The Citizenship Gambit

Pictures of Vladimir Putin have long been part of the Serbian patriotic iconography. But now some Serbs are going a step further, petitioning Moscow for citizenship. Several sources reported Monday that a group of Serbs in the occupied province of Kosovo (illegally declared independent in February 2008 by an ethnic Albanian "government" backed by the US, EU and NATO) sent a note to the Russian government asking to become Russian citizens.

According to RT, the letter was addressed to the legislature, which may not even be the right address for this sort of thing (as a footnote, it could not have possibly come through via the "Russian Embassy in Kosovo" - since such an embassy ought not exist, given that Moscow doesn't recognize the breakaway province). This suggests that the petition is really a publicity stunt. What are we to make of it, then?

First of all, it is clearly a protest against Belgrade. At its essence, any government is a protection racket, and protecting the lives and property of its subjects (or citizens) is its primary function. By this standard, the current regime in Belgrade is a failed government. Not only has it done nothing to help its citizens in the occupied province, it has actively collaborated with the occupation authorities and even the separatist Albanian "government" to surrender any claim to Kosovo (while publicly pretending otherwise).

The Serbs in Kosovo have successfully resisted both the Albanians and their KFOR/EULEX enforcers, and they aren't about to see their success invalidated by a quisling coterie in Belgrade.Now, perhaps these Serbs have an inaccurate understanding of Russia's military and political capabilities, but it is by no means a stretch to argue that any government could do a better job of safeguarding their lives, liberty and property than the current one. And as the American Founders explained in their own Declaration of Independence, when a government fails its people, it is only reasonable for those people to exchange it for another. So, the principle of the proposed arrangement isn't unusual, only the logistics.

It would be going too far, however, to argue that Russia has a "duty" to say yes. The only country that ought to have a duty towards the Serbs in Kosovo is Serbia. By giving citizenship to the Serb petitioners, Russia would take upon itself the obligation to protect them with more than just words. Perhaps that is what the Serbs had in mind - but then they ought to know it isn't a decision to be made lightly.

Caged

Next week it will be two months since the Serbs in northern Kosovo erected roadblocks to oppose the Albanian government's attempted takeover of road crossings into the rest of Serbia. NATO's "peacekeeping" force and EU's "law and order mission" have both backed the Albanian takeover, and continue attempting to coerce the Serbs to submit to the self-proclaimed independent state.

On the rare occasion when Western mainstream media reports on the standoff, it uses terms such as "ethnic clashes". This not only suggests that the Serbs are being motivated by bigotry (following two decades of propaganda claiming that everything the Serbs did was based on bigotry), but also that the two communities are on some kind of equal footing. In actuality, the unarmed Serb civilians are squaring off against the well-armed Albanians, EULEX and KFOR, who in addition to teargas and pepper spray have  even used live ammunition. It is very telling that "ethnic clashes" was the official euphemism for the March 2004 pogrom some 40,000 or more ethnic Albanians perpetrated against the remaining Serbs in the occupied province.

I say "remaining," because hundreds of thousands of Serbs (and others, such as Roma, Turks, etc.) were ethnically cleansed from Kosovo since it was occupied by NATO and handed over to the Albanian separatist KLA in 1999. Over 1000 Serbs have been murdered, countless homes burned, churches destroyed and desecrated, and cemeteries bulldozed. All in the presence of NATO "peacekeepers," all with absolute impunity. Under NATO's "peace," two new Albanian insurrections broke out, in Macedonia and in southern Serbia.

Several pockets of Serbs survive in the south of the province, in ghettos surrounded by barbed wire and "protected" by NATO troops. The great irony is that without those troops, the Albanians would have murdered them by now; yet it was those NATO troops that made the Albanian takeover possible.

In the north of the province, the local Serbs succeeded in halting the KLA takeover in 1999, and have kept a watch on the roads ever since. The writ of the KLA regime does not run there, much to the frustration of the self-proclaimed state. Yet though the areas ruled by the Albanians are almost entirely devoid of non-Albanian inhabitants, while other communities live in peace on Serb-controlled territory, the Western press continues to refer to "Serb-dominated" areas. How about the entire "Albanian-dominated" province? Ah, but they also avoid "Albanian," preferring to use the politically correct euphemism "Kosovar," designed to promote the lie that they are the original inhabitants and rightful owners of the territory.

Recently the Albanian "government" in Pristina and the Albanian government in Tirana signed a deal to share consulates around the world, bringing them a step closer to "Natural Albania" - a state encompassing all territories claimed by ethnic Albanians. Dismissed as "Serb propaganda" in the 1990s, the idea is now publicly promoted by a political party in "Kosovo," and even has the endorsement of a prominent Imperial figure.Yet Imperial propaganda still seeks to dismiss concerns over this as unduly paranoid.

What's disappointing, though, is hearing media that aren't part of the Imperial propaganda mill, such as RT, using the Empire's propaganda phrases. By way of example, in this clip today the presenter used "Serb-dominated" to refer to the north of Kosovo, and reporter Aleksey Yaroshevsky claimed that the Serbs were growing "accustomed to living in the cage they have built for themselves."

Kosovo itself is a cage, not just for Serbs but for everyone else. Even the Albanians who live there are captives of a criminal regime and a bigoted ideology. The Serbs set up the barricades not to seal themselves in, but to keep NATO, EULEX and the KLA "officials" out. Which is precisely what they've done so far, despite all efforts to coerce them into submission. It was a desperate act of a people resisting repression and plans for extinction. They deserve better than to be maligned for it, least of all by people trying to hack the Empire's propaganda matrix.

I guess some people still need to realize there is no spoon.

Reeker's Switcheroo

Most of my predictions about the aftermath of the incident in Sarajevo last Friday have, sadly, come to pass. The Bosnian Muslim media have indeed made an effort to describe the attacker as "Serbian", and even made claims that he was an agent of Serbian intelligence services (!) sent to stir up trouble. Ever expanding the horizons of self-delusion, I suppose.

Some agencies and papers in the West also seized upon the "Serbian" angle, but most were happy to explain away the presence of jihadists in Bosnia as "fighters for independence" that came to fight the (entirely fictitious) "Greater Serbia" plot by the evil Slobodan Milosevic (!). Once again, jihad becomes the Serbs' fault somehow.

Now, this morning, Serbia's official news agency (Tanjug) reported on a press conference given in Sarajevo by the unfortunately named Philip Reeker, deputy assistant Secretary of State. There has been no English-language coverage of it yet, so there is no way of ascertaining what Reeker precisely said and what may have been lost in translation or omitted. However, what is mentioned in Tanjug's report, which again relies on local media, tracks with what I've seen so far. Reportedly, Reeker qualified Mevlid Jasarevic's attack as an "individual act" to be treated accordingly.

If this meant it would be swept under the rug like every other jihadist attack that goes against the narrative, that would be tragic and stupid, but about par for the course. Except it gets worse.

According to Tanjug (again citing the Sarajevo media), Reeker actually argued that Bosnia should use the attention it garnered by the attack (!). Apparently, he thinks this is a wonderful opportunity for Bosnia to press on with reforms that the Empire wishes to see - changes to the Constitution and the peace agreement that would bring about a more powerful (and Muslim-dominated) central government. This is borne out by his remark about resolving the issues over military property, in order for Bosnia to join NATO.

How is that an appropriate subject for a press conference about a jihadist attack? Would Bosnia being a member of NATO have made the slightest bit of difference last Friday? As usual, there is more to this than meets the eye: at issue isn't just the property of the country's joint military forces, but what is and isn't the property of the central government. Again, nothing to do with jihadist attacks - but everything to do with Empire's fetishes and fantasies about Bosnia.

If this sounds absurd and nonsensical, do recall that when ethnic Albanians rampaged around Kosovo for three days in 2004, in a pogrom against the Serbs, this was used by the Empire as an argument to reward them with independence. So why not reward acts of jihad, especially at someone else's expense? Remember, the objective is to make jihadists love the Empire.

Yet that is about as likely as Imperial officials deciding that jhad is not a wonderful policy asset. Which is to say, not at all.