From inahoxhazaloshnja at yahoo.com Fri May 13 12:13:40 2005 From: inahoxhazaloshnja at yahoo.com (Ina Hoxha Zaloshnja) Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 09:13:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [NYC-L] What can you do for your country? In-Reply-To: <20050428211557.11345.qmail@web31301.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20050513161341.90487.qmail@web53503.mail.yahoo.com> Nese keni planifikuar te udhetoni ne Shqiperi kete vere, apo kerkoni nje arsye per te ardhur ne atdhe, mund te perfshiheni ne menyre konkrete dhe te prekshme ne nje eveniment te rendesishem per te ardhmen dhe demokratizimin e vazhdueshem te vendit. APLIKONI TE BEHENI VEZHGUES DHE MONITORONI ZGJEDHJET NE 3 KORRIK 2004! Ju qe jetoni jashte perbeni nje kapital te cmuar edhe nje burim njerzor qe mund te perkthehet jo vetem ne nje shprese te madhe por nje ndihme te dobishme per te ardhmen. JU FTOJME TE BASHKOHENI ME NE EDHE TE OFRONI NJE NDIHME KONKRETE PER TE SIGURUAR INTEGRITETIN E ZGJEDHJEVE KETE VERE. Fondacioni Mjaft po ndermerr nje iniciative per monitorimin te zgjedhjeve dhe nepermjet saj ne synojme te sigurojme nje pjesemarrje te diaspores shqiptare duke i krijuar vizibilitiet deshires suaj per stabilitet e zhvillim ne vend. Perfshihuni edhe ju! Per me shume detaje rreth ketij projekti apo per te mbushur nje aplikim mund te dergoni nje email tek: vezhgo at mjaftfoundation.org --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour -------------- next part -------------- HTML attachment scrubbed and removed From jeton at hotmail.com Wed May 18 14:10:49 2005 From: jeton at hotmail.com (Jeton Ademaj) Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 14:10:49 -0400 Subject: [NYC-L] State Dept on Kosova Message-ID: hey people, there's alot here: The Washington Post reported yesterday that Nicholas Burns will announce a shift in US policy meant to re-assess efforts to resolve the final status of Bosnia and Kosova. < http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/16/AR2005051601440.html > This is an excerpt regarding Kosova from yesterday's US State Department briefing...it was the first item of the briefing. The Q&A that follows below includes an exchange with an unnamed reporter who accuses the USA of backing "Hitler's policy in the Balkans", claiming that Kosova gained an Albanian majority because of der Fuhrer. I think we need to remind everyone public and private of Kosova's Albanian history and of the expulsion and/or murder of hundreds of thousands of Kosovars under Dr. Vasya Cubrilovic's 1938 Expulsion plan that was first unveiled before the Serbian Acadamy of Arts and Sciences, because the latest Belgrade strategy is to link us with (and de-link themselves from!) the Nazis. After you read the State Dept. excerpt, checkout this link from a Serbian site that outlines their general strategy. It includes some twisted logic, twisted verbiage and carefully omits Dr. Cubrilovic and any other context at all... < http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/060.shtml > here's the excerpt: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE DAILY PRESS BRIEFING TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2005 (ON THE RECORD UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED) 12:50 p.m. EDT MR. BOUCHER: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We'll get out a statement later today, just to tell you that Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick will be attending the World Economic Forum later this week in Jordan. He'll be our representative for that meeting there and we'll get out a little more details on what he's going to do there, including the address that he will make. And that's just worthy of note, but glad to take your questions. QUESTION: Yes. Please tell us a little bit about evolving Kosovo strategy. I know Mr. Burns will testify tomorrow, but if you can give us a little bit of a preview. MR. BOUCHER: Yeah, I think, "evolving Kosovo strategy" is a good way to put it, frankly. The Under Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns will discuss the current situation in Kosovo and our vision for progress and peace there in testimony before the House International Relations Committee on May 18th. And then he will give a speech on the Balkans at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on May 19th. On these -- in these two speeches or statements, he will elaborate on our strategy for resolving Kosovo's future status. That has to be done consistent with the goals of promoting regional stability and protecting the rights of all of Kosovo's citizens, especially its minorities. This is a subject that we have discussed a lot with our friends and allies. As I think, some of you may remember about a month ago at the NATO meetings in Lithuania, Kosovo was a subject of discussion for the Secretary, with NATO Secretary General and with many of the members of NATO that she met there, as well as in the larger North Atlantic Council meetings. So this is something that we and our allies have been talking about how to move forward in Kosovo to have stability and peace there within a larger region. We think we're now entering a new stage in our policy towards the Balkans, one that will accelerate the region's integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions. Burns and other U.S. officials have been in close contact with our European partners, largely through the contact group, which gets together periodically and I think had a meeting last month as well. And also in touch with the United Nations, which plays a very important and prominent role in Kosovo in terms of achieving progress on the ground and also moving the vision forward. This summer, the United Nations will review Kosovo's progress on achieving standards for democracy and multi-ethnicity. If that review is positive, the international community will launch a diplomatic process to determine Kosovo's future status. Since that process at this point has yet to get under way, it would be inappropriate for us to announce anything about possible outcomes. QUESTION: But you would have to acknowledge, wouldn't you, that the wheels are turning toward Kosovo independence and the U.S., which often speaks in favor of territorial integrity all over the world -- there are some stunning exceptions, of course -- but you do, aren't you -- isn't the U.S. intentionally setting in motion or helping to set in motion independence of Kosovo? MR. BOUCHER: I wouldn't put it that way. I would -- and you'll see, I think, when Ambassador Burns speaks in more detail about this, there has been an evolving discussion about this, about standards and status, the two sides of the equation of what needs to be achieved with Kosovo. And I think there's an increasing feeling among many that we need to define these things in order to achieve -- we need to define them better in order to achieve a number of other goals and purposes. And so that is what we're moving to do. We're moving to set in motion a process that can resolve Kosovo's future status, but at this point we're not expressing an opinion on how that should come out. Sir. QUESTION: The Washington Post is talking about a plan. May we know some aspect of this plan? What is it about? MR. BOUCHER: The particular steps involved in moving forward and kind of some of the more in-depth understanding about how we would like to move forward will be conveyed and announced by Ambassador Burns in his testimony, in his speech. The general outlines of what we're trying to do, I think, are known, that we are working with the Contact Group and the UN, looking forward to a review of how standards have been met this summer and, if that review is positive, then move on to a process that can decide -- resolve the issue of status. That is what we're moving forward on now. We think we've reached a stage of moving forward in that fashion, but I'll leave it to Under Secretary Burns to define in more detail how we think we can move forward. QUESTION: Under Secretary Nicholas Burns has been a key player in engineering the administration's renewed in Kosovo due to his experience, as he says, with the American Embassy to Greece and NATO. How this experience has an impact on him about the new process which is going mathematically, Mr. Boucher, to destabilize the western Balkans with Albanians having the upper hand and the full support of the U.S., Great Britain and NATO? MR. BOUCHER: Well, you're making presumptions about outcomes. You're making presumptions about problems with the outcome. I think it's important to remember we are all looking for a peaceful region in the Balkans that can be integrated into Europe more broadly, that can be part of a peaceful continent. And we are looking to achieve both standards and status in order to sort of solidify that progress and solidify the progress that is being made in the region by many countries in moving towards Euro-Atlantic institutions. So I think the experience that Under Secretary Burns has at NATO and in Greece means that he does understand the region, he does understand how to work with people and does understand how it can -- how we can work with this region so that it fits well into Euro-Atlantic structures and institutions. QUESTION: Mr. Richard Holbrooke, a close friend to Nicholas Burns, stated in Washington Post, "No way U.S. troops to leave Kosovo." I'm quoting. He predicted that Kosovo will become independent, there is no way about that, there is no question about that, and Montenegro will separate from Serbia. Any comment on this multiple division of the Balkans in the early stage by the U.S. policy? What exactly you are trying to do in that area? MR. BOUCHER: We're not making predictions. We're setting up a process where the outcomes can be decided in a way that stabilizes the region, that helps the region as a whole find its destiny in Europe and Euro-Atlantic institutions. QUESTION: Mr. Boucher, to be honest with you, and I hate to make comparisons, my only weapon is, as I've told you many times in this room, history. And allow me to ask how the two gentlemen, Nicholas Burns and Richard Holbrooke, and besides with them, the State Department itself, ignore totally the fact that Kosovo, the so-called sarcoma-kaposis, was created by Adolf Hitler, transferred Albanians from the mainland to fight the Serbs in order to control southeast of Europe seeking an exodus via the port of Thessaloniki to the Aegean Sea. MR. BOUCHER: I don't think either -- first of all, Nicholas Burns and Richard Holbrooke are two different people so I wouldn't lump them together in terms of their views. Second of all, I don't think either one ignores history. I will speak for Under Secretary Burns, since he works for us, and the point here is to overcome that history, is to have a future that's different from the past, and not to -- not to repeat mistakes of the past but rather to move forward where this region can find peace and stability within our Euro-Atlantic framework that makes them part of the whole and not separate chunks to create problems. QUESTION: But since the end of the Second World War, America was trying to reverse whatever Hitler did, with only exception of Kosovo. Why? MR. BOUCHER: I don't think I would characterize U.S. policy as that way. QUESTION: You've referred (inaudible.) QUESTION: No, no, no -- QUESTION: You have several times. How would you describe the situation now and does it require some wrenching change? MR. BOUCHER: We have had -- QUESTION: I mean, things are fairly quiet. MR. BOUCHER: Fairly quiet, compared to what? I mean, we've seen violence this year. We have seen uncertainty this year. Compared to the war, yes. But I don't think we'd characterize the situation as stabilized. I don't think we would say that Serbs are finding a future in Kosovo or are able to return to their homes. I don't think we would say that the economic future of Kosovo is on track. There's a lot of things that need to be done there and a lot of things that as we achieve the standards can be aided by proceeding forward to resolve the status issues as well. QUESTION: I imagine a process creates some uncertainty in a nervous area -- this process that you say, you know, the end of which you're not predicting and nobody's predicting. But don't you think that this will trigger all sorts of population shifts and all sorts of -- as we've seen in the Balkans for so many, you know, what, through the last three administrations, you're rattling the cage. Why are you doing that? MR. BOUCHER: No. I just don't accept that. The situation is not a stable one or a good one now. We and the UN and others have been working to try to create a more stable situation through the achievement of what are called standards of democracy, of good governance, of openness, of welcoming to Serbs and others to move back to their homes. But that process can only go so far without defining the status of people who are involved in that situation want to know, in the end, what they're going to be living in or what they're going to be a part of. And we think it's -- as we achieve these standards, it's time to start taking up the issues of status as well. We'll see what the review produces this summer and whether that review produces a decision to go forward on some of these status questions as well. QUESTION: Is it your hope that the summer review does give a positive report so that you can start final status? MR. BOUCHER: Well, we would hope that the standards -- the standards of democracy and multiethnic -- multi-ethnicity for Kosovo would be achieved as soon as possible. So -- and if that is achieved, then the outcome of the review would be positive. So I think the emphasis is on achieving democracy and good governance and multi-ethnicity for Kosovo. If that is done as we want it to be done, as we all are working to have it -- to see it done, then the outcome could be positive in terms of moving on to another stage. Yeah. QUESTION: Switch the topic? Luis Posada Carriles -- I'm trying -- From buki79 at yahoo.com Wed May 18 14:17:42 2005 From: buki79 at yahoo.com (buki79 at yahoo.com) Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 11:17:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [NYC-L] Ndihme per Punim Seminarik Message-ID: <20050518181742.29628.qmail@web52809.mail.yahoo.com> Ju Lutem nese dikush ka Punim Seminarik te Gatshem "Perkthim dhe Interpretim te nje teksti nga Anglishtja ne Shqip" te pakten 55 faqe.Teksti te jete nga ndonje Gazete Amerikane si New York Times,Washington Post etc. Nese ka dikush nga ky forum le te ma dergoje ne e mailin tim buki79 at yahoo.com . Me duhet sa me shpejt ta dorezoj tek Profesori..... Faleminderit Pershendetje per te gjithe........ --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail Mobile Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Check email on your mobile phone. -------------- next part -------------- HTML attachment scrubbed and removed From fjag2025 at aol.com Wed May 18 14:58:00 2005 From: fjag2025 at aol.com (fjag2025 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 14:58:00 -0400 Subject: [NYC-L] State Dept on Kosova In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8C729F2A552288E-C60-ADD0@MBLK-M39.sysops.aol.com> Jeton: I always find your comments well educated and informational. Thanks -----Original Message----- From: Jeton Ademaj To: nyc-l at alb-net.com; AlbaNews at listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu Sent: Wed, 18 May 2005 14:10:49 -0400 Subject: [NYC-L] State Dept on Kosova === NYC-L: New York City Discussion Forum === hey people, there's alot here: The Washington Post reported yesterday that Nicholas Burns will announce a shift in US policy meant to re-assess efforts to resolve the final status of Bosnia and Kosova. < http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/16/AR2005051601440.html > This is an excerpt regarding Kosova from yesterday's US State Department briefing...it was the first item of the briefing. The Q&A that follows below includes an exchange with an unnamed reporter who accuses the USA of backing "Hitler's policy in the Balkans", claiming that Kosova gained an Albanian majority because of der Fuhrer. I think we need to remind everyone public and private of Kosova's Albanian history and of the expulsion and/or murder of hundreds of thousands of Kosovars under Dr. Vasya Cubrilovic's 1938 Expulsion plan that was first unveiled before the Serbian Acadamy of Arts and Sciences, because the latest Belgrade strategy is to link us with (and de-link themselves from!) the Nazis. After you read the State Dept. excerpt, checkout this link from a Serbian site that outlines their general strategy. It includes some twisted logic, twisted verbiage and carefully omits Dr. Cubrilovic and any other context at all... < http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/060.shtml > here's the excerpt: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE DAILY PRESS BRIEFING TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2005 (ON THE RECORD UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED) 12:50 p.m. EDT MR. BOUCHER: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We'll get out a statement later today, just to tell you that Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick will be attending the World Economic Forum later this week in Jordan. He'll be our representative for that meeting there and we'll get out a little more details on what he's going to do there, including the address that he will make. And that's just worthy of note, but glad to take your questions. QUESTION: Yes. Please tell us a little bit about evolving Kosovo strategy. I know Mr. Burns will testify tomorrow, but if you can give us a little bit of a preview. MR. BOUCHER: Yeah, I think, "evolving Kosovo strategy" is a good way to put it, frankly. The Under Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns will discuss the current situation in Kosovo and our vision for progress and peace there in testimony before the House International Relations Committee on May 18th. And then he will give a speech on the Balkans at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on May 19th. On these -- in these two speeches or statements, he will elaborate on our strategy for resolving Kosovo's future status. That has to be done consistent with the goals of promoting regional stability and protecting the rights of all of Kosovo's citizens, especially its minorities. This is a subject that we have discussed a lot with our friends and allies. As I think, some of you may remember about a month ago at the NATO meetings in Lithuania, Kosovo was a subject of discussion for the Secretary, with NATO Secretary General and with many of the members of NATO that she met there, as well as in the larger North Atlantic Council meetings. So this is something that we and our allies have been talking about how to move forward in Kosovo to have stability and peace there within a larger region. We think we're now entering a new stage in our policy towards the Balkans, one that will accelerate the region's integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions. Burns and other U.S. officials have been in close contact with our European partners, largely through the contact group, which gets together periodically and I think had a meeting last month as well. And also in touch with the United Nations, which plays a very important and prominent role in Kosovo in terms of achieving progress on the ground and also moving the vision forward. This summer, the United Nations will review Kosovo's progress on achieving standards for democracy and multi-ethnicity. If that review is positive, the international community will launch a diplomatic process to determine Kosovo's future status. Since that process at this point has yet to get under way, it would be inappropriate for us to announce anything about possible outcomes. QUESTION: But you would have to acknowledge, wouldn't you, that the wheels are turning toward Kosovo independence and the U.S., which often speaks in favor of territorial integrity all over the world -- there are some stunning exceptions, of course -- but you do, aren't you -- isn't the U.S. intentionally setting in motion or helping to set in motion independence of Kosovo? MR. BOUCHER: I wouldn't put it that way. I would -- and you'll see, I think, when Ambassador Burns speaks in more detail about this, there has been an evolving discussion about this, about standards and status, the two sides of the equation of what needs to be achieved with Kosovo. And I think there's an increasing feeling among many that we need to define these things in order to achieve -- we need to define them better in order to achieve a number of other goals and purposes. And so that is what we're moving to do. We're moving to set in motion a process that can resolve Kosovo's future status, but at this point we're not expressing an opinion on how that should come out. Sir. QUESTION: The Washington Post is talking about a plan. May we know some aspect of this plan? What is it about? MR. BOUCHER: The particular steps involved in moving forward and kind of some of the more in-depth understanding about how we would like to move forward will be conveyed and announced by Ambassador Burns in his testimony, in his speech. The general outlines of what we're trying to do, I think, are known, that we are working with the Contact Group and the UN, looking forward to a review of how standards have been met this summer and, if that review is positive, then move on to a process that can decide -- resolve the issue of status. That is what we're moving forward on now. We think we've reached a stage of moving forward in that fashion, but I'll leave it to Under Secretary Burns to define in more detail how we think we can move forward. QUESTION: Under Secretary Nicholas Burns has been a key player in engineering the administration's renewed in Kosovo due to his experience, as he says, with the American Embassy to Greece and NATO. How this experience has an impact on him about the new process which is going mathematically, Mr. Boucher, to destabilize the western Balkans with Albanians having the upper hand and the full support of the U.S., Great Britain and NATO? MR. BOUCHER: Well, you're making presumptions about outcomes. You're making presumptions about problems with the outcome. I think it's important to remember we are all looking for a peaceful region in the Balkans that can be integrated into Europe more broadly, that can be part of a peaceful continent. And we are looking to achieve both standards and status in order to sort of solidify that progress and solidify the progress that is being made in the region by many countries in moving towards Euro-Atlantic institutions. So I think the experience that Under Secretary Burns has at NATO and in Greece means that he does understand the region, he does understand how to work with people and does understand how it can -- how we can work with this region so that it fits well into Euro-Atlantic structures and institutions. QUESTION: Mr. Richard Holbrooke, a close friend to Nicholas Burns, stated in Washington Post, "No way U.S. troops to leave Kosovo." I'm quoting. He predicted that Kosovo will become independent, there is no way about that, there is no question about that, and Montenegro will separate from Serbia. Any comment on this multiple division of the Balkans in the early stage by the U.S. policy? What exactly you are trying to do in that area? MR. BOUCHER: We're not making predictions. We're setting up a process where the outcomes can be decided in a way that stabilizes the region, that helps the region as a whole find its destiny in Europe and Euro-Atlantic institutions. QUESTION: Mr. Boucher, to be honest with you, and I hate to make comparisons, my only weapon is, as I've told you many times in this room, history. And allow me to ask how the two gentlemen, Nicholas Burns and Richard Holbrooke, and besides with them, the State Department itself, ignore totally the fact that Kosovo, the so-called sarcoma-kaposis, was created by Adolf Hitler, transferred Albanians from the mainland to fight the Serbs in order to control southeast of Europe seeking an exodus via the port of Thessaloniki to the Aegean Sea. MR. BOUCHER: I don't think either -- first of all, Nicholas Burns and Richard Holbrooke are two different people so I wouldn't lump them together in terms of their views. Second of all, I don't think either one ignores history. I will speak for Under Secretary Burns, since he works for us, and the point here is to overcome that history, is to have a future that's different from the past, and not to -- not to repeat mistakes of the past but rather to move forward where this region can find peace and stability within our Euro-Atlantic framework that makes them part of the whole and not separate chunks to create problems. QUESTION: But since the end of the Second World War, America was trying to reverse whatever Hitler did, with only exception of Kosovo. Why? MR. BOUCHER: I don't think I would characterize U.S. policy as that way. QUESTION: You've referred (inaudible.) QUESTION: No, no, no -- QUESTION: You have several times. How would you describe the situation now and does it require some wrenching change? MR. BOUCHER: We have had -- QUESTION: I mean, things are fairly quiet. MR. BOUCHER: Fairly quiet, compared to what? I mean, we've seen violence this year. We have seen uncertainty this year. Compared to the war, yes. But I don't think we'd characterize the situation as stabilized. I don't think we would say that Serbs are finding a future in Kosovo or are able to return to their homes. I don't think we would say that the economic future of Kosovo is on track. There's a lot of things that need to be done there and a lot of things that as we achieve the standards can be aided by proceeding forward to resolve the status issues as well. QUESTION: I imagine a process creates some uncertainty in a nervous area -- this process that you say, you know, the end of which you're not predicting and nobody's predicting. But don't you think that this will trigger all sorts of population shifts and all sorts of -- as we've seen in the Balkans for so many, you know, what, through the last three administrations, you're rattling the cage. Why are you doing that? MR. BOUCHER: No. I just don't accept that. The situation is not a stable one or a good one now. We and the UN and others have been working to try to create a more stable situation through the achievement of what are called standards of democracy, of good governance, of openness, of welcoming to Serbs and others to move back to their homes. But that process can only go so far without defining the status of people who are involved in that situation want to know, in the end, what they're going to be living in or what they're going to be a part of. And we think it's -- as we achieve these standards, it's time to start taking up the issues of status as well. We'll see what the review produces this summer and whether that review produces a decision to go forward on some of these status questions as well. QUESTION: Is it your hope that the summer review does give a positive report so that you can start final status? MR. BOUCHER: Well, we would hope that the standards -- the standards of democracy and multiethnic -- multi-ethnicity for Kosovo would be achieved as soon as possible. So -- and if that is achieved, then the outcome of the review would be positive. So I think the emphasis is on achieving democracy and good governance and multi-ethnicity for Kosovo. If that is done as we want it to be done, as we all are working to have it -- to see it done, then the outcome could be positive in terms of moving on to another stage. Yeah. QUESTION: Switch the topic? Luis Posada Carriles -- I'm trying -- ____________________________________________________ NYC-L: A discussion and information list of the Albanian community in the New York City Metro Area. To post to the list: NYC-L at alb-net.com For more information: http://www.alb-net.com/mailman/listinfo/nyc-l -------------- next part -------------- HTML attachment scrubbed and removed From inahoxhazaloshnja at yahoo.com Wed May 18 15:07:10 2005 From: inahoxhazaloshnja at yahoo.com (Ina Hoxha Zaloshnja) Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 12:07:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [NYC-L] State Dept on Kosova In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20050518190710.30471.qmail@web53503.mail.yahoo.com> Hi Jeton, I was wondering where in the city do you live? there is a new initiative of albanians (from all over the balkans) here in the city called albanian professional network. If you have some time on friday at 7:00 pm, naac is letting us use its office where we are meeting to talk about some future projects. my number is 571-228-3013 if you want to give me a call and discuss it futher. sorry for this quickly written email. Jeton Ademaj wrote: === NYC-L: New York City Discussion Forum === hey people, there's alot here: The Washington Post reported yesterday that Nicholas Burns will announce a shift in US policy meant to re-assess efforts to resolve the final status of Bosnia and Kosova. < http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/16/AR2005051601440.html > This is an excerpt regarding Kosova from yesterday's US State Department briefing...it was the first item of the briefing. The Q&A that follows below includes an exchange with an unnamed reporter who accuses the USA of backing "Hitler's policy in the Balkans", claiming that Kosova gained an Albanian majority because of der Fuhrer. I think we need to remind everyone public and private of Kosova's Albanian history and of the expulsion and/or murder of hundreds of thousands of Kosovars under Dr. Vasya Cubrilovic's 1938 Expulsion plan that was first unveiled before the Serbian Acadamy of Arts and Sciences, because the latest Belgrade strategy is to link us with (and de-link themselves from!) the Nazis. After you read the State Dept. excerpt, checkout this link from a Serbian site that outlines their general strategy. It includes some twisted logic, twisted verbiage and carefully omits Dr. Cubrilovic and any other context at all... < http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/060.shtml > here's the excerpt: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE DAILY PRESS BRIEFING TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2005 (ON THE RECORD UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED) 12:50 p.m. EDT MR. BOUCHER: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We'll get out a statement later today, just to tell you that Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick will be attending the World Economic Forum later this week in Jordan. He'll be our representative for that meeting there and we'll get out a little more details on what he's going to do there, including the address that he will make. And that's just worthy of note, but glad to take your questions. QUESTION: Yes. Please tell us a little bit about evolving Kosovo strategy. I know Mr. Burns will testify tomorrow, but if you can give us a little bit of a preview. MR. BOUCHER: Yeah, I think, "evolving Kosovo strategy" is a good way to put it, frankly. The Under Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns will discuss the current situation in Kosovo and our vision for progress and peace there in testimony before the House International Relations Committee on May 18th. And then he will give a speech on the Balkans at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on May 19th. On these -- in these two speeches or statements, he will elaborate on our strategy for resolving Kosovo's future status. That has to be done consistent with the goals of promoting regional stability and protecting the rights of all of Kosovo's citizens, especially its minorities. This is a subject that we have discussed a lot with our friends and allies. As I think, some of you may remember about a month ago at the NATO meetings in Lithuania, Kosovo was a subject of discussion for the Secretary, with NATO Secretary General and with many of the members of NATO that she met there, as well as in the larger North Atlantic Council meetings. So this is something that we and our allies have been talking about how to move forward in Kosovo to have stability and peace there within a larger region. We think we're now entering a new stage in our policy towards the Balkans, one that will accelerate the region's integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions. Burns and other U.S. officials have been in close contact with our European partners, largely through the contact group, which gets together periodically and I think had a meeting last month as well. And also in touch with the United Nations, which plays a very important and prominent role in Kosovo in terms of achieving progress on the ground and also moving the vision forward. This summer, the United Nations will review Kosovo's progress on achieving standards for democracy and multi-ethnicity. If that review is positive, the international community will launch a diplomatic process to determine Kosovo's future status. Since that process at this point has yet to get under way, it would be inappropriate for us to announce anything about possible outcomes. QUESTION: But you would have to acknowledge, wouldn't you, that the wheels are turning toward Kosovo independence and the U.S., which often speaks in favor of territorial integrity all over the world -- there are some stunning exceptions, of course -- but you do, aren't you -- isn't the U.S. intentionally setting in motion or helping to set in motion independence of Kosovo? MR. BOUCHER: I wouldn't put it that way. I would -- and you'll see, I think, when Ambassador Burns speaks in more detail about this, there has been an evolving discussion about this, about standards and status, the two sides of the equation of what needs to be achieved with Kosovo. And I think there's an increasing feeling among many that we need to define these things in order to achieve -- we need to define them better in order to achieve a number of other goals and purposes. And so that is what we're moving to do. We're moving to set in motion a process that can resolve Kosovo's future status, but at this point we're not expressing an opinion on how that should come out. Sir. QUESTION: The Washington Post is talking about a plan. May we know some aspect of this plan? What is it about? MR. BOUCHER: The particular steps involved in moving forward and kind of some of the more in-depth understanding about how we would like to move forward will be conveyed and announced by Ambassador Burns in his testimony, in his speech. The general outlines of what we're trying to do, I think, are known, that we are working with the Contact Group and the UN, looking forward to a review of how standards have been met this summer and, if that review is positive, then move on to a process that can decide -- resolve the issue of status. That is what we're moving forward on now. We think we've reached a stage of moving forward in that fashion, but I'll leave it to Under Secretary Burns to define in more detail how we think we can move forward. QUESTION: Under Secretary Nicholas Burns has been a key player in engineering the administration's renewed in Kosovo due to his experience, as he says, with the American Embassy to Greece and NATO. How this experience has an impact on him about the new process which is going mathematically, Mr. Boucher, to destabilize the western Balkans with Albanians having the upper hand and the full support of the U.S., Great Britain and NATO? MR. BOUCHER: Well, you're making presumptions about outcomes. You're making presumptions about problems with the outcome. I think it's important to remember we are all looking for a peaceful region in the Balkans that can be integrated into Europe more broadly, that can be part of a peaceful continent. And we are looking to achieve both standards and status in order to sort of solidify that progress and solidify the progress that is being made in the region by many countries in moving towards Euro-Atlantic institutions. So I think the experience that Under Secretary Burns has at NATO and in Greece means that he does understand the region, he does understand how to work with people and does understand how it can -- how we can work with this region so that it fits well into Euro-Atlantic structures and institutions. QUESTION: Mr. Richard Holbrooke, a close friend to Nicholas Burns, stated in Washington Post, "No way U.S. troops to leave Kosovo." I'm quoting. He predicted that Kosovo will become independent, there is no way about that, there is no question about that, and Montenegro will separate from Serbia. Any comment on this multiple division of the Balkans in the early stage by the U.S. policy? What exactly you are trying to do in that area? MR. BOUCHER: We're not making predictions. We're setting up a process where the outcomes can be decided in a way that stabilizes the region, that helps the region as a whole find its destiny in Europe and Euro-Atlantic institutions. QUESTION: Mr. Boucher, to be honest with you, and I hate to make comparisons, my only weapon is, as I've told you many times in this room, history. And allow me to ask how the two gentlemen, Nicholas Burns and Richard Holbrooke, and besides with them, the State Department itself, ignore totally the fact that Kosovo, the so-called sarcoma-kaposis, was created by Adolf Hitler, transferred Albanians from the mainland to fight the Serbs in order to control southeast of Europe seeking an exodus via the port of Thessaloniki to the Aegean Sea. MR. BOUCHER: I don't think either -- first of all, Nicholas Burns and Richard Holbrooke are two different people so I wouldn't lump them together in terms of their views. Second of all, I don't think either one ignores history. I will speak for Under Secretary Burns, since he works for us, and the point here is to overcome that history, is to have a future that's different from the past, and not to -- not to repeat mistakes of the past but rather to move forward where this region can find peace and stability within our Euro-Atlantic framework that makes them part of the whole and not separate chunks to create problems. QUESTION: But since the end of the Second World War, America was trying to reverse whatever Hitler did, with only exception of Kosovo. Why? MR. BOUCHER: I don't think I would characterize U.S. policy as that way. QUESTION: You've referred (inaudible.) QUESTION: No, no, no -- QUESTION: You have several times. How would you describe the situation now and does it require some wrenching change? MR. BOUCHER: We have had -- QUESTION: I mean, things are fairly quiet. MR. BOUCHER: Fairly quiet, compared to what? I mean, we've seen violence this year. We have seen uncertainty this year. Compared to the war, yes. But I don't think we'd characterize the situation as stabilized. I don't think we would say that Serbs are finding a future in Kosovo or are able to return to their homes. I don't think we would say that the economic future of Kosovo is on track. There's a lot of things that need to be done there and a lot of things that as we achieve the standards can be aided by proceeding forward to resolve the status issues as well. QUESTION: I imagine a process creates some uncertainty in a nervous area -- this process that you say, you know, the end of which you're not predicting and nobody's predicting. But don't you think that this will trigger all sorts of population shifts and all sorts of -- as we've seen in the Balkans for so many, you know, what, through the last three administrations, you're rattling the cage. Why are you doing that? MR. BOUCHER: No. I just don't accept that. The situation is not a stable one or a good one now. We and the UN and others have been working to try to create a more stable situation through the achievement of what are called standards of democracy, of good governance, of openness, of welcoming to Serbs and others to move back to their homes. But that process can only go so far without defining the status of people who are involved in that situation want to know, in the end, what they're going to be living in or what they're going to be a part of. And we think it's -- as we achieve these standards, it's time to start taking up the issues of status as well. We'll see what the review produces this summer and whether that review produces a decision to go forward on some of these status questions as well. QUESTION: Is it your hope that the summer review does give a positive report so that you can start final status? MR. BOUCHER: Well, we would hope that the standards -- the standards of democracy and multiethnic -- multi-ethnicity for Kosovo would be achieved as soon as possible. So -- and if that is achieved, then the outcome of the review would be positive. So I think the emphasis is on achieving democracy and good governance and multi-ethnicity for Kosovo. If that is done as we want it to be done, as we all are working to have it -- to see it done, then the outcome could be positive in terms of moving on to another stage. Yeah. QUESTION: Switch the topic? Luis Posada Carriles -- I'm trying -- ____________________________________________________ NYC-L: A discussion and information list of the Albanian community in the New York City Metro Area. To post to the list: NYC-L at alb-net.com For more information: http://www.alb-net.com/mailman/listinfo/nyc-l --------------------------------- Discover Yahoo! Use Yahoo! to plan a weekend, have fun online & more. Check it out! -------------- next part -------------- HTML attachment scrubbed and removed From SimonVukel at aol.com Wed May 18 22:30:50 2005 From: SimonVukel at aol.com (SimonVukel at aol.com) Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 22:30:50 EDT Subject: [NYC-L] State Dept on Kosova Message-ID: <60.55d6e12c.2fbd545a@aol.com> Interesting. Boucher refers to Burns' speech at the Wilson Center on Thursday... looks like that will be a live webcast... watch it here at 2:30 EST on Thursday: _http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.event_summary&event_id=122495_ (http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.event_summary&event_id=122495) -------------- next part -------------- HTML attachment scrubbed and removed From SimonVukel at aol.com Wed May 18 23:30:18 2005 From: SimonVukel at aol.com (SimonVukel at aol.com) Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 23:30:18 EDT Subject: [NYC-L] State Dept on Kosova Message-ID: <14.45893e6e.2fbd624a@aol.com> Here is Burns' testimony today before the House Committee on Intnl Relations... _http://www.state.gov/p/2005/46471.htm_ (http://www.state.gov/p/2005/46471.htm) -------------- next part -------------- HTML attachment scrubbed and removed From narcissist42 at yahoo.com Tue May 24 17:40:04 2005 From: narcissist42 at yahoo.com (Narcissiste) Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 14:40:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [NYC-L] infor per ervin hatibin Message-ID: <20050524214004.98209.qmail@web31307.mail.mud.yahoo.com> ka ndonjeri/a info kontakti si email address apo telefon per Ervin Hatibin? faleminderit. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new Resources site! -------------- next part -------------- HTML attachment scrubbed and removed From jeton at hotmail.com Sat May 28 04:14:36 2005 From: jeton at hotmail.com (Jeton Ademaj) Date: Sat, 28 May 2005 04:14:36 -0400 Subject: [NYC-L] fw: State Outlines U.S.---> Kosovo Message-ID: hey all use this especially for the links, but transcripts never hurt. Date: Fri, 27 May 2005 20:45:05 -0400 From: "U.S. Dept of State List Manager" Subject: State's English Outlines for Congress U.S. Policy on Kosovo State's English Outlines for Congress U.S. Policy on Kosovo (Human rights remain priority, director for South Central European Affairs says) (720) By Jeffrey Thomas Washington File Staff Writer Washington -- In the coming months, a process might be launched to determine Kosovo?s future status. In this new phase, the promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms would remain at the forefront of U.S. policy, the State Department?s Charles English told a congressional hearing May 25. English, the director for South Central European affairs at the State Department, was testifying at a hearing of the U.S. Helsinki Commission on the future of human rights in Kosovo. ?We cannot achieve a lasting settlement in Kosovo until structures, institutions and habits that protect the rights and liberties of all of the people of Kosovo are in place,? he told the commission, which has held numerous hearings on the situation in Kosovo since the 1990s. ?Principles of democracy and multi-ethnicity -- the cornerstones of our overall Balkans policy for over a decade -- will continue to guide us.? English referred repeatedly in his remarks to testimony given May 18 by Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns before the House Committee on International Relations. Burns said the Bush administration believes that 2005 is a ?year of decision? for Kosovo. He described a process whereby the United Nations would this summer launch a comprehensive review of Kosovo's progress in achieving certain basic human-rights and democratization benchmarks. If that review is positive, a process to determine Kosovo's future status will then be launched. (See related article (http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2005&m m=May&x=200505181814331CJsamohT0.8833124&t=eur/eur-latest.html).) Burns spoke more broadly about the Balkans in a major policy speech on May 19, citing the effort by the United States, the United Nations and partners in Europe to launch a process to determine the future status of Kosovo as well as to encourage political and economic reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina and to bring war crimes indictees before the Hague tribunal. (See related article (http://usinfo.state.gov/eur/Archive/2005/May/20-375965.html).) English told the Helsinki Commission that the human rights challenges in Kosovo remain significant. Minority communities in particular ?continue to face extraordinary obstacles to creating a sustainable life for themselves,? he said, citing such problems as discrimination, harassment, uneven access to public services, limited freedom of movement, and fears for personal safety. The violence that erupted in March 2004 showed how much work Kosovo needs to do to develop into a free and pluralistic society, English said. ?The primary responsibility for this lies with Kosovo's majority Albanian community,? he said. ?Until that community adequately protects and guarantees the rights of its minority communities, the pace of Kosovo's Euro-Atlantic integration will suffer.? English assured the commission that, even though many details of the process to determine Kosovo's future political status remain to be elaborated, ?[W]e have already said that the protection of human rights must be at the core of any status settlement. We have said that this settlement must be based on multi-ethnicity and respect the rights of all citizens. We also envision effective constitutional guarantees to ensure the protection of minorities, as well as safeguards for the protection of cultural and religious heritage.? Even after Kosovo's status is resolved, the work to defend human rights and democracy must continue and accelerate, English said, ?if Kosovo is to meet the European Union's high standards for membership. ?The people of Kosovo -- minority and majority alike -- must never stop working to ensure that institutions are transparent, that the political culture is inclusive and that laws are just. This ongoing commitment to democracy, based on the rule of law, is the most basic criterion for joining the Euro-Atlantic community and calling oneself a free, just society. The United States will continue to support Kosovo's efforts to achieve this objective.? Soren Jessen-Petersen, the special representative of the U.N. Secretary-General and head of the U.N. Mission in Kosovo, also testified at the hearing. The unofficial transcript (http://www.csce.gov/index.cfm?Fuseaction=ContentRecords.ViewDetail&Content tRecord_id=347&Region_id=0&Issue_id=0&ContentType=H) of Charles English?s statement is available on the U.S. Helsinki Commission Web site. The U.S. Helsinki Commission, a U.S. government agency, monitors progress on the implementation of the 1975 Helsinki Accords. The commission consists of nine members from the United States Senate, nine from the House of Representatives, and one member each from the departments of State, Defense and Commerce. (The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov) NNNN From ngapeja at rocketmail.com Sat May 28 12:34:15 2005 From: ngapeja at rocketmail.com (Isa Blumi) Date: Sat, 28 May 2005 09:34:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [NYC-L] A Community in remission or do I smell submission? Message-ID: <20050528163415.50420.qmail@web51706.mail.yahoo.com> Recent exchanges between an unidentified "journalist" and a US State Department (USSD) spokesperson at the daily press briefings were interesting on a number of levels. The charge that the US govt. neglects to acknowledge that Kosova is a creation of Hitler dominated the exchange. The context of the assertions was an explaination of the US position on the up-coming discussions on Kosova's final status. While those of us who read the transcripts may have been annoyed and/or bemused, it should not so easily be dismissed. I am concerned that the nonsense uttered in public is a damming indictment of our community/communities' utter failure to learn from our past Public relations disasters. While we have heard versions of this line of argument before--Albanians in Kosova are either Albanized Serbs or were imported from Albania to change the region's population--that such arguments have been progressivly reduced to sheer ahistorical nonsense troubles me. Our adversaries no longer use history to make historical arguments, largely because their audience no longer knows the history of the region. In the past, propaganda from Athens/Belgrade and respective diasporas actually used sophisticated historical arguments to make their claims. For a while it was argued that the Ottoman Empire was responsible for the population distribution of the contested regions of the Balkans. For instance, Serbs, trying to explain the vast territorial coverage of Albanian communities suggested the it was Ottoman policy since the 18th century to colonize the Balkans with Albanians. Setting aside the statistical, archeological and ethnographic inconsistancies in these arguments, they nevertheless reveal something about the level of sophistication of the targeted audience. Serbs and Greeks today think much differently of their audience. By evoking the Ottoman Empire, propagandists and lobbyists once had to convince an audience far more familiar with the region's past. It must be disturbing to all of us that the arguments have evolved towards the ahistorical, and more importantly, the time line has been moved forward. We are no longer talking about Medieval times, or the role of the Ottoman Empire, but World War II (or worse still, the 1990s). One can see a progression here that probably reflects the accurate perception that the audience is becoming less and less knowledgeable of the region's past and more and more vulnerable to the use of key phrases (Islamic Fundamentalism, Fascist policies, narco-terrorism, ethnic-cleansing) or the evocation of assertions that are simply ahistorical. First it was the Austrians and Bulgarians, during their Occupation in World War I that populated Macedonia/Kosova with Albanians. Later, as knowledge (interest) of the first world war faded, the timeline for Albanian invasion of Kosova moved to World War II. It was the Italians and now Hitler who colonized Kosova with Albanians. For this unidentified journalist to even suggest that Kosova is a creation of Hitler, and not be immediately laughed out of the press room is scary business. This all suggests Serbs/Greeks know their audience and they know this audience is getting less and less information about the region's past and are vulnerable. We must be terrified by the fact that the USSD's spokesperson was utterly incapable of answering the questions/statements made by the unidentified journalist in the press corps. (how such a hack ever got a press pass is another question that needs to be answered). Unfortunately, by failing to responding to the sheer nonesense of the questions/statements being stated in this public forum, the transcripts will forever give credence to the claim that Hitler did indeed create Kosova. The response from our communities should have been immediate. We should have had pressured the USSD to make a public statement, for the record, that immediately discounts the premise of the question. USSD spokespersons always do this, clarifying a point from an earlier misstatement. "The State Department and the Bush administration does not accept the premise of the question asked the other day..." For the USSD spokesperson to at least on two seperate confrontations, fail to call out the inaccurate premise of the question has caused great damage, not only now but in the future. The notion of Hitler's role is now on the table, in the minds of many involved in deciding Kosova's future. That the Serbs have identified a progressively vulnerable State department who know next to nothing about the region's history should have sent alarm bells throughout our communities around the world. I am not sure there has been much a of response other than people sending each other copies of the transcripts...and my concern here is that we are all focusing on the Serb/Greek journalist rather than on what the shameful/inept performance on the part of the USSD spokesperson suggests. The US State Departmet is simply not educated about the region. They are not armed with a vocabulary to respond to such tactics. This all suggests that Albanian Americans have failed in the strategically most important component of the struggle with Greece/Serbia. It is stunning after so many years of PR failures, that we Albanians are still incapable of putting together a decent lobby in DC/Brussels. I suspect the problem continues to be individuals who, despite their obvious inadequancies, refuse to hand over their considerable PR resources to more capable people. We have so many talented, educated, articulate (IN ENGLISH!!!) young people who need to be organized and employeed in a collective effort to address the serious knowledge deficit. Instead, we waste our limited resources on expensive and largely counterproductive trophies. That the LDK, PDK and God knows who else have hired expensive DC lobbist does nothing for us. These firms know even less than the young kids being placed at the Kosova/Albania desks of the State Department. Do we need any better proof of this than the last public statements uttered in Rugova's name in the US press? What garbage. If that is what hundreds of thousands of dollars in consultant fees buys, we are in big trouble. It is embarrassing and only undermines any attempt by hard-working outfits like KAN in Prishtina to actually do something productive locally. Kosova is out of the mainstream media and not a topic of discussion in the DC/London/Berlin think tank circuit for the simple fact that we are wasting our time and money on PR firms who know nothing about the region and the audience who will make a difference. That the fiasco of the UN administrated Kosovo has not been exposed, that the mass graves, the foot-dragging and the continued sabotage of Belgrade/Athens has not become headline news is a damming indictment of our PR failures. How can some PR firm, staffed by very expensive Americans help Albanians fight their battle of vocabulary insertion with Serbs/Greeks? The fact that they have not identified the strategic opportunities and brought the struggle to the strategic battlefields of the State Department, seminar circuit or press briefings is an outrage. Why is there not someone in the press corp asking leading questionse very day at the USSD press briefings? Why has no one yet hired an articulate, well-educated and tough Albanian-American to counter the daily bombardment coming out of the mouth of this unnamed Journalist? This guy frequents all the press briefings, meets other journalists and is often at the DC seminars that inform policy makers and their staffs. He is putting words in peoples' mouths and is giving them history lessons. It is time to stop being impressed by our associations with members of the Senate or House (keep the autographed pictures on your walls if you must) and get people who know how to talk about the history of the region, its current problems and future to live and breath DC. This small cadre must talk with journalists at the USSD press briefings, attend the public seminars/think tank discussions and for God's sake, we need some people who will befriend the young kids working at the State Department regional desks. It should be a scandal to all of us that the US has abandoned the region to the EU and use the Albania and Kosova desks as an opportunity to train just-out-of-college kids whose ambitions are limited to career advancement. Instead of bemoaning this fact, however, we must see this as an opportunity. These kids know nothing of Kosova/Albania and are ideal (and therefore essential) targets for indoctrination. I use these words for a reason because that is exactly what the unnamed journalist at USSD press briefings is doing. Our enemies are putting words in the mouths of State Department staff where there are none to begin with. It is a necessary investment to send bright, educated young Albanians to operate in the young professional circuit of DC. Making friends and educating the ambitious hoards that go to work in DC is essential for short term and long term success. The fact that we waste millions on PR firms who are staffed by these uninformed American-educated lawyers/interns just makes things worse. Clearly, the level of the propaganda coming from our adversaries/enemies has been dumbed down because their audience is dumber. This is what is dangerous. It is clear little has changed among the American Albanians since the 1990s in respect to propaganda. There are still those patriarchs who refuse to cede decision-making powers to those who are energetic and educated to lead an effective campaign. Likewise, there is a failure to understand that we are the only ones who can introduce a lexicon that will be used in discussions about Kosova/Albania. Hitler creating Kosova is now in the back of peoples' minds when Kosova comes up; doubt, confusion has set in. I promise that the US Left, especially those who w(h)orship Chomsky et al. will be using this argument soon. It is our task to put in the mouths of the audience a vocabulary that accurately challenges the crap that comes from our enemy's mouths. Let us enable that pathetic USSD to stand up to Serb/Greek propagandist who feel they are at liberty to get even more outrageously ahistorical. Who knows, maybe they will be able to reduce the argument back to Albanians live in trees and have tails. Let us raise the level of the discussion, let us return history to the equation. Respectfully, Isa Blumi, PhD. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From mentor at alb-net.com Sat May 28 19:13:15 2005 From: mentor at alb-net.com (Mentor Cana) Date: Sat, 28 May 2005 19:13:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYC-L] A Community in remission or do I smell submission? In-Reply-To: <20050528163415.50420.qmail@web51706.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20050528163415.50420.qmail@web51706.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Dear Isa, I carefully read this e-mail and needless to say I agree with your assessment of the situation. Unfortunately, it is indeed true that MUCH more can be done and it is not done in respects to the advocacy and the watchdog function in the US and Western Europe. When hiring PR firms and organizing lobby groups it is often forgotten that these non-Albanian PR firms and the non-Albanian lobby groups working on behalf of the Albanian(s)/Kosova cause put the issues in the background of a global socio-political-economic framework, and other issues that do not necessarily concerned with the Albanian cause as the final result. Thus, as a result the 'Albanian cause' usually becomes one piece of the puzzle that is made to fit, often sacrificed, without the immediate concern of the Albanian people and the Albanian cause. This is not to say that there are no PR firms and lobby groups that can deliver. There certainly are. However, the goals and the means to achieving these goals suggested by the PR firms do not necessarily mean 'good' for the Albanians. It is certainly possible to organize a watchdog and advocacy effort serving the Albanian cause, especially to address the point you mention in your e-mail to rebuff the Serb/Green propaganda of falsehood. That such activity can be successful it was demonstrated during the Kosova war with (with limited scope) the cooperative activities of various independently minded Albanians and friends of Albanians through the use of the Internet and other traditional means of communication. Lesson learn: such activity is possible when individuals get organized and work together to correct historical mistakes, respond to false articles and other perverted media discourses, alert to books full of falsehood, etc., all of this without the political or sectarian cloud. Short, the false Serb/Greek propaganda needs to be dealt with for the sake of revealing the historical facts. Sincerely, Mentor On Sat, 28 May 2005, at 09:34 -0700, Isa Blumi wrote: > === NYC-L: New York City Discussion Forum === > > Recent exchanges between an unidentified "journalist" > and a US State Department (USSD) spokesperson at the > daily press briefings were interesting on a number of > levels. > > The charge that the US govt. neglects to acknowledge > that Kosova is a creation of Hitler dominated the > exchange. The context of the assertions was an > explaination of the US position on the up-coming > discussions on Kosova's final status. While those of > us who read the transcripts may have been annoyed > and/or bemused, it should not so easily be dismissed. > > I am concerned that the nonsense uttered in public is > a damming indictment of our community/communities' > utter failure to learn from our past Public relations > disasters. While we have heard versions of this line > of argument before--Albanians in Kosova are either > Albanized Serbs or were imported from Albania to > change the region's population--that such arguments > have been progressivly reduced to sheer ahistorical > nonsense troubles me. Our adversaries no longer use > history to make historical arguments, largely because > their audience no longer knows the history of the > region. > > In the past, propaganda from Athens/Belgrade and > respective diasporas actually used sophisticated > historical arguments to make their claims. For a while > it was argued that the Ottoman Empire was responsible > for the population distribution of the contested > regions of the Balkans. For instance, Serbs, trying to > explain the vast territorial coverage of Albanian > communities suggested the it was Ottoman policy since > the 18th century to colonize the Balkans with > Albanians. Setting aside the statistical, > archeological and ethnographic inconsistancies in > these arguments, they nevertheless reveal something > about the level of sophistication of the targeted > audience. Serbs and Greeks today think much > differently of their audience. > > By evoking the Ottoman Empire, propagandists and > lobbyists once had to convince an audience far more > familiar with the region's past. It must be disturbing > to all of us that the arguments have evolved towards > the ahistorical, and more importantly, the time line > has been moved forward. We are no longer talking about > Medieval times, or the role of the Ottoman Empire, but > World War II (or worse still, the 1990s). > > One can see a progression here that probably reflects > the accurate perception that the audience is becoming > less and less knowledgeable of the region's past and > more and more vulnerable to the use of key phrases > (Islamic Fundamentalism, Fascist policies, > narco-terrorism, ethnic-cleansing) or the evocation of > assertions that are simply ahistorical. First it was > the Austrians and Bulgarians, during their Occupation > in World War I that populated Macedonia/Kosova with > Albanians. Later, as knowledge (interest) of the first > world war faded, the timeline for Albanian invasion of > Kosova moved to World War II. It was the Italians and > now Hitler who colonized Kosova with Albanians. > > For this unidentified journalist to even suggest that > Kosova is a creation of Hitler, and not be immediately > laughed out of the press room is scary business. This > all suggests Serbs/Greeks know their audience and they > know this audience is getting less and less > information about the region's past and are > vulnerable. We must be terrified by the fact that the > USSD's spokesperson was utterly incapable of answering > the questions/statements made by the unidentified > journalist in the press corps. (how such a hack ever > got a press pass is another question that needs to be > answered). Unfortunately, by failing to responding to > the sheer nonesense of the questions/statements being > stated in this public forum, the transcripts will > forever give credence to the claim that Hitler did > indeed create Kosova. > > The response from our communities should have been > immediate. We should have had pressured the USSD to > make a public statement, for the record, that > immediately discounts the premise of the question. > USSD spokespersons always do this, clarifying a point > from an earlier misstatement. "The State Department > and the Bush administration does not accept the > premise of the question asked the other day..." For > the USSD spokesperson to at least on two seperate > confrontations, fail to call out the inaccurate > premise of the question has caused great damage, not > only now but in the future. The notion of Hitler's > role is now on the table, in the minds of many > involved in deciding Kosova's future. > > That the Serbs have identified a progressively > vulnerable State department who know next to nothing > about the region's history should have sent alarm > bells throughout our communities around the world. > > I am not sure there has been much a of response other > than people sending each other copies of the > transcripts...and my concern here is that we are all > focusing on the Serb/Greek journalist rather than on > what the shameful/inept performance on the part of the > USSD spokesperson suggests. The US State Departmet is > simply not educated about the region. They are not > armed with a vocabulary to respond to such tactics. > > This all suggests that Albanian Americans have failed > in the strategically most important component of the > struggle with Greece/Serbia. > > It is stunning after so many years of PR failures, > that we Albanians are still incapable of putting > together a decent lobby in DC/Brussels. I suspect the > problem continues to be individuals who, despite their > obvious inadequancies, refuse to hand over their > considerable PR resources to more capable people. We > have so many talented, educated, articulate (IN > ENGLISH!!!) young people who need to be organized and > employeed in a collective effort to address the > serious knowledge deficit. Instead, we waste our > limited resources on expensive and largely > counterproductive trophies. > > That the LDK, PDK and God knows who else have hired > expensive DC lobbist does nothing for us. These firms > know even less than the young kids being placed at the > Kosova/Albania desks of the State Department. Do we > need any better proof of this than the last public > statements uttered in Rugova's name in the US press? > What garbage. If that is what hundreds of thousands of > dollars in consultant fees buys, we are in big > trouble. It is embarrassing and only undermines any > attempt by hard-working outfits like KAN in Prishtina > to actually do something productive locally. Kosova is > out of the mainstream media and not a topic of > discussion in the DC/London/Berlin think tank circuit > for the simple fact that we are wasting our time and > money on PR firms who know nothing about the region > and the audience who will make a difference. That the > fiasco of the UN administrated Kosovo has not been > exposed, that the mass graves, the foot-dragging and > the continued sabotage of Belgrade/Athens has not > become headline news is a damming indictment of our PR > failures. > > How can some PR firm, staffed by very expensive > Americans help Albanians fight their battle of > vocabulary insertion with Serbs/Greeks? The fact that > they have not identified the strategic opportunities > and brought the struggle to the strategic battlefields > of the State Department, seminar circuit or press > briefings is an outrage. > > Why is there not someone in the press corp asking > leading questionse very day at the USSD press > briefings? Why has no one yet hired an articulate, > well-educated and tough Albanian-American to counter > the daily bombardment coming out of the mouth of this > unnamed Journalist? This guy frequents all the press > briefings, meets other journalists and is often at the > DC seminars that inform policy makers and their > staffs. He is putting words in peoples' mouths and is > giving them history lessons. > > It is time to stop being impressed by our associations > with members of the Senate or House (keep the > autographed pictures on your walls if you must) and > get people who know how to talk about the history of > the region, its current problems and future to live > and breath DC. This small cadre must talk with > journalists at the USSD press briefings, attend the > public seminars/think tank discussions and for God's > sake, we need some people who will befriend the young > kids working at the State Department regional desks. > > It should be a scandal to all of us that the US has > abandoned the region to the EU and use the Albania and > Kosova desks as an opportunity to train > just-out-of-college kids whose ambitions are limited > to career advancement. Instead of bemoaning this fact, > however, we must see this as an opportunity. These > kids know nothing of Kosova/Albania and are ideal (and > therefore essential) targets for indoctrination. I use > these words for a reason because that is exactly what > the unnamed journalist at USSD press briefings is > doing. Our enemies are putting words in the mouths of > State Department staff where there are none to begin > with. It is a necessary investment to send bright, > educated young Albanians to operate in the young > professional circuit of DC. Making friends and > educating the ambitious hoards that go to work in DC > is essential for short term and long term success. The > fact that we waste millions on PR firms who are > staffed by these uninformed American-educated > lawyers/interns just makes things worse. Clearly, the > level of the propaganda coming from our > adversaries/enemies has been dumbed down because their > audience is dumber. This is what is dangerous. > > It is clear little has changed among the American > Albanians since the 1990s in respect to propaganda. > There are still those patriarchs who refuse to cede > decision-making powers to those who are energetic and > educated to lead an effective campaign. Likewise, > there is a failure to understand that we are the only > ones who can introduce a lexicon that will be used in > discussions about Kosova/Albania. Hitler creating > Kosova is now in the back of peoples' minds when > Kosova comes up; doubt, confusion has set in. I > promise that the US Left, especially those who > w(h)orship Chomsky et al. will be using this argument > soon. It is our task to put in the mouths of the > audience a vocabulary that accurately challenges the > crap that comes from our enemy's mouths. Let us enable > that pathetic USSD to stand up to Serb/Greek > propagandist who feel they are at liberty to get even > more outrageously ahistorical. Who knows, maybe they > will be able to reduce the argument back to Albanians > live in trees and have tails. Let us raise the level > of the discussion, let us return history to the > equation. > > Respectfully, > > Isa Blumi, PhD. > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around > http://mail.yahoo.com > ____________________________________________________ > NYC-L: A discussion and information list of the > Albanian community in the New York City Metro Area. > To post to the list: NYC-L at alb-net.com > For more information: http://www.alb-net.com/mailman/listinfo/nyc-l > From ngapeja at rocketmail.com Sat May 28 22:02:08 2005 From: ngapeja at rocketmail.com (Isa Blumi) Date: Sat, 28 May 2005 19:02:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [NYC-L] Long time In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20050529020208.95167.qmail@web51708.mail.yahoo.com> It's been a while Mentor, Hope you are thriving. Where are you by the way? A well stated response to my rant; although ceding authority and creative liberty to ANY US PR firm confuses marketing theory with realities. The story cannot be put into sound-bit-sized phrases and it cannot rely on the currents of power. When a PR is hired, it must be dedicated to the cause. Current PR firms have much bigger clients who are priorities. Any ways, pissing in the wind as far as I am concerned. If you are in NYC, I will be down on June 12,13 and maybe 14 to pick my wife up from the airport. Perhaps there is time for a meeting? Best, Isa --- Mentor Cana wrote: > === NYC-L: New York City Discussion Forum > === > > Dear Isa, > > I carefully read this e-mail and needless to say I > agree with your > assessment of the situation. Unfortunately, it is > indeed true that MUCH more > can be done and it is not done in respects to the > advocacy and the watchdog > function in the US and Western Europe. > > When hiring PR firms and organizing lobby groups it > is often forgotten > that these non-Albanian PR firms and the > non-Albanian lobby groups working > on behalf of the Albanian(s)/Kosova cause put the > issues in the background > of a global socio-political-economic framework, and > other issues that do > not necessarily concerned with the Albanian cause as > the final result. > Thus, as a result the 'Albanian cause' usually > becomes one piece of the > puzzle that is made to fit, often sacrificed, > without the immediate concern > of the Albanian people and the Albanian cause. > > This is not to say that there are no PR firms and > lobby groups that can > deliver. There certainly are. However, the goals and > the means to > achieving these goals suggested by the PR firms do > not necessarily mean > 'good' for the Albanians. > > It is certainly possible to organize a watchdog and > advocacy effort > serving the Albanian cause, especially to address > the point you mention > in your e-mail to rebuff the Serb/Green propaganda > of falsehood. That such > activity can be successful it was demonstrated > during the Kosova war with > (with limited scope) the cooperative activities of > various independently > minded Albanians and friends of Albanians through > the use of the Internet > and other traditional means of communication. Lesson > learn: such activity > is possible when individuals get organized and work > together to correct > historical mistakes, respond to false articles and > other perverted media > discourses, alert to books full of falsehood, etc., > all of this without the > political or sectarian cloud. Short, the false > Serb/Greek propaganda > needs to be dealt with for the sake of revealing the > historical facts. > > Sincerely, > Mentor > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From mentor at alb-net.com Sat May 28 23:06:24 2005 From: mentor at alb-net.com (Mentor Cana) Date: Sat, 28 May 2005 23:06:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYC-L] A Community in remission or do I smell submission? In-Reply-To: <429923B6.3020505@columbia.edu> References: <20050528163415.50420.qmail@web51706.mail.yahoo.com> <429923B6.3020505@columbia.edu> Message-ID: Dear Erkanda, My e-mail was no a rambling and expectation that somebody else would do the work that needs to be done. It was a brief analysis about the nature of the PR firms and lobby groups that do not necessarily have the Albanian cause as their priority, even when they are paid to do so. To your point that something needs to be done, I agree. Can we do it? Sure we can. Can we get organized to start some type of a watchdog and advocacy group for various Albanian causes? Yes. But, my believe is that such organizing has to be first and foremost apolitical, as I described in the previous e-mail. Any ideas how can we proceed further? Sincerely, Mentor From jeton at hotmail.com Sun May 29 01:00:46 2005 From: jeton at hotmail.com (Jeton Ademaj) Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 01:00:46 -0400 Subject: [NYC-L] submissions or emissions? Message-ID: hey folks why not lobby as many albo fat cats as possible into taking out a full-page ad in the NYTimes, WashPost Or WSJ...preferably for a non-holiday monday or tuesday and preferably in the their A or primary section ? as for the State transcript with the Hitler agit-prop, it's not at all clear that the questioner is even taken seriously. it's certainly to our disadvantage that we don't have a voice asking contrasting questions and lobbying State to denounce the underlying premise of a given question, but i would suggest a more sophisticated touch than simply planting someone to play call-and-response with the latest serb/greek wacko to gain a State press pass. i've heard far too many Albanians focus on reaching "people who matter"...well frankly we need direct public outreach. State will not stick its neck out to fight with this or that chauvinist if the propaganda victims in question (Albs) are not independently conducting public outreach. As for K-desk officers, it's reductionist to call them naive careerists, and i doubt holding such a view will make one more charismatic or influential to them. one is more likely to end up being tuned out. it's more important to be approachable and *credible* than merely combative..save THAt for the PUBLIC outreach. the sheer hysteria and smarmy mendacity of Serbian/Greek/American-Stalinist "journalists" has been a great gift to Albanians for the last decade, even if we too often fail to seize the advantage. op-eds and letters to newspapers and fullpage ads (and a focus on how Albanian interests intersect with American interests..."bridge to the Islamic world/balkan stability" etc etc) are all useful elements of what needs to be a broader outreach on our part. we need to press that strategy without joining the sheer wall-of-noise unleashed by our enemies. Anybody know any level-headed anglo-fluent albo journalists who live in (or would be willing to relocate to) the DC area? if u do, encourage them to pitch themselves to almost any news service as a SouthEast Europe correspondent, and get State or even White House press credentials. From the transcripts I've read over the years, wackjobs are filtered out of the White House briefings and cast down to State briefings anyway (Jeff Gannon/Guckert etc NOTwithstanding ;) so it would be cool to have a competent, affable and credible Albo journalist able to attend either. If it happens that i can help with any of this, let me know. J From ngapeja at rocketmail.com Sun May 29 09:23:53 2005 From: ngapeja at rocketmail.com (Isa Blumi) Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 06:23:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [NYC-L] Communal Warming and the Chemistry for Failure In-Reply-To: 6667 Message-ID: <20050529132353.42061.qmail@web51705.mail.yahoo.com> Public outreach takes place from 6-11:00 every night on the boob tube, writing letters in some hidden corner of the "liberal" print media is wasting time (and yes J. lots of hot air). We need to rechannel our "emissions," and not let it just float off into thin air. Part of that rechanneling requires gaining a deeper appreciation for how the world operates. The United States is not a cluster of societies among which things get done by persuasion in op-ed pages or full-page ads. Israeli or Oil corporation lobbies spend far more of its resources cultivating relations---not only with the Haslets, DeLays and Powells--but their operatives, who go out, dance the night away and love to make friends. They are the "ear-to-the-ground" who ultimately write policy papers for their bosses to sign. Often, they consult those young kids (who of course are to be coddled, petted and groomed--no need to remind me J [or at least insinuate] that I should conduct myself with humility at the right time; I have been doing it for many years). ButI am digressing, as usual because of distractions. The operatives of this great (and extremely corrupt and unfair) system are the targeted audience. One full-page ad does absolutely nothing and is quickly countered. It is by stealth, underground and long-term cultivation. Southeastern Europe is a big black hole. There are only free lancers submitting to AP, AFP, etc., the days when Carletta Gall was sending back reports are long gone. Getting an Albanian journalist a job in DC...A leper could count the fingers on his hands the amount of newspapers, news agencies or others willing to foot the bill for someone to report from DC (or from the Balkans) on matters that have no consequence to people's lives. Hell, NYT has cut back dramatically on its full-time overseas correspondents. I am sure those of you who study at Media Studies programs are already familiar with the sociology of the media market, it is in that nether world of the television and the talk-shows during the commuting phase of a person's daily existance in the United State. No, the community cannot hope for Hearst or Murdoch to subsidize this agenda. Moreover, the fight is not public relations but reformation of influential people. These are the people you never hear about, they will never autograph their portraits but they are the entourage surrounding every decision-maker in Washington, the faceless suites who are suaded by the silly things they hear in USSD press briefings and over a beer at the local bar. This is how the Bolsheviks and STB and UDBA and all those other counter-intelligence operations worked. Perhaps I should ask Putin to contribute his personal experiences at head of the KGB in Berlin to emphasize the point. I completely and utterly disagree with the notion that the last ten years have been something akin to a media victory for Albanians. If Kosovars and Albanians still believe they convinced Clinton to come and save them, they are saddly misguided. It is indeed a tragedy that the rationale for intervention, and what were the conditions that ultimately led the US Airforce to step up their "air campaign" is stunning. In the end, the trust we have in our special relationship with the US has cost Kosovars (I leave out Southern Albanians from this equation, they have their own problems with Nano and Greece) the golden opportunity in 1999 to have set the agenda. But I have written about this before. Let us not forget that our best and brightest are either dead (and largely unaccounted for) or in the Hague, charged as war criminals. The discussions in DC are again back to decentralization, minority rights and Hitler creating Kosova and the Albanian problem. Be as SOPHISTICATED as you want, but by being cute, time is wasted and pogrom after pogrom visits those Albanians who are not as lucky as we are, far away from artillary shells, Arkan's monsters and abject poverty. In the end, it is because we hate to look each other in the eye and work together; it is more self-serving to be smug, flippant and disrespectful, than bend a little. I plead guilty as charged by the way. The "leaders" of this country do not have my respect, nor do their operatives and those who are content with living in such an ethical wasteland. Isa --- Jeton Ademaj wrote: > === NYC-L: New York City Discussion Forum > === > > hey folks > > why not lobby as many albo fat cats as possible into > taking out a full-page > ad in the NYTimes, WashPost Or WSJ...preferably for > a non-holiday monday or > tuesday and preferably in the their A or primary > section ? > > as for the State transcript with the Hitler > agit-prop, it's not at all clear > that the questioner is even taken seriously. it's > certainly to our > disadvantage that we don't have a voice asking > contrasting questions and > lobbying State to denounce the underlying premise of > a given question, but i > would suggest a more sophisticated touch than simply > planting someone to > play call-and-response with the latest serb/greek > wacko to gain a State > press pass. i've heard far too many Albanians focus > on reaching "people who > matter"...well frankly we need direct public > outreach. State will not stick > its neck out to fight with this or that chauvinist > if the propaganda victims > in question (Albs) are not independently conducting > public outreach. > > As for K-desk officers, it's reductionist to call > them naive careerists, and > i doubt holding such a view will make one more > charismatic or influential to > them. one is more likely to end up being tuned out. > it's more important to > be approachable and *credible* than merely > combative..save THAt for the > PUBLIC outreach. the sheer hysteria and smarmy > mendacity of > Serbian/Greek/American-Stalinist "journalists" has > been a great gift to > Albanians for the last decade, even if we too often > fail to seize the > advantage. op-eds and letters to newspapers and > fullpage ads (and a focus on > how Albanian interests intersect with American > interests..."bridge to the > Islamic world/balkan stability" etc etc) are all > useful elements of what > needs to be a broader outreach on our part. we need > to press that strategy > without joining the sheer wall-of-noise unleashed by > our enemies. > > Anybody know any level-headed anglo-fluent albo > journalists who live in (or > would be willing to relocate to) the DC area? if u > do, encourage them to > pitch themselves to almost any news service as a > SouthEast Europe > correspondent, and get State or even White House > press credentials. From the > transcripts I've read over the years, wackjobs are > filtered out of the White > House briefings and cast down to State briefings > anyway (Jeff Gannon/Guckert > etc NOTwithstanding ;) so it would be cool to have a > competent, affable and > credible Albo journalist able to attend either. > > If it happens that i can help with any of this, let > me know. > > J > > > ____________________________________________________ > NYC-L: A discussion and information list of the > Albanian community in the New York City Metro Area. > To post to the list: NYC-L at alb-net.com > For more information: > http://www.alb-net.com/mailman/listinfo/nyc-l > > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new Resources site http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/ From jeton at hotmail.com Sun May 29 16:59:20 2005 From: jeton at hotmail.com (Jeton Ademaj) Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 16:59:20 -0400 Subject: [NYC-L] Mission: Message-ID: Isa: >>>Public outreach takes place from 6-11:00 every night on the boob tube,>>>>>>>>>>> do you have a proposal for getting some 30 second spots circulating on network primetime? >>>writing letters in some hidden corner of the "liberal" print media is wasting time (and yes J. lots of hot air). <<<< I listed the NYTimes, WashPost and Wall Street Journal because collectively they are all considered large and credible outlets by policymakers, especially for international news. >>>One full-page ad does absolutely nothing<<< untrue. it depends on the content and timing >>and is quickly countered. It is by stealth, underground and long-term cultivation. <<< so you have a plan i take it? one that *will* be put into effect by you or somebody? >>>Often, they consult those young kids (who of course are to be coddled, petted and groomed--no need to remind me J [or at least insinuate] that I should conduct myself with humility ***at the right time***; I have been doing it for many years). <<<<>>>>>In the end, it is because we hate to look each other in the eye and work together; it is more self-serving to be smug, flippant and disrespectful, than bend a little. I plead guilty as charged by the way.<<<<< as for "the right time" (to 'coddle/groom/headpat'), you ARE aware that some of whom you speak actually read THIS particular list, right? so u propose 'coddling' to their face and dissing them behind their backs, but within earshot? as for looking people in the eye you should probably speak for yourself only... >>>>>>No, the community cannot hope for Hearst or Murdoch to subsidize this agenda. <<<< why does it have to be 'an agenda" (as opposed to speaking and reporting the truth) and why do we need Hearst or Murdoch if there's all this albo money lying around? I ferget if ILLYRIA even has a DC correspondent, but if they dont they should...if only to have a voice amongst the DC press corps and in the transcripts of these briefings. >>>Moreover, the fight is not public relations but reformation of influential people. These are the people you never hear about, they will never autograph their portraits but they are the entourage surrounding every decision-maker in Washington, the faceless suites who are suaded by the silly things they hear in USSD press briefings and over a beer at the local bar. This is how the Bolsheviks and STB and UDBA and all those other counter-intelligence operations worked. Perhaps I should ask Putin to contribute his personal experiences at head of the KGB in Berlin to emphasize the point.<<>>I completely and utterly disagree with the notion that the last ten years have been something akin to a media victory for Albanians.<<<< it would have been if we'd had our collective act together. as it is we have Belgrade out and the makings for recognized self-determination in the works, which we are quite lucky to have given the job we haven't done. and that ship hasn't sailed yet, actually. most Americans still have positive perceptions of Albanians, despite the efforts of the isolationist/anti-Islamic right and the isolationist/anti-American left... >>>If Kosovars and Albanians still believe they convinced Clinton to come and save them, they are saddly misguided. <<< why EXACTLY? >>>It is indeed a tragedy that the rationale for intervention, and what were the conditions that ultimately led the US Airforce to step up their "air campaign" is stunning.<<< incoherent statement above. clarify, please. >>In the end, the trust we have in our special relationship with the US has cost Kosovars (I leave out Southern Albanians from this equation, they have their own problems with Nano and Greece) the golden opportunity in 1999 to have set the agenda.<<< bullshit. blaming "trust in the USA" is a copout to ignore the fact that we dropped the ball that rolled our way after the war. we walked right into the Serbian trap of trying to establish "facts on the ground", expelling and harrasing non-Albos to Belgrade's sheer delight. it was ***DISTRUST*** in the USA and NATO and the UN and most of all ***the EU*** that led many albos to shift the international focus from what Serbs did to Albos to what Albos were doing to the Serbs (and everybody else!). ******WE, KOSOVAR ALBANIANS****** have done Belgrade's work for them because many of us took Slobo's lesson from Bosnia: "kick them out and we have the territory by default"...which set up Slobo's aim of K-partition quite nicely. It is to our huge and mostly *unearned* advantage that the US has finally awoken to the fact that the "standards before status" paradigm has produced an intrinsically entropic state of affairs.... it is the LACK of clear status that has inflamed some Kosovars DISTRUST of the international community and produced this creeping entropy favoring partition and/or limbo. While that state of affairs suits several EU and UN members just fine, it's end result (partition or return to serbia and more war) would prove embarrasing for the US. the US has finally recognized this and moved the focus to STANDARDS *WITH* STATUS, to triangulate Prishtine and Belgrade out of an entropic, inherently unstable zero-sum mentality and into eventual EU membership...and if Kosovars get and keep their act together, AS SEPERATE ENTITIES. >>>Let us not forget that our best and brightest are either dead (and largely unaccounted for) or in the Hague, charged as war criminals. <<<< well there's nothing you or I or we can do about that besides seeking the fate and remains of the former and emotionally/financially supporting the latter. so you may wish to cast a wider net for organizing Albanians. >>>The discussions in DC are again back to decentralization<<< not really >>minority rights<<< that should ALWAYS be on the table >>and Hitler creating Kosova and the Albanian problem.<<< no that last part is not in wide discussion but Belgrade would like it to be...the actual history of the region is on our side in that regard which is why it's worthwhile to establish a public awareness of it, and allow wacky theorists enough rope to hang themselves with. >>>Be as SOPHISTICATED as you want, but by being cute, time is wasted and pogrom after pogrom visits those Albanians who are not as lucky as we are, far away from artillary shells, Arkan's monsters and abject poverty.<<< If i sound supercilious or 'cute', you sound like a shrill brownshirt. Kosovars are generally not facing pogroms right now, they've been lured into performing them. and THEIR victims are willingly sacrificed by Belgrade for as much publicity as possible. Abject poverty is part of the trap Kosovars are in (a trap which some people are only to happy to spring again and again), which can only be unsprung by establishing a stable, tolerant regime and culture throughout Kosova. Whether or not any of our efforts had anything to do with it, the US is at last moving to correct this inherently unstable situation. The least we can do is lobby public support for it AND create a sober and responsible Kosovar body politic. Jeton From ngapeja at rocketmail.com Sun May 29 22:28:08 2005 From: ngapeja at rocketmail.com (Isa Blumi) Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 19:28:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [NYC-L] Mission: In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20050530022808.90026.qmail@web51708.mail.yahoo.com> Well, is this not getting rich! I thought I was only half serious about the reference to Hitler, but it seems that the Nazis are the theme for the week. Frankly, suggesting that I am a fascist is a considerable waste of your talents Jeton. You clearly have a slippery pen and with the right kind of approach to things, you may be on to more productive pursuits. But calling me a fascist will not do. We can continue this head on collision if you want, I have dealt with bigger challenges than this, but I would think we should take it outside the forum here... In the meantime, as this is still a public discussion and I assume all of our friends are watching...let us try once again to explore this issue. What can be done. I have the tendency of approaching these things from the point of view of what should not be done, before we address what should be done. I have nevertheless, made twice now the suggestion that we spend far more time dealing with those people who actually are the consumers of information on Kosova, ie the good people at the State Department (SD), some of whom are actually good friends and I happen to like their understudies---it is only a terrible shame that they do not see Kosova/Albanian/Balkan affairs as a career, and that is how that silly diplomatic system works unfortunately; can not have people getting too attached. But I digress. The mass media is a dead end, I was not advocating reaching out to the television media because the audience is not interested and uninformed. Our problems are complex and require time, space and a constant dialogue with the audience (to make sure that our vocabulary is theirs) 20 seconds on some MSNBC program (if you could ever get the producers to appreciate 1) that Kosova is not a hot beverage served in Vienna 2) that there are some real consequences to not getting Kosova right). I do not see this happening. Hence the reference to Ruppert Murdoch, the don of American propaganda. And the same largely applies to one-page ads that are expensive and for copy reasons, must be kept short (you don't want to reprint Noel Malcolm's 5th and 6th chapters on the page, gets to "busy") So you end up putting in your full page ad a press statement that is meaningless because it does little to change the tenor of the discussion, which I suggest should be the goal. Which is exactly why community out reach needs to be steered towards our policy-making cadre. It is they, I repeat, who write the texts, inform the officials and ultimately inform the journalists (if there are any who are actually interested). Which returns me to the suggestion that we are being watched. I hope our friends at SD are reading this...they are trying to learn something about those Albanians, you see. Now if we actually spent more time talking about how to talk about Kosova rather than raising the hair on our backs or prancing about with our colorful feathers extended, we could actually help them help us. That is another fundamental problem, we are fish in a fish bowl and we are probably confirming all that is being said about us around the water cooler in DC. Jeton, you have mobilized some interesting words to confront my suggestions. Your assertion that I am an ethnic-cleansing (narco?) fascist who has "chased" away those innocent Serbs that just wanted to hang around and live peacefully with Kosovars, drops the ball on several points but by doing so, you reinforce my concerns. I will leave aside defending myself from the suggestion that I am a fascist. My work speaks for itself. It is nevertheless quite dangerous to evoke such language in the context of Kosova, because this is exactly what our adversaries is using to enframe the Kosova issue. Remember, Hitler created Kosova. Ever read Chomsky's rants about Kosovars? That being said, let us return to history for a minute. I seem to recall when I was in Kosova during the liberation, that Serbs were driving off with everything but the kitchen sink...they did steal my aunt's washing machine ENGINE (left the shell in the backyard), and endless lines of our cars were being towed away with the "biblical" exodus. We even stumbled up on some chaps whose trailor was so packed with PIVO! that the canopy could not be tied, whole crats spilling into the road. If you are suggesting Kosovars are responsible for this "exodus" I think you have dramatically been misinformed by your own sources and/or have simply relied on the post-conflict media assesments to explain the events on the ground. You have fallen into the rhetorical trap of enframing Kosova in terms set not by us or reality, but by actors whose ambitions was to muddle the issues, confuse the history and ultimately, create new realities from which we have to operate...and this was my initial point to all of this back-and-forth. We are back peddling because we do not control HOW KOsova is talked about. It is only about standards that can easily be sabatoged because they all require cooperation from our adversaries. It is incumbant on Albanians to be welcoming, to fascilitate the RETURN etc. For you graduate students in political science, anthropology or sociology I hope you are following me on this. In fact, one only needs to consult the media archives to remind us of what was happening on the ground. CNN, (now remember, they negotiated exclusive access with Belgrade and had people on the ground) was in Prishtina after the Kumanovo agreements and AFTER the Russians were not allowed to fly in additional troops. Have we forgotten the move to secure Prishtina in those first few days? Well it was all flowers for those Russian troops who came in from Bosnia. The cleansed Prishtina would forever be part of Serbia. (Initially, the strategy was partition...only later did things become clear that through "cantonisation/decentralization" even more could be secured). Back to Prishtina, once it became clear that they could not stay, then the panic hit. CNN will have in their archives endless reports from the PRishtina bus station of people packing into buses...not an Albanian in sight of course...and huge convoys orderly leaving before One Albanian reached the North. I recall a few days later, walking over the Iber before the French got their duplistic, bordering on criminal asses into North Mitroviza to "secure" the area, and who else but our darling friend Ivanovic and his wife were setting up the program that really did foresee a division of Kosova. Once Albanians started to return to their homes in the North, wife and former Karate champion and overall war criminal Ivanovic started the sealing off of North Mitrovica. But I have already explored this many times, be my guest: ? ?A Story of Mitigated Ambitions: Kosova?s Torturous Path to its Postwar Future.? Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations [1/4, 2002]: 30-52. Accessible at www.alternativesjournal.com. ? ?Kosova: From the Brink?and Back Again? Current History [November, 2001]: 15-20. ? ?Outside the Foreseeable Future: The Tyranny of Ethnicity Politics in Kosova? The Anthropology of East Europe Review, [19/1 Spring, 2001]: 109-127. ? ?One Year of Failure in Kosova: Chances Missed and the Unknown Future,? South Eastern European Politics [Summer, 2000]: 15-24. Reading Jeton's other mildly disguised insults, about my not so slick advocacy methods etc., I have my record to stand on, but it does allow me to again highlight the fundamental problem... Jeton challenges my premise that we (if we really ever tried) should not hold our hopes up for "popular" support. Jeton suggests that "most Americans still have positive perceptions of ALbanians despite the efforts of the isolationist/anti-Islamic right and the isolationist/Anti-American left." That is a fascinating claim, and if correct, then this will be a first...I will be in Nebraska on Thursday, a heartland state if there ever was one (The Albanian lobby actually heavily supports one of Nebraska's Republican Senators there.) I will conduct a survey on the campus of the University of Nebraska (where people will have presumably read something about Kosova) and I will bet my house that 90% will not know the basic components of the problem. I can verify Jeton's exaggerated confidence in the "American" people to give a damn with my experience teaching at Trinity College in Hartford this last year. Members of the faculty, let alone the Yuppy (and very well educated student body) were fuzzy on "what went on over there." I do not think the Albanian communities neither have the resources nor the audience to start reminding people about why they should give a damn. Which returns us to those who make this great country run. My suggestion that Kosovars are in love with America stands. Clinton can do no wrong and Rugova has maintained, like a broken record, that our good friends in DC have always been there and will always be there. Jeton's suggestion that Kosovars are more suspicious of Americans just does not hold water. Now that would be a fascinating poll result, if KOsovars did say the US was up to no good. Our friends at SD reading this exchange would be pretty nervous by now if they believed that was true, which of course they do not. We dropped the ball indeed, because half of Kosova, an important part of the temporarily discredited old elite, were allowed back into the game dear Jeton. Again, I have written about this in the past and there is no need to invite LDK supporters into this as well. This is the part where you suggested there was a wholesale cleansing of serbs from kosova, a trap set by Belgrade...well again, I think the flight of Serbs was already orchestrated and the violence that took place was very much local, hardly systemic. Of course, with the inept handling of the initial phases of the return to Kosova, when Kouchner and his crew still had their heads up their asses, arrogant and power hungry....the international community bullied a bunch of amateurs into conceding far too much when we did have a moral right to demand a trajectory shared by Eritrea and later East Timor. Alas, no Italy or Portugal coming up to bat for us. The violence by the way pitted some real nasty characters, many of whom were Russian/Serb service types...something I personally was bitching about that summer in Prishtina's daily press briefings. Let alone to sheer mishandling of evidence of war crimes, the washing over of rape camps, clearing out mass graves without proper archeological/forensic work (largely because Milosevic was the target, not the foot soldiers who are all still lurking). That the spoils for the new kids from Drenica, Klina and Dukagjin became so petty--restaurants, cigarette runs, the provisional government's media outlet Kosovapress-was all a bi-product of a failure, indeed. But the key here was that UNMIK created a counter measure here by creating an environment (rhetocial and economic) that permitted the old guard, who had no right to return after their performance before and during these trying times, to set up shop again in Prishtina. The rest is history...Alcatel, Energy, Culture etc. Back to my concern with who has shaped this discussion, I refer everyone to the just released summary statements of the PC at the UN on Peterson's report delivered on the 27th. You can find the complete text at http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2005/sc8397.doc.htm it is quite remarkable how uniform the statements are from countries as diverse at Benin, Algeria, the US and Brazil. The emphasis...minority returns, ALbanian failures to extend a hand etc...run much along the lines Jeton is casting doubt on my interpretations/suggestions. Again, we have lost control (historically never had) of the "epistomology" of Kosova's future and past. We are talking about ethnicity, criminality and history in ways that immediately paint us into a corner. We need to tell THE story using a completely different lexicon...This is not known because we are constantly using the terms and concepts of a society that is represented in the minds of our audience by Belgrade. Consider the frequent reference to the concerns of a "Resurregence of violence", return of refugees, Serbia (Covic) claims 240,000. Moreover, the solution to this problem remains decentralization, repeated by a number of delegates around the table yesterday. The themes, the problems and the solutions have all been determined by Belgrade...much as we witnessed last week in DC with this "journalist" evoking readibly recognizable terms (Hitler's demonic plans) as if they have some relavance to Kosova. Hell, Belgrade has even asked for Rugova to come pay a visit...applauded by most members....some things just will not change! Interpret what you will from my frustration with the Rugova crowd, I have published often what I think they have done for Kosova during earlier crises, but I would like us to again consider ways of changing the actual vocabulary surrounding Kosova. I think this will do...again Jeton, if you want to reduce this to insults, let's do it but off the radar screen of our more civil companions who are reading this quietly. My ultimate suggestion, long term, is to do what every legitimate immigrant group has done in this country in the past. THat is buy chairs in big-time and medium-sized Universities. TO buy a chair of Albanian Studies at NYU would cost $10 million, A chair of Ottoman studies has just been established for this price. I would think considerably less money would be needed for smaller, less pretentious outfits. The Saudi's spent millions to cuddle up with Clinton by investing in a program at the U of Arkansas, Little Rock...Onasis, the Olin foundation etc. have all been big players... Strategically placed on the East Coast, Mid West and South West...in twenty years, we have five generations of undergrads and graduates with a new vocabulary. In fact, you want to make Greeks and Serbs go nuts, publicize the intention of buying a Chair of ALbanian Studies at Harvard or Princeton...then you will see the firebrands and the brownshirts come out of the wood work. I do recall that at one point, our community in New York approached NYU...I was told by those directly involved on NYU's side that it fell apart because the community refused to give the school the autonomy it must have to actually search and appoint a chair. That is another thing...PR, public outreach etc., unless Murdoch is Albanian, we are renting space and time from others...we have to appreciate that. Isa __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new Resources site http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/