- Russia's red line over Kosovo. Humphrey Hawksley will be presenting an Our World programme called Red Line Roulette about Kosovo today and tomorrow on BBC News24 which can be watched on the Internet world wide (BBC News24 URL in the right sidebar) at 1430 and 2130 GMT today and at 0230 and 1430 tomorrow, Sunday.
- What Future for Kosovo? Karen Buck, MP for Regents Park and North Kensington, who is my MP has published a short comment about Kosovo on her web site yesterday. By doing so she inadvertently raises a question about what she has been doing in her own constituency since 1998.
1. Russia's red line over Kosovo. I have never really understood the situation in Kosovo until just recently, and I am not certain that like Northern Ireland anyone like those of us who live elsewhere and who do not actually live or visit the area frequently can really understand the situation. After all these years of devastating war, reprisals and genocide back and forth, a resolution, if one is ever possible, appears to be blocked by those with vested power interests rather than an interest in solving an intractable problem in the best way for those people who live in the area.
There are overtones of ethnic cleansing and other forms of bigotry in what I've been experiencing for the past nine plus years too which happen to be parallel with the eruption of this situation in Kosovo and Serbia. The same elements from the dark side of the human character emerge everywhere because people are the same everywhere. It involves the power of a few over the many maintained by brutal violence and repression.
Deprive people of an education, and they can be abused for not having an education. This is the sad story of incredible multifaceted discrimination which I read described by Dana Priest in her book The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military, W W Norton, New York, 2003. Dana Priest is The Washington Post journalist who broke the story internationally about rendition for which she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
The Mission is an outstanding book about the worldwide US military "mission" where Kosovo and Serbia play a key part in its global activity. This book has given me an insight into the situation along with an insight into the role that the US military has assumed around the world. I believe that this has a great deal to do with the fact that Colonel Vine and Lt Harry Bird, former US Marines, arrived in North Kensington, London in February 2001 with their most sophisticated surveillance technology which was deployed in a massive way against me a single individual. They joined a surveillance abuse programme that had been operating against me for two and one-half years 24/7 up to that point.
Humphrey Hawksley will be presenting a programme about Kosovo today and tomorrow on BBC News24 which can be watched on the Internet world wide (BBC News24 URL in the right sidebar):
This programme about Kosovo did not air as scheduled to day at 1430. Instead, there was a useless filler programme about Aden. There are three more times which are specifically noted as having the Kosovo programme as listed in the BBC's Radio Times online. Will this programme appear?
Our World: Red Line Roulette
Saturday 08 December at 2:30pm and 9:30pm and
Sunday at 3:30am and 2:30pm.
All times are GMT so that a local time of 3:30am in the UK is not so bad elsewhere in the world.
Nine years after Britain and other western powers intervened against Serbia in Kosovo, the status of the Balkan province remains undecided. Humphrey Hawksley reports from inside a new high-stakes issue right at the heart of Europe's future.
Here is some of his recent writing about Kosovo:
BBC News Saturday, 20 October 2007, 11:12 GMT 12:12 UK
Russia's red line over Kosovo
By Humphrey Hawksley, BBC News, Belgrade
For nearly nine years, Kosovo has been run by the United Nations. Kosovo is now seeking independence from Serbia with help from the US, but Serbia and Russia are trying to block this attempt.
YaleGlobal 5 November 2007
Kosovo’s Independence Could Mean a New Conflict
By Humphrey Hawksley
By avoiding empty sovereignty, Kosovo could lay down the foundation for its prosperity.
Kosovo’s Independence Could Mean a New Conflict
International Herald Tribune: Opinion 8th November 8, 2007
Kosovo: Squaring off for the wrong fight
It's almost nine years since NATO air strikes freed Kosovar Albanians from Serbian control, yet the official status of the province is still undecided. A deadline of Dec. 10 has been set for the diplomatic process to deliver. It's expected to fail, after which Kosovo's semi-autonomous government says it will make a unilateral declaration of independence.
Kosovo: Squaring off for the wrong fight
BBC News Saturday, 17 November 2007, 12:10 GMT
Kosovo's long-lasting legacy of war
By Humphrey Hawksley
The people of Kosovo are voting to elect a new parliament, but next month the territory faces an even more fateful decision - whether to declare sovereignty or not. On a visit to Kosovo, the BBC's Humphrey Hawksley gauges the strength of pro-independence feeling.
Kosovo's long-lasting legacy of war
2. What Future for Kosovo? Karen Buck, MP for Regents Park and North Kensington, who is my MP has published a short comment about Kosovo on her web site yesterday. It is an excellent, short overview of the situation there. I do not want to take anything away from her articulation and concern for this area of the world which has involved Britain for some time along with others.
However, I want to point out that the same type of very destructive discrimination and violence along with ethnic cleansing has been taking place in her own constituency for the same nine years since 1998. She has been more then fully and continuously informed about it. Why hasn't she done anything about this situation where she has the ability as a Member of Parliament to actually address a difficult and destructive problem that is quite similar to what is happening in Kosovo and Serbia on a much larger scale. Will everyone have to wait until the scale of the problem in North Kensington becomes so large that it cannot be ignored before anything is done?
What makes it all the more incredible is that Ms Buck has been sitting on the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee since 2006. This is an important position for her to bring my experience before this important Committee of Parliament with regard to what the Home Office is doing carrying out indefinite surveillance technology of the most intrusive and abusive ever known to the civilised world. While it's terrific to comment on an overseas situation that is in the news at present, it is quite problematic that she ignores similar activity being carried out daily in her own constituency where she has the ability to do something about it.