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.