3 of ballkan population. It was caused by infected mice brought to the ballkans with ships.Emperor COSTANTINE the Great got sick but made it alive, but his army was not so lucky. The albanian,greek, whoever was living in todays turkey and bullgaria were devastated. There was no manpower available, to stop the slavic crowds coming down to ballkans. As for albanians living in todays croatia,bosnia , were latinized.They were gradually seperating themselves from today Albanians in linguistic terms.So this parts of Illyria , might very well had become part of todays Italy. So we got the real blow from ROME. We were fighting for them , becoming their emperors. As evidece I will mention to you our language, which has borrowed a lot from Roman language.When Serbs appeared to the ballkans we were allmost finished.Albanians as we know today were living, only in mountains, never made possible to make enough food to survive.So Albanians were mostly in todays Dardania, some other ballkan territories, including serbia. Serbia itself gets it strength from Russian support. All their arms are either bought or donated from Rusia. So remember: strong Rusia means strong Serbia and vice-versa. As for Mongoloid blood line on slavic blood , I am not making it up. It it well known that GENGHIS-KHAN empire dominated them for long. It is present in slavic bone structure.A lot of them have bloond features with chineese eyes or dirty black hair taken from Mongols. Look at their animalistick character or ferocity of crimes. Typical mongoloid.It is were they got their name :slav” from bing ghengis-khans slaves.There is not a single humanist from slavic speaking world.The mongol blood does’t allow that. I am sure I have spelling mistakes but I am so lazy to go over. I expect disagreements.I will be willing to read some of them. But I am making up anything.The truth as I know.

;
102 Comment by EMete on 23 July 2007:

Ilir,
I did not mean you, but that Serb Ljubinko Jovicic. With his English, I wouldn’t dare write a single line. They can because they are faceless.

There is another article on this Website by the Serb bigoted author Srdja Trifkovic “Kosovo: Back to Square One”. The Serbs think that they are winning and Kosova will never achieve independence. Most of the commentators support him because they are Serbs or others who do not know the real essence of the Kosova issue. Go to that article and reply with your well thought arguments. I believe you can do it. I am doing it differently.
103 Comment by scytale on 24 July 2007:

C’mon. You are loosing the battle on diplomatic front. Can’t you see? International support wouldn’t last forever. Neather dirty money from drug trafficing used to bribe western birocrats. Who is so stupid to give money forever and achive nothing? If Kosovo declares unilateral indipendence it will be a long long way to real indipendence which is not guaranted at the end. Anyway, what kind of indipendence is that with foreign armies on your territory to protect you? Kosovo will only stay a dark corner of Europe. Something like Palestine on Middle East. If Albanians want to live prosperous life they need to change their agressive politics. They need to show something different. Better relations with their neighbours. Serbia did it and now is much more prosper then 10 years ago. USA cannot find another Miloshevic or another Husein to start with the war mongering again. Kosovo is the biggest balkan and europe’s problem. Thant kind of problems need time to be solved. Need better political ground. You cannot do a quantum leap and achive the goal. Tou cannot threat with violence all the time. At the end, who is afraid of your violence without your “partners” from West.
104 Comment by dimitar on 24 July 2007:

Attacking the character of others only reveals a weak mind!! The fact remains that Albanians are still going to have to live with the rest of us. In Macedonia, we have given you all the so-called “rights”. How about returning some respect?
You go on about being the original Balkan / European people. Where is the proof that you descend from the Illyrians? If you truly were an ancient people, it stands to reason that you would have developed culture, tolerance, consciousness.
How do you expect to defend the “Great Albania”? You’ve developed nothing but ill will with all of your neighbours. If you think the Americans/ Europeans will always support you, think twice. Their strategic goals have pretty much been met, and their diplomatic wile is pretty much spent! Has it ever crossed your mind you’ve been duped?
105 Comment by scytale on 25 July 2007:

dimitar,

Even if they find any proof that they are descendans from Illyrians which I really doubt, that don’t give them any right to go for other countries territory. We, Macedonians have every right to consider ourselfs as a descedens of ancient Macedonians and Illyrians (every nation have that right even people from Armenia, Kazahstan, Afghanistan etc, etc.) but that don’t give us right to go and ressurect Alexander’s kingdom. Modern history science says: Ancient history is acquisition of whole the world (every nation) and shouldn’t be usurped by a single nation.
But as we can see our neighbours Albanians and Greeks can’t dig that.
They go on with the politics that is insult for for many human achivements like history, science, international laws etc.

But, there is an old macedonian proverb: Кој со ѓаволот тикви сади, по глава му се удираат
106 Comment by dimitar on 25 July 2007:

scytale, se slozhuvam, brat. Vashno e, na shiptaro da im propandni se.
Pa do Grtsite, se razbirva, za veshtachki narod mu smeta vistinita. Ciao.
107 Comment by Illir Dardania on 25 July 2007:

Dimitar! You are the only one that have not seen proof of Albanian Illyrian connection. It is in every non slavic history books, in french,english, italian. It seems to me that the cirilic is the only alphabet you know. As for the rights you gave us: Who are you? Nobody knows. You don’t know either. An hibrid. Slavic, turkish,gipsy, some greek in short a salad badly mixed. I hope you will be around when occupied Albanian population in Slavic Macedonia , will be liberated. It will not be long. But anyway Albanians don’t wait for others to give them rights. We look for them in hard way. I would wish you guys getting along in Macedonia but I really doubt that it will last. All the best Illyr Dardani
108 Comment by dimitar on 26 July 2007:

Pa aj ke vidime be Dardania!!!
109 Comment by dimitar on 26 July 2007:

Dardania, all you seem to know is how to insult others!
It’s over!! http://www.maknews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3927 Go home(Albania)…
110 Comment by Alban Ziguri on 26 July 2007:

Dimitar,
I am writing this message to you because I find your ideas interesting. I have been to Macedonia several times because I have relatives there.
Albanians and Macedonians get along very well at the moment because you broke away with Serbia and the Serbs are not in a position to exert pressure on you directly and tell you to be tough on the Albanians. May be, they are doing this indirectly. I don’t know. You may know.
I don’t think the Macedonian governmen that has expressed its support for Kosova, intends to play fast and loose with the Albanians in Macedonia. Without them, there would be no Macedonia. Do you know why? The Serbs, the Bulgarians and the Greeks would devour you. The Albanians of Kosova and Macedonia will support you provided you are fair to them.

By the way, you say that “if you think the Americans/ Europeans will always support you, think twice. Their strategic goals have pretty much been met, and their diplomatic wile is pretty much spent! Has it ever crossed your mind you’ve been duped?” Can you enlarge on what you have written? Which strategic goals have they met? The fall of communism in Serbia being one of them? I am curious to learn your arguments. We are all lifelong students.
111 Comment by Illir Dardania on 26 July 2007:

I don’t know why you guys are dreaming. Rusias role as a world power is over.Demografics around Rusia are a good cause for them to worry about themselves, let alone them projecting power around the world,the way they used to in 1900..That time is over.They don’t have the economic and scientific clout to compete with the new world. England and France have a bigger say over world affairs than Rusia has, allthough their population is 1/3 that of Rusia. Sure there are short terms western interests over trade, but those interests are reciprocal, neither side can afford to sour them. That is why western powers are acting like they take the rusian position in consideracion,but that is just an act,theatre. So, stop dreaming of Rusia world power again, It will be from medium to small Europian power.As for U.S.A IT PS PROJECTED THAT by 2035 the population to be about 450 milion people, approximately 4 times that of Rusia . Add here their tecnological and scientific resurses.You do the math. Be prepared for the next 5000 years of U.S.A as alone supperpower. Don’t kid yourself with China and India. They will eat each other.
112 Comment by scytale on 26 July 2007:

Illir,

It is waste of time to explain to you some historycal facts. But I will tell you just this: Illiryan is a wide term. Albanians can only make a connection with Ardians. Why don’t you start argue with Slovenians or Croatians. Firs Illyrian tribe who settle Balkan peninsula was Hystri. And do you know whe Istra is?

At the end, what is the greatness of Illyrians? No culture, no language, no state. Just a tribal organization. If they were so great they should keep their religion. Mentioning Turks. Turk=muslim. Albanian (Gega)=muslim. This days… nothing has changed.
113 Comment by scytale on 26 July 2007:

Alban Ziguri,

I agree with your post but I keep asking my self: What the hell is problem with those people?
114 Comment by Illir Dardania on 27 July 2007:

Scytale! Illyrian is a wide term for you,but is narrow for me.If it happen to speak Albanian this word(Illirian) would make sense immediately( means : free person. liberte,freedom) Since you don’t speak it you fill it absract.You suggest that Illyrian didn’t have a language.Are you saying that they are comunicating witha sign language or didn’t speak at all because of some genetic disorder
115 Comment by Illir Dardania on 27 July 2007:

As for Illyrian presence in Slovenia, Croacia, BOSNIA we know that ,but we no longer have a human presence there so asking for those territories would not make sense first, and is not possible to get them ,second.The croats openly addmit that they have SOME Illyrian blood in their vains.Because the Illyrians didn’t writte their language ,how do we know for their presence? Roman and Greek sources and place toponims. For instance:Kosova today(no meaning in Albanian) , Dardania then(land of pears in Albanian), Macedonia now(no meaning in ALBANIAN) , Emadhia then( the big territories in Albanian, Dalmacia(the land of sheeps) Molloset(the land of apples) Ulcijnj( the land of woolfs) And I COULD go on and on. But to understand this thoroughly you need to study our language.That’s what Germans did when they loudly said: Present day Albanians originate from Illyrians.They have never changed that theory. The Slavic element of the world ,has hard time accepting that. They are either incapable or have an agenda. Fortunately histori does’t work in your favour oll the time
116 Comment by scytale on 27 July 2007:

Illir,

I think it is mixture of greek and latin.

Anyway, I don’t get your point. Let’s say that Albanians are descendants of Illiryans. Does that change anything? I will repeat once again: Ancient history is acquisition of whole the world (every nation) and shouldn’t be usurped by a single nation.

If your thesis is that the clame on territory is on someone who came first, go argue with your fellow Americans. Or start fighting for Indian rights. Mentioning Americans this came to my mind:

“An hibrid. Slavic, turkish,gipsy, some greek in short a salad badly mixed.”

Maybe that’s true. Because we know how to live with others around us. That’s not the case with you.

At the end. Who is descendant of Ancient Macedonians? Or what the hell happend with them? Listening albanian and greek arguments maybe we will conclude that those people never exist.
117 Comment by Illir Dardania on 27 July 2007:

Scytale! Ancient macedonians were more Albanians than slavs.I mentiened it was called Emadhia. Ancient macedonians were mixture of Illyrian and thracian. It is the theses of a greek profesor at “Colombia University” in New YORK. This is why Alexander the Great’s mother and Grandmother were Illyrians. They were getting married in their own kind.As for americans you mentioned that killed Indians, you on purpose or accidentally make an insinuation: Illyrians were Indians.That’s why I told you Albanians do not follow anyone. We lead. We know what we are, and will stay that way. What are you? What a hell you have to do with Macedonian heretage, other than sit as parasit on their territories.Why don’t you admit your bulgarian heretige? Albanians in Macedonia will protect their ansestral territories, and will become even a stronger element.Don’t you know without Albanians there is not Macedonia? You will become part greek,part bullgarian, part serbian.From the ALBANIAN part of Macedonia there are two nobel price winners”MOTHER TERESA AND FERID MURAD”So as you can see at least so far Albanians are much more advanced than you macedonians
118 Comment by dimitar on 27 July 2007:

Alban Ziguri, hi!
The twin traits of the human consciousness are love and aggression. Love for our own, and hatred (deriving from fear of the unknown) of the “other”. It’s much easier to project the more base, unattractive qualities of our own nature onto another “someone”.
“They are much worse than us! See the crimes they have committed against us”. And so on. This way we can ignore our own crimes infinitely, and continue forever in a cycle of tit for tat. There are those through personal magnetism, opportunism, whatever means, that are able to manipulate the masses to their own ends, usually with disastrous results. Of course, the main struggles are for resources, land/territory, etc. Interestingly, ego enters into the fray and often overtakes all other reasons for conflict, remaining when all other disputes are settled. The rule, is of course, might makes right.

In the case of the Balkans, I feel the American aim is to keep the region in a state of instability. Its a well known spiritual law that a divided house is easily manipulated. The US supports the Albanians, keeping them in an ever agitated state, and the rest in varying degrees of fear if ” the Albanian demands are not met”. I believe the Americans are surprised that they have’nt been able to push the independence through and at Russia/Serbia’s resistance. I don’t believe they particularly care if Kosovo becomes independent, but Serbs, Albanians, Macedonians do.

Europe’s bastard creations, Greece (b.1829), given a history by the Germans/English and Albania (early 20thc.) were also geostrategic/ political considerations. To landlock the Slavs, thwart Russia’s influence (denial of the warm water ports etc.) and so on. There’s a history of prejudice of Catholic Western Europe toward the Slav/Orthodox countries, it’s understood. In Macedonia, our “neighbours” are known as the four wolves. And we’re well aware that all of them would love us to disappear, to fatten themselves on our carcass. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen!!

As for the Albanians in Macedonia; we’ve made every effort at co-habitation, dialogue, goodwill. We feel the Albanian response is disingenuous. They “talk the talk” but they don’t “walk the walk”, taking every opportunity to undermine Macedonia’s progress. What’s needed is a fresh leadership; a younger less nationalistic, aggressive outlook from the Albs. At the end of the day, we’re all going to have to live together! There needs to be give and take, not just take.
119 Comment by Illir Dardania on 27 July 2007:

Dimitar! Albanians are 40% of population there . How many of privatised state property is at their hands.None.So the talk is not enough.Macedonians have to do some walk too. Giving them the right share of the wealth. Otherwise another war is innivetable.That relative wealth you have, was created with their taxes too.They pay they share to feed your generals of army and police. And what they get in return? Rubber clubs. It might look a little quite now the situation there, but if the wealth distribution continues at the same pace I would not be surprised to see you running for cover, and another independent Albanian state. So show them the money ,not the cheap talk
120 Comment by EMete on 27 July 2007:

To my fellow commentators,

Two days ago, I posted my comments in the context of Responses to “Kosovo – Back to Square One”. The next day, that is, yesterday, I logged on to check if there were any comments on my comment. I found the article and clicked on Comments. No article and no comments showed. They had been taken off the Website although the article “Kosovo – Back to Square One” was more recent that the article “The Perils of Kosovo’s Independence” which we are still commenting on. How come? Can anyone answer me whether he/she has the same experience as mine? Can they read the article “Kosovo-Back to Square One” and post comments on it?
Thank you!
121 Comment by Ljubinko Jovicic on 30 July 2007:

Sapienti sat

To Emete, whoever she might be

I am writing to high educated gentlemen who master French, basic German and some Latin, in universal language. Go East, to Paris, Berlin, Milan, come back, with IQ over 120 you’ll read my message and perhaps understand it. If you do, join the chaps.

Encantado.

Lj. J.
122 Comment by EMete on 30 July 2007:

I am so happy to write to you, who are a high educated gentleman.
It is my opinion that when we write, we have to take every aspect of our comments (content and form) seriously and this is shown in how we write and what we say. When people, like you, whose English turns out to be good, do not use good English, we might think you do it on purpose to ignore and offend those you communicate with.
Writing comments quickly and carelessly afftects the quality of English, makes it hard for others to understand what you are driving at and is conducive to misunderstanding.
I want to make it clear to you and others that though we are strangers, we should post comments to learn from each other’s opinions and not try to impose our views. People are different and this depends on their background and interests. Warmongering, racist and offensive, antagonistic language, in whatever circumstances, does not help. This is what I am trying to avoid when I write comments. If I do not succeed a hundred percent, please let me know.
123 Comment by Albiqete on 31 July 2007:

Some people are born evil
thats is all there is
124 Comment by Albiqete on 31 July 2007:

EMete
Thank you for your high stand of ethics that some people obviously do not understand
Thank you again
125 Comment by Albiqete on 31 July 2007:

Just an advice to EMete
I have tried many times to reason with the Serbs but it is impossible to come with them in the middle every day that passes I’m moving to a solid conclusion that they operate in myth building menatality and that is their source of energy. Here is one prominent Serb that states

Dobrica Cosic Former Yugoslav (Serbian) President

“We lie to deceive ourselves, to console others; we lie for mercy, we lie to fight fear, to encourage ourselves, to hide our and somebody else’s misery. We lie for love and honesty. We lie because freedom. The lie is the trait of our patriotism and the proof of our innate smartness. We lie creatively, imaginatively, inventively.”
126 Comment by scytale on 31 July 2007:

Illir Dardania,

Something is badly fu**** up with your mind. Why are you keep talking about things that took place 3000 years ago. What’s your point? That the whole world should make a revision of it’s history?

As for Albanians they ar 25% in Macedonia not 40%. Talking about war, Macedonians are not affraid of wars. We’ve seen what you have done in 2001. UCK killed 30-40 soldiers from ambush and kiddnaped 50 civilians. I have been in war I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Go tell your fairytales to someone else. At least we stand alone today. We are not waiting for help. Not from Russia, USA, EU or anyone else.
Let’s not forget that you have gained Kosovo after 78 days of NATO bombing of Serbia. Not because of “braveness” of UCK.
Without corrupted politicians from US an EU bribed with dirty money of albanian mafia you are nothing. Big ZERO.

And this is not 1999 or 2001. Things have changed. The waiter have come to pay up the bills.
127 Comment by dimitar on 31 July 2007:

Bravos, Scytale!!!
128 Comment by Illir Dardania on 31 July 2007:

To Scytale! You are telling me ,you didn’t get any help!!!Bulgarians,Ukrainians, and Russians didn’t help???? Whose helicopters where those flying? What about pilots? You are saing you are not affraid of wars? Everybody is. I wish you being strong militarily, but unfortunately you don’t stand a chance. We don’t need any armed confrotation in Ballkans since, if you agree with me,we all need some foreign assistence ,with the exception of Turkey who can handle it alone. But times have changed now Scytale. Cooperation is needed ,not wars.As for Kosova war we knew that we didn’t stand a chance of fighting Russian made and donated Serbian military machine. But we knew that we were on the loosing side through even not fighting or fighting Serbian army.Albanians had no jobs so they had to go west to stay alive, no schools , heavy military presence which within 20 years could have forced the majority to emmigrate. But we knew that nobody wants emmigrants even if they are primitive Albanians or smart slavs. Miloshevich thought it was 1800 when one can ship people around if one didn’t like them . Miloshevich thought Rusia was still a superpower but times had changed there too. So Scytale the real reason why the west helped us was not any grand conspiracy as you have read or heard, was as simple as this: Albanians from Kosova were going to ask ,to live in their countries, Germany, France,England,.USA once forced out of Kosova and no one wants anybody, let alone albanians, that were portrayed as half humans by powerfull slavic propoganda. So the west decided: we can keep this people there through shooting Miloshevich. We we sure that our gamble would work? No, but as I said we were in the loosing side anyway.To our good luck it worked in our favour. Now when we are free to buy guns Serbia has to redo its math, since their manpower and economic numbers are not great in their favours. I hope you agree with me to a certain piont since I am trying to be frank.
129 Comment by Illir Dardania on 31 July 2007:

To Scytle again! Since I wasn’t to carefull when I read your post. when I went over second time I read something chilling. You have been to war? Got Albanian blood in your hands? And expect Albanian respect in return? And I , that never been to war ,am f..cked up? And you , macedonians with a total 1 mil people can fight alone in the Ballkans? You have never done that before. Time will tell Scytale, but as I SIAD IN THE PREVIOUS POST, eather you agree or not, the economy will be a deciding factor if you will be one country. I have heard Albanians complaining that they have hard time to advance economically there, because the macedonian state is not fair in its economic policies. If you live in America you know that for a large part the economy is responsable for keeping all human races together. Macedonia is not an exception. So you have to do a lot of walk in that direction. But one more thing , we Albanians don’t wish your destruction , since then , our new neigbhoor will be Bullgaria, which of course can do more harm than you.
130 Comment by dimitar on 31 July 2007:

I.D. You have no idea about the situation in Macedonia!!
Believe what you will. Why have’nt you started the war with us then, the Serbs, God knows who else? Go ahead, if you can!!!!!!!! The fact is, it’s over!!!!!!!!!!
Get off the steroids, or whatever you’re on! It’s no longer 1999/2001….. Greater Albania is finished. Dead on Arrival>>> RIP
131 Comment by Albiqete on 31 July 2007:

Now we have Serbs living in Macedonia talking in here who want to divert attention somewhere else
I was in Skopje when the fighting was going on in Karacebvo village fifteen minutes from Skopje airport and few minutes from Skopje.
I remember seeing it from Skopje airport, which did close its operation that day. Albanian fighters were very close to airport and Chaire district and who is from Skopje knows what I am talking about. If they wanted to go in Skopje, it was just a five minute and the only thing that was holding them back was THE AMERICAN base near Skopje airport. It is strange how things change based on who is doing the talking.
Beside this did I read an article in which were given a few scenarios regarding Kosovo situation. Macedonia wanted to form a confederation with Albanians from Albania Kosovo and Macedonia itself?
For the Macedonian analysts the Albanian option was the best option compared to that of Bulgarian option, Serbian or Greek option. Macedonians will gain more than any other option if indeed this scenario will play out.
In the end, the discussion is about Kosovo not Macedonia.
So to all “experts of hate” I say ‘bring something innovative to the table not you hate speeches. Leave them to the Nazi rallies.”
132 Comment by Albiqete on 31 July 2007:

FOOD FOR YOUR THOUGH
Let us see now how the Serbs think from a psychological analysis

Dobrica Cosic Former Yugoslav (Serbian) President (you can Google for him to find out more)

“We lie to deceive ourselves, to console others; we lie for mercy, we lie to fight fear, to encourage ourselves, to hide our and somebody else’s misery. We lie for love and honesty. We lie because freedom. The lie is the trait of our patriotism and the proof of our innate smartness. We lie creatively, imaginatively, inventively.”

This is the core of the problem in Kosovo
We lie to deceive ourselves (translation) = we lie so we can lie ourselves = double lies
To console others = we lie to them so lets cheer them up = double lie

can someone else continue I’m so tired of those damm lies (I canoot count how many times the wrod “lies” are mentioned)
133 Comment by EMete on 31 July 2007:

Hi Albiqete:

Three Serb Big Lies:

!. Serbs came to the Balkans in the sixth century B.C. and not in the seventh century A.D. as mercenaries of the Byzantine emperor.

2. Hundreds of thousands of Albanians invaded Kosova after World War II.

3. Hundreds of thousands of Serbs left Kosova after World War II.

Albiqete,
Your post reminded me of what I had read in “Twenty years of Balkan Tangle” by Mary Edith Durham. What she wrote about the Serbs and Serbia at the turn of the 20th century is stlll valid today.
What she says about Serb mentality is also made manifest in the comments that some Serb readers post in this Webside. Read it carefully and I am sure you will draw the proper conclusions as to Serbs’ behavior today:

…
“That is their religious fanaticism, which then surprised me. It was not astonishing that the Serbs hated Islam, but that they should fiercely hate every other Christian Church I did not expect. (p31)

It is but one more instance of the fact that it was largely to the fanaticism of the Orthodox Church that the Balkan people owed their conquest by the Turks. Evidence enough there is to show that when their fate was in the balance the Orthodox of the Balkans regarded the Turk as a lesser evil than the Pope. Even in 1902, though a few mosques were still permitted to exist, no Catholic Church was tolerated save that attached to one of the Legations over which, of course, the Serb Government had no control. Most of the foreign women I met, who had married Serbs, told me frankly that for the sake of peace they had had to join the Orthodox Church; “you cannot live here unless you do.” (p32)

I was astonished at the intense bitterness with which the ex-Queen Natalie’s conversion to Rome was spoken of. As the poor woman had led wretched life in Serbia and had left it for ever, her religion could be no concern whatever now of the Serbs. But it seemed to be considered on all sides as an insult to the nation.

Nor was it, so far as I could see, because the people were devout believers–the upper classes certainly did not appear to be—but because the Church was Serbian, and represented a frenzied and intolerant Nationalism. To such an extent was this carried out that a Catholic Albanian, of whom I subsequently saw a good deal, had to add “itch” to the end of his name and conform to the Orthodox Church outwardly in order to obtain leave to open a shop in Belgrade.

That frenzied Nationalism and not religion is at the base of this intolerance is further proved by hatred of the Serb for the Bulgarian Church, which on all points of dogma and doctrine and in its services is precisely the same as that of the Serbs.

And this same frenzied Nationalism, if persisted in, may yet lead to Serbia’s undoing.” (p.32)

_________________

Haven’t developemts over the last years proved the British author Mary Edith Durham right?
Serb ultra nationalism destroyed Yugoslavia. The process of its dissolution started in Kosova where Serb suppression was the worst. It will be complete after Kosova wins its independence.
134 Comment by scytale on 31 July 2007:

Ilir Dardania,

If I have albanian (or any) blood on my hands, god help me. War is war, who knows. My point was that is stupid this days to threat with violence. Even more stupid to do it on Balkans. It is “been there, done that”.
We have to respect international laws. That is achivement of human civilization throughout centuries. Disrespect of international laws will bring nothing good to us.
Anyway you have the right to fight for your goals. That right is mine too.
So let’s live it there.

Albiqete

“Albanian fighters were very close to airport and Chaire district and who is from Skopje knows what I am talking about. If they wanted to go in Skopje, it was just a five minute and the only thing that was holding them back was THE AMERICAN base near Skopje airport.”

“U.S. TROOPS ESCORT REBELS TO SAFETY INSIDE MACEDONIA”

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/serbia/kosovo/index.html?query=ARACINOVO%20(MACEDONIA)&field=geo&match=exact

As I say: Been there, done that.

You got just this right: “In the end, the discussion is about Kosovo not Macedonia.”

So I’ll live it right there and I will not post more on this forum.

Oncemore: You got right to fight for your goal. But it’s time, I think, to find some better way.
135 Comment by Illir Dardania on 31 July 2007:

My comments related to Albanian-Macedonian problems to the region are closed. I wish there was some common sence in these posts, but for a large part there wasn’t. This is how , in the western world, when can’t agree about solving a simple problem in right way, call it “ballkanisation”. The only contribution we gave together to the human civilisation. All because of our idiopathic neighboors. Good night.
136 Comment by EMete on 1 August 2007:

In these comments, I am going to give my opinion very briefly on some points raised by the readers in their comments.

The Serbs have made up two so-called arguments: the Serbs came to the Balkan region in the 6th century B.C. and that hundreds of thousands of Albanians invaded Kosova after World War II, while hundreds of thousands of Serbs left Kosova during the same period (!). I advise readers not to believe such arguments. They can find the truth by consulting serious and unbiased authors on the Kosova issue. “Kosovo – a Short History” by Noel Malcolm is a very good guide to the issue. The rejection of these bogus arguments on the basis of historical facts is very important because it would also expose all the other Serb theses.

President Woodrow Wilson did not protect Albania at the Paris Conference in 1919 because of America’s interests in the country (!). He prevented its dismemberment between Serbia, Greece and Italy for the sake of a principle embodied in his Fourteen Points that “guaranteed political independence and territorial integrity to great and small nations alike.” As well as this, President Clinton and the leaders of the European Union protected a small nation that was being massacred by the butcher of the Balkans not because of their special interests in Kosova. With their action, they gave a message to the dictators that they were not immune to international censure and that the free world will always stand up for those peoples and nations whose rights are trampled underfoot. President George W. Bush also has declared full American support for Kosova’s independence not because of America’s specific interests in Kosova. His statement reinforced the great principle Woodrow Wilson fought for: “guaranteed political independence and territorial integrity to great and small nations alike”. In a nutshell, what these three American presidents have done is the embodiment of American idealism, a notion, which is alien to Serbs and Serbia. . States are like people. People who are devoid of ideals and after selfish interests are the scum of society. The same goes for the states, be they big or small.

I do not think partition is the best solution to the Kosova problem because such a solution would benefit the Serbs only and create even more serious problems in the region. If not the entire Kosova, the Serbs would like to grab its northern part (Northern Mitrovica) because that part is the richest in mineral deposits not only in Kosova, but in the entire former Yugoslav space. Kosova and Voivodina were the two granaries of the former Yugoslavia. The Serbs exploited the mineral wealth of Kosova and its agricultural products for one hundred years and now they want to exploit it forever (!).

The partition of Kosova, which means changing its borders, may cause a chain reaction in the Balkans. In other words, it would open the Pandora Box. Changing the borders of Kosova would lead to demands for the rectification of the Balkan borders and organized political and other movements will resort to every means to achieve this end.

The Serb government in Belgrade is now lavishly spending money to purchase the land and houses of the Albanians in Northern Mitrovica at very high prices. This move by Belgrade indicates that the Serbs are fully aware that Kosova will become independent and that they are in a hurry to grab part of it at least. By so doing, the Serbian government is conducting ethnic cleansing of the Albanians from the richest part of Kosova in anticipation of an independent Kosova.

High birth rate, I would say, is an innate, intuitive response of self-protection of a nation when it is in imminent danger of extinction. Nation is like a living organism. It has its own protective immune mechanism that goes into action once it feels its existence threatened. In the case of the Albanians, the threat has always come from Serbia. That immune mechanism can work only in a nation who is full of vitality and resilient like the Albanians.

It is the opinion of foreign policy specialists that the Albanian issue is the very essence of the Balkan question. There are Albanian territories in five Balkan countries. There is no country like Albania in Europe at least. Across the borders of today’s state of Albania there are only Albanian territories inhabited by Albanians. That’s why, their unification into one Albanian state would be the most natural thing and very easy for the international community to help achieve. If created, such a situation would lead to the solution of the Albanian issue and the Balkan question as well.
137 Comment by Limi Krasniqi on 2 August 2007:

The animals are back at it again… http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070801/ap_on_re_eu/serbia_gypsies;_ylt=AkRi7e080346hm6MsVQzUcp0bBAF
138 Trackback by Military Coins on 10 October 2007:

Military Coins…

I know!…
139 Trackback by ephedrine on 16 December 2007:

ephedrine…

news…

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