In light of the recent savagery committed by Serbs in their own streets, Canadians should recognize Kosovo independence and tell Russian politicians to go to hell. The Russian ambassador to Canada has the unmitigated gall to give the following insulting advice:
“We are both federal states and when you live in glasshouse you don’t throw stones.“
Yes, Mr. Ambassador, but Canadians do not torch embassies nor do they poison their political opponents. Canada is a “federation” but Canadians are different from Russians and Serbs. [I wonder if the Russian ambassador considers a bayonnet and a butter knife as being the same too, hmm???]
If Canadians want to maintain any semblance of being part of a civilized nation, they will distance themselves from the bullying arrogant rhetoric of Russian statesmen. Canadians will align themselves with other civilized people who did not hesitate to recognize the obvious: Kosovo independence.
Security wrote:
We should recognize Kosovo because of “recent savagery commited by Serbs in their own streets”? I’m thinking that’s a piss poor reason to base international diplomacy on.
Yes the Russians are smarmy, but that still is no basis for our government to recognize any unilateral declaration of independence. The “glass houses” comment, while boorish and rude, does have a modicum of truth to it in this case - there is much to be considered here.
Leave the knee-jerk reactions to Dion / Layton and that ilk.
Posted on 22-Feb-08 at 9:19 am | Permalink
Charles Anthony wrote:
I beg your pardon??? I did not write “because of” but rather “In light of” as you so carefully misquoted.
I am thinking you are either piss poor with reading with reading comprehension or you are dishonest.
Posted on 22-Feb-08 at 9:32 am | Permalink
jmrSudbury wrote:
You may want to reserve judgment if this is true:
http://socialistgulag.blogspot.....osovo.html
We will first have to figure out which side is more civilized.
John M Reynolds
Posted on 22-Feb-08 at 10:43 am | Permalink
Simeon George S=Drak wrote:
The KLA were trained and backed by the Americans and their ally in arm Osama Bin Laden. Nice friends the Yanks keep ….Murders,Gangsters and Terrorists!!!!
Slick Willy bombed the Serbs with deplete uranium poisoning the land and elevating cancer by 100%, all to divert attention from Monica Lewinsky.
Savagery you cry on behalf of the Serbs, the Americans are PIGS interfering within a sovereign nation.
I will take Serbian Savagery over American Diplomacy any day.
The only cause to get Americans united is the post Thanksgiving sales at the local WalMart.
Listen to General Lewis MacKenzie if you want the truth,as you are nothing more than a shill for the American ignorance.
Posted on 22-Feb-08 at 10:55 am | Permalink
Security wrote:
“I am thinking you are either piss poor with reading with reading comprehension or you are dishonest.”
Well I’m actually a pretty honest guy so it must be my reading my reading comprehension. But chastened though I may be :) your post still reads exactly as I said above. So you attack me and call me dishonest. Baby……
Posted on 22-Feb-08 at 12:08 pm | Permalink
Paul M. wrote:
The argument in this post, and I say this as a friendly reader, not some angry left winger, is flawed.
The Serbs did not engage in the sort of brutality attributed to them. After the signing of the military technical agreement in 1999, Kosovo was flooded with hundreds of war crimes investigators looking for the ‘100 000′ missing albanian men that the Clinton administration insisted were likely dead.
At the end of all the investigations, 3,108 bodies were found, and many of them died of natural causes, and others were killed in a manner consistent with injuries sustained in combat, not summary execution. While I am sure there were some excesses, the fighting was a civil war between two opposing forces, one a legitimate military of a recognized government and its duly recognized police forces against an armed paramilitary force that sought to create an ethnically pure state.
And the Russian ambassador’s words are well heeded. The accords which halted the war and allowed for the NATO KFOR to be inserted into the region expressly called for the final status of Kosovo to be negotiated between both parties: the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the leaders of the Albanian Kosovars. This ‘declaration of independence’ violated the spirit and letter of those agreements, and all the assurances made by NATO in June 1999 have been proven to be mere hot air.
For us, in Canada, this sets a bad precedent. It basically creates a precedent in international law for a largely ethnically homogenous province to unilaterally declare independence. Isn’t that very concept what we created the Clarity bill to oppose? Russia has deep roots in the Balkan region (their interest is more than convenience, it harkens back to the Treaty of Bucharest in 1812 - which incidentally helped to cause WWI), but they are probably more troubled by the precedent this sets for Chechnya, Ossetia and other potential regional factions attempting to go the same way. The Russian ambassador was not threatening Canada, it was instead warning us of the unintended consequences of this action.
The Kosovar albanians have played us like a fiddle. They started the war by attacking FRY police and government offices, intimidating ethnic Serbs and generally behaving like any other anti-government revolutionaries. Their leaders should not be in charge of a lemonade stand, they should be in Jail at the Hague with Milosevic. Agim Ceku, the head of the UCK/KLA military forces in 1999, and the present, was observed by Canadian forces (while he was a general in the Croat army) at Medak, an operation in which the Croat army engaged Canadian peacekeepers in battle for 6 days until the Canadians were ordered to stand down, and then watched as Ceku’s men systematically killed several thousand Serbs (all of which was documented and handed over to the ICTY by Canadian troops).
We’ve been played. Don’t let them keep playing us. Do not recognize Kosovo.
Posted on 22-Feb-08 at 12:53 pm | Permalink
LTerminus wrote:
I’ve got to agree with Paul M. here. Recognizing Kosvo would set a rather dangerous precedent for the Bloc to point at. And any self respecting Canadian (by definition, NOT a member of the Bloc)would rightly support a decision to not recognize kosovo until the majority of the world has.
Posted on 23-Feb-08 at 3:31 am | Permalink
Charles Anthony wrote:
You guys are peculiar types of statists.
Let me see….
Side 1) The Americans and the rest of the free world
Side 2) The Russians, the Chinese, dithering, more dithering
What a difficult choice!!!! Golly gee, let me digest some more communist revisionist propaganda before making a decision! I certainly would not want to make the wrong choice!
—
“We will first have to figure out which side is more civilized.”
Why? What difference does that make over the right to self-determination??
“The Serbs did not engage in the sort of brutality attributed to them.”
That account of history is debatable but that is not what I wrote. I wrote “the savagery committed by Serbs in their own streets” and linked to an article which describes the burning of the American embassy in Belgrade by Serbs.
“so it must be my reading my reading comprehension.”
I guess so. You said it yourself. Nevertheless, Mr. Security, you are in good company. You are joined by a person who fears Canadians will act like Serbs, a person who can not follow links, an anti-American Belgrade-propagandist and a bunch of ditherers.
Posted on 25-Feb-08 at 9:18 am | Permalink
George Freeman wrote:
I know little about the matter of Kosovo independence but will offer that any federation worth having provides for its member states/provinces a way to exit, should they see fit. The Clarity Act basically sets out an ethical standard for such exiting from Canada, one that, as received in Quebec, both seperatists and federalists are now agreed upon; a referendum question like that of 1995 would be quite illegitimate and forcefully condemned at present.
Where Antony makes a good point is that we should not compromise the ethical standards of our foreign policy at the altar of Canadian federalism. And on that score it is worth noting that it means something different to be a Canadian patriot than to be a Canadian nationalist: “nation-building” is rarely good for Canada (except in war and sport), let alone Canadian federalism and provincial rights. That said, Canadians can still love their country because it is a great country worth defending, not because it is a nation. Canada isn’t a nation but it is a great country, which is why it requires a robust and healthy federalism.
Posted on 26-Feb-08 at 9:53 am | Permalink
Fozzy wrote:
Total bullshit. You have no idea what is going on in Kosovo and Serbia and your judgment brainwashed by media.
Posted on 26-Feb-08 at 1:10 pm | Permalink
Charles Anthony wrote:
Anybody see this coming???
I guess they did not:
What, did the Serbian government actually think that Canadians would hold out forever????
Welcome to the 21st century!
Posted on 18-Mar-08 at 4:29 pm | Permalink