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 #17 (permalink) Mon Feb 25, 2008 4:50 am Kosovo independence |
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What happened in the 1990s verged on genocide. There was little known reason for the actions of the Serb forces. What excuse did Milosevic give for the wanton murder of Bosnians?
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Prezbucky
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| #18 (permalink) Mon Feb 25, 2008 5:39 am Kosovo independence |
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| prezbucky wrote: |
| What happened in the 1990s verged on genocide. There was little known reason for the actions of the Serb forces. What excuse did Milosevic give for the wanton murder of Bosnians? |
Usually, I find that many Serbs will give an explanation that is supposed to make foreigners understand why all that killing was "justified", but the listeners don't accept it. These particular Serbs then get angry and claim that practically everybody in the world is ignorant.
Once I took one of these explanations -- given by a Serbian professor -- and I changed the word "Albanians" to "blacks" and "Kosovo" to "Detroit", and I wound up with exactly the same arguments racist Americans use. I didn't have to change anything else. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #19 (permalink) Mon Feb 25, 2008 12:54 pm Kosovo independence |
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One of the reason I was told is the ancestors of the Bosnian Muslims did the same thing to the Serbian ancestors, two or four HUNDRED years ago.
How does that justify the massacre of a truly completely absolutely innocent and undefended group of people?
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NinaZara
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| #20 (permalink) Mon Feb 25, 2008 14:30 pm Kosovo independence |
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| NinaZara wrote: |
| One of the reason I was told is the ancestors of the Bosnian Muslims did the same thing to the Serbian ancestors, two or four HUNDRED years ago. |
Well, many of the Arabs in the Middle East are justifying their current jihad by the Crusades, which began a THOUSAND years ago, and were a defensive reaction to a Muslim jihad that had begun some time before that. So I guess if Arabs and Iranians can slaughter over something a thousand years old, then the Serbs can still be angry about something from two hundred years ago.
| NinaZara wrote: |
| How does that justify the massacre of a truly completely absolutely innocent and undefended group of people? |
Believe me, the Kosovar Albanians as a group are not absolutely innocent, and they weren't undefended. In fact, they're rather aggressive people, and they had an army that was largely financed by heroin sales. Kosovar Albanians are acknowledged all over Eastern Europe as causing a major law enforcement problem and as having set up a sophisticated drug smuggling and sales network where there wasn't one before. So what you have now is Kosovo is something similar to the Mafia taking over a country and being acknowledged by the world community.
People like the idea of independence, but Kosovo independence has its ugly side also. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #21 (permalink) Mon Feb 25, 2008 15:13 pm Kosovo independence |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: |
| NinaZara wrote: |
| One of the reason I was told is the ancestors of the Bosnian Muslims did the same thing to the Serbian ancestors, two or four HUNDRED years ago. |
Well, many of the Arabs in the Middle East are justifying their current jihad by the Crusades, which began a THOUSAND years ago, and were a defensive reaction to a Muslim jihad that had begun some time before that. So I guess if Arabs and Iranians can slaughter over something a thousand years old, then the Serbs can still be angry about something from two hundred years ago. |
For how long? Does this people ever heard of forgiveness and acceptance? And above all, mercy? If they are truly the ones with the superior value why are they acting the same way? And being angry of something that didn't happen to you or around your time just doesn't make sense. The only reason I can see is that these people, both the Muslims and the Serbians, are being fed with stories of more and more hatred for each other.
| Jamie (K) wrote: |
| NinaZara wrote: |
| How does that justify the massacre of a truly completely absolutely innocent and undefended group of people? |
Believe me, the Kosovar Albanians as a group are not absolutely innocent, and they weren't undefended. In fact, they're rather aggressive people, and they had an army that was largely financed by heroin sales. Kosovar Albanians are acknowledged all over Eastern Europe as causing a major law enforcement problem and as having set up a sophisticated drug smuggling and sales network where there wasn't one before. So what you have now is Kosovo is something similar to the Mafia taking over a country and being acknowledged by the world community.
People like the idea of independence, but Kosovo independence has its ugly side also. |
As a group maybe. But when I said 'truly completely absolutely innocent' I really meant to say that they weren't the ones who killed those people back two hundred years ago. That was my point, they cannot be hold against something that was done by people before them.
And most of the victims slaughtered in the war were from small villages and they were undefended. |
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NinaZara
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| #22 (permalink) Mon Feb 25, 2008 20:34 pm Kosovo independence |
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I always feel a little bit weird when I take the side of the Kosovos of the world, because of what happened in the US some 150 years ago.
The Southern states wanted to form a sovereign nation apart from the USA. One of their main reasons for seceeding was to preserve their tradition of slavery. Because slavery is obviously wrong, Lincoln was right to pursue war to keep the USA whole... while many Democrats either didn't want to fight in the first place or voiced their dissent as the war progressed and prospects for an easy end were squashed. Indeed, the first commander of Union forces, General George McClellan, didn't believe in the war and was thus (for that reason and the fact that he couldn't motivate a hungry polar bear to attack an injured seal... and that he was basically an unmoving coward who forced his superior numbers to stand still) a highly ineffective leader in the opening stages of the Civil War. If not for stalwarts President Lincoln and Generals Grant, Sherman and Sheridan, the Union might have lost and the CSA might be a country today.
(some things never change -- is nothing worth fighting for to the American Left?)
At any rate, I feel a bit weird because we denied the Confederate States of America their right to exist... while we shout for a free state of Kosovo.
We did, of course, have justification for going to war to keep the South. What is the Serbs' justification for keeping Kosovo?
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Prezbucky
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| #23 (permalink) Mon Feb 25, 2008 23:41 pm Kosovo independence |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: |
Believe me, the Kosovar Albanians as a group are not absolutely innocent, and they weren't undefended. In fact, they're rather aggressive people, and they had an army that was largely financed by heroin sales. Kosovar Albanians are acknowledged all over Eastern Europe as causing a major law enforcement problem and as having set up a sophisticated drug smuggling and sales network where there wasn't one before. So what you have now is Kosovo is something similar to the Mafia taking over a country and being acknowledged by the world community.
People like the idea of independence, but Kosovo independence has its ugly side also. |
You are making it sound like every Kosovar Albanian is a member of the Mafia or a drug smuggler. Now that Kosovo is an independent country they have a chance to fight corruption and create a market driven economy. I think there enough Kosovo Albanians who just want to live a normal life like many people around the world. The international community acknowledges Kosovo's independence and the EU and US will support those Kosovars who understand that they can only survive as a nation if they create democratic structures without corruption and unemployment.
Give them a little time and I'm sure they will raise their economy and improve their living standard just like many of their neighbours did.
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| #24 (permalink) Tue Feb 26, 2008 0:01 am Kosovo independence |
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| Torsten wrote: |
| You are making it sound like every Kosovar Albanian is a member of the Mafia or a drug smuggler. |
Wow! I can't say anything without someone accusing me of stereotyping. Even if I append my statement by saying something like, "but this is not true of all of those people," someone will accuse me of saying it's true of all of those people. People are better accusers than they are readers.
Kosovar Albanians commit a lot of murders in my city. They have a code of ethics and honor that's like 19th-century Sicily on steroids. An Albanian restaurant owner murders a customer, right there on the spot, because he's flirted with the Albanian's daughter, who is the waitress. Months later he murders one of his own daughters and wounds the other because they won't lie for him in court. A Kosovar Albanian gets a checkup in a clinic. The medical staff discovers that he's caught a contagious venereal disease, so they call his wife to come in for a checkup also. The man comes back in and murders five of the staff of the clinic. These are just the tip of the iceberg, because when they kill inside the Albanian community, it usually doesn't get on the news. However, about once a year I get a Kosovar Albanian in my class who suddenly starts to have problems because someone in his family has been murdered by one of their countrymen. Over the years, that piles up to a lot of murders! How many Arabs have had the same problem? Zero. Chinese? Zero. Ask a typical Albanian about this problem, and he will explain the history and sociology of the whole thing. In our high schools they even have to determine which Albanian families have vendettas against each other, because some of them have been raised to believe that it's their job to murder a specific boy from another family because of something that happened 100 years ago or more.
Whoever runs Kosovo is going to have a BIG job taming it. I'm expecting a problem like the one in Palestine, where once a ceasefire with Israel was called, the Palestinians started killing each other. Let's hope it doesn't come out like that. We'll see. |
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| #25 (permalink) Thu Feb 28, 2008 9:10 am Kosovo independence |
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Kosovo is a part of Serbia!!!
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Che Gevara
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| #26 (permalink) Thu Feb 28, 2008 9:17 am Kosovo independence |
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Independence should not be granted to an ethnic group in the expenses of violation of borders of a nation by force. So, I think Kosovo should not have been granted independence because this violated another important principle of inviolability of borders, in this case, of Serbia.
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| #27 (permalink) Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:03 am Kosovo independence |
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Hi Zahir,
How much do you know about the events that lead up to Kosovo's current status?
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Torsten
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| #28 (permalink) Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:29 am Kosovo independence |
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Well, I have been following the events since war crimes by the Serbian government took place in the second half of the 1990s. I remember the mass killings of Kosovars in Racak in 1999 well enough. I was very happy that some of the culprints of the killings stood trial in the Hague tribunal later. I understand that Kosovo had been under UN control for many years before it declared independence about a week ago.
Is there anything that you think I miss when making my statement in my post above?
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Ahmadov
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| #29 (permalink) Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:30 am Kosovo independence |
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It goes without saying that I also expect you to point out my English mistakes as well :-)
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Ahmadov
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| #30 (permalink) Thu Feb 28, 2008 11:51 am Kosovo independence |
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Hi Zahir,
You obviously have enough background information on the situation in Kosovo. I understand what you are saying about the borders of Serbia but then again the main ethnic groups of Yugoslavia decided they will be better off if they split up. As for Kosovo, why not give them the chance to be independent as well? If their independence doesn't work out and they have the desire to reunite with Serbia they can do so provided the Serbs will still want them back. It's a bit like a marriage -- two partners make the decision to become an entity and they might reach a point where they feel it's better to go separate ways again.
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