Kosovo Declaration of Independence

Here is the Declaration of Independence, taken directly from the website for the Assembly of Kosovo. Click here to learn more. I will respond to the press coverage of this in the next couple of days. It's not every day that a territory posts its declaration on the internet, or is it?

Kosovo Declaration of Independence

Convened in an extraordinary meeting on February 17, 2008, in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo,

Answering the call of the people to build a society that honours human dignity and affirms the pride and purpose of its citizens,

Committed to confront the painful legacy of the recent past in a spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness,

Dedicated to protecting, promoting and honoring the diversity of our people,

Reaffirming our wish to become fully integrated into the Euro-Atlantic family of democracies,

Observing that Kosovo is a special case arising from Yugoslavia's non-consensual breakup and is not a precedent for any other situation,

Recalling the years of strife and violence in Kosovo, that disturbed the conscience of all civilised people,

Grateful that in 1999 the world intervened, thereby removing Belgrade's governance over Kosovo and placing Kosovo under United Nations interim administration,

Proud that Kosovo has since developed functional, multi-ethnic institutions of democracy that express freely the will of our citizens,

Recalling the years of internationally-sponsored negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina over the question of our future political status,

Regretting that no mutually-acceptable status outcome was possible, in spite of the good-faith engagement of our leaders,

Confirming that the recommendations of UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari provide Kosovo with a comprehensive framework for its future development and are in line with the highest European standards of human rights and good governance,

Determined to see our status resolved in order to give our people clarity about their future, move beyond the conflicts of the past and realise the full democratic potential of our society,

Honouring all the men and women who made great sacrifices to build a better future for Kosovo,

1. We, the democratically-elected leaders of our people, hereby declare Kosovo to be an independent and sovereign state. This declaration reflects the will of our people and it is in full accordance with the recommendations of UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari and his Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status Settlement.

2. We declare Kosovo to be a democratic, secular and multi-ethnic republic, guided by the principles of non-discrimination and equal protection under the law. We shall protect and promote the rights of all communities in Kosovo and create the conditions necessary for their effective participation in political and decision-making processes.

3. We accept fully the obligations for Kosovo contained in the Ahtisaari Plan, and welcome the framework it proposes to guide Kosovo in the years ahead. We shall implement in full those obligations including through priority adoption of the legislation included in its Annex XII, particularly those that protect and promote the rights of communities and their members.

4. We shall adopt as soon as possible a Constitution that enshrines our commitment to respect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all our citizens, particularly as defined by the European Convention on Human Rights. The Constitution shall incorporate all relevant principles of the Ahtisaari Plan and be adopted through a democratic and deliberative process.

5. We welcome the international community's continued support of our democratic development through international presences established in Kosovo on the basis of UN Security Council resolution 1244 (1999). We invite and welcome an international civilian presence to supervise our implementation of the Ahtisaari Plan, and a European Union-led rule of law mission. We also invite and welcome the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to retain the leadership role of the international military presence in Kosovo and to implement responsibilities assigned to it under UN Security Council resolution 1244 (1999) and the Ahtisaari Plan, until such time as Kosovo institutions are capable of assuming these responsibilities. We shall cooperate fully with these presences to ensure Kosovo's future peace, prosperity and stability.

6. For reasons of culture, geography and history, we believe our future lies with the European family. We therefore declare our intention to take all steps necessary to facilitate full membership in the European Union as soon as feasible and implement the reforms required for European and Euro-Atlantic integration.

7. We express our deep gratitude to the United Nations for the work it has done to help us recover and rebuild from war and build institutions of democracy. We are committed to working constructively with the United Nations as it continues its work in the period ahead.

8. With independence comes the duty of responsible membership in the international community. We accept fully this duty and shall abide by the principles of the United Nations Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, other acts of the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the international legal obligations and principles of international comity that mark the relations among states. Kosovo shall have its international borders as set forth in Annex VIII of the Ahtisaari Plan, and shall fully respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all our neighbors. Kosovo shall also refrain from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.

9. We hereby undertake the international obligations of Kosovo, including those concluded on our behalf by the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and treaty and other obligations of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to which we are bound as a former constituent part, including the Vienna Conventions on diplomatic and consular relations. We shall cooperate fully with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. We intend to seek membership in international organisations, in which Kosovo shall seek to contribute to the pursuit of international peace and stability.

10. Kosovo declares its commitment to peace and stability in our region of southeast Europe. Our independence brings to an end the process of Yugoslavia's violent dissolution. While this process has been a painful one, we shall work tirelessly to contribute to a reconciliation that would allow southeast Europe to move beyond the conflicts of our past and forge new links of regional cooperation. We shall therefore work together with our neighbours to advance a common European future.

11. We express, in particular, our desire to establish good relations with all our neighbours, including the Republic of Serbia with whom we have deep historical, commercial and social ties that we seek to develop further in the near future. We shall continue our efforts to contribute to relations of friendship and cooperation with the Republic of Serbia, while promoting reconciliation among our people.

12. We hereby affirm, clearly, specifically, and irrevocably, that Kosovo shall be legally bound to comply with the provisions contained in this Declaration, including, especially, the obligations for it under the Ahtisaari Plan. In all of these matters, we shall act consistent with principles of international law and resolutions of the Security Council of the United Nations, including resolution 1244 (1999). We declare publicly that all states are entitled to rely upon this declaration, and appeal to them to extend to us their support and friendship.

The political economy of rock, paper, scissors

Sometimes it occurs to me, though it is reinforced time and again in my readings, how we take for granted certain parts of our culture. What often seems self-evident is something overlooked, especially when the cultural artifact is so widely known. Nothing is so apparent than what we learn as children, such as stories or games. Rock, paper, scissors is but one example.

I'm not sure why I assumed most everybody would know about the game. It was a pervasive part of my childhood, cropping up when incredibly important decisions were needed or when consensus could not be reached. As a child, my neighborhood friends and I were prone to adventurous explorations, which sometimes required picking the kid who would wander into and check out what we perceived as dangerous territory. The deciding force behind who went first - the process that made it legitimate - was typically rock, paper, scissors.

And most Americans with whom I come into contact know this game. Hence my surprise when my friend from India acted with bewilderment when I suggested jokingly we should use a game of rock, paper, scissors to settle a decision over our reading for class. As we split up our Manuel Castells reading for our Globalized Media class, I hopped on "Geopolitics and the State"; my friend ended up with "Bolivia and Democracy," a reading she seemed unhappy about. Upon my suggestion, she politely conceded - as she is always apt to do - that she would accept the reading that she received.

However, one of our peers and I, in sensing her confusion over the game, decided to explain the rules. We went round and round for about five to ten minutes before she politely said she had it, with a slight impatient huff and a wave of her hand signaling that she felt the game absurd. Why is the paper better than the rock? Heck, I don't know.

So I began to think about it. Why is it that my friend who has been in United States for some time lacked knowledge about this game? Even more, what did the game say about Americans? The political economy aspect of this game occurred to me as I read through the readings for my classes this week; however, the search for information is always a good place to begin.

I am quite sure if I had an overabundance of leisure time, I would devote that time to more constructive endeavors and not rock, paper, scissors. However, I will say as I entered the term into the Google engine and clicked "search", almost a million web pages came up. I went through several, and found several explanations of the game. I even found the website for the World Society of RPS, a factoid that I probably could have lived without. I also found our symbolic representations of our symbolic representations enlightening and amusing. For example, check out this graphic explanation of the rules from corkinthewater:




Or this beer commercial:


You can visit this website for more information.

I can imagine one would feel a bit of cultural vertigo from experiencing the game without a context by which to understand it. And in rethinking my knowledge of the game, as well as its meaning, I wondered how it related to the perplexing problems arising from decision making and resource distribution. It occurred to me those who possessed the better resources came out on top, and coming out on top depends on choosing the resource that bests your opponent.

The political economy of the game hit me as I perused the pages of my reading. Most of our globalization and international communication theory has dealt with the growth and decline of American media around the world, as well as the idea that capitalism was the engine behind the globalization phenomena. These two ideas - the spread of communications, particularly communications technology and content, and the spread of capitalism - are fused and expounded by Benedict Anderson in his argument about the development of nationalism. It was, argues Anderson, the spread of print capitalism that broke the hold of religious power and facilitated the growth of state mechanisms. Essentially the power of knowledge helped loose the chains of cognitive bondage, and began to place power into the hands of more people.

If I could re-imagine the game within the current media logic, the concept of scissors would include so much more than simply banned books or censorship. Once unpacked, it would also signify our cut-and-paste, fast-paced misinformation society. For the ability to evade and twist reality seems now much more potent than ever before. At some point we should come to understand that the one resource mightier than any weapon is the power of knowledge, especially coupled by the power of imagination. The one exception resides in the power to keep our fellow man ignorant.

And with that, I will leave you with this YouTube video by uphillbothways as an amusing sidebar:

The reaction to the reflection

School started about two weeks ago, and of course, I haven't necessarily made good on my promise to blog more frequently. My bad. I have a great deal to read, and as I wrote in my most recent post, I chose to try some of the Web 2.0 tools with my students.

Google documents, presumably singular when one refers to the online tool, is awesome. I can tell when my students submit their work, they can upload from Word, and they can work with one another on the same document while they are all logged in. I began the semester by asking them to sign up for Gmail, to access the documents. Being undergraduate students, they rarely do as asked at the beginning of the semester. This is the honeymoon period, when an educator must approach students with a compassionate, loving smackdown.

48 students, several mislabeled documents, and three assignments. One word: Clusterfuck.

However, I managed to work through it, and still maintain a bit of sanity. For I know when they come out on the other side of this situation, my students will have taken away much more than simply persuasive writing or public speaking. They will understand, hopefully, how they work in certain group settings, how they adapt to technology that they are unfamiliar with, and how to use these tools to collaborate within their chosen profession. Specifically, though, I wanted to provide them with an alternative way to think about social networking and collaboration, namely tools that exist outside of the Facebook/Myspace universe.

For the first couple weeks, I sent them out to work on specific things. I had them sign up for a Gmail account; I had them use documents that I set up for them; I had them work on assignments that required them to open and save documents. It's misleading sometimes to think that American students should be technologically proficient. While the numbers indicate a large proportion of Americans are wired, there still exists a digital divide; this fact makes implementing technology in the classroom risky. In fact, at a recent conference many made sure to reinforce this idea; some were even disparaging. While I took heed at the warnings, I have proceeded. Few students have complained of difficulty, and given that one of the classes is in a computer lab, I have no reservations about what I have asked of them.

On Wednesday, I finally decided to have the students collaborate online. I have split my persuasive writing class into groups for in-class activities. They have worked to come up with an issue for in-class group work, through brainstorming and blogging. After some deliberation, they reached consensus; after some inquiry about where they stood, I felt it a good time to push them ahead. I asked them to go over what they had discussed with their groups, open their group documents, and write their own impressions about their groups' issues.

After answering the usual I'm-confused-whattya-mean questions, they jumped in. And then they freaked out. They seemed to feel a number of emotions as they realized they were in the same document with their peers. Some were excited, some were a bit confused, and some just thought it was creepy. It was almost like watching a child who realizes the image in the mirror is its reflection. So after their emoting crescendoed - brought about by the picture of a fuzzy kitten placed no doubt by one of their more technology proficient peers - I put my hands up and said, "HANDS OFF THE KEYBOARDS!"

Both the typing and the noise began to subside, and I once again revisited the purpose of the exercise. That seemed to center most of them. We had other problems. Some students couldn't find the document, a couple had not signed up for Gmail, and some had difficulty working with the documents. Once they calmed down, they managed to get through the exercise.

My own classes have had a rocky start, too. I'm not sure I'll receive graduate credit for one of my classes, and I'm trying to figure out my employment situation in the summer. I'm also searching for research project topics. I haven't heard anything about the graduate forum that I submitted to, so I have a feeling that won't pan out. But I hope to submit my case study on Kosovo to AEJMC as a student paper. Again, I would simply like feedback that will enable me to proceed with the project.

Overall it will all fall into place; until it does, I feel same the vertigo that I see in my students. Will it work? How will it work? WHEN will it work? How do I fit into this? In the end, the world is created by those brave enough to seek and present their answers to these questions. When we challenge ourselves to answer, then we possibly come close to touching a dream of freedom, perhaps the one true freedom each of us possesses: the freedom to imagine the world as it could be.