Nation: c.1300, from O.Fr. nacion, from L. nationem (nom. natio) "nation, stock, race," lit. "that which has been born," from natus, pp. of nasci "be born" (see native).
Meet the transnational state of the future: Kosovo. It is roughly 100 square miles or 140km2 of highly rugged territory, sandwiched between Serbia and Albania, and Montenegro and - courtesy of the Greeks who for the time being object to the story of their nation being hijacked by historical upstarts, the diplomatic entity going by the elegant acronym of FYROM.
The Balkan Peninsula, being traditionally one of the world's highly inflammable tender spots, is an NGO paradise come true for experiments in international social engineering (multiculturalism and transnationalism: see also "Yes, to an Islamic State in the Balkans" and "Some Darned Thing in the Balkans"). Like bringing democracy to the Middle East it is a high stakes gamble, akin to lighting a cigarette in a kerosene depot. The last time I opened a history book the local buzz words were self-determination and autonomy. The Balkans ever have been the living proof of the futility of multiculturalism. So it is a bit of a challenge to The Construction Team but the pay-off will be well worth the effort. And the international community will boast yet another peace producing export product after the completion of the E.U.
The Balkans - like the Middle East - is awash with cloak and dagger stories. One documented conspiracy theory of Serbian origin is based on the Yugoslav wars of the late last century and the planned Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation (AMBO) pipeline, carrying Russian Caspian oil via the Bulgarian port of Burgas to the Albanian port of Vlore. As the joint venture is registered in the U.S. - the beating heart of Capitalism - and Germany is seen to have rang in the first Yugoslav war by adexterous diplomatic maneuvering, this has given rise to theories about outside economic interests and the wars of independence having been willfully caused to break up the happy national-socialistic unity under the late President Slobodan Milosevic.
The same mechanism is at work from all sides in respect of the U.N. protectorate of Kosovo. NGOs are accused of gross favouritism towards Albania and the Albanian Kosovars, ostensibly because they need their cooperation with regard to the pipeline. It is an area rife with conspiracy theories, reason for me to stay away from these aspects of the case: remember 'oil' conspiracies in the earlier stages of the Iraq war - a subject now dead ...? I'm still waiting for the apologies ...
It is certain however that diplomatically and politically something is afoot. The U.N. does not have the legal power to declare countries independent; nevertheless, if Security Council member and Serb ally Russia doesn't veto the transnational plan, drawn up by the U.N. Secretary General's special envoy Martti Ahtisaari, de facto the U.N. will have done exactly that.
It will provide a precedent for any other area in the world with separatist aspirations or with an axe to grind, to go the same route. But perhaps this is exactly what the Transnational Progressive community have in mind: supporting the breaking up of nation-states, thereby creating a faithful future clientele in the "NGO community of free nations", and the gradual end to the monocultural remnants of the era of "sectarian war after war, and wave after wave of ethic cleansing", as the latest postmodern propaganda slogan goes. Reason for a game of international hypocrisy: while the plan doesn't use the i-word, all parties understand it allows the protectorate E.U. supervised independence and all the trappings of statehood - in the Balkans still articles of reverence: a flag, an anthem, but also a parliament, a constitution and citizenship, moreover the ability to contract and join membership of international "communities of free nations".
Pertinent to our investigation in Transnationalism are the comments in an article written by one the Three-fold Kings of the Multicultural Borg ("Resistance is Futile"), Timothy Carton Ash in his pamphlet of preference, Al-Guardian on 15th February, carrying the revealing title "Why Kosovo should become the 33rd (E.U.) member - and Serbia the 34th (E.U. member)": "The way forward for Kosovo is not nation-building or even state-building, but member-state-building. And for Serbia too. This means European leaders having the courage and vision to say that we actually want a further enlargement of the E.U., because only then will peace be secured in the Balkans and Europe be whole and free."
For all Garton Ashes' glorying of transnational entities and disdain for the nation-state, he doesn't lack a sense of symbolism: he sees the entire Balkan to join the union, "as proposed a few years ago by a commission chaired by Giuliano Amato, on the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the first world war, the Sarajevo summit of 2014 should celebrate this achievement"
Kosovo moreover provides a chance of experimenting in the development of a moderate, liberal, European, form of Islam, long seen as The Solution to the problems of integrating a large Muslim population into Europe. It proves to the Turks and Eurabia that the E.U. isn't a Christian club (God forbid!) and it may be an important asset in isolating Jihadism. If a beautiful Utopian thought, as is usual with the ideologues it doesn't reckon with the Wahhabi type assertively in seeking world Islamic dissemination: it has already been reported that Saudi financed mosques and madrassas are being built on the territory of Kosovo. In this chilling Front Page article it transpires that even some Jews are taken in by the propaganda.
It is rarely mentioned as such, but in the mainstream press, in the international community and in the eyes of common citizens in the West it is often Serbia that is seen as the jingoistic culprit, held responsible for the anachronistic goings-on in the Balkans during the 1990's, ruining postmodern and middle class appetites night after night, watching the news reports on television.This common wisdom is made easy by the guilt attached to the roles played in the wars by N.A.T.O. and the U.S., but above all by the cowardice of the E.U. and the pathetic, immoral attempts at 'field marshaling' by the U.N.
The whole confounded thing came crashing down with the proclamation of strategically counter-instinctive enclaves, the so-called 'Muslim safe havens' by a sentimental, if single-minded French general with a conscience and a misplaced sense of chivalry. But after nobody appeared to be willing or able to preserve the neutrality of the enclaves, and Muslim fighters launched daily attacks on Serbian forces out of the safe havens, the Serbs in the person of General Mladic decided to put an end to this unsustainable situation.
The U.N. declined to defend the safe havens that were created in its name, resulting in the execution of thousands of Muslim civilians (or fighters, as the case may have been - in any case they were all men), and Dutch U.N. troops at Srebrenica - whom the U.N. had seen fit to arm in conformance with the Boys' Handbook of Scouting so as not to 'provoke any violence' in the war zone - had the heroic task of overseeing the dismantling of one of the monstrosities.
"We never want to do this again", a N.A.T.O. Defence Minister is held to have said. "This" being conducting a war by committee, making moral and military issues subservient to legal U.N. niceties, resulting in the U.S. going it alone in Iraq without U.N. green light later on in history.
One thing and another seems to have caused blindness and disinterest for the facts and the Serbian side of the story. The Front Page article already mentioned also reveals that the late reporter Daniel Pearl as early as 1999 made a case for - gross exaggeration at best, or a war of propaganda at worst - on the part of the Albanian UCK (or Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)) against Serbia. I remember at a time having the unsettling feeling of watching a film production rather than a journalistic news report; I dismissed it of course as unwarranted suspicion on my part.
What fills me with apprehension is the ease displayed by the international community to give in to Albanian threats, who see independence as "the only acceptable outcome", in the words of Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu. It is said that tensions could plunge the turbulent region back into violence.
More curious - what to think of a passage in a recent report produced by the International Crisis Group, an independent NGO, that by the way effortlessly reproduces a link to Garton Ash' biased article on Al-Guardian.
"Kosovo's Status: Difficult Months Ahead" states, and please note the emphatic imperative:
"The Contact Group should not permit further delay in Ahtisaari’s proposals after Serbia’s January elections and should not dilute them ... The E.U. Council should give its preparations and requirements for assuming post-status responsibilities in Kosovo more prominence, both for European public opinion and the Security Council. The incoming German Presidency should make uniting member states behind the Ahtisaari proposals a top priority. The Security Council should act promptly and positively when it receives Ahtisaari’s proposals, recognising that delay would likely mean a return of Kosovo to its agenda soon in crisis circumstances." Alex Anderson, Crisis Group’s Kosovo Project Director adding: "If Kosovo is to graduate to independence in 2007 - as it should - it must at the same time grow up."
No pretence of any neutrality there. The fear (or threat) for a new crisis by denying Kosovo independence doesn't convey any credibility in the face of the future crises that will follow the Kosovo precedent, which may cause entire regions to break away from nation-states. It makes no sense if the goal is stability!
Remarkable is Fourth Generation War theorist William Lind's comment in an article "That Flapping Sound you Hear": "... I want to state it as plainly as I can: in a Fourth Generation world, multiculturalism is the death of states ... cultural loyalties super-cede state loyalties."
While some nation-states will inevitably fall prey to the separatist Kosovo precedent, the international community's will on the other hand, as witnessed by the break away of Bosnia (and also witnessed in Iraq) want multicultural and multi-ethnic entities bound firmly together in federations and other umbrella unions. Huge semi democratic constructs are built as seen in yesterday's post, proportional power-sharing among unequal groups to replace traditional voting systems: the transnational version of democracy.
Serbia is being punished for misbehaving towards minorities by losing a large chunk of what it considers to be its heartland, conveying the message to the world at large, that multicultural or multi-ethnic states had better behave towards their minorities - even if it is the minorities that start causing trouble in a quest for independence - under the subjective principle that unequal groups must be compensated in proportion to their inequality. That the nation-state is seen to be losing legitimacy fast, is simply part of the message: you don't abide by transnational principles, you stop to exist.
As different groups and peoples are locked into multicultural states by social contract as we shall see in the last instalment, states themselves are locked into larger umbrella systems of interdependency, so as to ensure politically correct transnational behaviour amongst states, thus making the possibility of future wars virtually impossible.
Let's take a look at "The Ahtisaari Plan - what's inside?" "Ahtisaari's proposal is first and foremost a document designed to make Kosovo a multi-ethnic society. This means that the non-Albanian communities have been granted substantial powers. With more than 90% of Kosovo made up of Albanians, the minority Serb, Roma, Ashkali, Gorani, Egyptian, Turk and Bosniak communities are given tremendous influence in all sectors. In brief, Ahtisaari has designed an asymmetric state." The finer details, such as parliamentary seating arrangements and how in some areas one can only have heart by-pass surgery, in say - an Orthodox hospital, can be read in the full article.
Seeing - as in some recent cases, for example in Bosnia which rigidly kept Croats, Serbs and Muslims, separated together in one country, with no apparent benefit but hating each other to the core from up close - one wonders what the objection against the creation of a monocultural, or mono-ethnic nation-state exactly is?
Read 'Jurist' guest columnist Antony D'Amato of Northwestern University School of Law who says that creating an independent multi-ethnic state in Kosovo would almost certainly be a human rights disaster for the 200,000 Serbs living there, making up some ten percent of the total population. Nota bene: this is what you get if you lose the numbers game! D'Amato asks: "What about partitioning Kosovo into a Serbian and an Albanian territory?
The short answer is, that it wouldn't be conform the multicultural and transnational ideology. If Transnational Progressivism is seen as a method towards a conflict-free future, we will see the encouragement of the breaking up of states with a leading culture by way of the Kosovo precedent, while the interlocking into multicultural and multi-ethnic constructs under the benevolent management of democratically unaccountable NGOs, will be the favoured form of Empire for the future.
Since it conforms with the ideology (read: is politically correct), it is not expected that blood shed of any significance - caused by a heightened sense of nation, religious fervor or cultural differences - is likely in the transnational state of the future.
While some people of the "Stop Islamization of Europe" organization were preparing to demonstrate yesterday in Copenhagen against the chutzpah of Saudi Arabia lecturing their partner in the Eurabia project - Europe - on the Human Rights situation of Muslims on the continent - there has been an attempt on their lives. One of the victims is a 74 year old woman.
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