Wow! this is big day for Kosovo. The independence that's been long awaited has finally come. While I struggle to fully comprehend the complicated politics and culture of this region, this seems to be one of the more important events in their history.

which brings me to a point:

I find it interesting that MJ readers rarely comment on international affairs. If it doesn't have anything to do with Hillary or Obama, they don't care?

And, when it does have anything to do with Hill/Obam, they don't shut up....ever!

MJ readers really are a reflection of the self absorbed, band-wagon joining public that call themselves Americans.

not surprised, just disappointed.

The U.S. war on Serbia was unconstitutional, unjust and unwise. Congress never authorized it. Serbia, an ally in two world wars, had never attacked us. We made an enemy of the Serbs, and alienated Russia, to create a second Muslim state in the Balkans.

By intervening in a civil war where no vital interest was at risk, the United States, which is being denounced as loudly in Belgrade today as we are being cheered in Pristina, has acquired another dependency. And our new allies, the KLA, have been credibly charged with human trafficking, drug dealing, atrocities and terrorism.
By intervening in a civil war to aid the secession of an ancient province, to create a new nation that has never before existed and, to erect it along ethnic, religious and tribal lines, we have established a dangerous precedent. Muslim and Albanian extremists are already talking of a Greater Albania, consisting of Albania, Kosovo and the Albanian-Muslim sectors of Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia.

If these Albanian minorities should demand the right to secede and join their kinsmen in Kosovo, on what grounds would we oppose them? The inviolability of borders? What if the Serb majority in the Mitrovica region of northern Kosovo, who reject Albanian rule, secede and call on their kinsmen in Serbia to protect them?

I sympathize with the Kosovars but I'm not a big fan of nationbuilding a la Bush (and Clinton) that breaks apart existing nations on the basis of human rights or security concerns. Give me the Treaty of Westphalia any day. A Roma friend of mine was quite glum about Kosovo independence. Roma are suffering in Kosovo and he's afraid that Kosovo will now start nibbling away at the Albanian part of Macedonia (his home) and the Roma there will suffer as a result. In other words, as soon as one can of worms is righteously lidded, another two or three cans are opened as the new state works to gain its geopolitical feet.

Laura, your candor about the true nature of Albanian Muslim tolerance is appreciated.

Here is a timeline or Kosovo Chronology on how we got to this point of an ethnically pure "Kosova":

http://www.serbianna.com/news/2008/01360.shtml

Have a look at this timeline, Laura. You will learn a little more about Kosovo.

For example, did you know that "Kosovar" Albanian Muslims participated in the Holocaust, the murder of 6 million Jews? No, I bet you didn't know that. The Kosovar Muslims, in their Nazi SS Division Skanderbeg, rounded up all the Kosovo Jews who the Nazis transported to Bergen Belsen where they died.

Did you know that? Were you able to learn about that?

Did you know that Adolf Hitler was the first leader to create an "independent Kosova", in 1941? There is so much to learn once you get away from all the brainwashing and manipulation of the US media and government.

So what Carl about the Hitler times. Where are we today. Today's Kosovo's only kill Christians and not Jews. They are not like the Arabs who kill Jews. These are "good" Muslims.

It appears that the only bloggers here are Americans who have never been to this region of the Balkans. I was born and raised in Montenegro. I personally watched the Serbs beat and torture many of my family members on basis of ethnic cleansing. I am half Albanian and half Montenegrian, but to a Serb we are all disposable if we don't belong to their ethnicity.
These people slaughtered everyone that was not like them. They are the modern Nazis. In Bosnia, they killed exactly 47 members of my mother's family and in Kosovo they kidnapped my uncle's daughter, who was never found again, and killed my two uncles and their sons in cold blood, while they were trying to escape the war and go to Macedonia's refugee camps. These were not soldiers, they were innocent people.
The reaction the ex-Yugoslav states had to the independence of Kosovo, which is a positive one, should give you a clue about how the Serbs are viewed by the people who know them best. They have been the Balkan oppressors for over 500 years, and it just saddens me that when the rest of the world finally realized what is going on and is trying to justify all the wrongdoing, we have people who have read falsehoods and who have seen falsehoods on tv telling us what we should believe.
I urge anyone who is brave enough and curious enough to learn the absolute truth about the Serbian terrorism that to this day is present in the Balkans, go there and witness it for yourselves.
As we can all see, the Albanians, Montenegrians, Bosnians, Croatians, Macedonians, and Slovenians never, ever attacked the Serbs, the Serbs came to our countries and tried to wipe us out.
Therefore, please refrain from writing about a history you do not know or do not understand, and try and obtain legitimate sources for more information.

I forgot one more thing:
Contrary to some beliefs, the war with the Serbs has never been a religious one. Montenegrians, Croatians, Slovenians, Macedonians and many Bosnians and Albanians are not Muslim, but are either Catholic, Orthodox or Jewish. Southern Albania is highly populated by Albanian Jews, and this is becaause the Albanians accepted Jewish refugees from Germany during the Holocaust, and have never oppressed them in any way, contrary to what Carl Savic has to say. The fact that Serbia does not have any Jewish population is evidence enough of who the actual murderers were.
Anyways, the war with the Serbs was always about land. When they began their conquests, their goal was to create a "Large Serbia" and cleanse the Balkans of any other ethnicity. Just research some of Slobodan Milosevic's speeches. It will probably give you a sense of what it must have been like to watch Adolf Hitler speak and promise his people a "pure" country.
I'm done.

A senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says Palestinians should follow the example of Kosovo and unilaterally declare independence.

Welcome to Kosovo! The World's Newest Narco State

By Tom Burghardt

Global Research, February 29, 2008
Antifascist-calling.blogspot.com - 2008-02-23

The unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, former warlord/commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), heralds the birth of a new European narco state.

The illegal dismemberment of Serbia, completing the U.S./EU/NATO destruction of Yugoslavia, is proclaimed by ruling elites and their sycophants as an exemplary means to bring "peace and stability" to the region. This provocative move, outside the framework of international law, threatens any sovereign state with similar treatment should they deviate from the "Washington consensus."

Far from bringing "peace" let alone "stability," an "independent" Kosovo will serve as a militarized outpost for Western capitalist powers intent on spreading their tentacles East, further encircling Russia by penetrating the former spheres of influence of the Soviet Union.

Led by dodgy characters and war criminals such as Hashim Thaci and Agim Ceku, "independent" Kosovo is a gangster state governed by thugs with ties to Albanian drug trafficking syndicates and al-Qaeda.

(snip)

* * * * *

Continued at:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8182