In response to the above article found at www.rferl.org/newsline/4-see.asp this email was sent today to Radio Free Europe, and their mastermind Donald Jensen:

"In your article today, you have used one of the most blatant lies and propaganda tools in history of desinformation (as invented, practiced and endorsed by Goebels, Hitler, Stalin and similar unsavory characters). Namely your title states:
" Friday, 28 January 2005
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Analysis: Serbia's President Rejects Independence For Kosova"

KosovA does not exist, KosovO does. In efforts of recognising any group of rebels claim to the territory in dispute one of the first steps is name calling or name changing. United Nations resolution 1244 states clearly that KosovO is an integral part of Serbian Republic within what used to be FRY - Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Supporting any separtits cause before there was any analasys, concensus or discussion (especially within the entity which has the legal claim to that teritory) is blasphemous, at best, unless it is a part of an outright propaganda dictated from the powers in charge (in the Cold War days we had two big uncles the Russian Bear and the American Imperialists, badmouthed by each other in the similar vein). I would have thought we learned the lesson from not such a distant past, but I was obviously wrong for dubious sources like yours this is considered "fait accompli".

In my view people who allow, promote and spread this kind of deception are willing accomplices in a crime of words. Aiding and abetting is far too benign for what this type of an "unearned error" can contribute to the mass media desinformation.

Direct result and effect of such an "error" is that you have put your organisation just slightly above the United Nations - if you think about it. What shall we name New Scotia? Acadia? Well that was the name of the original French settlers who were expelled by the British from Bay of Fundy. It is fairly safe to say that the first recorded modern ethnic cleansing took place in today’s Nova Scotia (formerly Acadia). The Acadians are descendants of approximately 100 French families who settled along the shores of the Baie francaise (now the Bay of Fundy) during the 17th century. A distinct Acadian culture gradually evolved. The Acadians fishedand farmed, and claimed valuable farmlands from the bay by building dykes. A sense of community life and independence grew as they worked together to survive. By 1750, the population of Acadia had exceeded 10,000.
In was not long, however, before the Acadians were embroiled in the French-British territorial disputes. Beginning in 1755, fearing that the Acadians would support the French, the British government demanded that they sign an unconditional oath of allegiance to the Crown. Most refused, wishing to remain neutral. The infamous Acadian Expulsion resulted. From 1755, over 8,000 Acadians were deported to New England, to the southern colonies and to Europe (France and England). The Acadians were allowed to return to Nova Scotia in 1764. However, the fertile lands they had worked were now occupied by other settlers. Since the British would not allow the Acadians to form large settlements, they gradually settled along the various remote coastal regions of the province. Many of the exiled French Acadians found their way to today’s New Orleans, Louisiana, and the very word Cajun means exactly Acadians (in the form of French language spoken in 18th Century)."

Even more amazing is the following fact. Using KOSOVO as a search word your site returns over 500 pages. Using KosovA as a search word your site returns about 20+ pages and only within a year or two. Does that tell us you just recently renamed this province?

Critical observation by Peter Maher contains some of the unintended pun and political intrigue defined in the following:
""Kosovo" or "Kosova"?
What's in a Name?
By John Peter Maher
Professor of Linguistics, Emeritus
Northeastern Illinois University
[Originally posted summer of 1999
Reposted 27 September 2002]
=======================================

"Kosovo" is a Serbian place name, more fully "kosovo polje", meaning the 'field (or plain) of blackbirds'. "Kosovo Polje" lies just outside the city of Prishtina.

Ornithology lesson: Among North Americans, Australians, and South Africans, only ornithologists can identify the species in question. Kosovo's "black bird" is no crow, nor raven, no starling nor grackle, but "turdus merula", European cousin of the North American rusty-bellied thrush ("turdus migratorius"), which Yanks call the "robin".

In Britain and Ireland "robin" is the name of another species, "erithacus rubecula".
(The "four and twenty 'blackbirds' baked in a pie", of the English rhyme, were of the species "merula", in Serbian called "kos". From this term "kosovo" is the derived possessive adjective.

Like America's harbinger of spring, the black bird called "kos" in Serbian language sings sweetly in the springtime and early summer.

For North Americans the feel of the Serbo-Croatian place name "Kosovo" can only be had from a free translation, "Field of Robins".

Albanians have borrowed the word from the Serbs, whose once overwhelming majority was driven down, especially since the Congress of Berlin, by savage aggression from Albanians incited then and in WW I by Austria-Hungary and Germany, in World War II by Mussolini's puppet Albanians, and after WW II by the discriminatory ethnic cleansing of the Stalinist dictator Josip Broz.

Native Indian place names in America have no meaning in English: e.g. "Michigan" means nothing in English. In Ojibwa "mishshikamaa" means "it is a big lake".

Just so the place names of Ireland have transparent meaning in Gaelic but are meaningless tags in the colonialist English, e.g. "Dublin" is Gaelic "dubh lin" 'black pool', and "Kildare" is "cil dara" 'church of the oak'. Just so the names of the Serbian province of Kosovo are clear Serbian formations, but have no meaning in the Albanian language.

Proof of the Serbian origin of the name and the loanword status of the immigrant Albanian term is that the word "Kosovo" has a clear etymology to anyone who knows a Slavic language, while Albanian "Kosova" is an opaque, meaningless place name in the Albanian language.

Kosovo is Serbian.

-- Peter Maher"

It feels like observing the Middle East conflict and half of Idaho is going "what the Hell are they fighting for?" - not that Idaho is the only place on Earth where such questions are common. The depth of this conflict is equally alien to most Westerners, but the conflict remains profound enough to cause much unrest both there and here, at home.