[NYC-L] A Community in remission or do I smell submission?

[Mentor Cana]

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. 
 > 
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