Dollars are cheap

[Peter Korsten]

Dave S schreef:

> That was basically what I was getting at - that national borders don't really 
> do much for ordinary people except keep us imprisoned.  OK, often we are able 
> to choose to leave one prison and go to another one which is slightly nicer 
> (if they'll take us), but really, all these imaginary lines drawn in the 
> ground just serve to divide us, and keep us subservient to (and often unable 
> to escape from) the people with the power and the money.

Still, sometimes people *want* such borders. Current example: Kosovo. 
The Albanian majority wants independence; what's left of the Serb 
minority doesn't. Serbia obviously doesn't want it, but this is 
generally ignored, except by states that have sizeable ethnic minorities 
themselves (Spain, Romania, Russia).

What's ironic about Kosovo is that the area used to be almost completely 
Serb in the Middle Ages, but even since the number of Albanians has 
risen a lot faster than the number of Serbs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Kosovo

A Serbian friend of mine had something to say about this, although his 
comments don't tally with the above article. But according to his uncle 
or his grandfather, "Kosovo [would] not be conquered by sword, but by 
dick". In other words, the Albanians bred like rabbits.

Looks like the Serbs are going to turn their backs on the EU today, not 
entirely surprising. But the Balkans is an area where I think that, at 
the moment, national borders still make sense. Maybe, hopefully, this 
will change in the future.

- Peter