More On Kosovo

The U.S. embassy in Serbia ordered the departure of support staff and dependents of diplomats.

Serbians Not Happy About Kosovo Independence

Not surprisingly, Serbians are not taking kindly to the declaration of Kosovo as an independent state. In Belgrade protestors broke into the U.S. embassy and 200,000 Serbians gathered to protest Kosovo's secession.

Russia and Spain have not recognized the secession, and as far as I am aware Canada is delaying an answer also. The Russians have called the move illegal and immoral and threatened to use force. These countries recognize the ramifications that this could have on their own populations. Sure, secession sounds good to the powers that be when the issue is across an ocean. But what if an ethnic majority decided to separate California from the Union? Or what if Quebec wants its independence? How would the federal governments respond to that? Nato has been imposing solutions in the Balkans that most of its member states would be no means tolerate for their populace. Nato has outlived its usefulness and should be eliminated. It has spent a lot of money at best doing nothing or at worst causing destruction.

This is a prime example of how interventionism causes tensions. Rather than let a country deal with a civil war on its own, stakes are raised and tensions escalate. Policing the world is a dirty job. Nuances of the issues involved get the "jack hammer" treatment and the result is a mish-mash of mayhem. Of course, once the "blowback" starts raising its ugly head, there will be innocent-sounding yelps of, "Why do they hate us? They must hate us for our freedom!". Well, in a way it is true. "They" do hate us for our freedom. Our freedom to intervene in their affairs.

Kosovo Back In The News

The world is nervously watching the latest happenings in Kosovo.

Kryptonite in Serbia?

Slashdot has referenced a BBC article about Kryptonite being discovered in Serbian. Weird! Maybe Superman was a Serb too?

Nenadovic's in the 1700's and 1800's

I don't know if they are my forefathers, but there were a number of people from the Nenadovic family that were prominent in Serbia in the late 1700's and 1800's.

There's Jakov Nenadovic (1765-1836). He was a Serbian Duke and the first Serbian Minister of Interior. Let's just say he had a moustache to put all other moustaches to shame. There is a stately picture of him up at bia.sr.gov.yu:



And there's also Mateja Nenadovic (1777-1854), he was an Archpriest and a leader of a Serbian uprising against Turkish imperialism. Mateja's father was Aleksa Nenadovic, a chief magistrate of Valjevo. At 16 Mateja was a priest, and later became an Archpriest. He spent a short amount of time as a deputy-commander before he became a key diplomat. His memoirs are an important source of information about Serbian revolt during the period of Turkish conquest. Incidentally, he had a pretty cool beard. There is a picture of him, courtesy of the Serbian Wikipedia:



Do you see any family resemblance?