They ask good questions, too.
If independence is good enough for Kosovo, why isn't it good enough for Kurds and Palestinians?
"Kosovo marks 1 week of freedom"
"by William J. Kole, Associated Press | February 25, 2008
PRISTINA, Kosovo - Kosovo marked its first week of independence in quiet celebration yesterday as angry Serbs protested in the fledgling nation's tense north and in capitals across Europe.
The Russian envoy to NATO, meanwhile, unleashed a torrent of criticism on countries that recognized Kosovo's split from ally Serbia, including the United States.
About 1,000 people protested peacefully in the ethnically divided northern town of Kosovska Mitrovica. Protesters at the demonstration - the smallest in seven days of rallies - listened to a Serbian rock band playing on a stage decorated with a poster of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a sign reading: "Russia Help!"
.... Thousands of Serbs held demonstrations in European capitals yesterday, including Vienna and Geneva....
The US ambassador in Belgrade demanded that Serb leaders ensure that there would be no future violence against diplomatic missions. "I'm very angry at what happened. It had better not happen again," Ambassador Cameron Munter said yesterday...."
Or else what?
Gonna send American troops there, too?
And how come the newspaper didn't tell me what the Russian said?
"Russia's ambassador to NATO suggested Sunday that Kosovo's split from Serbia was the result of an imperialistic American effort to "divide and rule."
In heated remarks in a televised interview, Dmitry Rogozin also reiterated Russia's warning that Western recognition of Kosovo could encourage separatism worldwide, using Germany's large ethnic Turkish population as an example.
Ethnic Turks in Berlin might one day ask: "Why should we not create our own — not Kosovo but Berlinosovo, Abrikosovo, Kokosovo and so forth," said Rogozin, a former lawmaker and nationalist political party leader, apparently referring to the name of the German capital and to apricots and coconuts.
"It's the atomization of the world," Rogozin said on state-run Vesti-24 television. "Who benefits from this? Only those who prefer to divide and rule —the old imperial principle. This is first of all the United States of America."
By recognizing Kosovo over the opposition of Serbia and without U.N. approval, Rogozin said, Western nations were replacing international law with a system in which "there will be only one rule: he who has brute physical power is strong and is right."
Russia, he stressed, must maintain a strong military to ensure its security.
But, he said "We do not intend to interfere in some military, forceful way in a hot spot far from our borders," Rogozin said. The developments there do not constitute "direct attacks on Russia, direct attacks on our national interests," he said.
Instead, he said, "We will use to the maximum our political and moral authority — the absolute authority that we have in the Balkans, including in Serbia, to defend our truth. And this truth will bring onto our side many states that think not only about today but about the future."
Rogozin also alleged that Kosovo's independence declaration was supported by a powerful narcotics mafia.
He said there were "shadowy structures that stand behind Kosovo's independence. This is first of all a 'narcomafia' that long ago turned Kosovo into ... a gigantic laboratory for the production of heroin and cocaine for all the countries of Europe."
Oh, he knows about that, does he?
Only stoo-pid 'murkns don't!!!!
"Kosovo, the Kremlin, and the Kurds"
"The violent reaction from the Serbian "street" to Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence is "blowback" – as the writer Chalmers Johnson terms it – with a vengeance, and we have not yet experienced the worst of it.
The U.S. attack on Kosovo has come back to haunt Washington, and not just with the burning of the American embassy in Belgrade. A chain reaction is setting in, and its effects cannot be confined to the Balkans. The unrest is already spreading to Austria – and beyond.
For if the Kosovars can have their own "nation," then why not the South Ossetians? Why not the Abkhazians? Why not the Transdniester Republic? And why not the Kurds?
The rule the U.S. has set up is as follows: restive peoples who find themselves transferred from one great "prison house of peoples" to newer, U.S.-supported prisons named Georgia – and Iraq – have no right to self-determination. The Kosovars have a special status: they enjoy the protection of the EU and the U.S. armed forces, and the West recognizes their national aspirations. The others, however, must endure being ruled by a central authority that has the support of the U.S. government.
Why? Because Washington says so.
This is the new essence of "international law" – an edict from Washington. The UN, the EU, and other international bodies all must rubber-stamp decisions made essentially by the American president and his advisers.
Yet peoples yearning for freedom and self-determination are not about to cave in the face of this arbitrary power. The Serbs of northern Kosovo, who have been all but pushed out of their ancient land, are in open rebellion. They, too, want the right of self-determination. Will the U.S. and its allies use force to keep them in the newly independent state of Kosovo? If the American president sends troops to the Balkans – again – to enforce his will, Americans will begin to ask questions, and they are not going to like the answers.
As 8,000 Turkish soldiers pour into Iraq's Kurdish region, hunting down guerrilla fighters of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), the consequences of American support for Kosovo's declaration of independence are clear. America's alliance with Turkey is threatened, as is the tenuous stability of the Iraqi government – and U.S. occupation forces have made new enemies out of their only reliable Iraqi friends. The Christian Science Monitor reported that "Peshmerga Gen. Muhammad Mohsen took down his American flag, folded it up, and placed it in his office corner Sunday, reflecting the growing anger in Iraq's Kurdish north with U.S. support for Turkey's campaign against separatist rebels operating in the region." One hopes symbolic actions such as these are sufficient to express the full extent of his anger at his erstwhile American allies, but somehow I doubt it.
The Kurds have every reason to expect support from the U.S. After all, they have been our most enthusiastic allies in the "liberation" of Iraq, and we have supported them with billions in tax dollars, as well as the lives of American soldiers fallen in battle. While it's true that the Kurds claim a lot more territory than the current "Kurdish Regional Government" now commands, the same is true of the Kosovars, whose "Greater Albania" encompasses parts of Macedonia, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia. As the U.S. and its EU allies do everything to encourage this ultra-nationalist expansionism by recognizing Kosovo, why shouldn't the Kurds join in the fun and put "Greater Kurdistan" on the agenda?"
And who is behind all of it?"US Screws The Kurds Again. Some People Never Learn"
".... Evidently, Turkey is acting in concert with the US and Israel. The US and Israel endorse Turkey's pre-eminent role in northern Iraq. With the Balkans in focus and with defeat staring in the face of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)in Afghanistan, Turkey's importance as a key US ally is rising. Turkey commands the KFOR (Kosovo Force) in southern Kosovo. Turkey has historical influence in the Balkans.
The fact is, the Kosovo model is both good and bad for Turkey. As Russian President Vladimir Putin caustically suggested last week, the West should also now recognize Northern Cyprus as Turkish. On the other hand, Kosovo sets a bad example for separatist elements in Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iraq. Ankara's prompt decision to recognize the "independent" Kosovo was indeed a diplomatic signal to Washington that it is willing to harmonize its foreign policy decisions with US geostrategy...."
