Update: 21Feb08

Rioting breaks out in Serbia. Serbs protest Kosovo's sovereignty. Kosovo Albanians become a sovereign nation state in less than 50 years. That is, the Albanians have become the majority ethnicity in Kosovo in the past 50 years. Prior to that, Kosovo had a Serbian majority.

Congratulations to the people of Kosovo on the birth of their new nation-state. The U.S., England, France and Turkey have all recognized Kosovo as a sovereign nation. Serbia had refused to grant freedom to the ethnic Albanian majority that comprise 95% of Kosovo's 2 million people. Serbia has now stated that it would block admittance to the U.N. for Kosovo and arrest its leaders and put them on trial. Today, Serbia recalled its ambassador to the U.S.

Looking at the map
,
you can see the country of Montenegro. They gained independence from Serbia but are ethnically the same as the Serbs. All States were once part of the Soviet Block under the Yugoslav Federation. "Yugoslavia" means "Southern Slavs" and are considered Ethnic brothers by the Russians.

Despite the blatant hypocrisy, Serbia has refused to allow the Ethnic Albanians self-determination.

China, the world's fastest rising superpower expressed concern over Kosovo's independence. China said Kosovo's unilateral decision to secede could destabilize the region. It was in Sarajevo, Bosnia where WWII began in 1919.

Nation states are the problem not the solution. The people of Kosovo have nothing to celebrate. They now live under different tyrants nothing has really changed for them. Once again they are being used as pawns in an old geo-political power play that has been going on for hundreds of years. Now with various nations lining up on either side the stage is set for a another proxy war between the global super powers.

The whole scene will come with carefully orchestrated UN resolutions, the recall of diplomats and scary troops movements that will be called “exercises”. With Russia and China siding with the Serbs and the US and Britain siding with Kosovo it will be like the good old days of the Cold War. I guess Kissinger really misses those days and wants to bring them back.

>It was in Sarajevo, Bosnia where WWII began in 1919.

It was WWI, and it was in 1914.

"Nation states are the problem not the solution."
Uhh.. it's the distribution of state resources not the state that is the problem.
despite what 'other' isms espouse, it's the strength of the nation state that allows its citizens to collectivize their power ( in a working democracy ) to stand against the predators of oligarchic systems of rule. And the corporations that see the resources of the world as their property and the people, their prey.

clueless
by history buff Thursday, Feb. 21, 2008 at 6:54 PM

>It was in Sarajevo, Bosnia where WWII began in 1919.

It was WWI, and it was in 1914.

..........................

Of course youre right, sorry.

This vilification of the nation state is worrisome to me in that it proposes that in order to retain individual freedom, the state must cease to exist.
What must cease to exist is the hidden hand of corruption and predation that directs national policy. To benefit the very few at the labor and common treasury of the many.
Slicing and dicing a nation into fractional sects is a sure path for domination from the powerful.
Unfortunately, the model for domination has been cast and as we can see, it is a road to hell.

Then it is called "Communism."

And that's FAR worse.

Daniel wrote:

Then it is called "Communism."

And that's FAR worse.



I don't think communism has ever actually been practiced. The revolutionaries who fought for communism in Russia got something rather different than what they struggled for.

Trotsky was the only leader who stayed loyal to the revolutionaries, and he was forced into exile and ultimately murdered by Stalin's assassins.

I'm not an expert on communism or Soviet history, but my sense is that communism hasn't yet been put into practice.

Ghandi once said, "We shouldn't be too critical of Christianity. After all, it's never been practised." I think this holds true for communism, too.

Snickels:

"The revolutionaries who fought for communism in Russia got something rather different than what they struggled for."

I think that this is because the war broke out. Their revolution started out good. "Soviets" aka "People's Committees" (or something like that) were springing up in factories everywhere, including in the military. There was no centralized power early on. Lenin was still in exile.


But once the war broke out, defeating the Germans became more important than TRUE communism.

"defeating the Germans " became more important.
Duh
Particularly when the German 'living room' was intended to be carved out of the slavic states.
The push into Stalingrad failed and arrangements were made.
The U.S. then employed the nazi intelligence ( Reinhard Gehlen ) network to benefit the weapons makers as we were led into a false cold war with the Soviet Union and a national security state here in order to hide the rampant looting of the treasury and the dark criminality that now owned the media.