Communication
Contributions from readers who didn't object to having
their email published in Vagabond Pages.
Sometimes I don't receive an answer to my request to publish a letter and I don't know how to interpret it. So I've decided to simplify things and not oblige readers to answer. The most recent letters are at the top of the page. WM
"Solution for Kosovo: Emigration of Kosovars"...,
Re: Montenegro Secedes ...,
Montenegro Secedes ...,
Hope, Democracy and Freedom...,
I read in Switzerland's Le Matin dimanche (June 4) an interview with Baton Haxhiu, editor of the Albanian daily Gazeta Express in Pristina, Kosovo. The main points: Independence is a fact but it wont resolve the economic problems of Kosovo. More than 70 percent of the Kosovo Albanian population is under 30 years old. The greatest problem is to reorient education. Focus should be on practical education not the creation of technocrats who will inflate administration positions. People are needed in Kosovo who know how to produce things, not only to buy and sell. In his opinion, the immediate solution would be to encourage young people to emigrate. Neighbouring countries should integrate those immigrants, otherwise they will cross illegally and fall into delinquency.
Nikole
nikole@idirect.ca
Regarding Nikole’s letter in this issue about Montenegro secession, William comments that people unite and remain united for political and economic reasons regardless of ethnic, cultural, linguistic differences; example Switzerland. Montenegrins, voting for independence, have forgotten that they have common enemies with the Serbs from Serbia: Albanians, Muslims, Croats. Once the euphoria of independence passes, they will confront the reality that they have dangerous competitors AT HOME, the same Albanians, Croats, Muslims who voted for Montenegro’s independence. Now they will exploit the situation, pushing for more and more ‘rights’ which will contribute to destabilizing Montenegro. Once the native Montenegrins understand the danger and resist, the enemies of Serbs will use the same strategies that helped them to turn the world against the Serbs in Serbia. At the right moment they will remind the world that those Montenegrins are, after all, the same ‘mean Serbs that oppressed their neighbours.’ Macedonia has already experienced the claws of Albanians, who have the world on their side. For 500 years the Montenegrins victoriously resisted the Turkish avalanche. Now they will learn, too late, that interior enemies are much more dangerous than all the powers from outside. They will scream, they will argue, and, like the Serbs in Serbia they will learn at their own expense the bitter truth that nobody wants to listen to them.
(name withheld by request)
The Montenegrins apparently voted to secede from their union with Serbia. I say ‘apparently’ because it isn’t at all clear that this was a fair vote no matter what those international observers say. All they can observe is what happened at the polls but not what happened before the vote. How much do I know? Montenegro hasn’t preoccupied me over the past years of Serbia’s suffering but through many kinds of news sources I know that Djukanovic is nothing more than an opportunist. How did he rally that vote around him? It wasn’t easy considering that ALMOST half of the eligible voters voted against him and he has been working toward the goal of separation, pandering to his superiors – the international community, NATO, you name it, for years. My friend from Herceg Novi tells me how the government neglects basic services there because the settled population wished to remain connected to Serbia. For those people, I am sorry. But I’m sure that in the future Montenegro may need Serbia more than Serbia needs Montenegro. Nobody denies that Montenegrins have a special history. Being in a union with Serbia didn’t mean they would have to give it up. They just want to be rid of problems and they must think this is the way. I think it’s a coward’s way out. A Serbian friend called me on the day of the referendum, in tears. He said, “I can forget what the Croats did but I can’t forget this from our brothers.” The world press is singing euphorically about the ‘freedom’ of the last republic to break away from those horrible Serbs, denying the Serbs their dream of “pan Serbism”!!! As I’ve had to say many times over the past 16 years – It’s unbelievable. The laziness, the superficiality of the ‘experts’ continues to dumbfound. I’ll finish with a paraphrase of an interview I heard on CBC radio the day of the election. The interviewer asked the contact in Serbia and Montenegro for her opinions about the election, observing that almost one half of those who voted were for continuing the union with Serbia, I think the number mentioned was 750,000. He then asked, “What will be the reaction now of those 750,000 ethnic Serbs who voted to remain with Serbia?” The observer corrected him: “Those 750,000 people were MONTENEGRINS who consider themselves Serbs.” That concept must be too hard for some minds to grasp.
As usual, the press assumes a lot and spouts it off. Maybe they know that nobody cares and nobody will check up on them. In the meantime, good luck to the Montenegrins, they will need it.
nikole@idirect.ca
When people stay united it’s mostly for economic and political reasons, as in Switzerland, in spite of ethnic, religious, cultural, linguistic differences. Otherwise people have a tendency to separate like the English in America separated from England. In Biblical times the Jews split their country into Judea and Israel even though it was designated as one Holy Land by the will of God. WM
Hope
“Hope springs eternal in the human breast; man never is but always to be blest.” Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744)
The nature of our human condition arouses in most of us an eternal quest—a quest for something that may be described as a concept of “better”—an idea of an imagined utopia. Indeed, some quest, desire, goal, wish, ambition or objective for the here and now, or the after life that informs and drives our actions. Call this propensity of human nature by a name—“Hope”.
As individual human striving is propelled by hope, so too is there a societal concurrence in political struggle. Which point brings us to “democracy” and “freedom” as professed ideals born of hope.
If one honestly believed that the world is solely propelled by noble political ideals, then political power’s encounter with reality would have to be ignored. The convergence of power and the actualities of the real world invite more often than not an altogether Machiavellian appreciation of the scheme of human affairs. A somewhat cynical, more disbelieving, all together Faustian irreverence is required to grasp what is really afoot in this world we hope to make a better place. In suggesting this, there are also those instances of figmental and hypocritical “just causes” seeking to legitimise political action. Three countries come to mind illustrating “Hope, democracy and freedom” operating in political processes as these are and not as ideally imagined to be. “Hope” would have to exist in Haiti for the people to respond to the events of the recent past with inspiration and confidence in the immediate political future of that country. “Democracy” brings Israel to mind. “Freedom” has to be struggled for in Iran as a nation seeking to resist the same recent fate as Iraq, having had democracy unhinged in 1953. How so?
continued
(Courtenay Barnett)
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William Markiewicz
