MILOSEVIC TRIAL DISCUSSION ARCHIVE

Is Slobodan Milosevic getting a fair trial?
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• discussion archive

• Monday April 01, 2002 at 1:53 pm
  The Hague Tribunal uses the same methods to impose their will that they accuse Milosevic of using. The first time Yugoslavia acted on an ultimatum her independence ended. What is taking place with this Tribunal is simply victor’s justice and political murder of a nation. This political murder started with the illegal assault on former Yugoslavia. This Tribunal denies the accused their democratic rights and this has a dangerous impact on society. The first time you sent a man to this Tribunal you have justified the injustice committed against you. That is the day justice died in Serbia. If in fact the accused have broken the law, powerful nations should not break the law in order to impose their idea of justice on you. When America refuses to subject their own nationals to this international law they do not have a moral imperative to subject individuals from other nations to such law. America should value justice above logic since logic does not make what they are doing right. America does not have a monopoly on democracy. In international law American democracy means ‘you must do what I say, not what I do’. I find it problematic in that politicians in Serbia can be persuaded to do anything for a price. Djindjic like Milosevic will answer for their irrational acts and lack of political will. They should answer to the people of Serbia irrespective of their ethnicity. It is time that the people of Serbian become masters in their own house. Co-operating with illegal Tribunals who are above international law will not give your government any moral credibility. Use your own courts to deal with the issues of injustice. You need to value justice above the few dollars that will be provided if you co-operate with injustice. These nations that continue to dictate to you have recently caused over one hundred billion in damage to your nation in an illegal war now Djindjic who wants to be a 'big dog on the international stage is barking like a little poodle on a porch.' Those who build nations will be remembered by history rather than the ones who destroy them.I left Yugoslavia in 1952 as a boy of ten and my memories are of war and destruction. Men with vision must once again build consensus no matter how long it takes. If national unity is not possible some form of confederation or common market without borders must be created. Start with sports and education where the youth of the future can start to trust one another once again.As Bojan stated "tribalism' played a major role in the breakup of this once multiethnic society. The problem it seems to me is that most Yugoslavs paid lip service to ‘Brotherhood and Unity’. By ignoring justice you became conditioned to act in ways pleasing to the “New Class”. Yugoslavia by ignoring the just grievances of the majority played into the hands of the nationalists. The major powers used this “tribalism” for their own agenda, divide and rule ( a united Europe at all costs) since they well knew that individuals can be persuaded to do and believe anything. The Great Powers undermined the political values of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ and the Yugoslavs allowed it to happen. They have no-one to blame but themselves and history will hold them accountable if they don’t value justice more than their grievances. Walter Trkla Kamloops Canada
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops
  BC Canada

• Tuesday April 02, 2002 at 3:02 am
  This tribunal has been set up by the Security Council, as everyone knows. This may or may not be a problem, but what is a problem is that the Security Council seems to have no say in how the tribunal is run. It is clearly run by the US. As soon as the European Court of Human Rights dismissed Milosevic's plea for release, the US was promised more indictees from Serbia. I must admire the mental stamina of those who still believe this trial is even remotely related to law and justice. It is exactly for fear that the coming International Criminal Court will be created in the image of the Americans' hijacking of the ICTY that they themselves refuse to ratify the Rome Treaty (the court might be used for political ends!). Now, the European Court has in effect said it has nothing to do with the ICTY. It had to resort to legal reasoning one had hardly thought possible. The fact that some court has decided that a particular case is inadmissible now implies that the same case has already been "judged", so no other court can admit it either (on the basis of some perverted form of "ne bis in idem" rule). The whole Milosevic affair is now based on decisions on inadmissibility: The European Court had thrown out a plea against the ICTY as inadmissible (in Naletilic case). When Milosevic takes his similar case to the Dutch regional court, he gets thrown out because the European Court had considered the Naletilic case already inadmissible. So Milosevic goes to the European Court, which decides that the case is inadmissible because he did not appeal the Dutch regional court's decision on inadmissibility at a Dutch appellate court (which would probably be thrown out as inadmissible as well). And as a bonus, the European Court says that Milosevic plea is admissible also because he may have raised some points he did not raise before. So the case has now been thrown out as inadmissible on those counts too, and the Dutch appellate court (if it gets that far) will have no trouble throwing out the plea as inadmissible on those counts too, as the Dutch regional court had previously thrown it out, as far as denial of a fair trial was concerned, on the basis of the European Court's decision in Naletilic. OK, so who does the ICTY legally answer to, if not the European Court of Human Rights? The ICTY is still nominally a UN organ, so if the presiding judge and the prosecutors overstep their mandate, they themselves should be prosecuted. The UN does indeed have a judicial organ to deal with staff issues, presuming the ICTY judges and prosecutors are UN staff.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Tuesday April 02, 2002 at 4:03 am
  Even the American's KNOW what justice is: Impartiality, truth ... because their great poet Walt Whitman put it best when he wrote "On justice: as if it might be this thing or that thing according to decisions".
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Tuesday April 02, 2002 at 4:29 pm
  Isn't it quite amazing that EVERYBODY without exception on this page thinks the trial is fixed. This is even though most contibutors are citizens of Nato states. Perhaps somebody from some Nato government or the court might consider putting their head above the parapet.
  
  Neil Craig
  Glasgow
  Scotland

• Tuesday April 02, 2002 at 6:26 pm
  One cannot defend the indefensible and Nato does not need to because might justifies itself and the power behind Nato is the USA. Nothing can prevail against this power. Their sham justice will prevail. What we can do is expose this sham to a few and perhaps shame at least some of these charlatans. A court of justice requires at least truth and impartiality. When Kosovo Albanian leaders have openly boasted of murdering Serb policemen yet are not indicted by this court we see the principle of impartiality ignored. When witness Ashdown, accepted by the court, states "The British government has never used tanks, artillery, looting and burning to drive people out of their homes ..." the principle of truth is denied. When Judge May refuses Milosevic the oportunity to question Ashdown, on these points Ashdown has raised, the principle of impartiality is denied. The serial blackmail of the Serb authorities by the USA to kidnap its citizens for this court while promoting war criminals in Kosovo to positions of power is another example of impartiality denied. Until this court reveals to the world the EVIL which is Kosovo under Nato control - the principle of truth is denied.
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Wednesday April 03, 2002 at 7:06 am
  ??Without the knowledge of the past, one can not comprehend the present nor plan the future? - a quote from the first page of my history textbook in grade 6 or so... What is the use of comparing the ICTY with the ?Spanish Inquisition? where all accused were prosecuted, when the vast majority of Americans have never heard of the ?Spanish Inquisition?. We must not underestimate American ignorance and gigantic demagogical lies this society will swallow. American education system is designed to prevent those even remotely intelligent from looking out of the box. It is accepted, in their society, that a respected brain surgeon never has to read a single classic novel nor take a single history course in the course of their education. And rightfully so, would the rich and powerful really want people with high intellectual capacity to start asking questions? I hope that this time they have taken it too far. I hope that the people will begin to wake up and smell the essence of deceit. How can the land of total economical dictatorship (no one can vote for their boss) give their population the right to chose between two political parties, both ran by the same fuel, and call it ?democracy?... and then, take what they call democracy and impose it on the whole world, cowardly bombing or economically destroying those who don?t comply? ICTY is a burlesque of law and justice, regardless of Milosevic?s guilt or the lack thereof. I have a lot of hope in Mr. Milosevic?s ability to expose NATO?s dirty laundry. The mass media is sensationalist and media control and censorship are not very swift ? the things will leak out through the iron curtain and people will start asking questions.
  
  D. Pecurica
  Canada

• Thursday April 04, 2002 at 1:38 am
  Paddy Ashdown made fun of Milosevic's claim that the West is trying to dominate the world by some sinister conspiracy. A couple of weeks later Tony Blair's foreign policy advisor Robert Cooper talks publicly of the need to create a new Western empire. At least Paddy Ashdown is politically correct enough to be the new British viceroy in Bosnia, no matter how useless he is as a witness. Let's talk about the British government for a change. There are some EU member states that make the EU's foreign policy their foreign policy, and there are others that make their foreign policy the EU's foreign policy. Britain belongs to the latter group. Under Britain's EU presidency the EU set up a draconian sanction regime against Yugoslavia. This was January - June 1998, when the situation in Kosovo scarcely warranted any sanctions at all. (The American Robert Gelbard still called the KLA a terrorist organisation.) Britain is also a member of the Balkans Contact Group and a permanent member of the Security Council, and before you knew it the Contact Group and the Security Council started adopting similar, often literally identical, resolutions and declarations. The early 1998 was the time of the Good Friday agreement, so the British government may have been overly upbeat about resolving all the conflicts in the world. However, this seems a poor excuse in light of Robert Cooper's recent statements. Is there a Western conspiracy? I think the disaster that is called the Milosevic trial can be traced back to the legal education. In academia ideas are changed at a hectic speed in order to "keep up with the latest research", in other words Anglo-American research. Few students, or even professores, realize to what extent they have to get brainwashed. The craze is postmodernism. But the more things change, the more they change the same. The latest academic trends were prophesied by Lewis Carrol in his two classical masterpieces, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass as early as 1865 and 1871 respectively. Peter has already cited the "sentence first -verdict afterwards" principle in the Wonderland. In his comment on Robert Cooper, Jared Israel claimed that the greatest postmodernist thinker was Mr Humpty Dumpty, who said in Through the Looking Glass that the words mean exactly what he chose them to mean. Believe it or not, these were the exact words I got as advice from one law professor. Lewis Carroll may have been a great story teller, a fine mathematician, a prophet, not to mention the greatest legal theoretician of all times, but the truth is that the most prestigious law schools in the world get their philosophy from children's books.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Thursday April 04, 2002 at 12:42 pm
  The USA is becoming an empire. Like empires in the past the USA empire is doomed for destruction. Then justice will prevail. Those who are in control now will be the ones on trial or even worse when thier empire colapses. Im just glad I didnt piss of the Chinnese!
  
  Thomas Van Pelt
  Durbin
  South Africa

• Friday April 05, 2002 at 4:51 pm
  If you really want to know whether the trial and the problems of Yugoslavia are fair just read any article around in the newspapers over the past week and substitute the following words for those in brackets: Yugoslavia (Israel) Serbs (Jews) Albanians (Palestinians) Kosovo (West Bank & Gaza)International Justice? QED
  
  C Rentzos
  London/UK

• Saturday April 06, 2002 at 11:10 am
  ...but don´t the "guys" from the "big" newspapers support the politics of their own government? hmmm ..."the brave new world"
  
  milo a
  Vienna
  A

• Saturday April 06, 2002 at 1:39 pm
  It is nice to see that there are still some people around who can see through the fog of media lies and NATO propaganda. Unfortunately most of the people living in the western countries still beleive every word they hear or read in the media: "if it is in the press it mast be true" sindrom. I would like to ask all of you who contributed to this discussion to air your opinions in your local newspapers. Write to the 'Opinions' column or similar! Some editors may even publish what you have to say and may provoke other people to start questioning "the official story".
  
  Igor J
  Australia

• Sunday April 07, 2002 at 5:33 pm
  I am still astonished that NOBODY disputes that this is a corrupt court (post 2ndAp). After all we are not on an anti-war chatroom we are on JURIST the world's top legal affairs site sponsored by various universities worldwide. I suggest the evidence against Mssrs W. clinton, M.Albricht, W. Christopher, UK prime minister Blair, German chancellors Kohl & Schroeder among many others of planning aggressive war (a war crime), deliberately bombing civilians (war crime), deliberately going to war to help the KLA, & earlier the Croatian Nazis in Krajina among others, commit genocide (crime against humanity) & exercising command authority over the continuing genocide & ethnic cleansing in Kosovo (crime against humanity) is ENORMOUSLY stronger than anything provided against Mr Milosevic. Pres Bush is also implicated in the last charge. Is there really NO American lawyer (OR British)(OR German) who honestly disagrees with this (& cares) enough to "say it ain't so". Re Igor's posting above may I suggest radio phone in shows where the hosts have less time to decide to censor you. Just write down the points you want to make & make them. I was recently on a phone in on Radio Scotland making the above points to G. Robertson (Nato Secretary). He assured the audience that the bombing killed only 500 civilians, refused to say how many had been killed in Kosovo under Nato & that "nobody" in Yugoslavia supported Milosevic. I certainly wasn't convinced.
  
  Neil Craig
  Glasgow
  UK

• Monday April 08, 2002 at 4:34 am
  I urge everyone to find Noam Chomsky's interview dated june 13, 1983 about US foreign policy and the media. The article shows that nothing has changed in the US since the 1980's. The atmosphere of peer pressure and the latargic behaviour of American people has given the US government a licence to kill when it comes to foreign policy. But, ultimetly, I must say that only the Balkan people are to blame for what has happened in the Balkans. It is time for us to take responsibility for our destiny. If we do not, people like Milosevic will be used either by the West or by the Rusia and China for their political and economic gain. Milosevic is not getting a fair trial because the new leadership in Yugoslavia has allowed itself to be bullied by $1.25 billion. To be precise, Mr. Djindjic has chosen to become the next puppet in the series of puppets since the liberation from the Ottoman empire. Balkan People must decide to take their destinies into their own hands or Balkan will end up being the South America of Europe. Thank you for allowing me to express my view with this long comment. Alex Chicago, USA
  
  Alex Stojmenovic
  chicago
  USA

• Monday April 08, 2002 at 5:58 am
  Forgive me for bringing it up, but can anyone following world events tell me what worse did Slobodan Milosevic do (real or imaginary) than what is done at this very moment in front of the "international community" with live coverage by the world media, in the Palestinian occupied territories?How many more innocent civilians his troops killed,how many houses he demolished,how many "terrorists" he publicly executed, how many more "natives" he ethnically cleansed and for how many of these acts he publicly bragged about?
  
  Ioannis Nikolaou
  Greece

• Monday April 08, 2002 at 7:12 pm
  JUSTICE DIES IN THE DARK. "Openness is a hallmark of this nation's legal system. The founding fathers knew that SECRET court proceedings give cover to corrupt or tyrannical judges and sloppy prosecutors, that judges who can hide can easily abuse power". These are the opening words of the Los Angeles Times' editorial on 3 april 2002. There, I told you: even Americans know what justice is: Truth, Impartiality, Openess ... Just as I imagined that events in the ICTY could not get any more preposterous today's resumption of the Milosevic trial entered a SECRET phase!
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Tuesday April 09, 2002 at 11:54 pm
  Being born in 1947 in Timisoara (Romania ) 160 Km from Belgrade I had a chance to get familiar with Yougoslavia until 1967 when I came to America. I have good memories about Yougoslavia . In 1965 I visited Belgrade, Zagreb ,Lubliana,Koper,Rieka and I was very impressed with the standard of living there(compared with Romania at that time) Yougoslavia was heaven.I do remember Belgrade just before Christmas. the city was beautifully decorated ,the stores were full with merchandise. I saw many cars from Germany, Italy ,Switzerland,Austria, Sweden and found out that most of them were Yugoslavians living and working abroad ,now home on christmas vacation. I remember radio Novi Sad ,it was transmitting in Romanian,it was very informative and I learned a lot about politics in Yugoslavia. I think Tito was trying to keep the country together and let the people go out of the country to work,earn money and come back home.He knew that this was a relief valve and people going overseas will bring money home and help the economy. Yugoslavia was the key on the door between east and west it open from both sides.At that time yugoslavia was very active on international arena.After 1965 I visited Yug. in 1966 ,1967 and 1977. I never saw any tension among the many nationalities that live there. I met Serbs in Croatia and Slovenia ,I met Croats in Belgrade. Living in US since 1968 I had oportunity to meet many Yugoslavians in Ridgewood Queens and Brooklyn N.Y. Again I never saw any disrespect among yugoslavians. They share a comunity they shop at the same stores ,eat at the same restaurants,and clubs,live in the same buildings,kids play together.weddings are mixed. Now about politics. What went wrong when and how.Why did yugoslavia split starting with Slovenia. Was Slovenia considering itself above the Serbs .Was the Slovenian people or was the Slovenian leadership who wanted a free market society( and that was in contrast with Milosevic policy who wanted to keep Yugoslavia on the path of socialism).How is Slovenia now . About Croatia ,what happened there,the nationalists wanted independence( also being supported by Germany) How in Croatia now. Bosnia another tragedy( a land that will never survive on its own ). Kosovo ( biggest mistake off all times)My thinking is that all these independence wars never bring peace to this small wanna be countries. I think that all these so called new independent countries were much better under the Yugoslavian confederation.None of this countries will last as long as Yugoslavia lasted. In the future I see a new type of confederation that will bring back all the former states. As soon as the western allies troops will live these countries they will find themselves in political and economic chaos.A small country is a target for the big companies who look for cheap labor and no regulations not for the benefit of the population. About Milosevic; He is out and will not come back. It will be very interesting to see what former Russian prime minister or foreign minister have to say if they come to Hague as witnesses. I think the judges try to be fair,but I wish to see and hear all the witnesses. Its not fair to keep the door closed .These witnesses have no secrets and will not change the course of history.I see that somehow the serbs are blamed for everything, and if the court is biased against the serbs it will fire back .Hope is a fair trial and everybody should get a chance to get the real facts out in the open. Comments please Vasile in NY
  
  Vasile Ianos
  New York

• Wednesday April 10, 2002 at 7:22 am
  The Milosevic Trial shows how much our spin doctors have misled us and reveals that Mr. Milosevic has been as much sinned against as sinned. After the last war we considered the Yugoslavs our best friends. After all their Partisans had continued the fight against the Germans, our common enemy, long after the rest of Europe had caved in. Later we enhanced our friendship with lively trade and many trade agreements offering the impoverished country credi under favorable conditions. I myself was involved during Marshall Tito's lifetime in several turn-key factory projects based on such trade agreement finance. This also involved several visits to Sarajevo. Then the mixed races in Sarajevo lived and worked happily thgetherr, appreciating their different traditions and skills. Why can we not now do what Marshall Tito was able to do then? Because he loved his people while we have no feeling for them whatsoever. Proof of this is the dropping of over 40,000 bombs when it suited us and against which they had no real defense. We have to decide if we wish to offer Yugoslavia aid or blood money. It is to President Bush's eternal shame that he decided to offer blood money and it was even more shameful for the new Yugoslave goverment to accept it. Therefore Mr. Milesovic is dead already. In England we are even now spending £ Millions to buil the prison to hold Milosevic, without waiting for the niceties of a guilty verdict. Under these circumstances only a fool would look for justice.
  
  Eric Spielman
  London
  England

• Wednesday April 10, 2002 at 8:39 am
  Assuming that Milosevic WAS a dictator, the only reason he is in the Hague is because he didn't follow orders from the New World Order leaders. If he had followed orders, he'd be free and sunning himself on the Riviera or the Bahamas somewhere. It therefore follows that the Hague proceedings will be as fair as possible provided he is found guilty. The alternative is that he will no doubt have a "heart attack" or die from "remorse" for all the brutality he started in Gazimestan in 1989. The only problem is that the so called famous speech will FOREVER remain on record and future generations will always manage to see the truth. Not that the New World Order cares about that, there's still too much globalisation to be implemented. Maybe Slobo will go down in history as the FIRST anti-globalist to die in the Hague, not counting the millions who are dying all over the world at the moment. Can someone please promote the man to Che status as his courage in standing up to Global colonialists deserves nothing less.
  
  David Dury
  Australia

• Wednesday April 10, 2002 at 6:08 pm
  I see the transcripts are still unavailable... this is truly disgusting, beyond words.
  
  myrtle J
  Canada

• Wednesday April 10, 2002 at 7:58 pm
  Wesley Clarke the military ‘John Wayne’ of NATO during the bombing of Yugoslavia was asked on CNN April 9 2002, about sending UN monitors to the Middle East. He responded saying that “monitors purpose is to internationalize the conflict”. You have your answer for Racak and the bombing of Yugoslavia
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops
  BC Canada

• Thursday April 11, 2002 at 10:45 am
  Is it true that General Wesley Clarke is Jewish and changed his name to veil his true colours. If this true, Clarke's Jewishness would make his comments somewhat lacking in indepedence, would it not? Why would a journalist ask someone (who has a potential conflict of interest ) his opinion on a subject that is too close to the bone? Because in America, the truth is meaningless. regards, Alexander Sterr
  
  Alexander Sterr
  Adelaide
  AUSTRALIA

• Thursday April 11, 2002 at 11:04 am
  Hey Alexander, what does it matter whether Wesley Clarke is Jewish or not? I think it does not matter at all. Any other claim is just racism. General Clarke has conducted a merciless bombing campaign, for that he is to be judged, completely irrespective of the unimportant question whether he is Jewish or not.
  
  Guido Gebauer
  Germany

• Thursday April 11, 2002 at 11:38 am
  There has been an international development very relevant to the Milosevic trial (and I see JURIST has already set up a forum to discuss it): a "World War Crimes Tribunal" has been begun by the United Nations, "despite vehement U.S. opposition."
  And so, our one-sided war crimes prosecution/persecution of Milosevic and his thugs is coming back to haunt -- nay, hunt us?
  This means, for example, that our ruthless war with Colombia's cocaine producers and (China-backed) Marxist terrorists/revolutionaries can now come under international scrutiny with the threat of criminal prosecution for any pacification measures that offend international sensibilities or legalities. The Milosevic trial is indeed sowing an international legal whirlwind we are about to reap.
  And our oppostion to the Tribunal, like our self- interested opposition to the Kyoto environmental treaty, shall only further increase our isolation and slide to becoming "an alliance of one" -- the modern Athens Henry Kissinger has warned us against becoming.
  
  Lou Coatney
  Macomb IL USA

• Thursday April 11, 2002 at 12:33 pm
  Wes Clark -- no "e" at the end -- was the top of his U.S. Military Academy (at West Point) Class of 1966. (As far as I can remember, we never met.) He is mentioned in Rick Atkinson's book THE LONG GRAY LINE.
  Gen. Douglas MacArthur gave his Farewell Speech to the Corps of Cadets, on 12May62, but it still reverberates at the Academy: "Duty, Honor, Country." And (from an earlier speech) "There Is No Substitute for Victory!" ... spoken with the less-than-victory frustration of the Korean War in mind.
  Wes Clark has tried to live up to those standards almost pathologically. But he is also typical of his generation of U.S. officers, whom you can only begin to understand -- their feelings of having been betrayed, for one thing -- if you read Atkinson's book and/or see the recent Mel Gibson film "We Were Soldiers."
  I believe Wesley had us teetering on the brink of World War 3, threatening the Russians that he would blow any surveillance ship they sent out of the water ... and later ordering British General Mike Jackson to fire on the Russians moving to grab Pristina airfield -- an order Jackson thankfully disobeyed.
  I think Clark was under terrible political pressure and psychological strain and that his image as a "loose cannon" led to his earlier-than-expected retirement.
  I too have heard that his mom was Jewish. How that may have affected him -- his need to achieve and/or his personal loyalties -- is hard to determine. (The American Jewish Committee, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and even Survivor Elie Wiesel publicly supported our war crime Kosovo War for various reasons/motives.) However, at this point he should not be stereotyped as one of our "Israel Lobby." Lou Coatney, USMA x1968 (resigned 31Mar65)
  
  Lou Coatney
  Macomb IL USA

• Thursday April 11, 2002 at 7:18 pm
  The question posed was ‘Is this trial fair?’. I understand people’s anger and frustration at such things as Bush’s declaration that no American will ever appear before any International Court while subjecting others to such courts: At Blair’s hypocrisy on the Iraq issue in threatening the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries, having come to power as a CND campaigner: At Blair and his cohorts’ support for a KLA Islamic terror campaign in Kosovo while condemning it elsewhere: And his subsequent cluster bombing of Serbian civilians for the VJ combating that terror, in ways no worse (certainly before the bombing) than those of Bush in Afghanistan or Sharon in Palestine: At Blair’s subsequent complicity and acquiescence in the Genocide of the Kosovo Serbs. But we must remember that lying is the stock in trade of politicians. That is why we need independent courts of justice. So returning to the question let us consider again this so called court of JUSTICE the ICTY. Any court of justice must maintain at least the principles of truth and impartiality. To guard these major principles we must have supporting principles such as openness and independence. There is another major principle that appears to be missing in this court which brings us to PORKIES. For the uninitiated porkies is an abbreviation for pork pies which in turn is Cockney rhyming slang for LIES. In the English legal system the concept of truth is protected by the concept of perjury. A witness found to have lied to the court may face criminal charges for this perjury with severe penalties of imprisonment. A number of witnesses have been found to be lying to the ICTY but no sanctions have been applied? It is apparent that this court is rotten to the core. Taking silk is another quirk of English law that may be of interest. Barristers or more generally advocates may apply to be upgraded to a senior rank where upon appointment they wear a silk robe as opposed to one made, at least in bygone days, of alpaca. Alpaca is a material, which is often stuffed to create objects such as teddy bears. It is claimed by some that this gave rise to the insult GET STUFFED for it was applied to senior ranking barristers when they failed to perform to the high standards required of a silk. Do you think Carla del Ponte and her prosecutors deserve to be sent alpacing? Vote now.
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Friday April 12, 2002 at 12:16 pm
  It amazes me again and again to find out how politicians and journalists are able to swap bare truth and simple facts for lays and complicated explanations then using these “new well explained facts” they are always able to fool almost entire population, to get support for their ideas and future actions. In order to explain this I am going to give you several examples for judgment. For example: If I lived in my house - my neighbour came for coffee with his son - and he says it’s my house since we outnumbered you. Question 1: Is that house really his house? Question 2: Does the higher number of my neighbours give them more rights to claim my house to be theirs? Question 3: Does my neighbour have rights to discuss the problem, with somebody from another city and invite him in my house to scrutinize the problem? Question 4: Does that invited city man have rights to come to my house even though myself have not invited him? Question 5: Does the city man have rights to invite his colleague and come to my and my neighbour house? - If they really came and they use all ours belongings, is it for betterment of my neighbour and myself? Question 6: If I really take it tough and I don’t want them in the house do they have rights to use force to come in? Question 7: If they really want forcefully come in, and I responded - and somebody get killed. Is it then a first-degree murder? Question 8: Am I really aggressive if I the most muscular neighbour having 5 houses, lost 4 of them to my neighbours? Question 9: If thieves get these houses would it be really nice for them not to get prosecuted? Wouldn’t be even nicer for them that somebody else get blamed, then the case is closed? Question 10: Would you question the following news? The most aggressive and barbaric man having 120 lb of muscles get beaten in three separate fights by the most peaceful and civilized men, first having 25 lb the next 45 lb and third 25 lb. The same man is preparing to fight the next very peaceful man having 20 lb and we really need to stop a massacre and help the 20 pounds man.
  
  John Smith
  Canada

• Friday April 12, 2002 at 4:34 pm
  Fair Trial? This is a indictment 6. "The purpose of this joint criminal enterprise was the forcible removal of the majority of the Croat and other non-Serb population from the approximately one-third of the territory of the Republic of Croatia that he planned to become part of a new Serb-dominated state through the commission of crimes in violation of Articles 2, 3, and 5 of the Statute of the Tribunal." There are few questions from my side for this count: What was the real number of Serbs in Croatia and Krajina? Where disappeared 900.000 Yugoslavians and 600.000 Serbs (1991 census in Croatia) from 1990 - 1995? How many Serbs were expelled from Croatia from 1945 - 1990? How many Serbs disappeared from Croatia 1941 - 1945? How many Serbs were forced to leave Croatia during and after 1st World War? What is the Genocide? What nation disappeared from Krajina and other parts in Croatia? - Was that the only ethnical cleansing in former Yugoslavia? How many Serbs were expelled from Slovenia? What nation disappeared from Sarajevo? What nation disappeared from Zagreb? What nation disappeared from Pristina? Is Serbia ethnically clean like other “victim” states? In western media all other nationalities reacted to Serbian aggression in revenge - but there are over 800.000 thousands Serbian refugees in Serbia and they didn’t expelled Slovenians, Croats and others from Belgrade - Do ICTY has their opinion about it? Is it possible that there are 800.000 thousands Serbian refugees in Serbia, but no one Serbian was killed - or I didn’t find it in western (BBC, CNN) news? If there are 800.000 thousands Serbian refugees in Serbia it must be that there are fair number Serbian people crossed the border as refugees and have seek for a shelter somewhere in the West (Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Canada, Russia and so on). How come I have never seen in western media about these people? - If these numbers are so large how come nobody committed crimes against Serbs? It could be that all these people left theirs belongings by their will and happily headed somewhere else. O by the way did anybody bombed these refugees? Is it a bombing the worst crime by Geneva Conventions?
  
  Petar Peric
  Canada

• Friday April 12, 2002 at 7:44 pm
  Next wednesday at 9.00 pm BBC4 (in U.K. ofcourse) is showing the three-part documentary about war crimes in ex-YU "including terrifying video footage shown by the prosecution"... The same story over and over again. Should we expect the respecteful BBC to show and video shown by defence ? I bet they will not.That is the democracy my friend.I mean is not really the point anymore speaking about it over and over again. We know the truth. Anyone who has been following the development in the Balkan crissis knows the truth (from the neutral stance).Some of the people with common sense will notice the truth too. But again mostly of them will again blindly follow what has been written by the media. And media will stay the same.It is stupid to expect any radical change to come from them. If they haven't woke up untill now why would we expect them in the future? Imagine you switch your TV and CNN is reporting:"...Due to the development in the Hague tribunal where mr.Slobodan Milosevic was declared NOT GUILTY in the charges of genocide,crimes against humanity ......the viewers will have a unique chance tonight at 9.00pm to see a three-part documentary covering the development of the crissis in the ex-YU with the exclusive footage shown by the prosecution and defence during the trial......................... ) This will NEVER happen.The entire goverments would instantly be brought down.Milosevic is guilty. We dont speak here of Hag tribunal,the jury has brought the verdict before the trial began.The tribunal is only cover up for history.And all this is obvious to all of us and we are going about it again and again but is this going to help anything is a different question.I will leave it for you to think about. Think about what does mean all our opinions here if common people on your and my work ,influenced by the media, think of the west as a saviours of the world. That is exactly what I am experiencing here in the U.K.. From the beggining I have been arguing about it but in the end I have realised that all I am doing is wasting my time and energy making my life a bigger misery then it is. No hope for truth coming up if radical changes dont take place around the world. The human civilisation will probably have to pay in blood again for this revolution to happen .But that is a different story. Regarding this subject I mostly agree with all what is said here but again I will ask you is this gonna help anything ? And this website with our opinions in it and other handfull similar websites(which are still considered in the west as a Serbian propaganda ) are they making any difference in this sea of information? And the most important thing of all is WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT IT instead of still disscusing answered questions. Any feedback and opinion on this subject is welcome. Novica Golubovic Edinburgh amerenakare@hotmail.com P.S. Here is one more puzzle for you to think about- Why is our name,surname and country required for e-mail here to be published? P.S.2 Regards to Bojan from Slovenia and Neil from Glasgow
  
  Novica Golubovic
  Scotland

• Saturday April 13, 2002 at 6:01 am
  Dear Novica: May you use your strength to change those things you can change, your courage to accept those things you cannot change and your wisdom to know the difference. In the mean time be thankful along with me that Jurist has give us a 'voice'. It is claimed that the pen is mightier than the sword - let's hope so.
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Saturday April 13, 2002 at 8:24 am
  Very interesting to hear the" other side od the bell" Our media for years are singing the same version of bad and good boys in Yugo tragedy. What is also surprisingly to me ,although without any jurist knowledge,the timelist the prosecutors took in bringing the witnesses before Milosevic. I'll try to explain in my approx.english:What has to do Milosevic with the individual suffering of first witnesses displayed in Court? How can be linked to crimes which occured in some lost villages in Kosovo?? If the Prosecutors want to determine his responsability woould not they act better if they had first presented as witnesses the important persons from political point of view - like the english general of KVM mision who tried to demonstrate the Milosevic's responsability in what happened there?? If it was the case,then the turn should be to show the attrocities made by Serbs on innocent people in Kosovo. By the way this general with "impossible" name stated that he can not confirm that a genocide or ethnic cleaning until the Nato bombardement started. What then??? It is for me a very astonishing situation. What kind of logic is leading those prosecutors in ICTY?? Can somebody here explain ??
  
  Serjoe Brus
  Italy

• Saturday April 13, 2002 at 6:13 pm
  Dear Peter, I do respect what u have said in your comment. "Pen mightier then the sword"-very well said. In our time read-Internet. It might have an enormous impact on the future generations undestanding the history. How far from now- question. Is it gonna happen soon enough to prevent the bigger tragedy, which if west dont change its policy over Balkans it's expectable. What meny people dont see in the west is that by its involvment in the Balkans it has created a big mess. The conflicts are ( I will be polite now and not say CREATED ) stopped artificialy without no real solution to any of the egzisting problems. The hate is bigger then ever. But again all this is for a different discussion. What does ocupy my mind is how to stop the continuous suffering of the people which at the time you and me here have a chat on the PC they are having a serious thought what they will have for dinner and where they will sleep. This mostly apply to the refugees from Krajina and Kosovo about whom the west closes its eyes. It is obvious who is a real victim of the genocide and "ethnic cleansing" but with no real help from the international comunity. In the current situation where the truth is in no means coming in touch with the wider public in the west ,the catastrophy is inevitable. I do respect all your opinions here in the jurist and I was delighted to find such a place with you people inside. But I do not think that is making much difference in the developing situation. Even regarding Milosevic trial. He is already sentenced, there is no doubt about it. As is in no doubt about the consequences such an act would produce. Bringing the verdict GUILTY on any of the charges against him he will be marked and "officialy" as a bad guy and therefore all the blame for the war would be pointed toward the Serbs. Western leaders will once more be selebrated as a saviours. The future of Serbia could be jeopardised as in any of the possible crisis to be created there media could be used much easier then before. And is much ,much more to speak and worry about it. As for mr.Milosevic himself I do have an opinion that he should stand before the trial and answer some questions. But not in this one,not in the way is opened,represented,sponsored etc. Best regards
  
  Novica Golubovic
  Edinburgh
  Scotland

• Saturday April 13, 2002 at 8:00 pm
  There are some rays of hope that the ICTY prosecutor Carla del Ponte’s version of events in Kosovo will eventually be seen to be false. See for example Neil Clark’s article in the Spectator (UK) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/decani/message/66259 As more of these articles appear in the West’s media the truth about what really happened in Kosovo, before and after Nato commenced bombing, will be revealed. Then Blair’s spin doctors will not be able to prevent his exposure as a war criminal: among his crimes the indiscriminate cluster bombing of Serb civilians (causing thousands of deaths and injuries to innocent women and children) and his subsequent complicity in the genocide of the Kosovo Serbs. The RAF, with a proud record second to none, reduced to dropping cluster bombs from three miles high into defenceless civilian areas? Blair’s contradictions demonstrate just how unprincipled he is. Over Kosovo he actively supported Islamic terror attacks: Now, elsewhere, he actively denounces Islamic terror attacks. In 1999 He sent flying bombs (cruise missiles) into public buildings in Belgrade: Since September 2001 he is most outspoken about in his condemnation of the ‘heinous atrocity’ of flying bombs into public buildings. In 1999 Blair was equally outspoken about the, so called, ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians: Now that hundreds of thousands of the ethnic minorities have ACTUALLY been ethnically cleansed from the province by the KLA/KPC Islamic terrorists he has remains as silent as a Trappist monk. He sent his envoy Ashdown to warn Milosevic that he would haul him before his kangaroo court for using tanks to root out terrorists in Kosovo: Now, as Sharon hides the bodies of Palestinian tank attack victims, Blair makes no such threat, he remains as silent as the graves of his own victims? So what does this ‘great world leader’ believe in as he struts about the world stage occasionally in his bomber jacket? He of the New Labour ‘New world Order, the New Labour ‘Ethical Foreign Policy? Why votes of course and the spin, or more correctly the lies, that secure them. For contradictions reveal nothing but nonsense. Principles require consistency. “On justice: as if it might be this thing or that thing according to decisions”.
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Sunday April 14, 2002 at 3:25 pm
  Dear Novica, Again In answer to your question “WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT IT” please read the article available at this address: http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/prog2.htm As you will see this authoritative source, UN Consultant Dr. Hans Koechler, describes in detail the illegality of the ICTY both in its creation and its procedures. The same page includes an appeal on behalf of the publisher. What we should do is publicise as far as we can articles like this and respond to the appeal as far as we are able. Good luck.
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Sunday April 14, 2002 at 4:59 pm
  Does anybody know why no transcrpits relating to the Milosevic trial have been released since February 19th on the ICTY website? Presumably they are not available elswhere?
  
  C Rentzos
  London/UK

• Monday April 15, 2002 at 10:58 am
  A good test of this new World War Crimes Tribunal will be to see if it takes up the issue of our/ NATO's responsibility for starting the Kosovo War (with Appendix B of the Rambouillet Treaty ... see my postings in the archived discussion) and for (all) the ensuing atrocities.
  I talked with a (Democrat) U.S. Congressman on Saturday. (We have had our differences, but he is basically a good person trying to do what's right as he sees it.) I -- tactfully, under the circumstances -- mentioned my concern that we not be one-sided, that we still be receptive to the feelings/opinions of the rest of the world -- that we not be the "arrogant Athens" Henry Kissinger warned us against becoming.
  But for him, it is now very much an us( good)/them( bad) world ... although he is pleased at how much better blacks and whites in DC are getting along, with shared feelings of an external threat.
  We must be more objective, if we want the world to trust us with strategic, missile-defense hegemony. We must do better, for the (rest of) the world and for ourselves ... if we are to survive.
  
  Lou Coatney
  Macomb
  Illinois USA

• Monday April 15, 2002 at 12:03 pm
  C Rentzos (above) "Does anybody know why no transcrpits relating to the Milosevic trial have been released since February 19th on the ICTY website?" -A Spanish chap hunting for transcripts e-mailed the webmaster at The Hague about this and was fobbed off with the excuse of "bureaucracy". Not good enough. Now, I have been on trial (Not Guilty, promise!) and I know that transcripts must be made available for public scrutiny because I wanted the transcripts of my trial (I couldn't afford it). No transcripts = No public scrutiny = No legitimacy = No trial! I am completely bewildered and frustrated by the undignified silence by the Media on the subject. Ditto the countless "Human Rights" organisations, who are not usually reknowned for lack of things to say. Any ideas, anyone?
  
  Richard de Lacy
  Luton
  England

• Tuesday April 16, 2002 at 12:41 am
  Thanks to Peter Taylor for the link http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old§ion=current&issue=2002-04-13&id=1762 Read something that "free" CNN and BBC can never dispute , so they will never print likeness of it. Also one of the ICTY supporters on "Institute of War and Peace" (I think that site should omit word Peace) web sites that Jurist has a link was stating that Milo was arguing wrong on "hit list" of 66 people, because he didn't argued that allmighty Serb Security forces in two years never been able to "hit" more that 3 people on the that list. Well, Milo pointed that that hit list cannot be Serb Official document because grammatical mistakes on "official" document can not be something done by official Serb goverment. None of the official Serb documents have such a low knoweledge of Serbian language. His argument more valid than to count how many people of that "hit list" have been eliminated. It simply proves that it is not official therefore can not be linked to him or goverment of his time Serbia.
  
  Alex Allblind
  US

• Wednesday April 17, 2002 at 2:17 am
  The Dutch government resigned yesterday on account of their "collective guilt" in the Srebrenica massacre. This reminds of the documentary that was shown on BBC with the title "Moral Kombat". Everything is suddenly only a moral problem, as soon as it is the West that is involved. Any Serb with the same track record would already have been indicted. But there is more? By a strange set of circumstances, the Dutch government may also have a conflict of interests in hosting the ICTY. It is particularly interesting that the Milosevic case has already been thrown out of the Dutch courts (or I should say "a" court). Can the Dutch officials and judges be expected to treat the case even-handedly, when they are under "a collective guilt"? It is very much to be doubted that Dutch officials would carry out an indictment against a Dutch officer or a politician and take them to the country's capital (where most of them would already be anyway).
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Wednesday April 17, 2002 at 8:52 am
  BLOWJOB, sorry I mean blowback, in the oval office - "the buck" (I think it's buck?) "stops here". Read comments by Robert Hunter, U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from 1993 to 1998, CIA Director George Tenet before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on 19 March 2001 and a former Balkans intelligence officer who remains anonymous for fear of reprisals. These senior officials describe Nato's complicity in the smuggling of Mujahedeen and their arms into the Balkans. You may read this article by Greogory Piatt in the Stars and Stripes 17 April 2002 at URL http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=126&article=7844 Now that put a rather different complexion on del Ponte's version of events. Pouring petrol on the flames of the WTC would be childs play in comparison. Would Blair and Clinton have welcomed a few hundred Mujahedin fighters, complete with Al Qa'eda links, into the separatist movements in Northen Ireland and Texas? You bet your ass ... Blair, Clinton and his successor Bush claim to fight this sort of terrorism? And elsewhere they and their allies, the Israelis, thrash about them with gusto: in Afghanistan, Palestine and next on the big hit list Iraq. If you have your vomit bag handy view some of the atrocities, not just the casualties of Serb artillery or Nato bombs, but the deliberate mutilations perpetrated by these Islamic terrorists. Pictures are available on the Web most recently in Macedonia. A FAIR COURT IS IMPARTIAL. IN SPITE OF HUNDREDS OF WELL DOCUMENTED MASSACRES AND BRUTAL MURDERS AND THE ETHNIC CLEANSING OF 200,000 KOSOVO SERBS NOT ONE KLA MEMBER HAS BEEN INDICTED BY DEL PONTE'S COURT? Why is it the Serbs and their cousins, the Macedonians, are uniquely not allowed to defend themselves? In the meantime I hope that Blair and Bush have remembered to issue "goolie chits" else there may well be a slump in demand for blowjobs in the very near future.
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Wednesday April 17, 2002 at 12:56 pm
  What I find rasther duplicitous is the following: 1. Nato and The US ranted and raved that they had proof of Serbian mass grave sites to cover up their killing fields and photographs were presented in the media through their massive technological capacity using satellite and other means. Most of thi so called evidence has been shown to have been speculative. 2. Now that America's ally (Israel) has been accused of genocide for weeks now in Jenin (Palestinian settlement) there is a stunning silence by the same clever technorats who are so clever at finding such grave sites and the killing fields. I suppose that it depends whether you are an American ally, doesn't it? Alexander Sterr This is called selective
  
  Aexander Sterr
  Adelaide
  South Australia, Australia

• Wednesday April 17, 2002 at 2:10 pm
  Wow - so many people appear to hate America. This is one American Serb that does not. Milosevic is evil, not the USA.
  
  Nick Kvocka
  USA

• Wednesday April 17, 2002 at 4:53 pm
  To Nick Kvocka, Surely no one on this board hates America what we all hate is INJUSTICE. That is the fault of individuals in America along with individuals in other Nato countries, principally the UK and Germany. This board is hosted by Americans in America. Whether Milosevic is "evil" or not is yet to be determined by a court: According to Anglo-American legal tradition no one is guilty until proved guilty in a properly constituted court according to procedures based on principles of truth and impartiality. As I am an Englishman and you a Serb I need you to explain something - that is if your analysis is beyond the level of "Wow" and 'I love mom and apple pie'. Where have you been during the past three years during which time events in Kosovo were definitely not in the control of Milosevic? During that time between 5000 and 10,000 Serbs have been murdered (and many more injured) by Nato bombs, the KLA sponsored by Nato (including Mujahedeen) and assorted Albanian thugs and criminals. Some 1500 Serbs are still missing and in a period of three years Nato has made NO serious attempt to assuage the agony of their thousands of relatives. Some 200,000 Serbs have been ethnically cleansed from their centuries old homeland where their property has been destroyed or stolen and the rest live in permanent fear in ghettos. Massive destruction of Serbian infrastructure has impoverished your nation for decades to come. Southern Serbia is still under frequent attack from Islamic terrorists. Well over 100 of your religious sites in Kosovo have been destroyed. What is your point - that is if you are not an Agent Provocateur? If you are indeed a Serb you should be thoroughly ashamed of your ignorance or your insouciance.
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Wednesday April 17, 2002 at 6:07 pm
  Thanks Nick I have been asking since 2nd April for somebody to speak for Nato. So can you explain what exactly Milosevic did that made Yugoslavia less deserving of support than Tudjman's Croatia, Izetbegovic's Bosnia or the genocidal thugs currently running loose in Kosovo. Let alone what makes him a war criminal & not the Nato leaders.
  
  Neil Craig
  Scotland

• Wednesday April 17, 2002 at 8:07 pm
  Nick is not a Serb. I know for a fact he is not.
  
  Kathryn Love
  SJC
  CA USA

• Wednesday April 17, 2002 at 10:51 pm
  I am not sure why nationality should be a factor in this discussion. Nick, I don’t give a damn if you are a Serb or Chicken Little. The issue here is JUSTICE, HONESTY and FAIRNESS. Before I accessed this web site I felt that I was well informed, however Nick, I find contributors to this discussion who are more informed than I. I learn from them every day and Nick, I would welcome ideas from those who support your point of view. Unfortunately I don’t know what your point of view is. I am not against Americans. I oppose what the American government does in the name of the American people. Ninety nine percent of the American public had no idea where Kosovo was located or its meaning to the Serbian people. If you watch the quiz shows in America, Jeopardy or Millionaire, we see the questions that are answered incorrectly most often deal with international issues or geography, while the questions that are answered correctly most often deal with trivia or with the Soaps. The people on these shows are supposed to represent the most intelligent Americans. How much intelligence does it take to see propaganda on CNN when opponents of NATO are silenced? When in the past ten years have you seen Chomsky interviewed on CNN? When Christiana Amenpour interviews an Albanian mother and her five year old son who left Kosovo during the bombing and asks her where her husband is, she responds sobbing and says that "he was tortured and killed by the Serbs." To the same question the little boy responds that he is with the UCK. You know the saying ‘from the mouths of babes.’ This clip was live and CNN played it once. I hope I don’t need to tell you why? My mother was a peasant woman and during WWII she was smart enough to hide her children in a clump of trees as the Stukas attacked the village where we lived. I must have been at most two years old when this event took place and I remember it like it was yesterday. Kosovo mothers and fathers, like my mother, understood that if they stayed in the village that is being bombed their family would not survive. If we examine some of the events of the twentieth century, starting with the sinking of the Lusitania, burning of the Reichstag, Invasion of Poland, Tonkin Gulf Incident, Korean 007 Airline Incident, Bread Line bombing in Sarajevo, Market Place bombing in Sarajevo and Racak in Kosovo we can see what interest was served in each case if we are not blinded by nationalism and ignorance. Some years ago I read a letter in “Time” magazine (a magazine that I seldom read) by an English officer who went to Srebrenica when it fell to the Serbian forces and he questioned; “What happened to the forty percent of the Serbian population of the town?” He also asked the question, “What happened to the Serbian village population in the vicinity of Srebrenica?” This question is not been answered by the Tribunal since they are not interested in the truth. The Tribunal wants a conviction and it matters not who is lynched. The responsibility for the lynching of Milosevic rests with western media, as well as with Russia and China, since they have been silent because of their own economic and political interests. It is time that we demand that our governments add to the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government a fourth responsibility, an independent media. Independent media must be responsible to the other three branches and must be free from serving any master. This might be ‘pie in the sky’ but so was the landing on the moon.
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops
  Canada

• Wednesday April 17, 2002 at 10:59 pm
  To Nick Kvocka. What is America? Is it Enron or Mad Albrigt (whom Serbs saved during WWII from fascists and who has amnesia of her past) or is it Walt Whitman, Miles Davis or Thomas Jefferson? So go figure what we hate. I guess you, as a Serb you like ethnically clean Kosovo (that is why NATO is good and Milo is evil isn't it?). "Lovers" like you always try to end up on winning site
  
  Alex Alblind
  US

• Thursday April 18, 2002 at 11:06 am
  First, there is no need for foul language on this site. If that was Peter Taylor, you only undermine your excellent/strong arguments by degenerating the exchange in this manner. Are you trying to get this forum deleted entirely?
  As frustrated as we all have been about Clinton, Albright, et al so far escaping justice ... and the injustice of prosecuting the Serbs while they do ... there are some promising developments.
  The World Criminal Court has been created, and it has been condemned by the U.S. government, arrogantly, of course. This means that we now have a court where prosecution initiatives which the Clinton-Bush government -- and if Bush continues to go along with the Kosovo War and injustices, he becomes as guilty of them as Clinton -- would otherwise be able to block can be introduced and heard.
  I have talked to Sam Husseini of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He was one of the very first to expose Appendix B of the Rambouillet Treaty, and I urge anyone/everyone here who wants to see legal action taken against Clinton et al for the Kosovo War to get in touch with him or anyone else who might be willing to take this before the WCC.
  Also, the U.S. military servicemen's paper STARS & STRIPES has just run a bombshell article exposing/ confirming our/NATO's support to Muslim terrorists in Bosnia and Kosovo. This shows the depth of the resentment -- nay, rage -- within our American national security community about how they have been dishonorably misused by our politicians to protect/enable Mafia/terrorist drug and prostitution operations now being run even more actively through Kosovo -- which is transforming into the domestic terrorism we are seeing even here in rural Illinois. (The increasing danger to U.S. personnel was also noted.)
  So let's knock off the foul language and get to work! There is a war for truth and justice here, to be won!
  
  Lou Coatney
  Macomb
  IL USA

• Thursday April 18, 2002 at 12:54 pm
  Milosevic is my hero. He is not getting a fair trial. I don't believe he was aware that anyone was ever killed in the Balkans, or he would have put a stop to it. He just wanted a nice, clean, pleasant country to live in with his wife and kids. Nato really ruined everything for all of us.
  
  Supo Marovic
  US

• Thursday April 18, 2002 at 3:04 pm
  When I look back in time i can not but feel betryed by the Western Civilization. I was born and grew up in a peacefull and most beautifull country in the world formerly known as Yugoslavia. First time I noticed there are differencies between us was well into my childhood when we, kids from the neighbourhood, showed each other our "tools". I recall feeling jealosy becouse some of my friends were circumsized and I was not. Early adulthood brought us our first loves, punk and rock music, movies( Venders, Belushi) and books(Kamy, Becket, Shaefer etc.).First breath of Western culture and we were in love! God forgive me how we loved West. Those days you were "cool" if you had a pair of All Star sneackers, Levis jeans and US Flag patch on your shoulder. Elderly disliked this, warrning us that things are not the way they look like(experience from WW1 and WW2), but we completly ignored them.We did not want to be Serbs, Croats, Muslims, Slovenians etc, we WERE Westerners. When comunism started to shake we were the ones which pulled it down.Instead of going abroad(what was a trend for our generation), we had a chance of bringing abroad to us and we seized it. The prosperity of having Nick Cave concert in Belgrade, or McDonald restaurants left us floating on our false belives. "Visit west before west visits you" used to say my grendpa seeing the direction that we were heading. How right he was! Instead of peace, prosperity, love and music West brought us war, misery, hateret and the "music" of arms. West made us what it wanted us to be:SAVAGE BALKANIANS. It was my generation that suffered the most,it were us that had to run from oposed nationalities as well as from own armies to avoid draft; it was my generation that turned to drugs, alcohol and criminal out of desperation; my generation that ended scatered all ower the western world that we craved so much as janitors, construction workers or street tugs(world most educated janitors-an american joke I heard recently), truing to defy odds and destiny that was placed in front of us, and live "normal life". I ended up in NYC. Instead of peace of mind I found an open propaganda war waged against the WHOLE SERBIAN POPULATION. How can I begin to explain my 5 year old doughter who grew up in US why she sould be proud of her Serbian roots; how can I begin to comfort my 10 year old niece who came crying from school being laughed at and called names just becouse she is Serbian; how can I begin to explain mu American friends that their Goverment(not people) is responsible for what they are accussing whole Serbian Nation; HOW? My prospects are grim. I can either succomb to Colective Amnesia of western civilization (my kids will potentially become new Nick Kvocka's), or I can wear mark of Serbhood(in wich I was pushed by West) proudly, as did Jews in the WW2. Eitherway I lose. Or I can do what almost 2% of population of Yugoslavia, pardon S&M (abbreviation used in western media) did on the last census and declare myself an Marsian. The only thing that wories me than is that Viking probe that landed there couple of years ago. If I can recall correctly it had a huge US flag on it; THE MARK OF FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY. Enough is enough. Here's to you my dear friends; Vlada(Serbian killed in 1993), Denis (Croatian killed by Nato bombs in 1998), Sadik(Albanian disappeared in 1998) and Moca(Macedonian overdosed in 1999). Till we meet again in our land of inocence. Last one is buying a round...and no rock music and superman comics this time...
  
  Miroslav Radulovic
  NYC
  US of A.

• Thursday April 18, 2002 at 5:09 pm
  Sorry Lou and my apologies to all who took offence at my oblique references to the events surrounding the impeachment of President Clinton that coincided with Nato's preparations to bomb Serbia.
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Friday April 19, 2002 at 11:52 am
  The guilty UK men (or most of them) Tony Blair Prime Minister, Alistair Campbell Special Adviser, Robin Cook then Foreign Secretary, George Robertson then Minister for Defence, Jamie Shea then Nato spokesman and Mark Laity then BBC correspondent. These men were complicit in the broadcasting of massive lies concerning the situation in Kosovo. I owe yet another apology, to Nick Kvocka, assuming that his comments were made in ignorance rather than lack of concern for his fellow Serbs. If I had relied on the information according to Blair and his like then I might also feel that everything in the garden is lovely. What with Blair and Campbell’s “New World Order” and Cook’s “Ethical Foreign Policy” how could it not be? When I learned that Britain was about to bomb a country that had not attacked us or even posed a threat I took a keen interest. Then came reports that the Serbs had massacred a hundred thousand or more Kosovo Albanians. Who would not believe that the Serbs were beyond redemption - even if they were fighting terrorists armed and trained by Nato (including Mujahedeen) while being bombed? As the BBC newscasts showed droves of refugees crossing into Macedonia and the rest of the UK was falling about in horror I was puzzled by the lack of injured. Where were the tens of thousands of injured people concomitant with such a massacre? And the big lies, a la Goebels, kept rolling in. The evil Serbs had shelled a refugee convoy, then another, then a housing estate, then a bus, then a prison … All these five hundred or so casualties (200 or so dead) eventually discovered to be the result of Nato air attacks: meanwhile the KLA was murdering Serbs on the ground. How do I know all this: from the moment I realised I was being told lies by Blair and his like I trawled the internet. One American hosted site publishes news reports from around the world from every source: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/decani/messages you have a lot of homework to do Nick. There are over 66,000 reports. The huge lie has now been decimated to a big lie? Nato has stopped digging up bodies because many of them are Serbs. JUST WHAT IS THE TRUTH ABOUT THE “10,356” MURDERED KOSOVO ALBANIANS CLAIMED IN THE ICTY AND WHERE ARE THE CONCOMITANT INJURED?
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Friday April 19, 2002 at 12:45 pm
  Peter, Nick is not Serb for sure. The surname Kvocka in my opinion is rather Chech or around there. The serbian names ending mostly with "ic". I am following Your posts with great interest.
  
  Serjoe Brus
  Italy

• Friday April 19, 2002 at 4:58 pm
  Serjoe-Please explain to my grandparents (both sides immigrated from Serbia before WWII) that they are not Serbian.
  
  Nick Kvocka
  USA

• Friday April 19, 2002 at 8:38 pm
  Who is Mirko Klarin reporter from The Hague? There is the link to his article http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/tri/tri_261_2_eng.txt There are no transcripts from this site and he can like during 10 years of Yu-wars again post pure lies, there are no transcripts in english and there is only one site which posts transcripts and Mr Klarin obviously doesn't know for that Web site so he can again take parts from the whole and explain to public. Mr. Klarin don't try to explain anything just post transcripts. I read the all transcripts in Serbian from http://www.sps.org.yu/index-ie.htm Anybody should read it. Mr. Klarin said "Andras Riedlmayer, a Harvard university expert..." Mr. Klarin Milosevic asked him first whether he is a phd. - he is not, he is not a balistics expert, he is doesn't know how many orthodox sites there are in Kosovo, and he couldn't estimated damages on objects that are old centuries where tons of NATO heavy bombs have fallen nearby. He doesn't know what impact heavy bomb can have on "Ikona", etc. I have to tell that Mr. Riedlmayer on his way to Kosovo first visited prosecutors in Hague. (The question is - was he going to prove that the prosector wAS doing THE right job?). From Mr. Klarin article "The second witness, retired British general Karol Drewienkiewicz, testified about events preceding NATO's air strikes. The deputy head of the Kosovo Verification Mission, KVM, from October 1998 to March 1999, he had been in charge of monitoring an agreement on the Kosovo crisis concluded between Milosevic and the US envoy Richard Holbrooke. Drewienkiewicz's eyewitness account of events on January 16, 1999 in Racak, following the massacre of 45 Kosovo Albanians (which is included in the indictment against Milosevic) will be continued next week, and be discussed in the next Tribunal Update." I am not going to comment anything on Racak - I think every human being on the Earth should read the complete transcript (April 12 & 15).
  
  Petar Peric
  Canada

• Friday April 19, 2002 at 8:55 pm
  As most of you on this web page know that four Canadian soldiers were killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan two days ago. The friendly fire came from an American fighter. I want to express my condolences to the families of these young men while at the same time I am angry with my government for sending them there in the first place. (Please don’t get me wrong I am not a fan of the Taliban) As far as the American media is concerned the friendly fire event did not take place. I saw one mention of it on CNN and that was it, while Robert Blake, the actor, who is accused of killing his wife makes the national news every few minutes. American government and the media take their friends as well as their enemies for granted. As Miroslav states the Yugoslavs, especially the Serbs have been the American’s best friends and admirers in the Balkans. As far as the Brits are concerned the Serbs were the first to stand with them during their ‘darkest hours’ of WWII. As Mr. Taylor states the proud RAF of WWII was tainted by the cowardly act of Blair, Robertson and Cook. The Serbs saved many RAF and American pilots when they ditched their crippled planes after bombing the oilfields of Ploesti in Romania. Some of these pilots are alive and I would like to hear from you on this web page. Every nation has their Chamberlain’s and Churchill’s, Pavelic’s and Titos, and we know how history will see Mr. Blair. As for Mr. Kvocka his nationality should not matter his lack of knowledge should matter to him. For those who wish my input on the origin of his name, I would say it could be Serbian or Croat. Kvocka means ‘brooding hen’ or a ‘sitter’ just like ‘trklja’ means a place on which you dry hay or beans. What concerns me about Nick is that one need not be an Uncle Tom to be a good American. I am unable to find any recent news on the trial. Any suggestions ???? Walter Trkla Kamloops BC Canada
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops BC
  Canada

• Saturday April 20, 2002 at 6:48 am
  http://www.spectrezine.org/war/Macedonia.htm or http://www.projectcensored.org/default.html kind regards, milo-a
  
  milo a
  austria

• Saturday April 20, 2002 at 6:56 am
  no comment :) http://www.spectrezine.org/war/index.html
  
  milo a
  austria

• Saturday April 20, 2002 at 11:39 am
  THE TRANSCRIPTS ARE UP! Finally!
  
  myrtle j
  Canada

• Saturday April 20, 2002 at 12:38 pm
  And I see there was an announcement yesterday by Carla del Ponte that an Albanian is about to be indicted. Maybe the ICTY is finally feeling forced to respond to the outrage about its injustice.
  We'll see if there will be fairness after all ... and to what extent ... and whether anti-NATO incidents in Kosovo break out in retaliation.
  But still: What of the real Kosovo War criminals: Clinton, Albright, Blair (sadly), et al? ??!!
  Or are these Albanians only token, sacrifical lambs ... like the Kosovo Albanian civilians were generally, when we started the war and staked them out for Serb rage and retaliation?
  This new World Criminal Court should be approached as soon as possible.
  
  Lou Coatney
  Macomb
  Illinois USA

• Saturday April 20, 2002 at 1:46 pm
  And was the publication of the transcripts delayed so long so that the memories of those present have dimmed to the extent that they can't remember what was said in those critical, early days ... so that the transcript can omit or falsify key Milosevic passages? (I hope this isn't the case.)
  Was anyone else recording the trial? (I hope so.)
  
  Lou Coatney
  Macomb
  Illinois USA

• Saturday April 20, 2002 at 2:37 pm
  You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. I have some sympathy with young Nick who might easily have been mislead by the West’s media and its three ring circus tricks. My own family and friends look askance when I voice these opinions. Blair’s spin doctors have certainly fooled them while his medical doctors pile ’em up on trolleys in hospital corridors for lack of funds wasted on foreign adventures. The sins of commission and omission are two of the major tricks operated by the media. Example commission: The media reports “Serb artillery shells a refugee convoy killing 76 and injuring 54” with graphic newsreel and full page spreads of the horror. Nato knew full well that the Serbs had not shelled this convoy but it lied. Some days later when the evidence is insurmountable a small retraction appears together with some nonsense like “The Serbs dressed the refugees in military uniforms and made their tractors look like tanks - oh and by the way they rang up Nato to tell them just where and when to bomb”. By then the damage is done. Many do not hear or see the retraction. When mud is slung some of it always sticks. Recently at the ICTY Milosevic produced a radio recording of the pilot reporting a civilian convoy and the controller instructing him to go ahead and bomb anyway. But no one is listening. There are none so deaf as those who do not want to hear. Example omission: The media reports “Serbs shoot two of their prisoners dead and injure many more”. Perfectly true but what they don’t report is that the prison was bombed by Nato killing 100 prisoners and guards, including the Deputy Governor, and injuring 200: That a gun battle ensued in which escaping prisoners suffered casualties. Overall result: the public in the West thinks ‘Those rotten Serbs there is no limit to their murdering ways shelling refuges and killing prisoners in their care’. These are just two of the tricks of the Campbell, Shea and Laity three ring media circus. All the Nato lies become clear when you examine the tens of thousands of messages from every source which appear in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/decani/messages. These reports start in March 98 when the incursion of Islamic terrorists began in earnest. For starters I recommend you read message number 211 upon how Western governments and media set about demonising the Serbs.
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Saturday April 20, 2002 at 5:35 pm
  I think that the moral qualities of the world media has never been at a such low level. They are so "blind" that they do not even understand the immense importance of this trial.It is regarded like just a formality to punish the allready sentenced criminal Milosevic. I do believe that the judges in ICTY are honest persons and of moral integrity. I also believe that they have been also "fed" as we were,with propaganda. In the meantime the situation is changing and every person of good sense is realizing that the matter is not so simple as described so far by te media and Carla. Suppose now that the judges at the end of the trial come to the conclusion that not only Milosevic is guilty but also Clinton,Allbright etc should have to respond for their misdeeds, together with their comrades from OVK. What a historical event would be this!!! The future politicians would be well aware of the consequences of waging "humanitarian wars" against other states,for their strategic interests. I think that the whole world would have gain enourmous benefits and the peace would not be as it is today just an "empty" word. If the judges come to similar conclusion, the judges May, Robinson and Kwon will have in their hand the "tools" to ameliorate the condition of the manhood on this planet. If hypoteticaly the trial will finish like that,would they have the guts to bring such a historical decision??, because it's not just a matter of honesty but also of great courage. I am confident in judges, because in big matters like this it is not important who is the boss financing the ICTY. They have been put there to make their job. Let'see.
  
  Serjoe Brus
  Italy

• Monday April 22, 2002 at 7:32 am
  OIL. The truth about Kosovo: The bottom line: "We will certainly stay here for a long time in order to guarantee the safety of the energy corridors which cross Macedonia" General Mike Jackson, commander of the Nato troops invading Kosovo in 1999. This quote comes from Michel Collon’s book ‘Monopoly - L'Otan à la Conquête du monde’, EPO, March 2000,p. 96. This implies that Kosovo, regardless of the peace agreement, will not in our lifetime remain a Province of Serbia NOR a part of a Greater Albania. It is now firmly a Province of Nato as its new capital city, Camp Bondsteel, clearly demonstrates. Which brings me to ROBIN COOK. Yes we would all like “Ethical Foreign Policy” but spinning will not make it so. In August 1998 Radfelder a German journalist reported a mass grave near Orahovac containing 567 Kosovas including 430 children: see message 180. A report he later denied. This was plastered/broadcast by the Western media - an Austrian paper, Die Presse, ‘confirmed’ the report and reported another mass grave containing a thousand Kosovas. Cook immediately convened meetings with Albright et al and threatened bombardment of Serbia. Unfortunately for him the Serbs immediately opened the area to free inspection and the Nato Secretary, Solana, was able to report that there were NO MASS GRAVES. Was this lie to be the trigger for bombardement? On the actual trigger, Racak, let me say that the Nato commissioned Finnish pathologists dismissed the massacre claim and that the victims were not local men. In message 181 UN official Jiri Dientsbier complains about the KLA incursion of non-Kosova Albanians. We now know that these were armed and trained by the USA, UK and Germany. We also now know that they included Mujahedeen. A number of reports about his time show how they not only abused and murdered Serb officials and civilians but also local Kosovas. See messages 36, 68, 115, 175, 214, 268, 269. 271, 282, 323. Above all this shows that the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Kosovas (and the Kosovo Serbs) was caused by the KLA backed by Nato NOT the Serbs. No Nation can allow such atrocities and MUST combat them. So much for del Ponte’s case.
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Monday April 22, 2002 at 12:04 pm
  Which reminds me... When the former chief prosecutor of the ICTY Louise Arbour indicted Milosevic, she said: "I'm perfectly certain Mr. Milosevic thought he could keep me out of Kosovo. I believe he can't keep himself out of The Hague." It was a battle of egos to start with.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Monday April 22, 2002 at 1:40 pm
  Here it is one article related to Bosnia http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=126&article=7844 and another one related to Serb Krajina (Croatia) http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020422-7801660.htm Something seems moving in media Serjoe
  
  Serjoe B.
  Italy

• Monday April 22, 2002 at 6:18 pm
  Something serious. I have read that the prosecutors have asked the ICTY to stop allowing the amici curiae to cross-examine the witnesses ... has anyone read anything further on this, has the court stopped it? They were appointed to defend Milosevic's interests in the absence of Counsel - and now the prosecution is asking the court to disallow this?
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Tuesday April 23, 2002 at 5:57 am
  It seems that Milosevic's accusations of Clinton have caught on. Now the Croatian General Ante Gotovina (another ICTY indictee) is doing the same. And he is accusing Clinton of the Croatian anti-Serb offensive!
  http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020422-7801660.htm
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Tuesday April 23, 2002 at 8:09 am
  The “Washington Times” article that accuses Clinton’s administration of complicity in the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Krajina indicates in the same breath that the Serbs who were defending themselves in Knin and Krajina came from the moon and occupied territory where they have lived for the past seven hundred years. It seems to me that the only group in the Balkans that does not have a right to their own state is the Serbs. As soon as Serbs in areas where they are a majority wanted to be in a state of their choice they were accused of creating a Greater Serbia and Milosevic was the scapegoat of this great plan. The people of former Yugoslavia did not benefit from the disintegration of their country. I think the architects of this Balkan mess are to be found in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin and it was they who benefited. The breakup of Yugoslavia saved the NATO bureaucracy. There are so many muddy scenarios about who is responsible for this Balkan mess and like the Kennedy assassination only time will tell who the perpetrators really are. The favorite tool of the Western Media is to muddy the water so that the truth is buried under so much mud so that Western responsibility is hidden The blatant hypocrisy of the Hague Tribunal lies in the fact that the West is using the Trial to muddy the waters even more and burry their responsibility with the lynching of Milosevic.
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops BC
  Canada

• Tuesday April 23, 2002 at 8:35 am
  please, do not forget vienna :)
  
  milo a
  vienna
  A

• Tuesday April 23, 2002 at 1:01 pm
  Carla del Ponte has been so eager to put every former Yugoslav key figure behind bars that they may soon testify as witnesses in favour of each other. Gen. Ante Gotovina is a case in point. Does it matter what he says or what Clinton said or what Washington Times says. I think this Mr/Ms Disgrace has a point, because it is no use "ranting" about something we cannot make stick. I have had no time to check what the charges against Gotovina are exactly, but if one of them is genocide, as I believe it is, it is natural to invoke Article III e of the Genocide Convention (complicity in genocide), which has been interpreted as "aiding and abetting in genocide". If the things that Gen. Gotovina are true, Clinton surely aided and abetted whatever Gotovina was allegedly doing. As a point of comparison, in 1993 the Bosnian Government issued a statement of intention to institute legal proceedings against the U.K., drafted by one Francis A. Boyle ( http://teletubbie.het.net.je/~sjaak/domovina/
  domovina/archive/1993/english/931115.html ). One of the bases was the Genocide Convention, and what the U.K. was alleged of doing was nothing compared to what Clinton allegedly did. I do not know what exactly happened with the statement of intention, but the same Francis A. Boyle is using it as a framework for his proposal to the Palestinians to institute legal proceedings against Israel. http://www.mediamonitors.net/francis1.html
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Tuesday April 23, 2002 at 1:49 pm
  Another tunnel vision. Does ICTY understand, that Krajina Serbs didn't come from Serbia to occupy Croatia? Serbs from Krajina had more sovereignty than Croats for more than 400 hundred years as a part of Austro-Hungary (Federal State)? Do these people understand that Serbs in Krajina in November 1918 ceded their sovereignty on Yugoslavia. There was no constitutional law under which Croats had complete sovereignty over Krajina territory, not even Tito (who was a Croat), and under his rule has given those rights to them. There was a serious dispute on sovereignty (territory) between Croats and Krajina Serbs. However nor Croats nor International community scrutinized that problem, they ignored Serbs and history, what lead them to lose lawfulness for their actions and they cleared the way to commit crimes. (Even if they had had undisputable sovereignty over Krajina I still think that they would not have a right to ethnically clean that territory). Nobody disputed rights on Croat’s state, however Croats ultimate goal was to have a state without Serbs, and that was disputed. Croats in 1990 forcefully took constitutional rights in their own hands, and they were awarded a state from Genscher (Germany) for their role in The Second World War. (Serbs activities then postponed “Barbarosa” for six weeks what was considered to be a crucial moment for the outcome of the Moscow battle). Croats goal to have a state without Serbs and their ties with Germany dictated how Tudjman proclaimed an independent state - all by Nazi symbols. After all: "Florence Hartmann, spokeswoman for chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte, said the tribunal is not challenging the legitimacy of Croatia's military offensive but individual atrocities carried out by Croatian soldiers whose actions fell under the responsibility of Gen. Gotovina." I am really not sure does ICTY represent UN. If it does….how come they forgot that Croats and US in order to conquer Krajina in 1995 had to first fight UN peacekeepers who were there by UN resolution to protect Serbs. (Obviously Clinton and Croats together didn’t care for UN) And ICTY indicted Gotovina for ethnically cleansing 150.000 thousands of Serbes - What happened to other Serbs in Croatia and Krajina? Hartmann in her statement “cited above” and in the number of Serbs tried to clear US and (Clinton) responsibility for the real ethnical cleansing and all kinds of other war crimes committed by Croats and other paid puppets under US governance. Trying to protect aggressors and war criminals it’s what ICTY was doing from the beginning.
  
  Pero Peric
  Canada

• Tuesday April 23, 2002 at 2:02 pm
  Is it true that Croats have fought in the Hitler's favor until May 15 1945 and Hitler capitulated May 9th 1945?
  
  John Smith
  Canada

• Tuesday April 23, 2002 at 8:11 pm
  Hitler died rather than capitulated & some Croats fought him (Tito was of Croat/Slovenian birth for example) but yes the wartime Croatian Nazi regime which the current regime claims to be heir to did out-Nazi the Nazis. This did not stop Tudjman saying "Hitlers new European order can be justified by the need to be rid of the Jews". Presumably both Clinton & John-PaulII were aware of this when they offered him their help. Walter I think you are wrong to blame America so specifically for this - most of us live in countries whose governments are guilty & whose media have monolithically lied about these wars (as comprehensively as if their owners had met at Bilderberg to arrange it).
  
  Neil Craig
  Scotland

• Wednesday April 24, 2002 at 12:27 pm
  “In judging whether to place our trust in others’ words, we need the means to judge that information. … We place or refuse trust because we can trace specific information to particular sources we can check.”. Onora O’Neill, Reith Lecturer 2002. Before the recent attempt to disrupt proceedings on this board I was explaining to a contributor, who seemed unaware of their existence, the origins of my beliefs. This exposes the real background to the ICTY trial, one not recognised by del Ponte. These beliefs are based principally on the collection of reports found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/decani/messages These reports come from every relevant source worldwide. Each report may be checked back to its original source. I have followed these reports for over three years and observed the discrepancies at the time between these and the reports by the BBC and other Western media sources, mainly British. It is still possible to make these comparisons but it requires considerable research except on a single incident basis. I shall continue my interrupted explanation but in the light of the disruption I need to discuss previous comments first. In discussing this I regret the distress it must cause the bereaved families Albanian, Serb and others. The vast majority of which would have been avoided without Blair et al’s support for a vicious KLA terror campaign and their subsequent aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia. The Nato/KLA alliance and its compliant media has not been truthful … Proof: The mass graves at Orahovac which did not exist: The Serb shelling of a refugee convoy which did not happen (and a second): The Serb destruction of Kosovar housing estates, which were actually destroyed by Nato bombs: The Serb killings of their prisoners in a prison actually bombed, deliberately and with heavy casualties, by Nato. Hundreds of bodies incinerated at the Trepca lead mines, not true. The rape camps never identified … Read the reports and form your own opinion. Which brings me back to the one huge (100,000), now just big, lie: the “10,356” Albanians allegedly murdered by the Serbs. Conversely while the media bangs on relentlessly about the so called Racak massacre the real massacres and ACTUAL mass graves of Serbs and loyal Kosovars at Klecka and Glodjane, which preceded them, are never discussed: Seriously did anyone see threats by Cook, he of the “Ethical foreign Policy”, to bomb Albania for these atrocities let alone to actually do so? It is recently reported that Kosovo officials have complained about bodies being imported from Albanian cemeteries to be reburied. Let us hope we do not see reports soon of a new finding of a mass grave or a truckload of bodies in a Serb river? There appears to be no limit to the trickery of the Nato/KLA alliance. SO WATCH THIS SPACE CAREFULLY.
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Thursday April 25, 2002 at 4:06 am
  Pero, I noticed too what you said of Hartmann's comments about not questioning the legitimacy of the military offensive but individual atrocities. I was not aware of the exact historical background, but it caught my attention that on the Croatian side they don't question the legitimacy of the offensive, only individual atrocities, whereas on the Serb side, the individual atrocities are used an excuse to question the legitimacy of the whole offensive (if "offensive" is a correct term in this case in the first place, because these acts took place on the territory of the "former Yugoslavia", and it is questionable to call a military movements an offensive, if they take place within one state, former or not). But from a purely technical point, it is interesting that del Point and Arbour have collected the former Yugoslav VIP's in The Hague, and what I am wondering about is whether they could testify for each other. A similar point was raised when Milosevic has mentioned that Clinton should be called to testify. It has not been a point that in the process Clinton might incriminate himself. What Prof. D'Amato has mentioned in his article on Milosevic's witnesses (on this website) is only that this kind of witnesses are "uncontrollable". So why should Gotovina not be able to testify for Milosevic? If a person can in principle testify even if he could incriminate himself, why should a person not testify if he can dis-incriminate himself (and Gotovina is not convicted)? I don't know. The animosity between the Serbs and the Croats would be an obstacle for this kind of manoeuvre, but in the end even this obstacle would turn out for the best, because this animosity is a good guarantee that what they say in favour of each other is true. And for those who question whether our discussions on this forum are sane or not, let's get back down to the basics. I don't know the numbers of how many people the ICTY has indicted and convicted but it is a notorious fact that all of them are former Yugoslav nationals. Carla del Ponte has not even opened a file against the Nato leaders. Have the Nato actions been prima facie legitimate so that the criticisms voiced on this panel should be dismissed right away? When one forgets about Milosevic for a moment and takes a view of the whole corpus of cases, there can be no question that this tribunal is biased (some people try to excuse this by saying that it is a tribunal and not a court, but then the question arises whether it should be a UN organ in the first place). OK, so the tribunal is biased, what are we going to do about it? There is no doubt that del Ponte has overstepped her jurisdiction, when she ordered Milosevic bank accounts closed in Cyprus because of alleged corruption in Yugoslavia. Shouldn't she make up her mind whether it is war crimes or corruption that she is prosecuting, this is not one of her former Mafia cases in Switzerland. I think Mr Richard Black was right in claiming that the whole corruption scandal was trumped up so that Milosevic could be held under custody in Yugoslavia until the U.S. could orchestrate his extradition. And it is a height of irony that del Ponte has stuck her nose in corruption, because I is not certain whether her collaboration with the U.S. administration is nothing short of corruption. Everybody knows Milosevic was extradited in the hope of getting American money. Is that not corruption, when the Yugoslav federal law (and Serbian law) was infringed? If not, at least that sort of tacit agreement is immoral, and hence invalid. As a bonus, Djindjic was tricked when the bulk of the money went to pay back old loans (even if it was not certain at that point whether Yugoslavia was a successor state of the Social Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, whose debts it was that were paid). What happens to an agreement (tacit or explicit) when trickery is part of it? And this financer is the state that pays de facto the ICTY expenses. If not corruption, is this not a case of conflict of interests, which is mentioned in the statute as far as the judges are concerned? If not, it causes grave concern that the presiding judge and many other key figures in the process are Nato citizens. Just take notice of how great lengths the International Court of Justice has gone to avoid any doubt of bias because of the national composition of the judges. A case in point is ironically drawn from the ICJ case law: it was the judges from the Nato countries that voted against the Yugoslav plea for provisional measures at the time of Nato bombing in Yugoslavia's genocide case against some Nato countries (which has now been suspended because of the change of political climate). OK, maybe we cannot do anything. But by changing the direction of the public opinion we can make sure that some people become an embarrassement for those states that have appointed them. Normally, they are relegated into oblivion. Who has heard of Robin Cook or Bernhard Kouchner lately? And to answer the recent disruption: who is nuts? Cook claimed publicly that at the time of the Kosovo bombing, Albanian men were stipped naked by the Serbs and the Serbs made them lie naked on the ground before the Serb canons when they fired Kosovo Albanian villages. This man was the British foreign secretary, and someone has the nerve to call us nuts. It is interesting whether any of the prosecution witnesses will corroborate Cook's claims. If so, then the main problem will be what has been the prosecution's problem all along: what has this got to do with Milosevic?
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Thursday April 25, 2002 at 9:35 am
  Folks, did anybody notice the article that apeared here yesterday and it was taken off within hours. The article was titled "...Slobo cop at home..." or something. It was printed by New York Times and it talked about a telephone conversation between Mr. Milosevic and his son which Croatian intelligence tapped. The telephone call was a father-son conversation regarding Mr. Milosevic's refusing his son's request for plastic surgery on his ears. Did anybody see this article? I felt that the article was ridiculously tabloidized and I wondered how come this spy story leaked through ever do present censorship... Little did I know, when I was about to show the storry to a friend it was already removed. I can't find it anywhere. This happens quite often. I live in Atlantic Canada, I see the sun in before USA does and, apparently, I read my news before the censors get to the office. CNN is especially bad for removing articles in mid day and whiping every trace of them. Did anyone see this article?
  
  D. Pecurica
  Canada

• Thursday April 25, 2002 at 12:01 pm
  I do not particularly like Milosevic but I'm sure he will not get a fair trial. After all,how would it look for NATO,the U.N. and the international community if he is found to be innocent?? They would look like complete pratts,that's how ;)
  
  George Davidson
  Herts/UK

• Thursday April 25, 2002 at 12:07 pm
  Of course Milosevic won't get a fair trial. How would it look for NATO,the U.N. and the international community if he is found to be innocent,after all the fuss they have created? They would look like pratts ;)
  
  George Davidson
  Herts/United Kingdom

• Thursday April 25, 2002 at 1:03 pm
  Somewhere i read that Del Ponte was happy to catch a "big fish" like Milosevic Unfortunately,she was not aware,that it was not just a fish but a shark and yet she did it barehands. The hearings so far, show from my pont of view, that the above statement is appropriate. I really do not understand the Nato's pressure on Yu government to have other important indectees like the ex army chief commander Ojdanic in Haag. Is that a sort of masochism???
  
  Serjoe B.
  Italy

• Thursday April 25, 2002 at 6:28 pm
  The site www.emperors_clothes.com is certainly a news source practicing high journalistic standards - moreso than the mass media. As an example they reported the finding of the finding of 160 bodies in Dragodan, Pristina under Nato rule. I have received a letter from junior UK minister McShane confirming this massacre (actually increasing the dead to 210 but saying it is not an official mass grave). This has, as you will no doubt be able to confirm from your own experience, been deleted from the official mass media. As regards the CNN case I accept that this is purely anecdotal as I dont have the website & you have a perfect right not to believe they would do this. I do, but would not care to rely purely on that case to maintain that the web, used judiciously, is a more reliable source than the official media.
  
  Neil Craig
  UK

• Thursday April 25, 2002 at 8:45 pm
  Reductio ad absurdum: “pointing out the absurdity”. In his evidence to the ICTY Lord Ashdown, Viceroy elect of Bosnia, claimed that the British had never burned people out of their homes. In the province of Northern Ireland in the summer of 1969 the police cracked down heavily on a relatively peaceful Catholic civil rights movement. The discrimination against Catholics was worse than that against Albanians in Kosovo. Loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland aided by the police attacked the Catholics. In Belfast alone entire streets of houses were burned down and over 3000 Catholic families were driven from their homes. EVENTUALLY in mid-August the government sent in troops to put a stop to it. In Kosovo it is claimed that Serb paramilitaries burned people out of their homes during a real WAR against an invading KLA. Milosevic’s legitimate forces were pinned down by Nato bombers so there was no way he could have used his troops to intervene even if he wished to. In any case as Jari has asked above “What has this got to do with Milosevic?”. If the loyalist paramilitaries in the UK are not the responsibility of the government why should Serb paramilitaries be the responsibility of the Serb government? Supplying, arming, training and supporting Islamic terrorists including Mujahedeen - is that not absurd? Flying bombs into public buildings (I mean in New York AND Belgrade) - is that not absurd? Claiming that the Serbs, pinned down by Nato bombers, killed “10,356” Albanians in 78 days when Nato with all its fire power including 20,000 tons of bombs and the KLA infantry could only kill half that number - is that not absurd? Waging a humanitarian war leading to the Genocide of the Kosovo Serbs - is that not an abomination, a contradiction and an absurdity? Is it possible for a sane person to claim that these are not facts, that these things did not happen - is that not “absolutely ridiculous”?
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Thursday April 25, 2002 at 10:36 pm
  I am reading this forum for the first time and I must tell that I always wanted to tell someone what I think about all this wars.Maybe my English is not that good but I will do my best to explain how do I feel.I came from Belgrade in Austarlia 4 years ago and I have never denied my origin-Serbian. I know that in all these wars Serbs wre demonised but why they dont show and the other sides in the war.I admit that some of the Serbs commited the crimes against humanity - but they shouldn't judge the whole nation about that. There was athrocities from all sides in the war but only our was recorded for reasons just known to Americans.It is obvious that they want to expand their "hand" all over to Russia no matter what price it is. I beleieve that judge May is honarable pesron but I don't think that Milosevic can escape all these indictments. He is guilty for what he did to all people and specialy Serbs but let us judge him in our courts. I believe that the army and police never commited a crimes but individuals - they did. If it was up to the army and police and not respect customs of war - within months they would take over whole Kosovo, Macedonia,Albania,Bosnia and Croatia. I think it's about time that World start looking at other atrocities commited on Serbian people.Like Milosevic said in his interview in 1995 :"There is no innocent side in the civil war. Whole three sides are guilty"! Thank you all who still try to present true to the world and open their eyes.As far as Miss Witheld is concern I beleive that she is the one who was brainwashed by western media unless she is Bosnian or Croatian origin.If she doubt in all this - I'm offering my self as a guide throughout Serbia and prove to her that she might be wrong in some of her thougths. P.S. If Milosevic could at least prove that Nato is guilty of atrocities in Kosovo that would be his biggest victory.
  
  Goran Pantic
  Australia

• Friday April 26, 2002 at 2:41 am
  I still have to wonder about who is allowed to act as a witness at this tribunal and for whom. This brings me back to what Serjoe said earlier: why go after the whole Yugoslav establishment? From some media reports it can be concluded that the reason del Ponte has mounted such an immense offensive against the Yugoslav establishment is that she is after more witnesses against Milosevic. This has been cited as one of the reasons why there is such a gigantic man-hunt after Karadzic and Mladic. It was also mentioned in connection with Ojdanic. The fact that del Ponte has to go through the Yugoslav "Who's who" may give some indication how desperate her case is becoming. Add to this the recent spy scandal involving Yugoslav classified documents presumably to be delivered to the ICTY (or this has been a popular explanation). If the spy scandal was somehow motivated by the needs of ICTY prosecution, it is becoming more and more manifest how deeply ICTY is sinking in corruption (or whatever name you care to give to this practice: misconduct?). But taking into account all the hints that the reason the indictees are in The Hague because they could be used as witnesses against Milosevic, the instrument of indiction is used for something for which it was not intended. Call this what you like, but it is becoming obvious that del Ponte is resembling more and more the Mafia that she used to prosecute in her homecountry. To minimize the level of damage to the due process, I can't see why the indictees, who the prosecutor intended to use as witnesses AGAINST the defendant, could not be used as witnesses FOR the defendant. This option should be open at least when an indictee witnesses for another indictee who was on the opposite side of a conflict, like Gotovina and Milosevic. At least they could show that some Nato figures have not been falsely left unindicted, which would show the level of bias of the tribunal. This may not determine the outcome of the trials but would give some glimmer of hope that at a later date the false convictions that the tribunal has handed down could be revoked due to procedural errors. This could become a reality when the international criminal system has developed some more (of course it could develop in an even worse direction, but if it does, it will become only a matter of time when it is declared bankrupt).
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Friday April 26, 2002 at 9:48 am
  Peter, it seems that you described a perfect double standard practice in international politcs as well as law.
  
  Carla Berg
  Marchtrenk, O.Ö.

  Austria

• Friday April 26, 2002 at 11:36 am
  I think The american is using the ICTY to get rid of the opposition party in Serbia so that they can control serbia for sure..
  
  young ma
  oxford UK

• Friday April 26, 2002 at 1:09 pm
  Why are all the posts here pro-Milosevic and anti-US, anti-Nato? What happened to the recent postings questioning these views by someone unnamed? Is someone censoring out pro-US statements?
  
  John Simmons
  Fresno
  CA, USA

• Friday April 26, 2002 at 3:38 pm
  John you arn't wrong. Mine of Thurs 6.28 is a reply to Withheld which has been removed. I expect that this is not a conspiracy but purely because there has been such heavy mail recently & because he had withheld his name. On a couple of previous occasions I have asked any lawyer or whatever ANYWHERE in the world who can express the Nato position to put their side. Astonishingly NOBODY did. I would WELCOME you or anybody else testing our case.
  
  Neil Craig
  UK

• Friday April 26, 2002 at 4:00 pm
  To John Simmons,If you have been following the posts of "Name Withheld" you must realise that they were deleted probably because they were DAMAGING to the US/Nato case. Several of my replies to his/her comments have also been deleted. Also like Neil I would welcome reasonable argument and will tolerate unreasonable comments. I am equally astonished at the lack of support for the US/Nato case?
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Friday April 26, 2002 at 8:31 pm
  It's the Western inability to recognize the complexity of Serbian society that causes the usual misunderstanding of this matter. Off course Mr. Milosevic is not getting a fair trial. Somehow the US decided to destroy that accused myth of Serbian unity by designing a black sheep in the person of Mr. Milosevic. As I live in the Hague I have the opportunity to visit the trial which I do every Friday. Very very interesting, I can tell you!
  
  Anna Maria van Klinken-Poharnok
  The Hague
  The Netherlands

• Saturday April 27, 2002 at 12:16 am
  Mark Twain stated that "If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.” I want to be informed and those who believe that this trial represents justice I want to hear from you. Why is Ojdanic’s decision to face his accusers more newsworthy than Milosevic’s trial? The last time our local press had anything on the trial dealt with how Milosevic met his mach in Mr. Ashdown. Ojdanic and Ashdown may in some way give credibility to the media. At the start of this trial the media stated that this was a trial of the century and yet they are treating it as yesterday’s news. This kind of reporting is a fraud and a hoax and one must interpret this as a hidden agenda designed to deceive the reader.
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops BC
  Canada

• Saturday April 27, 2002 at 3:03 am
  I'm looking forward with great interest the arguments brought in favor of Nato/Usa intervention in Yugoslavia, and the achievemnts as a result of it. The honest politics (if any) should give accounts of their deeds. For example: In Italy the Media Rainews 24, after 1 and a half year of research, found out that 7 italian soldiers engaged in cleaning the contaminated area in Bosnia and Kosovo from depleted uranium got childs with genetical malformations - the same as with childs of the soldiers back from Gulf war. Both parents of these childs have been checked in case they could be the transmitters of the disease. All laboratories results were negative. The preoccupation of the media is for the soldiers of the countries which took part in humanitarian wars.It is understandable.What is not understandable is that they neglect completely the consequences of maybe hundreds of thousand of civilians who have to live on by Nato contaminated areas. What has this to do with Milosevic"s trial?? The trial is unfair not because of the procedures, but because the wrong person is sitting there before the judges.
  
  Serjoe B.
  Italy

• Saturday April 27, 2002 at 4:06 am
  Serjoe, I agree that the wrong person is in the dock. That is my opinion. However, with all the energy that has gone into this discussion, we might just as well get him out. That is my point. If even some of the allegations against the prosecution are correct, there has been appalling misconduct in the way they have gathered evidence, not to mention in the way how they are presenting it. Like many people, I have thought that lawyers stick to the procedural errors to get a guilty man out, but for the first time I realize these errors can be invoked to get an innocent man out. And in fact, that is exactly why the procedural issues are such a big deal in the first place. The idea was that the evidence gathered in an irregular fashion is fruit of a polluted tree. That means that the procedural errors suggest the falsity of the evidence itself.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Saturday April 27, 2002 at 4:14 am
  P.S. There is nothing sinister about the Name Withheld being blocked. If you read the banner at the top of this page, it says: "JURIST reserves the right to block or remove posts that are ... disruptive, defamatory, threatening, harassing or abusive, ... or that are not related to the topic being discussed".
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Saturday April 27, 2002 at 8:24 am
  For those who wish alternative information on this issue and quite opposite to the "official" which is in distribution all over the world for many years allready, visit: http://www.icdsm.org/index.htm This is also an indirect answer to John Simmons. Here is out of question beeing pro-one or anti- another. Here is the JUSTICE at stake !!! The final result of this trial will for sure have a great influence - for the future polticians when they have to decide between war and peace.
  
  Serjoe B.
  Italy

• Saturday April 27, 2002 at 4:14 pm
  Statement Milosevic Was Not Allowed to Read at the Hague http://reagan.com/HotTopics.main/
  HotMike/document-9.5.2001.2.html
  
  milo a
  vienna
  A

• Sunday April 28, 2002 at 7:12 am
  The ICTY is part of what one calls "transitional justice". I guess what this means is that the legal system of a country is so bankrupt that the system is unable to deal with large-scale human rights violations. (There is even an International Center for Transitional Justice www.ictj.org .) Whether this is a fair assessment of the Yugoslav legal system depends on one's perception, but applying the term "transitional justice" to the ICTY suggests that there is still work to be done to the Yugoslav legal system. What everybody can agree upon is that the faults of the legal system are eventually to be remedied in that same country: the "transitional justice" is only a sort of safety valve. The interesting thing is that the Yugoslav legal system is thus something permanent, whereas the ICTY is not. More specifically, even when the international community complains about the Yugoslav legal system, what exactly are their points of criticism? The critics can only point to the undesirability of the people who ran the country as a whole. As James Rubin once said, the Yugoslav judges were appointed by Milosevic, so the Yugoslav courts were illegal! The ICTY now imposes its law on the Yugoslav system. However, ICTY is bound to terminate its activity in a few years, and then will come the time to evaluate the achievements of the ICTY. One of the benchmarks will be the Yugoslav legal system (with whatever changes it will have gone through by then). The ICTY is now acting in a legal vacuum, as the very notion of "transitional justice" suggests, but once the transitional period is over, it will be time to submit the transitional justice itself to a merciless legal scrutiny. This will be the time to redress any irregularities that may have occurred during the period of transitional justice. The general principle is that the accused can be tried in the country where he committed the alleged crimes. Extradition (or "transfer" as it is called in this case) is out of the question when the accused is a citizen of that country. So the question will be what redeeming value the violation of so fundamental procedural principles as these can have. The point is that the ICTY can go on endlessly about their principle that no-one is above the law. They should not forget that they are not above the law either.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Sunday April 28, 2002 at 6:30 pm
  As I live in The Hague (Netherlands), I have the opportunity to visit the ICTY, in particular the trial of Mr. Milosevic. I have been talking there to several journalists from different parts of the Former Yougoslavia, and although grown up in a Western country (but originally from Hungary), I can tell you that I get very confused about the different stories I hear, in particular about the tribunal itself, being legal or not, because I've been told that the Security Counsil has no rights to found a tribunal as the ICTY, and that the tribunal would be illegal. I really want to know how and why Mr. Milosevic, and other intelligent highly educated people like you, can say that the tribunal is illegal. I have great difficulties with this, as I believe in one universal moral, ethic and juridicial "truth/reality" which should be the basis of integer/honest international law all over the world. If this supposed illegality should be a logic conclusion because of the "Serbian point of view" (which I can understand as I stated above): that's an answer that does not satisfy me! Please try to explain to me if the ICTY is a legal tribunal or not and where I can find the sources. Please mail me some kind of links to websites where I can convince myself, and find the necessary documents to know the truth. Thank you very much.
  
  Anna Maria van Klinken-Poharnok
  The Hague
  The Netherlands

• Sunday April 28, 2002 at 6:35 pm
  P.S. My email address is amvanklinken@planet.nl Thank you again.
  
  Anna Maria van Klinken-Poharnok
  The Hague
  The Netherlands

• Sunday April 28, 2002 at 8:33 pm
  Anna Maria. Surely the reason why the ICTY is illegal is the fact that it is NOT INDEPENDENT. A properly constituted Court of Justice is independent of the litigants: In effect Nato v Serbia. Nato controls the Security Council that set up this court. The power behind Nato, the USA which pays for this court and effectively owns it, has stated that non of its citizens will be indicted by this court although there are prima facie reasons, under established international law, why they should. For a professional explanation read http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/prog2.htm Another critique available is that of the surviving US prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. What is reality? Is it the Genocide of the Kosovars for which Milosevic has been indicted and which was arguably a temporary displacement due Nato bombing and a civil war: a Genocide which clearly has NOT happened. Or is the ACTUAL Genocide of Kosovo Serbs for which Nato and the KLA/KPC will never be indicted by this court?
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Monday April 29, 2002 at 3:17 am
  The point I wished to make when talking about "transitional justice" was that the legality of the ICTY has been argued from the illegality of the Yugoslav courts. Anna Maria has a point when she mentioned the "Serbian point of view". The ICTY and the Yugoslav courts do not complement each other, they are mutually exclusive. So if you see the problem from the Serbian point of view, of course ICTY is illegal. Another point I wanted to make was that if ICTY is "transitional justice", it should by definition be subsidiary to the Yugoslav legal system. However, which direction has the so-called cooperation between the ICTY and Yugoslavia taken? Yugoslavia has to pass laws to accommodate the ICTY! So if you want to express this problem in terms of familiar legal terms, the question is that of jurisdiction. At least until the passing of the law on cooperation the ICTY had no jurisdiction (and this is the time of the transfer of Milosevic we are talking about). However, as the ICTY was especially set up for former Yugoslavia, its lack of jurisdiction in the territory for which it was intended can only mean that it was illegal in the first place (I don't know to what extent, if at all, the passing of the law on cooperation has remedied this). For the procedural problems that this entails see the interview with Jacques Vergès (in French: http://www.diplomatiejudiciaire.com/Tpy/Milosevic17.htm ). I think the legality of ICTY should be evaluated from this point of view, because questioning the powers of the Security Council can be countered by arguing that the Security Council has extremely large powers. A more hopeful avenue against ICTY could be the very fact that the ICTY was founded by the Security Council. Does the Security Council have any real influence in the ICTY policies, as the "founding fathers" of ICTY undoubtedly intended? Russia and China, permanent members of the Security Council, have been complaining of their lack of power in this matter (sorry that I cannot find the link right now). If this still does not satisfy you, the frustration of "fair trial" makes the tribunal de facto illegal, and the way to tackle this is to address the conduct of individual officials of the ICTY. The national composition of the ICTY personnel can also be questioned. John Laughland should have his book on the comparisons of Nuremberg and ICTY out later this year. I would like to add one general link to the ones mentioned in previous postings. An academically respectable website is that of the Toronto-based "Centre for Peace in the Balkans" www.balkanpeace.org . (They even have a list of law suits against Nato as a result of Kosovo bombing campaign.)
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Monday April 29, 2002 at 3:40 am
  P.S. That the cooperation with The Hague is a one-way street is demonstrated this direct quotation from a recent report: "But Hague prosecutors say that Yugoslavia also needs to open its archives to investigators to show that it is committed to full cooperation." The law only gives a veneer of lawfulness to those things the ICTY has done illegally all along. And you thought the Rambouillet Accords were bad for Yugoslavia!
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Monday April 29, 2002 at 6:05 am
  Anna Maria. In my reply above I have confused legality with justice. The technical reason why the ICTY is illegal is simply that the Security Council was not empowered by its founder members to set up international courts - or baked bean factories. This is not just a Serb point of view. You and I may believe that it should have been so empowered and that such criticism is nit picking but law, unfortunately, is nothing if it is not precise. As this answer does not satisfy you I went to the level of “ethics, morals, truth and reality” which you say is your concern - hence the confusion. Courts which claim to be Courts of Justice must obey the principles of Justice. Justice is an absolute like pregnancy. Things are just or they are not, women are pregnant or they are not. There is no intermediate state. Justice demands impartiality and thus openness to see that justice is done, truth and thus measures to deal with witnesses who are not truthful. There can be no transitional Courts of Justice only Lynch Mobs of varying degrees. Because it is not an independent court the so-called ICTY Court of Justice fails repeatedly on the principle of impartiality and the principle of truth as many here have demonstrated. Its procedures have been bizarre. The trial for war crimes in Kosovo was reconstituted at the last minute and lumped into a trial for war crimes in Kosovo and Bosnia. As far as Milosevic is concerned he was party to the Dayton peace agreement seven years ago, why has this been dragged up again now? Quantity is never a substitute for quality yet there are 66 indictments against Milosevic and more than 300 witnesses? The major indictment is Genocide. It is blindingly obvious to everyone that the only Genocide in the reduced Yugoslavia is that perpetrated on the Kosovo Serbs and we all know who is responsible for that. Other indictments involve atrocities: what greater atrocity is there than dropping cluster bombs from three miles high onto civilians yet no one has been indicted for these obvious crimes?
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Monday April 29, 2002 at 6:55 am
  As far as I have followed the discussion, there is disagreement among experts on international law whether the security council has the authority to establish a ad hoc tribunal or not. Having read various statements, I feel that the majority of the experts affirm the legality of the tribunal. While it is true that there is some controvery surrounding the legality of the tribunal, I do not think that it is correct to claim that it is certainly illegal. Obviosuly the present tribunal serves political functions, obviously its work is not impartial at all but highly one-sided and in the interest of the powers financing it. These are shortcoming of the present tribunal. Unfortuantely for many these shortcomings appear to call the whole idea of an international body of law into question. Nevertheless, I think a truely impartial tribunal would be desirable. How else could crimes against the people commited by governments and insurgencies be prevented if not by a international body of law?
  
  Guido Gebauer
  Germany

• Monday April 29, 2002 at 8:25 am
  Thank you for enlightening the obscurity in my mind. I agree with Peter when he says: "As far as Milosevic is concerned he was party to the Dayton peace agreement seven years ago, why has this been dragged up again now?", because this is exactly what Milosevic's two legal advisers, Tomanovic and Ognjanovic have been telling me when I spoke to them at the ICTY. But I also feel for the words of Guido! I have another question: how do you think must have ended WITHOUT the intervention of Nato? An Albanian journalist from Kosovo told me that Nato intervention was "necessairy" "because IT had to end". But he also laughed during the trial when an albanian witness uttered he knew nothing about UCK... Reading a lot of stuff about Kososvo (thanks for balkanpeace.com! Very interesting!) I' indeed amazed how misinformed we (I) are (am). So: what other solution could have been better for ending the war in Kososvo?
  
  Anna Maria van Klinken-Poharnok
  The Hague
  The Netherlands

• Monday April 29, 2002 at 8:47 am
  With my best regards , I wish to point out , that as Yugoslavia was experiment , for larger conflicts , this new justice is experiment , for much larger Inqusition. My dear people , I hope , you'll understand , that main point of trial to Mr.Milosevic is very simple. You're next.
  
  Aleksandar Radojcic
  Amsterdam
  Netherlands

• Monday April 29, 2002 at 10:47 am
  Anna, thanks for your response ... and for being our person "on the scene" (in the Hague). :-)
  NATO itself ratcheted up the violence by supporting KLA guerrila attacks in Kosovo, which some believe were intended to incite Serb repression, not to oppose it. Even regardless of that, the situation had become so violent by Jan99 that a new, decisive solution had become necessary, and if Clinton/NATO had really wanted a peaceful solution, it could have been achieved.
  However, Appendix B of the Rambouillet Treaty -- see my postings in the archived discussion and the dialogue starting on 14May99 in H-Diplo -- was obviously intended to force a war on the Serbs by confronting them with an ultimatum they could not accept. (App. B, if you don't know, was the demand that NATO be allowed to occupy all of Yugoslavia, including Serbia, without restriction -- an unconditional surrender ultimatum even the many Serbs who hate(d) Milosevic could not accept.)
  Now, Bosnia-Herzogovina had shown that the Serbs would back down when threatened with NATO bombing, even if that hadn't been of Serbia itself. If we had not added Appendix B, if we had offered a fair partition of Kosovo, and if we had backed that with our threat to bomb Serbia itself if Milosevic didn't agree, the Kosovo War and all of its grief and suffering never would have happened.
  Instead, using App. B, we/Clinton/NATO deliberately started the unnecessary Kosovo War -- and by Nuremberg, that's a war crime.
  As I have written above, Milosevic alluded to Appendix B early in his defense, apparently assuming everyone in the West already knew about it. Actually, the mainstream media have gone along with the coverup -- only the right wing and old pro-Soviet leftwing in the United States have covered this key issue, for example.
  The West is guilty of everything that happened in Kosovo, from the start of our bombing and thereafter ... and yet only Milosevic is being prosecuted??
  So much for "the West's justice" at the Hague!
  (There are various theories, which you can read above, why Clinton/NATO wanted the Kosovo War, even though it wasn't necessary.)
  Does this help you understand, Anna?
  
  Lou Coatney
  Macomb
  Illinois USA

• Monday April 29, 2002 at 10:54 am
  Anna Maria, There was not war in Kosovo before NATO intervention there. The sole ojections from various politicians until then was disproportionate and excessive reaction when combatting against albanian insurgents.Lord Ashdown said the same in tribunal. Your question: How could be ended without intervention of NATO ?? My answer: with peace and distrust as they lived so far for hundred years, but with less criminality,less poverty and NO pollution (depleted uranium). A peacefull and wise (honest) western politician would have reject the "humanitarian" war to settle this complicated matter and would have been patient and wait until Milosevic is overthrown, if it is true that all disgraces derive from him. But, the war is allways(wrongly) thought to be usefull to somebody: To whom was usefull?? The albanian witnesses gave the answer:They were all happy when Nato start to bomb their country. From the serb point of view: Could You immagine that Milosevic who shows beeing intelligent person (no matter his political beliefs), that he would thought to expell all the albanian Kosovars, without encountering a fierce reaction from all civilized world comunity?? I this was his plan, he has to be declared insane and sent to lunatic asylum.
  
  Serjoe B
  Italy

• Monday April 29, 2002 at 12:08 pm
  I agree with Guido's statement that you cannot dismiss the tribunal as illegal without any further consideration. However, if the legality of the tribunal is a logical corollary of the illegality of the Yugoslav courts, the matter is not quite so straightforward. I think this ideology can be elicited from some of the statements, especially those made by James Rubin on the illegality of the Yugoslav courts. Besides, there HAS to be a reason why we need the tribunal in the first place: you cannot just evoke a court and say that it is thus empowered. For once, let's place the burden of proof on ICTY! Besides, the legality or otherwise of the ICTY cannot only be decided by the legal basis, in this case a Security Council decision. One also has to take into account two other decisive factors: the questions that pertain to jurisdiction and fair trial. Why are the Yugoslav courts supposedly illegal? Because the judges were nominated by Milosevic? Are the courts not legal now that they have handed down some rulings against Milosevic and Milosevic himself has been "transferred" to The Hague? No, because Milosevic's influence has been too profound. So the need to keep Milosevic in The Hague points logically to the illegality of the Yugoslav courts Lucky that Milosevic was the chief culprit for this "illegality". This sounds like attibuting some superhuman powers to Milosevic, but the "reasoning" must go something like that. Hence, as long as Milosevic is in The Hague, he is presumed guilty, if for no other reason then at least for exerting his demonic influence on the Yugoslav courts. How does this tally with fair trial? How could a court be legal if its existence is conditional on treading on other courts and as a bonus compromising fair trial in the process? The fact that the legal basis of the tribunal is a decision of the Security Council only compounds the problem. The Security Council may have extensive so-called "implied" powers, but let us bear in mind that the UN does not have "checks and balances" like a national government, so it cannot be divided into the legislative, executive and judicial powers, which guarantee an equitable functioning of a state. If anything, the Security Council is an executive organ, and the fact that the judicial function of the tribunal has been adulterated by an executive element can be traced back to the fact that its powers have been derived from a quasi-executive organ. If the ICTY is supposed to be a midwife of the post-Milosevic legal system, as the idea of "transitional justice" holds, it ought to keep within the limits that the Yugoslav legal system has imposed on the judicial power - thus it would have to abide by the division of power of the state into legislative, executive and judicial. Has this happened? The answer is becoming ever more evident now that the law on "cooperation" has been passed. What national court would have the audacity to demand that the state divulge its classified documents to the prosecutors? Also, the ICTY prosecutors have stated that ICTY does not respect any national rules on immunity. Both of these restrictions on courts were meant to guarantee the checks and balances between the three branches of government. You know, the judicial power has to be kept in check too. And there you have the confusion between the executive and judicial functions of ICTY. Finally, you can refer to what Jacques Vergès said in his interview about the confusion of the legislative and judicial functions (a favourite topic in France by the way): ICTY makes its rules as the trial proceeds. I don't think there is any word in any language to describe such presumptiousness. And of course, the only persons that seem to enjoy immunity in all this are the ICTY officials themselves.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Monday April 29, 2002 at 6:22 pm
  Ms. Anna Maria van Klinken-Poharnok It's not that there was no war. It is that western countries and their secret agencies started to create the problem then they came to fight "an evil" then they came to Krajina, Bosnia then Kosovo as "peacekeppers". The post would be too long to explain everything, however if you are interested in some of these I can explain and try to document it.
  
  John Smith
  Canada

• Monday April 29, 2002 at 6:26 pm
  Mr. Nousiainen I have read your post and I instantly noticed that you are not from USA. You’ve gotten ability to notice important tings. If we don’t have any humanist and ethical background (no such subjects during education) in any profession, we have no common sense…etc There are examples like physician (doctor) saying: “You are a smoker and you knew that smoking could affect badly your health and I am not going to cure you because of it!” (Happening in Canada), they are not able to realize that he/she can say the same thing for injured people who drove a car: ”You knew that there is a risk driving a car and despite of it you drove it and now you are asking for help”. They think that they know where is the border, border between right and wrong, good and evil, and most importantly they usurp right to judge about it. They always simplified views; they always have to portray two sides - bad and good boys. However they acted proactively for easier public manipulation (When they needed problem or crisis, they created it). After they were referred; Croats, Muslims and Albanians used American’s Ruder and Finn, and Global Communicators PR firms to picture Serbs as bad boys - you can visit directly their web site. http://www.globalcommunicators.com/cpp.html There is a connection between PR firms (Public Relations Company) and ….. Ruder Finn chair David Finn. "We get people in positions of responsibility together and facilitate their communications." “As if that's not reason enough for skepticism, consider this: foreign-government officials aren't the only ones who understand how useful PR professionals can be. Two weeks ago, Leslie Dach, vice-chair of public-relations giant Edelman Worldwide, was hired to work on Kosovo-related communications. For the White House.' http://www.daanspeak.com/Balkan02.html (At the end of Dutch version you will find English version too). USA had chosen Balkan to show how incapable Europe was to solve a problem, and they solved it effectively. The message was loud: FROM NOW ON YOU KNOW WHOM YOU OBEY! The whole Europe was too deaf to hear it and “Old Lady” signed managerial rules on “New World Order” on Balkan crisis. Effectiveness of USA action on Balkan has the other side too - Violation of basic rights and destruction of the world order; good reason to use a phrase “New World Order” as Nazis did to justify why they did (they are) not respect(ing) current rules (law). All that is contained in Bush’s speeches, however in much more open way than anybody did in 20th century: “This is a war between good and evil.” Mr. Bush is it “Americans are good!” what are you trying to say - others are…. what? “They don’t like us, they don’t like our democracy!” Mr. Bush democracy came from two Greek words: Demos - people Crate - throne People exercise democracy as much as they are able to control those who are in power. “And they don’t like our freedom” Mr. Bush you are free to do whatever you want until you don’t ruin somebody else’s freedom. “If you are not with us, you are against us!” - No comment. Louis XVI used to say: “That’s lawfully because I want that!”
  
  John Smith
  Canada

• Monday April 29, 2002 at 6:33 pm
  Mr. John Simmons, it's not that all posts here are pro-Milosevic, it is that people on this board don't believe any more in: CNN type news The ethical approach of PR Firms The Governments who were lead by PR Firms. The Governments whose agencies failed. (I meant that there are obvious mistakes done by Governments - some of these are done under the influence of PR firms and some because the official government agencies failed.) Do governments now rely on journalist and media to make decisions? Are some of the public relations agencies more influential in decisions making than government agencies, if so why? Do employees in foreign affairs, internal affairs, secret services etc. use information from media to make official reports? Could you name any newspaper, which practice to confirm any information from at least two sources before publicizing it? You are saying that all posts are anti NATO. We have to ask ourselves: Why was NATO founded and when? Do these reasons still exist? Was there 12-14 years ago a huge concern for NATO existence? - What happened meanwhile?
  
  Pero Peric
  Canada

• Tuesday April 30, 2002 at 7:55 am
  There is an interesting discrepancy between the reactions to the Dutch Srebrenica report and the ICTY's insistence to get a hold of the Yugoslav classified documents. Many influential people have expressed their admiration at the courage of the Dutch government to admit "collective guilt". Perhaps it is because of this admiration that ICTY has not taken any steps against the Dutch government, which is the host of the ICTY, by the way. Apparently the culpability of the Dutch government and the UN bears even more heavily on Milosevic, because the Serbs have not admitted collective guilt. So the ICTY officials are not the only ones who enjoy immunity from prosecution, the same applies to any Nato politician. (Strangely enough, the Dutch may be the first indictees of the new International Criminal Court, if the Bosnian Muslims keep their "promise".) So if declassified documents can have such an exonerating effect, should we believe that the ICTY prosecutors want to find some evidence in favour of the Serbs? The person who investigated the Dutch documents was a Dutch researcher, whereas the ICTY wants Yugoslavia to hand documents that would probably end up in foreign intelligence services. The Dutch document also reveals that the U.S. and its "ally" Israel were on the opposite sides in the Bosnian war. There has been a lot of confusion how one should address the current conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Many are so fed up with the U.S. that they automatically think their cause is best served by distancing themselves from Israel, the U.S. ally. Some people do not see it that way. Certainly the Israelis themselves do not. The postponement of the Jenin fact-finding mission may be attributable to the presence of the Finnish pathologist who headed the Racak investigations: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27423 . Of course, the two (or actually three) conflicts are not directly related, but one should exercise caution before choosing sides (if that is even called for).
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Tuesday April 30, 2002 at 11:18 am
  But the Dutch government's complicity in the Kosovo War itself -- they must have known about Appendix B -- is far worse ... as is true for all the NATO governments that went along with it. By premeditated intent and numbers of victims, the Kosovo War was a far worse atrocity than our My Lai Massacre in Viet Nam. Thanks to Appendix B, all the NATO governments (and peoples) have their/our hands covered in Balkan blood.
  A month or so ago, Chicago-born lawyer John Podesta -- Clinton's White House Chief of Staff during the Kosovo War -- gave a public talk in the upstairs lecture room of the Galesburg (Illinois) Public Library as part of the American Library Association's Presidents, Politics, and Power program. (Before our Civil War, Galesburg was one of the sites of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, wherein Abraham Lincoln defined our Northern opposition to slavery and Southern secession.)
  After his talk, I asked John a direct question about Appendix B -- specifically, whether or not there had been concern in the White House about a war crime indictment of Clinton, Albright, et al for forcing the war on the Serbs with it.
  Maybe because I had bypassed any question of it, by instead focussing on the war crime dimension, John didn't try to dispute Appendix B or his significance. He simply said that he knew there were questions about the diplomacy leading up to the war which he didn't want to get into, and he denied there had been any concern about a war crimes indictment in/against the White House.
  (Once he relaxed, John proved to be a good speaker, giving insight and humor on how the Clinton White House was run, I might add.)
  But he well knew what I was talking about.
  
  Lou Coatney
  Macomb
  Illinois USA

• Tuesday April 30, 2002 at 11:22 am
  That should be "or its significance," not "or his significance"
  Could you make the correction, BH?
  Thanks.
  
  Lou Coatney
  Macomb
  Illinois USA

• Tuesday April 30, 2002 at 2:55 pm
  If any of you are keeping up with the so called trial of Milosevic could you please post your opinions of what is taking place.This website is showing only the articles from the Institute of War and Peace which appears to be very, very anti Milosevic. Their articles are all indicating that the trial is going badly for Milosevic. From bad to worse. Is this what you see?
  
  Kathryn Love
  SJC
  CA USA

• Tuesday April 30, 2002 at 10:10 pm
  I was very surprised recently to hear anything derogatory concerning the prosecution of Milosevic. I tend to follow the plight of the Jews in their homeland. I happened to here about the bias slant on Milosevic in a talk about the terrible slant the mideast crisis recieves. I am starting to worry about anyone that doesn't have a healthy distrust of the media.
  
  Rich Sutliff
  wi/usa