posted
Just wondering what everyone's take is on the Kosovo situation... the Albanians declaration of independence... for or against? and why?.
I'm still mixed on this one but i tend to be for independence because 90% of Kosovo's population is Albanian so I see no need why the Serbs need to hold on to it since they and the Albanians hate each other.
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posted
well, i have never beena ble to understand what they are actually fighting about.
the arguments appear to me to be tribal, as opposed to racial or religious, but they have components of racism and religion.
do they speak diffferent languages?
i have personally known many Jews, Muslims and Persians so i have had a good bit of tutoring on the Mideast issue, but the Serb, Croat, Albanian issues are still quite mysterious to me...
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Croatian language (hrvatski jezik) is a South Slavic language which is used primarily by the inhabitants of Croatia and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina and parts of the Croatian diaspora. It is one of the standard versions of the Central-South Slavic diasystem.
Croatian is based on the Ijekavian pronunciation of Štokavian dialect (with some influence from Čakavian and Kajkavian) and written with the Croatian alphabet.
Serbian connection
The 19th century language development overlapped with the upheavals that befell Serbian language. It was Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, an energetic and resourceful Serbian language and culture reformer, whose scriptory and orthographic stylisation of Serbian linguistic folk idiom made a radical break with the past; until his activity in the first half of the 19th century, Serbs had been using the Serbian variant of Church Slavonic and a hybrid Russian-Slavonic language. His "Serbian Dictionary", published in Vienna 1818 (along with the appended grammar), was the single most significant work of Serbian literary culture that shaped the profile of Serbian language (and, the first Serbian dictionary and grammar thus far).
Following the incentive of Austrian bureaucracy which preferred some kind of unified Croatian and Serbian languages for practical administrative reasons, in 1850, Slovenian philologist Franc Miklošič initiated a meeting of two Serbian philologists and writers, Vuk Karadžić and Đuro Daničić together with five Croatian "men of letters": Ivan Mažuranić, Dimitrija Demetar, Stjepan Pejaković, Ivan Kukuljević and Vinko Pacel. The Vienna Agreement on the basic features of a unified "Croatian or Serbian" or "Serbo-Croatian" language was signed by all eight participants (including Miklošič).
Karadžić's influence on Croatian standard idiom was only one of the reforms for Croats, mostly in some aspects of grammar and orthography; many other changes he made to Serbian were already present in Croatian. Both languages shared the common basis of South Slavic neoštokavian dialect, but the Vienna agreement didn't have any effect in reality until a more unified standard appeared at the end of 19th century when Croatian sympathisers of Vuk Karadžić, known as the Croatian Vukovites, wrote the first modern (from the vantage point of dominating neogrammarian linguistic school) grammars, orthographies and dictionaries of the language which they called "Croatian or Serbian" (Serbs preferred Serbo-Croatian). Monumental grammar authored by pre-eminent fin de sičcle Croatian linguist Tomislav Maretić (Grammar and stylistics of Croatian or Serbian language) and dictionary by Broz and Iveković (Croatian dictionary) temporarily fixed the elastic (grammatically, syntactically, lexically) standard of this hybrid language.
quote:Originally posted by glassman: well, i have never beena ble to understand what they are actually fighting about.
the arguments appear to me to be tribal, as opposed to racial or religious, but they have components of racism and religion.
do they speak diffferent languages?
i have personally known many Jews, Muslims and Persians so i have had a good bit of tutoring on the Mideast issue, but the Serb, Croat, Albanian issues are still quite mysterious to me...
Simple. It's ethnic. Hence the "ethnic cleansing" perpetrated by Slabodan and his henchmen. Not much of a mystery glass.
Plays to your US civil war analogy. Looks pretty spot on.
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The sociologist Max Weber once remarked that "The whole conception of ethnic groups is so complex and so vague that it might be good to abandon it altogether."[6]
In any case, Weber proposed a definition of ethnic group that became accepted by many social scientists:
[T]hose human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration; this belief must be important for group formation; furthermore it does not matter whether an objective blood relationship exists.[6]
Anthropologist Ronald Cohen, in a review of anthropological and sociological studies of ethnic groups since Weber, claimed that the identification of "ethnic groups" by social scientists often reflected Western colonial labels more than indigenous realities:
... the named ethnic identities we accept, often unthinkingly, as basic givens in the literature are often arbitrarily, or even worse innacurately, imposed.[7]
Cohen also suggests that claims concerning "ethnic" identity (like earlier claims concerning "tribal" identity) are often colonialist practices and effects of the relations between colonized peoples and nation-states.[7] Harold Isaacs has identified other diacritics (distinguishing markers) of ethnicity, among them physical appearance, name, language, history, and religion;[8] this definition has entered some dictionaries.[9] Social scientists have thus focused on how, when, and why different markers of ethnic identity become salient. Thus, anthropologist Joan Vincent observed that ethnic boundaries often have a mercurial character.[10] Ronald Cohen concluded that ethnicity is "a series of nesting dichotomizations of inclusiveness and exclusiveness".[7] He agrees with Joan Vincent's observation that (in Cohen's paraphrase) "Ethnicity ... can be narrowed or broadened in boundary terms in relation to the specific needs of political mobilization.[7] This may be why descent is sometimes a marker of ethnicity, and sometimes not: which diacritic of ethnicity is salient depends on whether people are scaling ethnic boundaries up or down, and whether they are scaling them up or down depends generally on the political situation.
Serbia tried to remove the Albanian population through force and discrimination. They could have succeeded if the UN hadn't stepped in.
I do think that is a good thing though I understand that I cannot defend from critics that the formation of my own country is built upon the same type of actions against the American Indian population.
I like to think of it as progress. The world no longer accepts removal of one culture to bolster another.
I understand that the Kosovo area is a area rich in heritage and religiously significant to the Serbian population. I understand why they don't want to lose it.
BUT
Since they were unsuccessful in their removal attempt the creation of Kosovo into an independant nation is the punishment incurred against Serbia for not learning how to live in peace with their neighbors.
It isn't a fully developed thought process and I am sure there are holes in it but that is where I am at right now.
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posted
I still fail to see why I should care. Beyond the bit that we're all humans and we all deserve liberty. Should it not be up to them? Sorry guys but I see this as all part of social conditioning towards a world government. Too much compassion results in the loss of all freedom.
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Realistically liberty is all about personal responsibility... Deal with your sh!t and I'll deal with mine. Why can I allow this? Because I trust you as competent. I will only interfere if I think you're a moron. Can you not see now how we as Americans treat the world? And you can still wonder why they hate us? Then you are the moron. Understand this as the truth that will set you free: Any nation who can jail someone for nothing more than avoiding arrest is a nation doomed.
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It is my G0D D*MNED DUTY as an American to resist arrest. We were founded out of disgust for overreaching "government". Myopic if not completely blind. We are a daydream in an instant and there are those who would have you think they hold dominion?
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"Fighting words People inside Serbia and beyond are now taking notice of what Russia is saying. And for many in the West it's frightening. "
On Friday, Russia's NATO envoy, Dmitiry Rogozin, warned that Russia might have to resort to "brute military force" if Europe recognizes an independent Kosovo. But in the same breath, Rogozin backed off some, suggesting that Russia would not to go to war over Kosovo. Still, many are asking, how did it come to this?
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I'm not sure I take your point. Are you suggesting anarchy is a preferred political system?
Anarchy is the natural and only result of an overpowering government. But it isn't really my point. My point is that we as Americans are just as much to blame for government's over-reaching power as they are. It is up to us to keep them in check. Simply submitting to their every whim is in no way keeping them in check. It is our duty to resist arrest and should be considered common sense that anyone would resist arrest. How many people are in jail and the only listed offense is felony evading or resisting arrest? Does it not suggest that our system of law enforcement is out of control? What was the initial reason for the stop? Why was it so necessary to detain the individual? We need to fight back or we will soon not be a great nation but the biggest prison camp in the history of this world. But none of that was my original point either. The current blather on the 24/7's about Kosovo and every other nation in crisis has nothing to do with concern for that nation or its people. It is propaganda aimed at convincing us to adopt ultimately a world government. I couldn't care less if Kosovo splits off, if Quebec splits or if the southern states split off. You see "They" must portray every single nation as inept, incapable of handling any turbulence. Every single nation needs the help of a greater authority. That is the intended message of all of this.
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The whole world must be portrayed as "At the Brink". Then it would seem logical to insist that a world government could bring order and save us from ourselves. Russia isn't going to war over Kosovo. It's all part of the scam.
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quote:Originally posted by Relentless.: The whole world must be portrayed as "At the Brink". Then it would seem logical to insist that a world government could bring order and save us from ourselves. Russia isn't going to war over Kosovo. It's all part of the scam.
Agreed. Russia nowadays is more akin to a "paper tiger". Alot of bluster....little stomach for follow through.
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