MILOSEVIC TRIAL DISCUSSION ARCHIVE

Is Slobodan Milosevic getting a fair trial?
————————————————————————————
NOTICE: Comments posted to this discussion board are solely the responsibility of individual posters, and not of JURIST, its owner, operators, host or staff. JURIST reserves the right to block or remove posts that are in violation of law or that advocate illegal acts, that are obscene, disruptive, defamatory, threatening, harassing or abusive, that are in breach of intellectual property rights, rights of publicity or rights of privacy, that are advertisements or solicitations, or that are not related to the topic being discussed.
————————————————————————————

• discussion archive

• Thursday August 01, 2002 at 1:28 am
  Frank Tiggelaar I think that Francisco J. Gil-White’s version of events surrounding Slavko Dokmanovic’s supposed suicide is more believable. Mr. Gil-White provides a range of evidence and the only thing you provide is that you are Dutch and that you “hold the Dutch judicial and medical system in high regard”. Great! So do I, particularly your groundbreaking law on assisted suicide. Did you bother to read Mr. Gil-Whites well documented thesis on Dokmanovic’s death. If you missed the web page provided by Jared here it is again ttp://www.psych.upenn.edu/~fjgil/Dokmanovic.htm To quote Mr Gil-White "According to the law of the Netherlands, it is the responsibility of the Medical Examiner to investigate all deaths from criminal violence, accident or suicide, as well as those that occurred when the person was in apparent good health, was not attended by a physician, was imprisoned, or died in any suspicious manner.---- It thus seems that there was no separate Dutch investigation for the simple reason that the Tribunal is not subject to Dutch law. A post-mortem may be obligatory under Dutch law, but the Hague Tribunal obviously does whatever it wants when it investigates itself.” End of quote. You state “I was aware of Mr. Black’s role”, so why play your game with the questions? If I somehow confused you with the term “his lawyer” it was unintentional. In Canada lawyers may represent one in court or advise one outside of the court. A lawyer in Canada can be both a barrister (plead at the bar) and a solicitor (any lawyer other than a barrister) at the same time. They are not separate entities like in the United Kingdom. Some lawyers (Latin advocates) never see the inside of a courthouse after they are called to the bar. I am not complaining to you that there is a conspiracy of silence on this “Trial of the Century”. You entered the discussion and it is only fair to pose the question to you since you think that there is no conspiracy of silence. As to why Mr. Milosevic’s is defending himself is a question that is bothered me as well. We have a saying in Canada and I think it goes something like this “One who acts as his own lawyer has a fool for a client”. I don’t think that Milosevic is a fool by representing himself. He might have been a fool for trusting the West. He knows that this Tribunal needed a scapegoat and he didn’t want to play their game. He knows that no matter what evidence he presents the verdict is predetermined ab initio. As I stated before the danger for the NATO Tribunal is that he will get a chance to speak. You also stated that you hold the Dutch judicial system in high regard. Let me pose a question to you. How long would this trial last in the Dutch courtroom under the present rules and procedures? I know it would end in a Canadian courtroom at the preliminary hearing. Madame Arbour knew what she was doing went against every tradition of English jurisprudence and that is why she quit. If it lasted any longer than a week in a Dutch courtroom your respect is misplaced. And you are right Mr. Milosevic “nema na cemu” to thank you.
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops
  BC Canada

• Thursday August 01, 2002 at 3:04 am
  Frank, I offer you a sincere and profound vote of thanks for all your work in making the facts of this case available on video. I am one of all the few who have followed almost the entire trial, and it is you who have made this possible.

  Having learned to distrust the facts as presented to me in the media, I consider it both a moral duty and a necessity for one and all to act as member of a jury, in this trial without a jury. It is a corner stone of English law that not only must justice be done but it must be seen to be done, and your video's make this possible.

  I sincerely hope that someone will use your collected footage to write the definitive text, on this trial, its legality, its rulings, and the behaviour of those individuals and government agencies involved in it.

  Are there any plans to publish in a more permanent manner, the footage and transcripts of this trial. The record of this trial must be preserved in its entirety for future generations of lawyers and school children to study, and learn from.

  rtsp://hague.bard.edu/autoarchive/icty_env.200207261320.rm and in particular the transcript beginning at 2:33:00, should be required viewing.
  
  Ian Davis
  Waterloo
  Ontario, Canada

• Thursday August 01, 2002 at 3:43 am
  Why did Judge May never caution Markovic to not discuss his evidence with anyone during the scheduled interruptions of his cross-examination. This has become such a routine thing, that its omission was bizarre.
  
  Ian Davis
  Waterloo
  Ontario, Canada

• Thursday August 01, 2002 at 5:20 am
  "So much for free speech"? Funny that the (alleged) closing down of the BBC discussion didn't seem to bother our "Barrister" a bit. And what is your definition of "speech"? If he had placed a smiley every time he said something tongue in cheek, his postings would have been all smileys.

  And don't forget your manners? Bribes and torture are part of the job description, so why do have to make a fuss about it? Obviously some people wouldn't mind a little torture once in a while, if the torturer is well-mannered.

  I think this callousness gives us some idea of the shape the English legal system is in. It's like the father of postmodernists, Humpty Dumpty, saying that the words mean what he chooses them to mean. And then come the egg-heads (unintentional pun) who want to get in touch with the "pros" and start spewing legal theories connecting law with literature and theatre.

  Yes, it is visceral. I think it was Oliver Wendell Holmes who said that the judge's digestion determines the decisions he makes. At any rate, he was the one who started this "intutions of public policy determine the rules". He was born in 1841 (American), so obviously there is nothing new under the sun.

  By the way, a lot depends on what you mean by "visceral". Even the word visceral makes me puke.

  So I think the criticism concerning May's and Nice's English background may well be on point. In the film The Bridge on the River Kwai" the British colonel (Alec Guinness) makes a point about the treatment of prisoners of war on the basis of the Geneva Conventions. Nowadays, the judges wouldn't wipe their backsides with the conventions, if the conventions don't benefit them. Now that I have mentioned Orwell, let's quote another jewel of British literature. On the last page of his novel "The Lord of the Flies", William Golding writes: "I should have thought that a pack of British boys would have been able to put up a better show than that".

  I don't know if Golding was a leftist (doesn't sound like it). But if only this were a leftist movement! I think what makes it dangerous for some is its non-partisan nature. I think this discussion, for one, doesn't stand out by the number of its leftist participants! I think Lou caught the mood perfectly in his latest posting. Let me paraphrase. All the decades of labour to bring about a phenomenon like Glasnost and Perestroika was wasted the minute they dropped the first bomb in Yugoslavia. Suddenly we heard comments like "Russia can kick at the wall all it want". So was that all that it was about for some? Another visceral reaction again.

  I think the Barrister gave a perfect answer to Frank. "What's keeping people locked-up prior to court but torture?" So the point is not how well Milosevic is taken care of and by whom. The point is that is being kept locked up at all!

  And then Frank keeps surprising us with his faked expressions of surprise. So what is the big deal if Milosevic is kept in the glare of halogen lamps day and night (I don't know if this surprises you - OK, maybe it was not halogen)? I am not an expert (another surprise) but I remember reading that the biological clock functions according to the amount of light the organism gets. So if the trial drags on for years, Milosevic will be toast (pretty much literally). Don't they have more subtle methods, like infra-red cameras, to keep a check on his alleged suicidal tendencies? And as was mentioned in the Dutch assisted-suicide discussion by one Dutch professor of ethics, a common cold is quite a different thing for a senior (which I think Milosevic is becoming) than a teenager. So go on with the little tricks with the ventilation system!

  As to the Guardian article referred to by Ian, Richard Dicker may have been guilty of an unintentional understatement when he said: "The more difficult part is making the link - at least in the sense of his knowledge - between Mr Milosevic himself and all those crimes". I contend there can be no link on the basis of Art. 7(3). The last straw was Markovic, who said that Milosevic wasn't part of the chain of command. So how do establish his "command responsibility" when Milosevic wasn't part ot the chain of command. I am sure they will think of something.

  The point isn't any more if he "knew", but even within Dicker's parametres the case is becoming tough. Consider the testimony of K-32, which the article makes so much of. How do you argue for Milosevic's "knowledge" when K-32 blurts out: "I know because I was there. You were not there. You should have come to see."?

  One French documentary on the ICTY said that the trials are videotaped ex officio. So I can't figure out how Frank's video webcasts fit into this.

  As to Milosevic defending himself, I think Pertti got the point. To me, defending oneself should be a sign of Milosevic's sincerity. His hero is Georgi Ivanov, who defended himself and one. And remember that Milosevic has even gone so far as to suggest that he would go on defending himself even if he were terminally ill.

  Besides, who needs lawyers, when even the legal egg-heads are mostly interested in the didactic value of the trial? For some of them, at least, even a fair trial is an illusion. So, as it was pointed out the Barrister: plead guilty and get a reduced sentence. Rat on your chums and get released!
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Thursday August 01, 2002 at 6:16 am
  

  Ian Davis surprised us with:

  Ian, presently Bard have a budget to keep the Amsterdam-based servers holding the Milosevic trial archives on line for a period of two years. The quest to find sponsors for a budget beyond mid-2004 continues.

  FreeSerbia's RealVideo archives with Serbian audio are also secure, financially, until mid-2004. These files reside on a Belgrade-based server. Because of the high cost of international data-traffic from Serbia, the video from this archive is presently only available for visitors connecting from inside Serbia and Montenegro. We are working to set up a mirror of the BHS-language video archives on xs4all for the benefit of the Yu-diaspora in other time zones. I hope it will be operational when the BiH/HR part of the trial starts.

  The English-language Internet archive at Bard doubles as an index to the integral DVCam tape archive which is being created for Bard. Not-for-profit organisations, media, law schools, etc. will soon be able to apply for copies of these digital tapes. The master tapes have English and 'floor' audio, ICTY jargon for audio w/o interpreter voice-overs.

  Frank Tiggelaar

  
  
  Frank Tiggelaar
  Amsterdam
  Holland

• Thursday August 01, 2002 at 6:38 am
  I just read another article of the alleged Cypriote links to Milosevic's sanction busting. Now the reports called it by its real name: busting the UN sanctions. The latest reports also leave out the name of Del Ponte, who started this investigation into Milosevic's bank accounts in Nicosia. All the while her name was mentioned in the reports, you got the impression that having offshore bank accounts is a war crime. Suppose the KLA was funded through Swiss bank accounts. Would Switzerland have been guilty of UN sanction-busting: it was not a member of the UN! If not, there would have been no case for Del Ponte to prosecute. However, I guess the UN resolutions bind third countries too. Just a thought...
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Thursday August 01, 2002 at 6:58 am
  

  Jari Nousiainen surprised us with:

  "One French documentary on the ICTY said that the trials are videotaped ex officio. So I can't figure out how Frank's video webcasts fit into this."

  The ICTY digitally records all court sessions for its own use. Unless there is a closed session, these recordings are passed on to the media in PAL-format after 30 minutes; the delay allows judges to act when a lawyer or prosecutor inadvertently mentions the full name of a protected witness. To the best of my knowledge this happened only once in the past five years, in the Krstic case.

  The courtroom-feeds the ICTY supplies may be used by the media free of charge, whether for direct broadcast (as RTS did before the Djindjic government stepped in and B92/ANEM still do every session day), to prepare soundbytes as CNN and other entertainment channels looking for cheap thrills sometimes do, or to feed them into computers to create Real/WinMedia streams for webcasts as Domovina Net and RadioRadicale do.

  Several institutions record the ICTY feeds on videotape: I mentioned Bard earlier, but the International Monitor Institute also has a set of SVHS decks running every day. IMI's archives span all trials in all three courtrooms from the first appearance of Dusko Tadic in 1996 onward.

  Frank Tiggelaar

  
  
  Frank Tiggelaar
  Amsterdam
  Holland

• Thursday August 01, 2002 at 7:19 am
  Pertti Lindroos surprised us with:
  "[..] to show the world that it was NATO to blame for the distruction in the Balkans."

  Uhhh? NATO was nowhere near the Balkans when Vukovar was razed to the ground, NATO was not involved in any way when Dubrovnik was shelled, NATO slept when Bulevar and Stari most were reduced to rubble, to mention just a few of the major cases of destruction in the Balkans.

  Frank Tiggelaar

  
  
  Frank Tiggelaar
  Amsterdam
  Holland

• Thursday August 01, 2002 at 9:44 am
  Frank,Vukovar,Dubrovnik etc... all these facts were the consequences of break up of Yugoslavia and NOT the cause. The responsibability was of Nato members first, and at the end of Nato itself when they decided to bomb civilians to "protect" other civilians. But i presume others participants here will be eager to respond You in more punctual manner
  
  Serjoe B
  Italy

• Thursday August 01, 2002 at 10:07 am
  Frank Tiggelaar says (and I am not surprised):

  The ICTY digitally records all court sessions for its own use. Unless there is a closed session, these recordings are passed on to the media in PAL-format after 30 minutes; the delay allows judges to act when a lawyer or prosecutor inadvertently mentions the full name of a protected witness. To the best of my knowledge this happened only once in the past five years, in the Krstic case.

  On March 14 and 15 this year Lord Paddy Ashdown testified and spoke about his diner in a London restaurant with Croatian president Dujman where the partition of Bosnia-Hercegovina was discussed using the paper menu of the restaurant. Paddy described the jovial mood and atmosphere telling the court the number of bottles of good whine they both drank.

  Under cross examination by amici curiae Mr. Kay, yet again another barrister albeit on the good side this time, and when Mrf. Kay asked if they were both intoxicated and Lord Ashdown said they were in a very good mood or something like it, Judge May (NATO) had that portion not only redacted from the transcripts but also from the video, making usage of the 30 minutes gap between real event and transmission.

  I can understand and it is the prerogative of the chamber to redact the transcript, the official record and reference for further legal proceedings but editing the video which is the only link to the public is certainly an attempt to distort and censor what the event court is in actuality.

  The journalists present in the press gallery were able to hear it and see it, including judge May(NATO) order to remove the references to drunkness, but the viewers were denied that opportunity.

  I believe this practice is common and explains the sometimes incoherent dialogue.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Thursday August 01, 2002 at 10:08 am
  Frank, you may not be aware that on the outbreak of hostilities in Croatia, the British Government rushed second line NATO equipment (i.e. 1960s) to the Croatians and also equipment from the East German Army and Airforce were supplied directly. The British Government also provided an export certificate to RACAL to export encrypted radio communications equipment to the Slovenian Territorial Defence several weeks before any fighting began (http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4023009,00.html).

  AG
  
  Alexei Gorbulski
  Belgium

• Thursday August 01, 2002 at 11:40 am
  The events of 1991 are pre-web, and thus all but pre-history. But sources such as http://www.britains-smallwars.com/Bosnia/timeline2.html; http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/yugo.crisis/story/sanctions/; http://suc.suc.org/politics/chronology/chron91.html; http://www.hr/hrvatska/WAR/causes.html; etc. make it clear that there was more than enough blame to go around.

  In that context it is of relevance to note that Serbs were universally condemned, while those states which unilaterally declared independence from Yugoslavia, even though this was/is illegal under international law were as strongly supported. The list of sanctions documented at http://www.un.org/News/ossg/fy.htm makes the bias against FRY here obvious. Macedonia voted for independence in 1991 and obtained independence peacefully from FRY. How was that possible given Milosevics alleged track record as "Butcher of the Balkans" in this very time period. When precisely did the EU first impose sanctions on Yugoslavia, and to what extent was the break up of Yugoslavia a consequence of the desire of the rich republics to avoid sharing poverty caused by the collapse of Russia and the financial manipulations of the west, rather than any squabble about territory. The provided timeline states that "The European Community restored links to Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Macedonia 3-Dec-1991". As early as 1991 it is clear that the EU had already taken sides.

  As someone who has never visited Serbia, and has no connections with the people there, I think we ask the wrong questions in trying to understand who started the war there. The questions we should be asking are instead, what did we do to help avert war, and what did we do to incite war. If in that question fault can be found, the blame for it lies entirely with us.
  
  Ian Davis
  Waterloo
  Ontario, Canada

• Thursday August 01, 2002 at 11:40 am
  Analysis: Judges Face Milosevic Dilemma. http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/tri/tri_276_1_eng.txt "Judges Face Milosevic Dilemma" No kidding! It took Mirko Klarin only 6 days to produce a sanitazied account of the last week's mess. meanwhile the July 25 transcripts are still nowhere in sight. I'm convinced more than ever that the forced recess blamed on Milosevic's "health condition" is only a tactical ploy by the prosecution to wrest extra time for regrouping after being beaten up by their own witness last week, while publicly lamenting about the lack of time. Frank, by the time of Vukovar and Dubrovnik Croata was awash with weapons smuggled with the help of Germany (a big time NATO member) from Hungary, former East Germany (the surplus military hardware left by the Soviets, delivered via Germany proper and Austria), and even Argentina (midwifed by Germany also - see the recent Menem indictment on illegal weapons sales to Croatia via Germany). Germany paid a pivotal role in triggering the violent breakup of Yugoslavia at its Slovenian and Croatian phase, promting the U.S. to make steps to secure its own piece of the disintegrating Yugoslav pie following the 1992 presidential election (the U.S. never makes a major foreign policy move during an election year), introducing the stage for massive U.S. involvement under the aegis of NATO. The rest is history.
  
  Andre Huzsvai
  U.S.

• Thursday August 01, 2002 at 3:41 pm
  Mirko Klarin should look for a new profession. If one has followed the trial Mirko's article is laughable, compared for example to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2152747.stm which is factually far more accurate. As IWPR's senior editor Mirko should be asking how http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?top_about.html justifies the existance of IWPR when the BBC is better able to respond to the stated goals of IWPR than IWPR. Is it mere coincidence that IWPR was founded in 1991.

  Why laughable: The discrepancies in the photo's by Bosko were not explained as claimed, and Milosevic did not display any respect for Bosko's professionalism, given that police photographer Bosko took pictures of the truck, but not the bodies. That highly unusual fact never even made it into Mirko's article.. how many police photographers could fail to take pictures of such bodies. I'd say more but its not worth while.
  
  Ian Davis
  Waterloo
  Ontario Canada

• Thursday August 01, 2002 at 5:49 pm
  There are two sets of photgraphs: one of a long trailer, another of a small truck.

  In any event who can believe the story of the investigator who openly manipulated the evidence by adding registration plates, painting over the commercial name, covering the busted door, waiting days before removing the corpses when in fact the whole trailer or lorry should have been removed and transported to a suitable place to conduct an apropiate forensic investigation.

  Not only there are no pictures of the corpses, but nobody knows where the corpses are: what was the prosecution trying to prove?
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Thursday August 01, 2002 at 8:11 pm
  I see that Fikret Abdic has been sentenced to twenty years in prison. Why? As far as I can see he was the only sane person in all of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the years of tribalism. Mr. Abdic was a very successful entrepreneur who brought prosperity to North Eastern Bosnia, mostly associated with agriculture. His crime was that he wanted a federal union and was opposed to Isetbegovic’s policies of sectarianism. Enemies of reconciliation continue to eliminate those that would have been a force for unity.
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops
  BC Canada

• Friday August 02, 2002 at 12:39 am
  Heart Attack in The Hague - 1998. <<
  Andre Huzsvai
  U.S.

• Friday August 02, 2002 at 12:55 am
  Thank you Serjoe B and Alexei Gorbulski, for giving Frank the facts. Not only NATO, but the CIA with the help of the Mujahadeen, {untill they bit them on 9-11} ran the wars in the Balkans, much as they did in South America for the last half of the century. Hugo Chavez, watch your but.
  
  Pertti Lindroos
  Quesnel
  BC Canada

• Friday August 02, 2002 at 3:58 am
  Let me come back to the Guardian article supplied by Ian. Maybe the crucial passage is this quote from "an observer": "But actually you have to ... imagine how the judges will eventually piece it all together." In other words, the question is not whether the judges will piece it all together, but how.

  This brings back bad memories of the Krstic judgment. Point 4 of the judgement says: "The Trial Chamber draws upon a mosaic of evidence that combines to paint a picture of what happened during those few days in July 1995."

  So eventually the judges will manage to piece it all together. And we know what a marvelous job they did. Maybe this approach has something to do with postmodernism, I don't know.

  Talking about the Krstic judgement, it is funny how the trial chamber fails to form even one coherent sentence. Point 2 is of special interest. See how the judgement contradicts itself in one single sentence: "Thus, the Trial Chamber concentrates on setting forth, in detail, the facts surrounding this compacted nine days of hell and avoids expressing rhetorical indignation that these events should ever have occurred at all."

  On the more bright side, the same paragraph admits: "The Trial Chamber cannot permit itself the indulgence of expressing how it feels about what happened in Srebrenica, or even how individuals as well as national and international groups not the subject of this case contributed to the tragedy".

  So there you have the "international groups". However, "The Trial Chamber leaves it to historians and social psychologist to plumb the depths of this episode of the Balkan conflict and to probe for deep-seated causes".

  I appreciate the videotaping of the trials, but it isn't enough to leave it to historians to plumb the deep-seated causes. There may be deep-seated causes why the case presented is a "mosaic of evidence". And as a judge I wouldn't get cute with hinting at "social psychology", if at the law school you get treated with digestion theories, which to me seem to be only a kinder way of referring to psychopathy.

  I agree with the evaluation that the talk about Milosevic's health (as if that were a new topic) is only to allow the prosecution time for a fresh approach. From what we now read (here and in the press), the judges and the prosecution don't seem to slow down the pace, although the press attributes this to Milosevic's own obsession. The talk about slowing down will only allow the prosecution to produce even more witnesses, if the pace doesn't change, and that may be the intention. And of course, the defendant will wear down and ultimately collapse, which it doesn't take a Dutch physician to figure out.

  But why go to all this trouble? Isn't the case pre-judged? I think the answer is that forums like this are becoming a nuisance to some bigshots. I share Peter Taylor's pessimism about their effectiveness, but on the other hand, if they are effective, they will only be so in the long run. I think the tribunal will want to wear the public down too. So those who have the patience to sit it all out are those who will "take the biscuit", and you had better make sure that there are not too many biscuit-takers.

  I sincerely appreciate JURIST's generosity in offering this forum. The latest "interruption" by the moderator shows (to me) that JURIST is in it for the long haul, and they want us to keep the messages to manageable dimensions. If the trial is going to last for years, this is of course the least we can do.

  And I think this answers the invitation to Guardian's forum. I have participated in other discussions (on other topics), and after awhile it starts to wear you down. On the other hand, the Milosevic case is getting more challenging and the views of the participants even in this discussion are getting more nuanced, so one would be wise not to dissipate one's energies too much. Of course it is nice to win an argument, but this will be only a sham victory ("scoring points" to quote the Barrister), because anything tangible will be achieved only if you are not naive enough to hold your breath.

  The case is made now and I think the justice will be seen done if there is lively public debate. Don't trust the historians. It will take just as much time to view the videotapes after the trial as it takes during the trial. If the defendant doesn't have time to read through the thousands of pages he is flooded with, why would you have time to read them later? The difference is that if you want to be effective, be it now!

  As I said, the phenomenon is non-partisan, so don't trust anyone who wants to scatter us by playing on our political agendas and their differences.

  I admit I don't have the opportunity to view the trials. Even my TV set has been busted for a couple of months now, and that's the way it is going to be: I had never realized that I hadn't been missing a thing. Not so much is happening in the world as the postmodernists would like us to think. You begin to see more clearly when everything is not happening in real-time.

  By the way, the guy who defended himself is Georgi Dimitrov (Reichstag fire in 1933). Georgi Ivanov is a Bulgarian cosmonaut. No wonder I thought it sounded funny.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Friday August 02, 2002 at 5:22 am
  To come back to the subject of "me", let me point out that the phrase "as a judge" wasn't meant to imply that I am a judge. It was a grammatical error on my part (not even a Freudian one).

  And now that I am still here, let me say that Frank made a very good point (one of the many he has made) that Milosevic reputedly recognized ICTY when he signed the Dayton agreement. I don't if that is true. As far as I know, the Dayton agreement doesn't mention the tribunal. But it is a reasonable assumption that the signature somehow was taken to imply the recognition of the tribunal. I doubt, however, if that can be made hard. If it could, the tribunal should have done it by now. And anyway, the Dayton agreement was pretty much signed under duress, and above all, by the wrong person - after the political leadership of the Bosnian Serbs had been eliminated from the talks by that very same tribunal! But I agree that the illegality of the tribunal is a moot point. But let me put it this way: before Milosevic was indicted, there were at least two moot points on the opposite side. 1) Whether the ICTY statute applied to conflicts after the Bosnian war. 2) Whether heads of state could be indicted while in office. But then it is not so much a question of the legality or otherwise of the court, but its jurisdiction.
  
  J N
  Finland

• Friday August 02, 2002 at 8:32 am
  

  Walter Tkrla surprised us with:

  "[..] Mr. Abdic was a very successful entrepreneur [..]"

  Mr. Abdic cooked the books of Agrokomerc to the extent that it almost bankrupted Ljubljanska Banka from which his company had borrowed huge sums it could not repay. It was Slobodan Milosevic who exposed this scam. Ljubljanska Banka was the main competitor to Beogradska Banka which had long been chaired by Slobodan Milosevic.

  After the war Mr. Abdic surfaced as an economic advisor to Croatia's authoritarian president Franjo Tudjman. During the HDZ-era he was untouchable; extradition requests from BiH were turned down.

  Mr. Abdic abandoned some 20,000 of his Bosnian followers who had fled to the Kuplensko Valley in Croatia after Dayton. The audio of a 1995 Dutch TV report on the subject is available at Domovina Net's archives. Select 'Nederlands' - '1995' - '01-12-1995' Audio is a mix of Dutch, English and BHS; format is RealAudio V2.0 (for which your RealPlayer will probably need to download a plugin)

  Frank Tiggelaar

  
  
  Frank Tiggelaar
  Amsterdam
  Holland

• Friday August 02, 2002 at 9:27 am
  RE: Heart Attack in The Hague 1998 and the medical attention at the detention facilities. Worth rewieving. http://www.suc.org/sucinfo/press/press_release/press080498.html http://www.truthinmedia.org/Activism/wsj9-26.htm http://www.pplink.org/
  crj/crj7.html http://anthonydamato.law.northwestern.edu/
  Adobefiles/A003defending.PDF
  
  Andre Huzsvai
  U.S.

• Friday August 02, 2002 at 10:09 am
  I wonder if all the transmissions emanating from the ICTY are public in nature, why is it not possible to make copies, or download the RealAudio or video stream.

  I could in many discussions I have had about the trial show in my laptop the specific passages I was discussing only if I could download or record the stream.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Friday August 02, 2002 at 10:11 am
  RE: “Milosevic recognized the ITCY.” As almost everything else, this matter was a subject of manipulation with regard to Milosevic by the imperial powers. As former Assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck wrote in a 2001 article in the Boston Globe that, if the 1995 Dayton agreement "prolonged Milosevic's rule, it also sealed his fate." In it, Milosevic agreed to the tribunal that is now putting him on trial. When he was arrested six years later, "the trap that had been set in 1995 at last slammed shut," wrote Shattuck. This confirmes a long-held suspicion that the U.S. manipulated Milosevic and world opinion. “The Trap Was Set and Milosevic Fell In”, by John Shattuck, The Boston Globe op-ed, July 11, 2002
  
  Andre Huzsvai
  U.S.

• Friday August 02, 2002 at 2:06 pm
  Mr. Tiggelaar, thank you for sending me to the Domovina Net archive on Fikret Abdic. I am sure that many here would find it interesting, particularly the interview with Mr. Abdic. Unfortunately, the article is in Serbo-Croat. I will attempt to list some points he makes that you avoided in your post. If the readers want to see what Mr. Tigelaar avoided in telling us, go to http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/abdic.htm as well as http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j072001.html . Your point about Ljubljanska Banka is new to me so thank you for that information. This happens in North America every day. Bre-X gold scam in Canada and Enron in US are only two of hundreds recent examples where books are cooked to defraud investors. This is all justified in the name of globalization. I didn’t know that ICTY has added Adam Smith, laissez-faire and the invisible hand to the list of war crimes. ### Summary of Abdic interview: • He wanted to end sectarian violence • His relationship with both Serbs and Croats was positive. He said that they “believed in me” • He supported the Vance_Owen plan. • He saw Isetbegovic as a senile old man a fundamentalist a theocrat and not a benevolent one at that. • “He said that all movable property from his enterprise was sold of by Western Bosnia mafia headed by Atif Dudakovich former general of the Muslim army, however the main mafia is in Sarajevo” end of translation. • He said that “it was said that the Serbs know how to lie but, Alija’s Muslims know how to lie better than the whole world population put together” end of quote. • He said Martic, leader of the Krajina Serbs must answer for his crimes if he is guilty but it was Mrtic who saved his 70,000 people from starvation when they escaped to Krajina. Alija wanted them to starve. • They claim that I had concentration camps “We need to open the concentration camps of Alia Isetbegovic, the dynasty of Cengic, Rasim Delic and Atif Dudakovic. They know what I am saying. We did not have camps.” • I wanted to end the fighting he said and I observed all agreements between Alija and the Croats I also had agreements with Boban the leader of BiH Croats and with Karadzic in the presence of Milosevic that all sides be bound by agreement for peace.” • He had more votes than Alija for the presidency yet Isetbegovic usurped the presidency. #### It is quite clear to me that Abdic wanted an end to sectarian violence. It is also clear to me that he was trusted by the Muslims, Serbs and Croats in Western Bosnia. To Quote Charles Boyd Chief of US European Command “Abdic created one of the few examples of successful multiethnic cooperation in the Balkans”. It also seems to me that he had positive relations with Tujman, Milosevic, Boban, Karadjic and Martic. This should entitle him to a medal in diplomacy. To be extradited to Bosnia to face Alija Tribunal is like going from the pot into the fire. Mr. Tiggelaar, you don’t claim that we have due process and the rule of law in Bosnia???? NATO does not want Abdic in government in Bosnia and I still stand by my previous post that NATO is not interested in peace in the Balkans. Mr. Tiggelaar you defend NATO’s “Drang nach Osten” policy, I don’t. I, like Ms. Lindroos, believe that the international community (NATO nations) conspired to breakup Yugoslavia and tons of evidence was provided on this page we don’t need to chew our cabbage twice. It would be interesting to have Abdic as a (prosecution or defense) witness during the Bosnia-Croatia Hague kangaroo segment if Milosevic lives to see the day.
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops
  BC Canada

• Friday August 02, 2002 at 9:12 pm
  Why was Lord Ashdown not arrested immedatly when he addmitted on the stand being witness to arms being smuggled into {Kosavo} Serbia. As an impartial observer at the time he was obligated to inform the police of this violation of Serbian soverance.
  
  Pertti Lindroos
  Quesnel
  BC Canada

• Saturday August 03, 2002 at 7:51 am
  

  Walter Trkla surprised us with:

  "Mr. Tiggelaar, you don’t claim that we have due process and the rule of law in Bosnia????"

  You're merely suggesting I made such claim - it is not contained in my posting. As a matter of fact I think the courts in BiH, like in Serbia and f.i. Russia, have a long way to go. Having said that, there was imho no reason why Abdic could not have been tried in BiH. In cases like this, the ICTY monitors the trial (as it did with the trial in HR) and steps in if it is not fair. It can do this because it has primacy in cases of crimes against humanity, war crimes, etc, committed in the territory of the former FRY. How this works and why, for instance, general Norac is tried in HR, while genral Krstic faces court in the Hague, is explained by the Deputy Chief of the ICTY's OTP Graham Blewitt in a 90 mins interview I made for RFE/RL in March of last year. The unedited audio is (in three segments) at: http://2002.xs4all.nl/domovina/html/rferl/audio/blewitt1.ram http://2002.xs4all.nl/domovina/html/rferl/audio/blewitt2.ram http://2002.xs4all.nl/domovina/html/rferl/audio/blewitt3.ram

  "[..] what Mr. Tigelaar avoided in telling us."

  Again, you are being suggestive. I didn't even refer to the interview you are quoting from - I supplied the URL to a 1995 media report about the fate of Abdic's followers and some additional information to the claim that Abdic was a succesful business tycoon.

  "It also seems to me that he had positive relations with Tujman, Milosevic, Boban, Karadjic and Martic."

  Fine company indeed. But Milosevic did not have positive relations with Abdic. Milosevic protected others who pulled financial scams in Serbia, but in his struggle for power he chose to destroy Agrokomerc/Abdic because:

  1. Abdic financially supported Pozderac, the only BiH political strongman left from the Tito-era after Bjedic got killed in a plane crash. Killing Agrokomerc would leave Pozderac without his source of income

  2. Uncovering the Agrokomerc financial scam and thus exposing Ljubljanska Banka's predicament would destabilise the Slovenian economy

  3. The demise of Agrokomerc would leave Bosnia without its major food processing industry and make it much more dependent of Serbia.

  I doubt therefore that we shall see Abdic as a defense witness in the Hague, but let's hope the OTP will call him up

  Frank Tiggelaar

  
  
  Frank Tiggelaar
  Amsterdam
  Holland

• Saturday August 03, 2002 at 12:34 pm
  Message on creating paragraphs

  For contributors who wish to make their text easier to read by breaking it up into paragraphs:

  Prefix the sentence intended to start the new paragraph with the following group of three characters:

  <P>

  On most keyboards the < character is created by an upper case comma key.

  The > character is usually created by an upper case full stop.

  Example: Prepare your text thus:

  First paragraph. <P>Second paragraph. <P>Third paragraph.

  The text published on this forum will then appear thus:

  First paragraph.

  Second paragraph.

  Third paragraph.

  PSIt is easier to form paragraphs while creating/editing your text so that it is obvious where to place the <P> code. Probably this is what most contributors actually do rather than prepare continuous text as shown in the example given above. But remember that a paragraph will not be formed in the published text unless you also place the <P> code before the sentence starting the new paragraph.
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Saturday August 03, 2002 at 5:58 pm
  

  Frank Tiggelaar says (and I am not surprised):

  The ICTY digitally records all court sessions for its own use. Unless there is a closed session, these recordings are passed on to the media in PAL-format after 30 minutes; the delay allows judges to act when a lawyer or prosecutor inadvertently mentions the full name of a protected witness. To the best of my knowledge this happened only once in the past five years, in the Krstic case.

  On March 14 and 15 this year Lord Paddy Ashdown testified and spoke about his diner in a London restaurant with Croatian president Dujman where the partition of Bosnia-Hercegovina was discussed using the paper menu of the restaurant. Paddy described the jovial mood and atmosphere telling the court the number of bottles of good whine they both drank.

  Under cross examination by amici curiae Mr. Kay, yet again another barrister albeit on the good side this time, and when Mr. Kay asked if they were both intoxicated and Lord Ashdown said they were in a very good mood or something like it, Judge May (NATO) had that portion not only redacted from the transcripts but also from the video, making usage of the 30 minutes gap between real event and transmission.

  I can understand and it is the prerogative of the chamber to redact the transcript, the official record and reference for further legal proceedings but editing the video which is the only link to the public is certainly an attempt to distort and censor what the event taking place in court is in actuality.

  The journalists present in the press gallery were able to hear it and see it, including judge May(NATO) order to remove the references to drunkness, but the viewers were denied that opportunity.

  I believe this practice is common and explains the sometimes incoherent dialogue.
  
  Gogol Chalemagne
  Conn. USA

• Saturday August 03, 2002 at 6:00 pm
  Sorry for the errror
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Saturday August 03, 2002 at 9:29 pm
  

  Gogol Charlemagne surprised us with:

  "The journalists present in the press gallery were able to hear it and see it, including judge May(NATO) order to remove the references to drunkness, but the viewers were denied that opportunity."

  I missed this one. Do you have one or more URL's pointing to articles by reporters who actually included this in their despatches, please?

  Thanks

  Frank Tiggelaar

  
  
  Frank Tiggelaar
  Amsterdam
  Holland

• Sunday August 04, 2002 at 7:26 am
  Source: http://www.iwpr.net/archive/tri/tri_068_1_eng.txt

  Wino
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Sunday August 04, 2002 at 11:54 am
  In response to Frank Tiggelaar question about URL on articles about Ashdown testimony March 15 about his now dinner with Tudjman, the menu or napkin and the references to drinking.

  I don't have any URL to articles because I don't know there was such an article written, there was however a comment, message in a net of some kind similar to the 1998 reference to the same testimony in the trial of the Croat General Tihomir Blaskic where Ashdown told the ICTY that the wine was flowing freely and his neighbor, Tudjman, "consumed a certain amount of that."

  Ashdown said the very same thing during his testimony at the trial of Mr. Milosevic and if I recall properly amici curiae Mr. Kay pointly asked whether he was "intoxicated" and at that point the message said, Judge May(NATO)objected and had removed from the record any references to wine and drinking. The video does not have any as well.

  It is interesting to note General Blaskic was sentenced to 45 years. It is also interesting to note Ashdown tells about the diner and Tujdman in his book and it is even more interesting to note that he is the Commissioner of the Bosnia-Hercegovina Protectorate with very broad authority, in fact he appoints and fires officials, mostly Bosnian Serbs at will.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Sunday August 04, 2002 at 12:02 pm
  In response to Frank Tiggelaar question about URL on articles about Ashdown testimony March 15 about his now famous dinner with Tudjman, the menu or napkin and the references to drinking.

  I don't have any URL to articles because I don't know there was such an article written, there was however a comment, message in a net of some kind similar to the 1998 reference to the same testimony in the trial of the Croat General Tihomir Blaskic where Ashdown told the ICTY that the wine was flowing freely and his neighbor, Tudjman, "consumed a certain amount of that."

  Ashdown said the very same thing during his testimony at the trial of Mr. Milosevic and if I recall properly amici curiae Mr. Kay pointly asked whether he was "intoxicated" and at that point the message said, Judge May(NATO)objected and had removed from the record any references to wine and drinking. The video does not have any as well.

  It is interesting to note General Blaskic was sentenced to 45 years. It is also interesting to note Ashdown tells about the diner and Tujdman in his book and it is even more interesting to note that he is the Commissioner of the Bosnia-Hercegovina Protectorate with very broad authority, in fact he appoints and fires officials, mostly Bosnian Serbs at will.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Sunday August 04, 2002 at 12:29 pm
  Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1872227.stm

  Dinner
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Sunday August 04, 2002 at 9:07 pm
  

  Peter: thanks for the URL - wonder why I didn't find it with Google

  GC: "[..] mostly Bosnian Serbs [..]"

  As far as I know (and could find on Internet using nadjiclanak and TNO) PA sacked three BS judges during his short time in power. I haven't done the stats but I would say that his predecessor WP sacked more BC officials than BS officials, which would make your statement slightly premature

  Frank Tiggelaar

  
  
  Frank Tiggelaar
  Amsterdam
  Holland

• Monday August 05, 2002 at 3:12 am
  Mr Tiggelaar, the webmaster of Domovina Net, does not surprise me one bit with his comments nor should he surprise any of us that contribute to this page. He does not answer my questions directly and only deals with many of my observations by innuendo. Mr. T. is another example of the mainstream media where we live in a dirty and dangerous world where it is hopeless to get accurate coverage of world events. In the last two days I have examined some of Mr. T’s wed sites and I can see that he is in bed with the ICTY. On the web sites that he has provided I have not seen any critical analysis of the ICTY. You sir serve the interest of the ICTY and because of that you are given the liberties to provide the video feed. In fact, my due respect for providing the video feed, most of the rest is Pablum. The video feed has given us an opportunity to see the farce that the Hague Tribunal represents and I thank you for that.

  Mr. Blewitt, the special investigation officer from Australia, is now the Deputy Prosecutor of the ICTY. Mr. B. has a tendency to speak and than retract after his bosses at The Hague pull his leash. Just the other day he had criticized the new slate of judges as inexperienced criminal benchers and he was forced quickly to retract his statements saying that he had no experience to make such a critical analysis.

  Mr. T. to be fair I did not listen to the 90 minutes interview that you had with Mr.B. After the first thirty minutes I saw the interview as an infomercial for the ICTY. Your questions to Mr. B. were Pablum sir that one would expect from a grade eight student. I have a feeling that if you had asked any critical questions concerning the Tribunal’s legality, NATO crimes due process as it is understood in most Western Nations, your association with the Tribunal would be short lived.

  At one point in the interview Mr. B. states that all sides committed war crimes in former Yugoslavia. Why did you not ask him why Isetbegovic, Boban and Tujman (who was alive at the time of your interview) were not indicted? Why only indict Milosevic, Martic, Karadzic and Abdic but not the leadership of the other minorities? Are their responsibilities any less criminal?

  I went to the page you directed me to and I came up with the interview with Abdich. Why is the interview with Mr. A. any less believable than your interview with Mr. B.? Are you telling me that the Hague Tribunal has a monopoly on the truth?

  Mr. T., you suggest when you say “Fine company indeed” when you speak of Abdic’s relationship with the leaders of the other parties in the region. Are you saying that one can only relate to people one respects? I don’t relate to your point of view but “I will defend to the death your right to say it”. The fact that Abdic, under pressure from several sides, united the three factions in Western Bosnia should be admired; you tend to dismiss him as a dog that was protecting his interests rather than the interests of his village. What is your view of Paddy Ashdown who wined and dined Tudjman, does he fit into the same category as Abdic? Your material seems to be against all those who fought to preserve Yugoslavia as a single nation and it fits well with NATO’s objectives.

  Mr. T. you seem to be the sponsor of the theory that Serbia undermined Bosnian and Slovenian economies for their own benefit. The innuendo seems to be that it was Milosevic’s grand plan for control of Yugoslavia. You neglect to tell us the effects of the actions of the World Bank and the IMF on the said economy. Most economic analysts see the action of the World Bank and the IMF as the main culprits in the undermining of the Yugoslav economy but you Mr. T. put it at the door of Serbia and Slobodan Milosevic.

  If you want to serve the interests of truth and justice Mr. T. ask questions of Mr. Blewitt that many have asked on this web page and we will see how long you remain as the infomercial of the ICTY.
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops
  BC Canada

• Monday August 05, 2002 at 4:54 am
  I couldn't find the Boston Globe article with John Shattuck, so I will have to speculate on the details. OK, so the argument goes like this: Milosevic signed the Dayton Accord and reputedly recognized the tribunal, although I don't know how. That made it possible for Milosevic to stay in power (as if the Western powers had the right to decide that) but then he fell into the hands of the tribunal he had just recognized. The incoherent part here is: 1) his power was prolonged and 2) then he fell to the tribunal. If the the tribunal was a trap, why didn't he fall right away? If the Bosnian war was what justified Milosevic's indictment, why wasn't he indicted at once? Maybe the reason is that it would have been too obvious that he couldn't have been indicted just for signing a peace agreement! Besides, if (a big if) he recognized the tribunal at signing the agreement, did the agreement really operate retroactively, so that he could be prosecuted for the Bosnian war (which he brought to an end) which took place before the signature?

  So the problem is this "prolonging the power" bit. If he was to stay in power after the Bosnian war, how could he be indicted for the Bosnian war? Answer: another war had to be started, the one in Kosovo. Then he could commit war crimes for which he would end up in The Hague. But how is it possible that he is now indicted for the Bosnian war as well?

  I think the tribunal and the Dayton agreement were a trap, but one where the Western powers fell. Why would John Shattuck now "reveal" the plan, if it had worked perfectly? So the Kosovo war was started with one objective in mind: to get Milosevic indicted. What do we need conspiracy theories for? Now we hear it from the perpetrators themselves! However, the perpetrators got jittery and screwed up the plan by indicting Milosevic for "crimes" he had committed after the signature as well as before it. And it still is the question whether the tribunal has jurisdiction for conflicts after the Bosnian war.

  If I hadn't said so many times before that this is enough to get Milosevic out, I would say it again. Even in domestic courts you incur a punishment for taking someone to court out of sheer malice and on trumped-up charges.

  And as for Mr T, of course the tribunal wants "independent" observers and cooperators to legitimize itself. It would be interesting to hear their version of the Shattuck story. This line of argument only brings into question the Dayton Accord. The fact remains that Milosevic had as little power to sign it (he was no Bosnian Serb) as Western states had any say in who should stay in power.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Monday August 05, 2002 at 5:34 am
  RE: Fikret Abidic.

  You might find this interesting...

  "Agrokomerc" Affair Is Being Repeated: Sead Hodzic and Vasvija Vidovic To Put Fikret Abdic On Another Staged Trial

  AG
  
  Alexei Gorbulski
  Belgium

• Monday August 05, 2002 at 6:35 am
  At Dayton MR. MILOSEVIC was representing the Bosnian Serbs since Richard Holbrooke had ruled the Bosnian Serbs leadership out of the negotiations. That is to say the US did not want the direct interests of the people of Bosnia-Hercegovina been participant at the negotiations, nor its leaders whom the media had demonized to such a degree their presence would have been embarrassing, and at that time Mr. Milosevic was part of the solution in the eyes of the West.

  Note that at the time of Dayton the United States had managed to get the United Nations out and preparations to deploy Nato troops were underway. Rick Holbrooke(BANKING) had called the UNO presence in B/H "trash" in a radio interview demonstrating his satisfaction with a "robust" Nato force deployment which obviously was under US control. In the same interview he also describes how "creatively" the journalist were "used" by adding "details" to massacre reports, all of course to "advance" the concept of peace(!)

  At the end of Dayton Bill Clinton shook hands with many including Mr. Milosevic and added "this is a man with can do business with" and if there was any mention of the tribunal at that stage it must have been rather insignificant. The Bosnian Serb leadership was barred by Dayton to return to politics and a new political structure emerged, now under the grotesque authority of Paddy (LORD) Ashdown, a failed British politician whom still has some use in the empire, after all his career began with the empire.

  I have to say that the ICT for the Former Yugoslavia had no intended jurisprudence in Yugoslavia proper since the problem was, as it was seen in the seceding, breaking away entities from Yugoslavia and if the there were crimes they had to take place in EX-Yugoslavia, that was the understanding during the whole Dayton "negotiation" and that did not change until the Nato aggression against Yugoslavia become bogged down and dangerously looking like a failure when Yugoslavia stood her ground and refused to yield.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Monday August 05, 2002 at 8:46 am
  Indeed, Art. 1 of the Statute speaks only of former Yugoslavia. The complicating factor is that it was uncertain (for some) if Yugoslavia (Serbia+Montenegro) was the successor state of Yugoslavia. All indications are that it was: these indications include uninterrupted diplomatic representation in Belgrade, until Yugoslavia broke the diplomatic relations after the bombing had started. However, some states wanted to make the succession of Yugoslavia a more complicated issue than it was, and now we may see one reason why that was so: Yugoslavia had to be included in "former Yugoslavia" for the purposes of ICTY! It is no surprise then that this mock "diplomatic recognition" was granted to Yugoslavia had been transferred to The Hague!

  I think that Western diplomats have congratulated themselves too early. Their plan was not so clever as they thought, and in any case it is a third-rate performance from legal point of view. If the tribunal was an unwelcome bonus of the Dayton Accord, none of the signatories should have been given to understand that the signature marked the end of the temporal jurisdiction of the tribunal. All else amounts to misleading.

  As far as Milosevic's indictment is concerned, it was a happy coincidence that by his signature he made the Bosnian Serbs his vassals. The result was that just as his signature bound the Bosnian Serbs, the crimes committed by them became Milosevic's responsibility. If you would to establishing Milosevic's criminal responsibility, I hope you have a time machine. The West's ingenious plan is nothing but a labyrinth of retroactive forces and teleological interpretations.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Monday August 05, 2002 at 11:15 am
  Hi everybody, I would like to say that although I haven't posted for a while, I am reading this discussion on everyday basis. Last time I have tried to explain our side of the story. I must say that I am not punctual like most people here, that is I am not exact with figures and dates, and I don't collect texts from around the web to prove my point. I guess that by now you have done a wonderful job of providing in detail the facts that can disclose this farce of a trial and the dirty tricks used to disintegrate Yugoslavia and blame Serbs for it. I would rather try to explain why we've had 5th october and what I think about Sloba. Let's start from the begining... We were a socialist (communist) country for some 50 years when Slobo came around. That means we've had all the bad things that come with that system - buerocracy, lack of political criticism, ineffective government owned companies with incapable directors that were chosen on the basis of political "appropriateness". Those companies were often led with no sense of responsability, since they really belonged to all and no-one particular. The interest of a director was often the opposite of the interest of a company - he would make a bad deal for the company for a bribe from some private-owned firm. From a viewpoint of a worker, no matter how good or bad you worked, you would end up with same salary as everyone else. There was practically no chance of you being fired (one of the "pluses" of the communism, there is no unemployment). The stupidity of a "self-government" was leading to a fact that a cleaning lady would get to choose whether company would acquire a multi-million worth of equipment neccessary for improvement of production line. Of course her answer would be 'no', hey, just think how much cleaning supplies and toilet paper rolls you can buy for that money? Any good idea that some honest worker could have had was drowned in a sea of greyness, lazyness and ignorance. Although our universities produced much of the very-well qualified engineers, those people simply didn't have a chance in the country to show what their worth is. There was always no money for any long-term investment while, on the other side, the directors were building their villas and sending their children to the west for education. What I think really kept our standard above the standard of other communist countries was the fact that we didn't belong to any block-Warsaw or Atlantic. Since Russia couldn't buy from the West for political reasons, a lot of the goods were acquired through Yugoslavia. Also, we didn't need visas to go almost to any country on the West, so we've had lot of expatriots sending money to their families in the country. But in total, it was a rotten system we've had, the one that could not take us to the future. It solved problems by denying that they exist, feeding people with ideals instead of food. When Milosevic started his bombastic criticism of the communist party he himself belonged to, he immediately gained popularity of the masses. He was the first politician to openly state what's wrong in the country. He demanded reforms, and although he didn't distance himself from communism he was seen as a first breath of a fresh air in the stale atmosphere. He expressed his concerns about Serbs in Kosovo, demanding that police protect them from wild albanian separatism and racism, it was a taboo then to speak about such things. Also he was against the authonomy of Vojvodina and Kosovo which made sense since all of the political decisions that could have been made in Belgrade needed to be approved in those two provinces and not vice versa, so Serbia was effectively ruled by it's minorities. He generally gave the feeling of a "people's man", a refreshment from a long line of spineless butt-lickers with no vision. He mainly spoke of problems of the Serbs, but then again, he WAS elected to be a president of Serbia, what's the crime there? When, helped with the mass demonstrations throughout Serbia he came to power, he did what he promised, he sent police to the Kosovo which considerably improved the security status of the Serbs there. It gained him great popularity among the Serbs for years to come. Unfortunately, from the very begining, the wave of hatred and lies was started in the press of Slovenia and Croatia. They were expressing pity for poor Albanians, speaking of a waked Serbian nationalism that endangers their rights (I guess they ment right to frighten, rape and kill Serbs to make them leave Kosovo). We were all in a great surprise in Serbia, we would never expect such a great threachery from our so-called 'brothers'. What the hell they are talking about, we're the victims here, hey, wake up? Suddenly in their eyes Slobo was seen as somebody who wants to tear Yugoslavia apart, although he was always referring to Yugoslavia in his speaches, the one that will really be equal for all it's citizens. They have projected their wishes for independence on Sloba, preparing ground for nationalists to come and protect their nations from the evil Serb dictator by separating what was unrightfully theirs. So why am I saying all of this when I promised to speak about Sloba's guilt? Because here is the first thing he's guilty for: HE DIDN'T GET RID OF THE OLD ESTABLISHMENT OR THE COMMUNISM. He kept all of the sleazy communist characters on the positions of great state companies, they claimed obedience to him now, continuing their catastrophic policy of robbing the state money for their private gain. Privatisation that was promised turned into a ordinary robbery, the directors intentionally destroyed their companies to the bancrupcy, and then buy them off for small money. The media, although at the beginning looking democratical and free, never looked critical for his goverment, always pointing a finger somewhere else, trying to cover up the mess his party was creating in the country. Well, it was easy job for them, West did treat us as shit, and so were the Croats and Muslims. When war broke out the Serbs fought hard to protect themselves. Although the West claimed that Serbia invaded the other republics, it was the local Serb population in those republics that was fighting to protect their homes. Serbia never officially entered the war, and her part of the army didn't participate in the fights. However, Serbia did help them with the arms and supplies, and the war was more or less coordinated from Belgrade, since it had jurisdiction of what was left of VJ. The fact is that Serbs never had majority in numbers in these wars, they were minority fighting against much more numerous enemy (they were something like 20% of the population in Croatia and 38% in Bosnia). Yet through desperate fighting they have managed to achieve significant victories. However, there was never any POLICY from our goverment. It wasn't at any point explained to us WHAT we hope to achieve and HOW are we going to achieve it. Judging from the way the war was fought someone would believe that we had a traitor for a supreme commander. A lot of stories I've heard from people who were fighting go like this - we surround the city, try the offensive, lot of people die on our side and as soon as we are about to seize it, there is a command to withdraw, and it was like this over and over. Like someone wanted to keep the status quo, and at the same time show us as invaders. What was Vukovar all about? It was mostly populated by Serb population and it was in hands of Croats. So how did we free it? By bombing it with artillery to the rubble. Who normal can say that we freed it? But it was a good show for the West to see how we are barbarians (of course, West didn't ever mention that it was a Serb populated city). As I understand, the war was to be fought in one of two ways: either stick just to protecting the territory where you have majority of people (although that was difficult since the Serbian enclaves were scattered around), or try to take over the entire republic, thus eliminating the enemy forces and make them surrender. Our tactics seem to have been neither of that - we did spread our territory (in Bosnia), yet with the constant attack-withdraw tactics we always allowed enemy to regroup, rearm and attack us back. I can understand that Slobo was under the pressure of the West, that each time we were about to achieve the victory, he was threatened by western intervention and had to move back. But then, what's the point in having a war at all? If anything you win by fighting will be erased with whatever West comes up with? If the enemy was allmighty, why let your people die for nothing? Another thing - when Krajina was falling down. The army was ordered to retreat, not firing a single bullet to protect what they have successfully held for years against Croats. OK, let's say that Slobo saw that he couldn't protect the Krajina, that the 200.000 Croat soldiers that were marching against it supported by Nato airforce was impossibe to confront. Then why didn't he warn civilians to evacuate first? Why withdraw an army and let civilians at mercy of croat soldiers? I guess he needed it then as a proof that Croats are butchers, that we are the victims. Too late, buddy, Croats have played on the victim card much before you, so no-one really gives a damn what will happen to those civilians, since they are Serbs. Did he honestly believe that Nato countries will ever admit that they took part of a worst ethnical cleansing that ever happened in Europe since WW2? But what fascinates me most is how our media was behaving that infamous night and days that followed. While we were panickally listening to the calls from Croatian Serbs running away and flooding into Serbia, on the state TV there was NOTHING AT ALL!!! Like everything is just an unconfirmed rumor?! I even remember seeing somewhere around midnight a video from Croatian group E.T. on our TV, while at the same time first convoy of refugees were entering my city crying in that cold rainy night. The news of Serbian cities falling one by one to the Croat hands were served with a great delay, I guess not to provoke immediate rebellion. As I remember, the pact that was signed with Croats before they started their Operation Storm, was saying that if they ever break the treaty and attack the enclave, Serbia will enter the war with Croatia. I guess Milosevic was stalling the news in order to prevent this happening. In the total chaos that came afterwards, with the greatest flood of refugees that hit Serbia from the beginning of war, I guess nobody would remember that fact. Somehow, suddenly everybody knew that Krajina was "sold" a long time ago by Milosevic. Whatever is the case, what really made me hate the man is the fact that he DIDN'T EVEN SHOW UP ON TV TO ADDRESS THE NATION! WHAT KIND OF PRESIDENT WOULD DO THAT IN TIMES LIKE THAT?! I think that at that point he should have resigned. Were he a honest man, he would show up and say I'm sorry, I've tried to do the best for this nation, but the enemy was just too strong. He would have been remembered as a hero, a brave man that stood up against the evil. We would never give such a man to the Hague tribunal. However he chose to stick to his power, using the persuasive method of combined state propaganda with secret police, while at the same time members of his party were getting incredibly rich. The state of sanctions and wars gave them perfect opportunity to rob the citizens of their money, for "higher" causes. They took all of the people's currency saving from the banks. All of the trade was going through their hands, since nothing could have been imported normally because of sanctions, they got a hold of secret smuggling channels. They were even selling to the people humanitarian aid that we would get from abroad. When using the same scenario he had let go of all of the major cities in Bosnia, nobody was really surprised. Now we had not only an enemy from outside, but our own president from inside that destroyed what we've fought for and suffered for all those years. It was a matter of time when he will fall from the power. The problem was that the opposition was very divided, not respectable in any way. Also, lot of people were influenced by state media and still saw Slobo as some kind of savior. That was mostly older people that grew up in the communism, for them Slobo was a replacement for Tito. I cannot blame them though, the West has really shown us it's ugliest side, no wonder they were afraid of 'democracy'. However, it was impossible to look at SPS acting as if Serbia was their property, all of the time showing on TV some fairy-tails about how successful we are in reforming our country while in reality it was worse with each day. What has started with a clever little dose of influence from politics on media, ended up as a totally moron-oriented brainwashing crap of a programme, like some that you can see on CNN. As the end was comming close, they have resorted to Stalinist methods finding "inner enemies" everywhere. Whoever criticized SPS for something got labels like "NATO mercenary", "domestic traitor" etc. He was largely helped in staying in power by the West who all of the time acted totally unjust, showing no mercy or intention to stop whatsoever (they started propaganda for separation of Kosovo, also Sandzak and Vojvodina). When such a party supports your opposition, it's not likely that you can trust them on elections, right? Uhh, I see I've made this post pretty big, I hope moderator lets it through. I suppose by now you see why 5th of october was inevitable. When Slobo managed to get Serbia bombed by 18 countries for 3 month just to have it surrendered as he could have in the first day without ruining rest of the country, and then claimed a VICTORY, it was really a punch in a face to any Serb with an IQ over 50. This moron had to go, and since he didn't respect the results of the elections, he had to be removed by force. Finally, the critical mass was there and they have all gathered at the 5th of october to fight for their voters right. Luckily for us, Sloba didn't use power against us. Luckily for him and his followers, new authorities didn't use the same methods as the communists, that is, they didn't hang the lot right at the city square, instead they promised fair trials for those who were involved in robbery of the country. I really don't know if Djindjic and Kostunica are traitors, if they are paid by the west to do some dirty work for them. But I know this - we could have not beaten the west by fighting. We could not beat it by winning over their public opinion. We can only stop their offensive by not giving them the excuses to hurt us further. They cannot blame us now for anything, they have lost their main card - Milosevic. There is nothing now that connects us to him, except of course the Hague tribunal. But that's where they screwed up - the tribunal was their mistake. It actually helps us, not them. The Milosevic and his clique now finally have an opportunity to tell the world what was really going on. At least now he can play some positive role. OK, that's it for the moment, I'm eager to hear your comments...
  
  Bogdan Oparnica
  Belgrade
  Yugoslavia

• Monday August 05, 2002 at 11:24 am
  Thank you Alexei for the address to the interview with Ibrahim Djedovic. His experiences with the rule of law in Bosnia are somewhat different than what Mr. Tiggelaar would have us believe. Of particular interest is Mr. Djedovic’s view as to who wants Abdic out of the way. The ruling classes if I can take the liberty to summaries Mr. Djedovic’s comments are not interested in reconciliation or the unity in Bosnia.

  Mr. Djedovic experienced trumped up charges, changed indictments, falsified evidence which he claims will face Fikret Abdic in Croatia. He spent three years in jail to prove his innocence while those who manipulated the court system and fabricated evidence continue to serve their masters. Djedovich comments that “If they invested at least half as much energy in the improvement of daily life, economy and on the process of reconciliation in Bosnia-Hercegovina, all of us would have been much better off at this point”.

  As I stated before Abdic was eliminated by those who are not interested in peace in the Balkans. NATO is not interested in reconciliation and as a result they support those that serve their interests. “Fikret Abdic acted totally contrary to what he is charged with in the indictment. Namely, his support for Bosnia-Hercegovina as a state of equal nations, attempts to reach a solution through negotiations, as well as his humanitarian role during that period of time, both in the Bihac region and all of Bosnia-Hercegovina.”

  Djedovic comments that “If we lived in a state with a shred of rule of law, at least 10-20 indictments would have been produced by now based on those testimonies. Unfortunately, since we live in the state where the basic role of the authorities is to exact revenge against others, and” their (I changed this ‘our’ to ‘their’ for obvious reasons) “own crimes are swept under the carpet, some time will have to pass until the Bosnian public hears about what really happened in this region.”

  It seems to me that the legal system in Bosnia has take a page out of the ICTY and follows the same pattern in order to subvert justice. Retroactive indictment of Milosevic should not surprise us but I wonder if it surprises Mr. Tiggelaar????
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops
  BC Canada

• Monday August 05, 2002 at 11:31 am
  RE: Kosovo and the timing of the Milosevic indictment. The imperial masters needed Milosevic in power more than anything else to complete the Kosovo phase of their "divide et impera" policies in the Balkans. Had they indicted him in 1995 on Bosnia or had they supported the 1996 opposition Zajedno (that on the grass-root level originated in the fury over Milosevic's betrayal of RS), Kosovo would still be intact but that was not the NATO goal. Any regime change at the time would have brought pro-U.S "reformists" to power in Belgrade, with whom it would have been impossible to push the provocations in Kosovo to the level "justifying" the air war. Simply put, guided by the old Bolshevik principle of "the worse the better" (Lenin), they needed a "bad guy" , not a "good" or a "moderate" one at the wheel in Serbia. Any "moderate" leadership whould have steered the process toward a political solution, while the name of the game on the part of the imperial powers was a military invasion and establishing a parmanent military foothold in the region (Camp Bondsteel). Milosevic was an indispensible and untouchable public relations asset until he war rendered useless, save a show trial. This policy was tailored to a long-term goal of the Albanian secessionists who always hoped that Milosevic will stay in power until their plans of independence are accomplished. This was the official LDK (KLA's previous name)policy, emphatically stressed by Fehmi Agani in his secret meeting in Pristina on October 15, 1992 with Milan Panic who was then desperate for Albanian Kosovo votes to unseat Milosevic. “Frankly, it is better for us to continue with Milosevic. We could not give total support for Panic, because he would have not supported our quest for independence. He thinks we will accept him because he is an opponent of Milosevic. It’s not enough. If the situation remained frozen, it would lead to a more radical stand among the Kosovo Albanians.” Only in late May 1999 when Serbia's capitulation was in the works, the ICTY has indicted Milosevic (on NATO's schedule), for the imperial masters no longer needed him. To NATO and the U.S. he has always been a lemon. He realized it too late to save his country, but in time enough to turn the table on them now at The Hague.
  
  Andre Huzsvai
  U.S.

• Monday August 05, 2002 at 1:11 pm
  The United States from their embassy in Budapest organized strong support of the "student" movement, it is easy to manipulate young students, OTPOR pouring millions of dollars, perhaps $35 millions and conducting a vicious media campaign against Mr. Milosevic.

  Why was it not allowed to have a second run as mandated by the constitution, if DOS and Kostunica were so sure of their victory, instead of organising civil unrest?

  All what was necessary was for the Federal Electoral Commision to have the votes counted with an impartial panel of observers.

  That did not happen, nobody got to see the results, the ballots because the first thing the otpor rioting members did was to storm the electoral commision and burn the ballots!

  It is shameful for Nato or the United States so blantly to intervene in the democratic process of a country and that after 78 days of bombing. But I could list many other instances where the same scenario was repeated.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Monday August 05, 2002 at 1:38 pm
  Latest:

  Yugoslav government obtains protective measures for key witness in Milosevic trial

  LINK
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Monday August 05, 2002 at 1:43 pm
  This is just in: MACEDONIAN PM TAKES SWIPE AT FOREIGN INTERFERENCE Friday, 02-Aug-2002 9:00AM SKOPJE, Aug 2 (AFP) - Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski on Friday accused the international community of double standards in the Balkans, as his country celebrated its national day. Speaking to a crowd of thousands gathered to mark a Macedonian uprising against the Ottoman empire in 1903, Georgievski said the country was in a state of flux after last year's armed rebellion by ethnic Albanians. "We thought the new century would bring peace and prosperity (but) the 20th century is not finished for Macedonia -- we are still full of worries for our present and for the future," he said in a speech in Krusevo, some 170 kilometres (105 miles) southwest of Skopje. Rebels launched an insurgency last year in what they said was a bid to improve the rights of ethnic Albanians, who make up almost one third of Macedonia's two million people. Skopje accused them of trying to unite northwestern Macedonia with the Serbian province of Kosovo, which also has a predominantly-Albanian population. The fighting ended last August with a Western-brokered peace accord giving the Albanians more rights in exchange for disarmament, but Georgievski frequently accuses the rebels of secretly regrouping. The prime minister said Macedonia had "no other alternative" but to cooperate with the European Union, but he objected to what he described as the "double standards" of the international community. "Many words have been said about multi-ethnicity in Kosovo, Macedonia and Bosnia, but in reality what has been happening is the biggest ethnic cleansing that this part of the Balkans can remember," he said. "Some international structures are supporting ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, even in some parts of Macedonia and of Serbs from Kosovo, supporting the creation of an independent Kosovo and even a Greater Albania." (C) 2002 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet) * Reprinted for Fair Use Only http://www.ptd.net/webnews/wed/ag/
  Qmacedonia-politics.RpNN_Ca2.html
  
  Andre Huzsvai
  U.S.

• Monday August 05, 2002 at 1:50 pm
  RE: U.S. manipulation of the 2000 Yugoslav Presidential elections: http://www.2net.co.yu/lopusina/cia_engl.html
  
  Andre Huzsvai
  U.S.

• Monday August 05, 2002 at 2:12 pm
  Bogdan, I think that You missed the point .We are not supporting here Milosevic or the Serbs in general, but the aim is to fight for justice and truth, while you give the impression of taking political part on this issue. You insist that the main problem of Yugoslavia was because ruled by communists. You must admit that communism in Yu was quite different than in Poland or Bulgaria. In these countries nothing so tragically occured. Instead the anticomunist hysteria was one of the reason of the ethnic wars as nationalists from all sides branded it as a "good reason" to fight each other and thus bring "democracy".(it was just an excuse for other agendas). If You are against SPS (Socialist party of Serbia) You have the opportunity to give Your vote in next coming polls, but here Your political opinion is "irrelevant" the term Judge May like to use so frequently.
  
  Serjoe B
  Italy

• Monday August 05, 2002 at 5:26 pm
  Andre Huzsvai I am interested in reading the book. I have no idea where to find it.

  gogolc@hotmail. com
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Monday August 05, 2002 at 5:26 pm
  Milosevic and the Impeachment of President Clinton, Part 1

  Source: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/
  articles/2002/3/18/12052.shtml

  Milosevic and the Impeachment of President Clinton, Part 2

  Source: http://newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/3/21/233526.shtml

  By Lev Navrozov

  It’s good to see that at least some US media dare make reasoned criticism of the ICTY: unlike the mostly spineless media and it’s journalists in the UK.
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Monday August 05, 2002 at 8:02 pm
  

  Walter Trkla surprised us with:

  "Why did you not ask him why Isetbegovic, Boban and Tujman (who was alive at the time of your interview) were not indicted?"

  If you are as educated about the ICTY as you claim to be, you would know that it - like any other court in the world - never comments on possible suspects that have not been formally indicted. It is therefore pointless to ask ICTY officials if there are indictments against Naser Oric, Alija Izetbegovic, etc.<.P>

  You are wrong about Tudjman being alive at the time of the Blewitt interview, which took place in February 2001. Tudjman died on Dec 11, 1999. The then chief prosecutor Louise Arbour said shortly after his death that Tudjman would have had to face the court had he not died, and caused a diplomatic row with HR in the process.

  As for promoting the ICTY: I certainly am a supporter of the tribunal, but not without criticism, see f.i. http://www.domovina.net/complaint. Needless to say I am disappointed with the ICTY for not taking the actions the complaint demands. The Srebrenica survivors are now considering to take their case to a Dutch or European court.

  As I explained earlier, one need not be in bed with the ICTY to pass on the video they provide. RTS, which I'd hardly call pro-ICTY, did exactly that for six weeks earlier this year.

  I'd also like to point out to you that - from February 1997 to May 26th 1999 (when Eutelsat switched off the satellite transponder) Domovina Net was the only website to bring RTS' daily Dnevnik programs to Internet in RealVideo format - bez komentara.

  After the war we extended this service, so if you want to watch non-mainstream media then check out Domovina Net's AV-page at http://radiodomovina.net. You'll find RTS and RTCG 24*7 live as well as archives holding a full month of RTS and RTCG video (yes, that's 2*31*7*24h of RealVideo).
  And we have a month of PBSBiH Dnevnik's, too. Go to the church of your choice.

  Frank Tiggelaar

  
  
  Frank Tiggelaar
  Amsterdam
  Holland

• Tuesday August 06, 2002 at 1:45 am
  Frank says - surprise or not - that "ICTY - like any other court in the world - never comments on possible suspects that have not been formally indicted." The release of the names of "suspects" is a police job in the investigative realm of things. Courts per se have no business commenting on ANYTHING. Prosecutors (not courts) issue indictments of "suspects" based on sufficient evidence, resulting in arrests, whereby they become "defendants" (in a court) i.e. investigation (by police)preceeds indictments (by a prosecutor)and not the other way around. In the tradition of the Western jurisprudence that is, if you discount the lapses of the Great Inquisition and the NKVD that blended the above three functions into one. It's been repeatedly voiced on this forum that if the Milosevic trial were to take place in any given Western country under Western legal standards, e.g. the U.S. the case would have been thrown out by a judge a long time ago. What keeps the current proceedings going (I'm not sure how more longer) is their supranational status free from the binding legal norms of individual nation-states, a status that allows for introducing and setting new legal standards and precedents with regard to the arraignments and the ongoing court procedures (abducting "suspects" on "secret" indictments, ignoring buying governments into violating their own respective constitutions and international legal norms regarding extradition, presenting hearsay as reliable evidence, ignoring the proof of coercing false evidence, allowing opinion-shapers on the subject to pose as witnesses, etc.) that would not be tolerated in the respective home countries of the three judges. The new and superimposed "international" status of the ITCY is the "smoke and mirrors" factor in this equation. The most telling proof of the hazards of the concocted medicine that the U.S. so eagerly prescribes to others but is unwilling to take it itself - is its fierce resistance to the idea if the ICC: when the imperial masters look at Milosevic they see themselves, and the sight is not pretty. "Formally indicted"? I thought an indictment is an indictment, period. Are there "informal indictments," and if yes, what the hell are those? Unless we make a difference between the public announcement of the indictments (Karadzic, Mladic) for political pressure and PR ends , and the "secret indictments" (Krstic, Kovacevic)resulting in ambushing, kidnapping and abducting unsuspecting "suspects", or is it "indictees?" "The then chief prosecutor Louise Arbour said shortly after his death that Tudjman would have had to face the court had he not died, and caused a diplomatic row with HR in the process." "But I really, REALLY was going to indict him!" Ah, the timing of Tudjman's departure to the eternal Ustashe hunting grounds was so fabulously timed! He really pulled a trick on Arbour, didn't he?! As though he, terminally ill, knew that she would come up with the above statement after he abandoned life and was beyond the reach of this "equal opportunity" tribunal. Or was is Arbour who waited in the wings on higher orders not to upset the delicate balance of justice?
  
  Andre Huzsvai
  U.S.

• Tuesday August 06, 2002 at 1:49 am
  Gogol, to the best of my knowledge it will be available in e-format at www.yugobooks.com within a few weeks.
  
  Andre Huzsvai
  U.S.

• Tuesday August 06, 2002 at 1:57 am
  On a more cheerful note, Albania sends elite troops to Afghan security force -Armed forces chief Pellumb Qazimi said the mission was a "symbolic" gesture affirming Albania's determination to join NATO. TIRANA, Aug 5 (AFP) - Thirty Albanian elite soldiers left here Monday to join the international security force (ISAF) in the Afghan capital Kabul, Defence Minister Pandeli Majko said. It is the first time Albania's armed forces have participated in an international force outside the Balkans. "Albania has decided to join in every international effort in the struggle against terrorism and fundamentalism," Majko said during a ceremony marking the troops' departure. Armed forces chief Pellumb Qazimi said the mission was a "symbolic" gesture affirming Albania's determination to join NATO. Albania is among nine eastern European countries which have applied to join the security alliance. Albania's army is trying to rebuild after it virtually collapsed during violent civil unrest in 1997 provoked by the collapse of financial pyramid schemes. ISAF has some 5,000 troops, drawn mainly from EU countries and currently under the command of Turkey, providing security in the Afghan capital following the defeat of the Taliban regime late last year. Its mandate is due to expire in December.
  
  Andre Huzsvai
  U.S.

• Tuesday August 06, 2002 at 2:16 am
  Mr. Tiggelaar uses one more innuendo when he writes “If you are as educated about the ICTY as you claim” and provides no evidence that I ever said this. Education is a process of asking questions not a process of regurgitation. A good question is always better than a good answer. I know the difference between asking someone “if there are indictments” vs. why is there no indictments against those others if they are also guilty? I am quite aware of what it means to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, what is rule of law, what is due process and what it means to be judged by an impartial tribunal. I have provided names of lawyers in Canada and in the United States who see the Hague Tribunal as a lynching. Pablum questions lead to pablum answers or “garbage in garbage out”.

  What Louise Arbour has to say means very little to me as most who write on this page know. Reducing appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada to nepotism has tarnished our top court.

  Mr. Tiggelaar states “I certainly am a supporter of the tribunal” and I am sure you can tell that I am not. I don’t support this Tribunal, not because I want to see the guilty go free but because this tribunal dispenses justice at the point of the gun and the gun is pointed at those who don’t have NATO as a patron
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops
  BC Canada

• Tuesday August 06, 2002 at 2:53 am
  Back to the "trap". Was Milosevic so dumb he didn't know the West had set a trap for him? I think he set a trap for the West, but the West is so dumb it doesn't know yet that it is in a trap. Milosevic's trap was simple. He knew the West would try indict him for Kosovo. Wasn't that the reason Louise Arbour was denied a visa to investigate Racak? So Milosevic's trap was not to order any war crimes. I think Louise Arbour realized immediately after she did enter Kosovo after the bombing that Milosevic had set a trap. So she left.

  And once the tribunal had figured out that whatever crimes had been committed in Kosovo couldn't be linked to Milosevic, they changed their strategy. They didn't settle for Art. 7(1) of the Statute any more, on which all the indictments were based, but on Art. 7(3), the liberal interpretation of which suggests that Milosevic only had to "know". HRW was ahead of everybody else. No wonder Human Rights Watch, which had been involved in drafting the indictments (remember Fred Abrahams), realized that it had to keep sending e-mails to Milosevic to keep him up to date of the crimes that he was to be responsible for (sounds pretty absurd if you put it like that). Maybe HRW outsmarted Del Ponte in this, because all the three indictments are still based on Art. 7(1) whereas HRW was already building a case on Art. 7(3) - and let me say it once more, a very liberal interpretation of it.

  The West seems to be in the trap it has set for others, which sounds quite Biblical. The only way the West now can save itself is to make people believe that Milosevic is so evil that even the Good Guys have to break every imaginable rule in the book to catch him. It doesn't work that way. Those who break the rules are the Bad Guys.

  Milosevic's media policy wasn't an exception in the Socialist world. The marxist news theory said that you can speak of a problem, but only once it had been solved. For instance, you couldn't report that Mr X had a drinking problem, but you could report he had overcome his drinking problem. So it went for Krajina and Bosnia as well. What is striking, though, is that the official ICTY reporting holds on to this marxist news theory. There are no problems other than solved problems. I don't know what the role of the quasi-independent media is in this. I think B92 isn't half so bad, although I wouldn't go as far as to call it independent. I do think IWPR is atrocious, but more of that later, perhaps.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Tuesday August 06, 2002 at 3:51 am
  Mirko Klarin's article at http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/tri/tri_276_1_eng.txt sums it up. There is one memorable passages in this article: "[The judges] let the defendant treat the witnesses, prosecutors and judges themselves in a way that would have earned others expulsion from the courtroom and contempt charges. None of it was of any use. Today, the former Serbian president finds himself in greater legal danger than ever."

  I don't know what the last two sentences mean, but the first sentence is quite interesting. Mr Klarin must have been reading these postings, where somebody pointed out that Judge May is asking the witnesses questions that no defence attorney would be allowed to.

  So here is Klarin's response. Milosevic is in contempt of court. The only question is why he hasn't been charged (unlike one of the prosecution witnesses). There are two possible answers. First, the judges are so nice to Milosevic. They are doing anything for him to allow him to make a desperate case for himself. Second, and this is where the "none of it was of any use" piece may come in. He is going to be convicted for life, so what is the use of charging him with contempt.

  There is some truth in the latter option. We can be certain that Milosevic is going to be convicted for a sentence term that is at least as long as his stay in detention before the sentence. This was done recently in Bosnia: you served your 7 years while you were being detained, so you will be sentenced for 7 years. So the longer Milosevic is being detained, the less his prospects are made to look. And of course this entails the possibility that his health might collapse entirely.

  Finally, I don't know how someone can say he is a supporter of the tribunal. I would be its supporter if it could be trusted to sentence those that are guilty are release those that are not. Neither of this is likely to happen.

  Paradoxically, I think the tribunal has become its own worst enemy. Nobody would have asked questions if the tribunal had made its temporal jurisdiction end in 1995. But even while the tribunal admitted the Milosevic case, the prosecutor should not have enlarged the indictment to cover Croatia and Bosnia. Now we are rehearsing all the events that led to the establishment of the tribunal (which is our right in a fair trial as members of the public), and we know it from Warren Christopher himself that the tribunal was meant as a prolongation of the US foreign policy to eliminate the Serb leadership. So I can't understand how anyone can be a supporter of the tribunal if he is consistent in his criticism. This is no conspiracy theory. We are hearing this now from the architects themselves! So what are we to learn from the tribunal? I think the prospect of Albanian "peacekeepers" should give you some clue.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Tuesday August 06, 2002 at 6:40 am
  Question if I may forFrank Tiggelaar

  I wonder if all the transmissions emanating from the ICTY are public in nature, why is it not possible to make copies, or download the RealAudio or video stream?

  I could in many discussions I have had about the trial show in my laptop the specific passages I was discussing only if I could download or record the stream.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Tuesday August 06, 2002 at 8:37 am
  Hmm, it seems that I did miss the point, that I am somehow abusing the issue of this topic to test some of my beliefs by sharing them with impartial observers. And it seems also that I wasn't very clear about what I wanted to say. I tried to picture the circumstances in which Milosevic came to power, and his inability to cope with the situation that was at hand in order to show that he could not have possibly been another Hitler. I think it's quite obvious from what I wrote that he or his party have never come close to the idea of nazism. They were a bunch of bureaucrats that had only one wish - staying in power as long as they can. I wanted to make it clear to anybody that they shouldn't put the sign of equality between our authorities and the ones that were in Croatia and Bosnia. They've had nothing in common - while Tudjman and Izetbegovic were clear successors of nazist movements in their republics, Milosevic was trying not to be a nationalist, but an anti-fashist, anti-globalist leader. It was not in his profile to make ethnical cleansing. It is painfully obvious that all of the Croats, Muslims and Albanians remained untouched in Serbia while Serbs were thrown out from wherever our army wasn't present. I remember sitting in the bomb shelter together with Albanians from my place and none of the Serbs didn't mind although it was them that we were bombed for. As a contrast, my uncle who's lived in Zagreb at the time of a war in Croatia, told me that during the air-emergencies (that was another trick Tudjman was using in poisoning people with hatred, they were all the time playing air-emergencies in Zagreb although Serbs never used their airforce on them), he wasn't allowed to stay at home, since he was suspected being a Serb to make some diversion. But when he would enter a bomb-shelter, people would throw him out calling him names and shamelessly pouring their anger on an unprotected man. He wasn't allowed to leave Zagreb, and the only reason that they've kept him alive was that he was a good expert (he had regularly to show up to work). He told me that no matter how well educated he was and familiar with the facts of history, by watching their TV even he was starting to think God, what a monstrous nation I belong to, so perfid and clever their propaganda was. Again, for contrast, when Krajina fell down and rivers of refugees were comming to Serbia, Croats from Banovci and other mainly populated by Croats areas in Serbia were loudly celebrating and nothing had happened to them, even though it was a provocation. We never had anything against anyone just because he's from another nation, as long as they are not attacking us. I am proud to be a member of such a nation and will not let anybody speak of us as nazists. I am not seeing you as supporters of Milosevic but as seekers for the truth, like I am myself. The difference is that I also want to protect Serbs and their face, since both people who are pro and cons of the tribunal seem to underestimate us. I will not agree with you that it was the western money and propaganda that led us to throw down Milosevic. Up to that time we were quite familiar with propaganda and how it works, we had seen CNN, Sky, BBC, HRT and RTS in action, to name a few. It was a common sense that has led us do so, as I have explained in my previous mails. As for the second round of elections, I think it was quite obvious that Milosevic was buying time for something. All of the counts on the voting places that were done with observers have shown that SPS lost. But SPS does not agree with the reality, they start manipulating the total sum. They use their influence in constitutional court to cancel the results of elections. So they could have done 2nd time, 3rd time and so on. They had in their posession countless 'legal' institutions that could have dragged this process on and on. The real ratio of the supporters of Milosevic and Kostunica was quite obvious in the street demonstrations. If you count diplomma as a measure of intelligence and informness I can tell you that all of the engineers I know were against Milosevic. You say students are easy to manipulate with? Then how come students were the first to demonstrate against war in Vietnam? Anyway, what's so strange with president falling from power after loosing 3 wars? Emperors were being dethroned for less.
  
  Bogdan Oparnica
  Belgrade
  Yugoslavia

• Tuesday August 06, 2002 at 9:58 am
  Students and youngters were the first to demonstrate against Vietnam as they were the first to demonstrate against France's war in Algeria because they were the ones to be sent to the front to fight and die!

  
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Tuesday August 06, 2002 at 10:15 am
  I am writing from Detroit, Michigan USA, a Slavic city. I had an impression about Serbian people long ago in High School. They are a very tough people. I had an experience with Russians, Poles, Slovenes and Czechs while I was still in High School. I remember I had a hard time telling Slovenes and Czechs from Germans, even though my grandmother was an ethnic German from Transylvania. I appreciate the remarks of Bogdan Oparnica because it is interesting to know how it feels to be a Serb at this time. I am following the Milosevic trial with an open mind, and I'm not prejudged about the outcome. I do not find the comments by the far left to be especially convincing. I would say this to Bogdan. In the USA we have had some fabulous war criminals, from the Confederate Officer who ran Andersonville through Lt. Calley and Capt. Medina. We have not had the experience of having foreigners judging them. Justice might have been better done if Calley were tried in an international tribunal. After conviction, Calley was given favorable treatment by President Nixon and the mass media, while Chief Warrant Thompson (who had heroically stopped the massacre) was subject to military and social ostracism. From my study of the Nuremberg trials, I would say the trials stigmatized and marginalized certain forms of conduct, and in the process absolved the German nation in a sort of way. Those defendants who did well at Nuremberg were those who accepted the tribunal and the norms of international behavior it institutionalized, but who argued military necessity as a mitigating circumstance. The Milosevic defense resembles that of Hermann Goering, who also made an effort to granstand to history. My impression is Milosevic could do more for his country by conducting his defense in some other way, especially if he were not his own lawyer. Kurt Thornbladh, J.D, M.Ed. Detroit, Michigan USA
  
  Kurt Thornbladh
  Detroit
  Michigan USA

• Tuesday August 06, 2002 at 10:33 am
  Well, they were right to do so, weren't they? Don't students have right to choose whether they want to die for something or not? Anyway, these weren't anti-war demonstrations, there wasn't any war at the time. If it was their self-preservation they thought about, why would they expose themselves to police beatings and dropping of years at universities?
  
  Bogdan Oparnica
  Yugoslavia

• Tuesday August 06, 2002 at 10:37 am
  Some may find this page of interest: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/converse.htm
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops
  BC Canada

• Tuesday August 06, 2002 at 1:41 pm
  Kosovo today: Britain’s northern provinces tomorrow?

  "The US wants to control everyone” Mr. Sultan (a regional leader of al Muhajiroun) says” …"But the US can't stop us. Islam will one day dominate the world." Sultan is part of a growing number of Muslim radicals who find Britain, with its liberal immigration laws and tradition of free speech, to be a comfortable base for their jihad against the West.

  "England is the capital of the Islamic world." says Sheikh Abu Bakri Mohammad, the Syrian asylum seeker who founded al Muhajiroun in 1986.

  Ignore these oft repeated warnings at your peril

  In response to Professor Wilkinson and Mr Atwan’s anodyne comments in the report let me say this: You may claim “Most of Britains’s 1.5 million Muslims have nothing to do with these radical elements.” nor did the 1.5 million Kosovars: But that did not stop the extremists taking over. While the ICTY justifies their acts of terror - by ignoring them.

  After more than three years of asking: Where are the 1500 bodies of the abducted, tortured and murdered minorities hidden by the KLA in Kosovo and when if ever is del Ponte going to indict their leaders for these horrendous crimes?

  Source: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/decani/message/68569
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Tuesday August 06, 2002 at 1:46 pm
  
  
  Peter Taylor
  h

• Tuesday August 06, 2002 at 2:00 pm
  Like our unnecessary -- ergo war crime -- war against Kosovo, our intended attack on Iraq (if as unjustified at this point as it seems to be) would constitute a war crime which the new ICC could prosecute.
  While the world community -- from which we are becoming more isolated every day -- isn't powerful enough to come into the U.S. and arrest someone, being internationally wanted could certainly curtail a president's international itinerary.
  So Kosovo and Iraq will be linked. Is that why Bush wouldn't expose Clinton's guilt ... in the election and since: to keep his own aggressive options open?
  
  Lou Coatney
  Macomb
  Illinois USA

• Tuesday August 06, 2002 at 2:51 pm
  I am bet lost on legal issues over the creation of the ICTY. Hovere, this was not the case with ICTR, since there was request as well as agreement on the ICTR Tribunal. Could some legal experts help me to understand the legal basis for the creation of the ICTY by the Security Council? Carla Berg
  
  Carla Berg
  Austria

• Tuesday August 06, 2002 at 3:29 pm
  No need for much expertise. Is the Austrian National Security Council the body which enacts any Law? or is it the elected assembly of people's representatives?
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Tuesday August 06, 2002 at 5:06 pm
  Some perspectives in political trials

  Georgi Dimitrov's trial was conducted by a German criminal court in Berlin months after the burning of the Reichstag, that is to say right after the Nazi party had won a marginal majority in the Reichstag and the President of the Republic appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor. Dimitrov, a Bulgarian political refugee was charged with three other Bulgarians, all of them illegally in Germany, and a Dutchman Marinus Van der Lubbe with arson. Dimitrov defended himself and won the release of him and his fellows Bulgarians: they were deported to Moscow the very same day of their acquittal. Marinus was found guilty and was executed. During the trial it was clear Marinus was not in full possession of his senses; as often happens the weak perishes easily.

  In February 1942 Nazi collaborationist Vichy put to trial a number of French politicians for having lost the war against Germany. Among them Leon Blum who had been French prime minister during his Popular Front introducing among many social reforms the 40 hours work week. Leon undertook a very able defence and the trial had to be indefinitely postponed since it backfired and the Vichy regime became very much the defendant. Leon Blum was deported to Germany and interned in Buchenwald a concentration camp for political figures where he survived the war and died in France in 1950.

  In November 1938 Grynzpan a young Polish Jew refugee in France shot Ernst vom Rath, a German official of the German Embassy in Paris. Event which Goebbels exploited to launch his barbaric Kristallnacht in Germany. In Paris Grynzpan was arrested, tried and sentenced to a long incarceration according to French law and a fair trial. When Germany occupied France Grynzpan was moved to Germany and in 1942 another trial began to explain to the German people who was responsible for the war. The trial was suspended to avoid scandal when Grynzpan intimated Ernst vam Rath had been his lover. Grynzpan it is believed, died in unclear circumstances in a concentration camp during the last months of the war, in 1960 he was officially declared dead.

  In December 1989 George Bush the Elder invaded Panama, more than 2,000 Panamanian civilians killed in order to apprehend (or was it to kill) General Noriega an old US collaborator whom had become, -horrors of all horrors!- independent and tried to run his small nation disregarding US interests. Illegally Noriega was brought to a US district court in Miami and pretending everything was regular and normal he was tried and sentenced. The trial lasted seven months, 51 witnesses testified for the government among them 18 confessed drug offenders some even convicted and much circumstantial evidence introduced. It took the jury over five days to deliver the verdict after the judge had been advise the jury could be hung. During the trial it was decided president Bush or anything related to him could not be used for the defence of Noriega. His appeals have been rejected on the same grounds. It will be a good thing for Noriega if Bush the Elder could cease to exist as many mortals do when the moment arrives.

  
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Tuesday August 06, 2002 at 8:52 pm
  

  Question if I may forFrank Tiggelaar

  I wonder if all the transmissions emanating from the ICTY are public in nature, why is it not possible to make copies, or download the RealAudio or video stream?

  I could in many discussions I have had about the trial show in my laptop the specific passages I was discussing only if I could download or record the stream.

  --

  The problem lays outside the ICTY and is not about copyrights: for security reasons none of the RealServer machines in the xs4all network are geared for anonymous FTP (the hague.bard.edu and gjnpj.bard.edu domains run on dedicated machines in xs4all's Amsterdam server farm)

  There used to be an applet called 'Streambox VCR' which could record RealVideo to disk. Real took the program's makers to court for copyrights infringement and won the case: Streambox disappeared from the market. Use Google for the full picture.

  Frank Tiggelaar

  
  
  Frank Tiggelaar
  Amsterdam
  Holland

• Wednesday August 07, 2002 at 12:14 am
  Some in Canada know the facts?

  “You will probably not learn about the fact that Albanian women and girls sought ‘the protection of’ Serb soldiers in Kosovo - protection from the Ushtria Clirimtare e Kosoves, which was selling the prettier Albanian refugees into prostitution rings in Italy and Greece … As for Carla del Ponte’s War Crimes Tribunal, that travesty of international justice, a massive and unsightly carbuncle on the face of the world’s legal systems, Croats are turning themselves in because any evidence condemning them of war crimes has been destroyed.” Writes Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY.

  To read all about it click here

  Source: http://news.serbianunity.net/forums/read.php?f=3&i=27645&t=27645&
  Forum_Session=3535b137b37fe76c84483d49edcfadc0
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Wednesday August 07, 2002 at 1:18 am
  Thank you Peter for that article “Some in Canada know the facts”. Much of that was related to me by a former student who served with the Canadian forces in Croatia. He was a young man of 24 who chain smoked, nerves shot, not only from what he saw but also from what he experienced. After dinner we sat on the back porch talking about the events described in the article. He described in detail the Medac pocket incident where some of his buddies were wounded and one killed when a jeep hit a land mine. At dusk, when my sensor light went on he almost dove under the table, his smoke stained hands shaking. The truth is out there. Thank you Peter, Ian, Jari, Gogol and others for substantiating what others saw first hand and exposing that this trial is a farce.
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops
  BC Canada

• Wednesday August 07, 2002 at 3:50 am
  As to Tony Blair's love affair with Islam, we hear that Tony Blair is the only foreign leader to back Bush in his campaign against Iraq. Sure! Behind the scenes we hear that Tony Blair has enormous reservations about attacking Iraq. And who do we hear it from? From King Abdullah of Jordan, who apparently has had a heart-to-heart talk with Blair, who doesn't want to share his secrets with Bush. And now that the bush radio goes through Abdullah, is it unreasonable to assume that Blair has enormous reservations about attacking his "fellow" Muslims?

  Maybe Blair's policy has been "If you cannot beat them, join them". This man is portrayed as Bush's friend. But I guess the old formula applies: you will betrayed by your own friends.

  And while we are on the subject, I think Bush has made a mess of his war on terror. Everybody could understand why he attacked Afghanistan. However, even before that war was over, he started planning an attack on Iraq. That ruined any credibility his war on terror had had so far. People started to talk that maybe this was all a conspiracy. No it wasn't, Bush just messed things up. OK, it may be unrealistic to expect that the Middle Eastern conflict should be solved before making any further plans on Iraq, but at least they could have waited until they had some proof that Osama is dead (as he probably is). That would also go a long way to make people forget that maybe Osama didn't order 9-11. I just hope that whatever happens in Iraq will not be held against the American people. Bush has had all the sound advice he would need to keep him out of Iraq, but he just won't listen. Let him go, but let him remember that Napoleon had his Waterloo too. And that may be what the Islamists mean by "we will overcome" (which I would very much doubt in any other circumstances).

  And then about winning and losing in Milosevic's media war. We have heard a lot about Kosovars and Croats hiring the best minds in the Western PR world to do their propaganda for them. Why didn't Milosevic do the same? Why does he stay there lying in the fire? I just read that the Russian Olympic figure skaters are planning to sue American networks for showing their faces in connection with a Russian mobster. Why doesn't Milosevic do something similar? Why doesn't he sue the American networks for making such a fuss about the "trial of the century" just to shelve the news as soon as the case began to look good for him? I guess the same pattern applies as in the Croatian and Bosnian wars: he attacks but desists the minute he could deliver the coup de grace. Did the Croats respect that? Of course not. We just read that they cleaned up the mess they had made as soon as they could, and with foreign money at that. What was Milosevic thinking? That Nato would think he was such a good sport in exercising such a degree of self-control (for which others had to pay)? At some point he should have realized that everybody loves a winner.

  But maybe Bogdan got me on his side a little too easily. There is the bright side too. As Lord Owen said, Milosevic is a clever man, but his main problem is that he is always a little too late. That is what got him to The Hague. But as the expression goes, he laughs best who laughs last. It isn't necessarily bad that he got himself to The Hague with his procrastination. Now we have all the time to go through everything that actually took place in the 90's. Sure, the trial may go on, but the longer it goes on, the more convincing the case against Nato (and the tribunal) becomes. And the precedents that Gogol cited (Dimitrov et al) are not exactly an excuse for the West. The West cannot say "we didn't know it would turn out this way". So if Milosevic screwed up, the West screwed up too. The main thing is that "he laughs best who laughs last". And now that he has chosen to defend himself in a trial that is in principle videotaped in its entirety, everyone of us can play his pro bono lawyer. So what if the big media keeps silent? Those who want to know more of the trial will turn to discussion forums like this. These people may be few, but they may be those that count. We maybe a voice in the wilderness, but so what? (Just as long as you make sure that you are the only one.) You don't have to be in the majority to achieve the critical mass. The important thing is just not to make the mistake of desisting when things are brightening up.

  Has this been planned by someone, like Milosevic? I don't think so. The phenomenon we are witnessing is called "you can't hide the truth". The truth can take care of itself. And the longer the trial goes on, the better the chances are that the truth will come out before the verdict. At least Milosevic can be accredited with that observation.

  Just let me put a simple question. Was Slobo really in charge of the Croatian operations, or is that just part of the ex post facto mythology that the tribunal is playing on?
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Wednesday August 07, 2002 at 4:52 am
  It was asked if the American citizens could be kidnapped on their itinerary abroad and taken to the ICC for war crimes committed in Iraq. It is my understanding that it is exactly this scenario that has prompted the American embassies to negotiate immunity agreements with their host countries so that these countries won't "transfer" American citizens to the ICC.
  
  J N
  Finland

• Wednesday August 07, 2002 at 6:59 am
  Bogdan surprised me with this: "Anyway, what's so strange with president falling from power after loosing 3 wars? Emperors were being dethroned for less" Does it mean that Serbia fought the wars against Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo??? So far I thought that the fighting in Croatia and Bosnia were going in between: Croatian Serbs and Croatian Croats in Croatia. Bosnian Serbs on one side and Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslim on ther other side, plus Bosnian Croats agains Bosnian Muslim. That Milosevic's Serbia fought a war against Croatia was normally accepted and spread out as a uncontestable argument by the media through all these years. Was I wrong in considering them as civil wars and not Serb's agression against third countries??
  
  Serjoe B
  Italy

• Wednesday August 07, 2002 at 7:55 am
  There are two trials , going on , one in the cortroom of ICT in Den Hague , and the other in a major coorporate media.I have fallowed this trial , and I have been astonished with some articles.What trial did they watch?????? It is utterly pathethic , but helpfull , to find out that HRW , and other so called NOG are more govermental then goverments themselves. There are gradually les and les people who are brainwashed by them , and that is good. Considering Media and a Western world , there is nothing they will gain with this trial , but shame.Shame that deeply , they will All feel , but wiil be unable to admitt , because Western corrupted Ego , is becoming Unique phenomenon in our perverted history. Regards PS:Little Advice To Win a War you need no enemy Re
  
  Aleksandar Radojcic
  Amsterdam
  Netherlands

• Wednesday August 07, 2002 at 12:03 pm
  In response to the post regarding Lt. Calley and war crimes. You must remember that Lt. Calley was someone who was taught to kill by his country. He went too far, but what was his frame of mind.Did the war cause the madness.From what I witnessed on the news regarding Vietnam, I think that is possible. A country has a moral duty to protect the men and women they send off to war. There have been “war criminals” since the beginning of time. All of whom have not been identified. I for one would not like Lt. Calley to be tried by an international court. Just as I do not like the Serbians being tried by the Hague.

  At this time we have had the murder of four wives at Ft. Bragg by their army husbands. Violence begets violence. Teach someone to kill and there is no telling which one will go mad.

  Send your people off to war and you owe it to them to always support them. Your war criminal is someone elses heroe.
  
  Kathryn Love
  SJC
  USA

• Wednesday August 07, 2002 at 1:11 pm
  Not quite.

  War crimes are defined by international law and most nations agree to such conventions. It is in the interest of all to reign excesses if war becomes inevitable and corruption of principles is the worst enemy of peace.

  The UNO Security Council was established to avert war, now is used to "authorize" it. The ICC is ready to face the gigantic task of universally agreed and apply one law for all and the USA is already corrupting this pivotal principle by CLIK HERE obstructing it.

  It was a time when war criminals were judged by a joint tribunal composed of all war participants. At the age of one and only Hyper-Power, concensus is essential otherwise law in the hands of an absolute power is tirany.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Wednesday August 07, 2002 at 3:10 pm
  Kathryn and Gogol have had an interesting discussion on Lt. Calley. Soldiers are supposed to be taught to follow the Geneva Convention, which covers noncombatants. Soldiers are supposed to kill combatants. Calley argued that in Vietnam even old women and little babies are combatants. However there has long been a question whether Calley was intellectually capable of holding the position he did.

  At Calley's trial, the following colloquy occured between him and his lawyer:

  Q. Now, I will ask you if during these periods of instruction and training, you were instructed by anybody in connection with the Geneva Convention?

  A. Yes, sir, I was.

  Q. And what was it--do you have a recollection, what was the extent and nature of that tutoring?

  A. I know there were classes. I can't remember any of the classes. Nothing stands out in my mind what was covered in the classes, sir.

  It goes on like this. For a transcript of portions of the U.S. v. Calley trial go to www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/
  mylai/MYL_ctchar.htm.

  It is true the U.N. Charter undertakes to abolish war. The problem arises with how to deal with someone who wants to go to war. Can you say "excuse me. excuse me. let me pass. excuse me. ....[later after working your way past the crowd and security guards]...Mr.Hitler, you are under arrest"? More than likely you end up having to fight a war against the Aggressor. It is not certain to me just to what extent the Serbian president is an aggressor, and I have not been convinced of evidence of a U.S. led NATO plot. Milosevic is probably going to convict himself by trying to prove there was a plot against him. More than likely, the Western leadership has little strategic interest in this part of the Balkins. Western leaders were probably just reacting to situations put before them.

  I would be more interested in hearing some evidence about the historic frictions between Serbs, Croats, Muslims, and Albanians. To what extent did Milosevic formulate and execute an agenda and to what extent was he reacting to an ancient tribal miasma which had been contained but not cured by Tito.
  
  Kurt Thornbladh
  Farmington
  Michigan USA

• Wednesday August 07, 2002 at 4:34 pm
  Wheter Mr. Milosevic was the agressor or not is certainly irrelevant from the United Nations stand point since the powers of NATO decided to ignore that international organization and proceeded to attack Yugoslavia which was denied of her rights and protection as a member country.

  It has been argued and ridiculed the fact according to the ICTY indictment Yugoslavia had attacked herself!

  Hitler took Germany out of the League of Nations and the United States was not even a member!

  The UNO can certainly make live very difficult to certain countries without resorting to war.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Thursday August 08, 2002 at 3:19 am
  As has been noted above, Jared Israel has promised a reward for anyone who is able to find a racist remark in any of Milosevic's speeches. So wanting to hear some evidence about the "historic frictions" only supposes its own answer. This is just the same kind of bias that refuses to be convinced of a Nato-led plot. And it is a sign of mock-interest to say that one would like to hear more about it. There are certainly a plenty of places where you can hear more.

  It is indeed strange that the US did not even request an authorization of the Security Council but does avail itself of the services rendered by the ICTY, which is nominally under the Security Council. It is rubbish that Russia would have blocked a Security Council Resolution. Russia had been cooperating with e.g. Great Britain and the US in the Contact Group, whose draft text were basically rubberstamped by the Security Council. But aggression is something Russia would never have allowed. And Gogol and Serjoe have been quite right in hammering on this. The US-led NATO was the aggressor. Talking of a plot is putting a too subtle spin on it. Yugoslavia was not the aggressor. Of course there was no plot. Everybody could see that on TV after a certain stage had been reached.

  The former Yugoslav republics were breaking away from the federal republic, and Yugoslavia had the right to stop it. Foreign powers had no right to recognize the break-away republics before the situation was settled. That was tantamount to a violation of the principle of non-intervention (no matter how outdated that sounds after 10 years).

  Germany was the first state to recognize Slovenia and Croatia, even though the Yugoslav Army had got the go-ahead from the EU to suppress the separatist movements just a little earlier. So correct, there was no plot, it is a fact of plain "open-source" history. And correct, the breakup of Yugoslavia may not have been "led" by the US. It was indisputably triggered by Germany, and the US jumped in once the EU found itself out of depth with the mess it had created.

  The US may have imposed sanctions in 1990, but that may not have been intended to bring about the break-up of Yugoslavia, but only to provide some "shock therapy" to the Yugoslav economy who wasn't too eager to change it "market socialist" model, even if it could have. So the US, too, may have found itself out of depth. It is certainly incorrect that the Western leaders were "probably" only reacting to situations.

  The complicity of the US in the Bosnian war later is beyond dispute. This is shown not only in the Dutch Srebrenica Report but in the Congressional Report of the Republican Party dated 16 January 1997. We have been too naive to expect that the Republicans would live up to their conservative ideals like being consistent over time. Just as soon as the President changed, it was time to silence those revelations that may have in a small way helped the Republican candidate to power. I suggest that those mock-skeptics would study report which was certainly not leftist at the time it was written (it may be now).

  Just to point out a few very fundamental points. Why do we now have to discuss the American war crimes trials? Hasn't anybody registered that is now part of the prosecution witness's statement that there were 200 (and I repeat, not two, not ten, but two hundred) war crimes convictions in Yugoslavia after the Kosovo war?

  And the second fundamental point. I can understand that Milosevic is accused of screwing up in Croatia and Bosnia. What I would like to know is: was he part of the chain of command, which he wasn't in Kosovo? It is almost humorous to compare Milosevic to Hitler and Tito. The latter two were military leaders. So go on blaming Milosevic for the wartime blunders. He is a banker, for pity's sake! Even the financial scandals sound better.

  And just to come back to the more than obvious. It has been said that the Serbs are not on trial. That is certainly nonsense, considering comments like Croats and Slovenes can hardly be told apart from the Germans, while Serbs are Slavs and tough ones at that. I don't know what comments like that are meant to achieve.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Thursday August 08, 2002 at 3:23 am
  The Congressional Report 1997 can be found i.a. at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/DCH109A.html .
  
  J N
  Finland

• Thursday August 08, 2002 at 5:09 am
  Dr Milan Tepavac has argued that Lilic should not give evidence at all. He points out that Art. 7(2) only says: "The official position of any accused person, whether as Head of State or Government or as a responsible Government official, shall not relieve such person of criminal responsibility nor mitigate punishment." It says nothing of (former) Heads of State that are called to appear as witnesses. So the old rules of immunity apply. If immunity doesn't apply to Lilic, Tepavac argues, it should not apply to the Western leaders either.

  This is a solid argument but I am afraid it will be lost on those who have watched this trial and still after more than 100 witnesses can substantiate their belief in Milosevic's guilt with nothing more than a gut feeling! Another variation is to ask for more evidence concerning Milosevic's manipulation of the "historic frictions". After 100 witness some people still want more! The point is that the witnesses haven't still told them what they want to hear. Play it again Sam, we want to hear that old Slobo story about how he manipulated the historic frictions. I think where that has been tried in this trial, it has failed. The "minor but significant" mistake made by the prosecution at the beginning of the trial was to quote extracts from Milosevic's 1987 Kosovo Polje speech out of context. More importantly, Judge May should have ruled this irrelevant. Art. 8 says: "The temporal jurisdiction of the International Tribunal shall extend to a period beginning on 1 January 1991". And anyway, the Kosovo charges have to do exclusively with the year 1999, so you don't have to give evidence of the "historic frictions". I guess some like the story, that is all. What they don't want to hear is how the West manipulated the "historic frictions" in the Balkansa, which is the conclusion the British historian Miranda Vickers concludes in her book about Kosovo! No no, that is too old, and totally irrelevant in this trial.
  
  J N
  Finland

• Thursday August 08, 2002 at 10:14 am
  This is just in: Bush administration is pushing Belgrade to sign the treaty wich will guaranteed US Soldiers and Civilians not to be rendered to ICC for the crimes commited on the teritory of Yugoslavia. In this case Kosovo IS part of Yugoslavia. USA already signed similar agreement with Israel and Romania, but unlike those which were bilateral, the one offered to Yugoslavia is UNILATERAL, backed up with imminence of economic sanction as elaborated by Mr. Prosper. NO COMMENT
  
  Miroslav Radulovic
  NYC
  USA

• Thursday August 08, 2002 at 1:36 pm
  Jari Nousainen asks "Why do we now have to discuss the American war crimes trials?"

  The question the thread asks is if Milosevic can get a fair trial. For those of us in common law traditions, we might answer this question by drawing parallels to other cases. I am aware that Roman Law traditions attempt to define legal norms without reference to other cases, but the thread doesn't limit the participants to people from the Roman Law tradition. The ICTY tribunal itself combines the Roman law and Common law tradition. In a pure Roman law tribunal, Milosevic wouldn't even be able to cross-exam. He would submit the questions to Judge May, who would decide which ones to ask.

  Our discussion related to Milosevic's attack on the validity of the tribunal. The American government supports such tribunals for the trial of other-nationals but carefully avoids the creation of international tribunals over Americans.

  While I favor the emergence of internationally-recognized norms of behavior which are enforceable in some tribunal, I am troubled by the policy of the US government. Our administration could remedy this by adopting the Statue of Rome, creating an international criminal court.

  If my comments on the characteristics of nations offended Nousainen or anyone else, I apologize for the comment and I withdraw them.

  However I think it would be appropriate not to become so legalistic that we fail to recognize long-standing historic antagonisms. In many other human rights law tribunals it has been appropriate to address some of these concerns, especially in the South African Truth Commission.

  In my reading of the evidence, the witnesses are addressing something which goes beyond mere gut feeling. If one is a witness to a war crime, one would get a gut feeling about it, bu that wouldn't invalidate eye witness testimony. Ethnic Albanians are going to have a gut feeling about Mr. Milosevic.

  Testimony of July 22, 2002. The witness is a Serbian soldier. Cross exam by Milosevic.

  Q. Did you get an order to the effect that you should drive everyone out and tell them to go to Albania?

  A. We did have such orders. I didn't receive them personally, but the army did.

  Q. I understand, but you were part of that army.

  A. Yes. I took part in that.

  Q. Did you hear the order being issued to drive people out to Albania?

  A. I did.

  Q. Who issued the order?

  A. Those NCOS of ours.

  ..............

  Q. Fine. So your NCO told them to drive them out to Albania?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Did you do that?

  A. We did.

  Q. So you expelled them and saw them off too?

  A. I was an eyewitness to an incident where a woman was told to go to Albania, and we killed her father, her grandmother, and her brother. I know that for sure.

  End of testimony. I don't see how cross-examination testimony such as this can be simply dismissed as "gut feeling". Like other soldiers, who committed other war crimes, he'll be saddled with guilt for life. His testimony is "orders came from above".

  The testimony of Markovic, the former security chief establishes Milosevic was "at the top", but Markovic also testified Milosevic gave orders that "no atrocities be carried out against ethnic Albanian civilians."

  Colonel Markovic is currently serving a sentence under Yugoslav law for destruction of the records of the Internal Security Force. He may not be completely credible. Maybe Milosevic can come up with a convincing way of convincingly verifying he attempted to enforce international humanitarian law.

  This case may be like that of General Yamashita, who produced his deputy at trial. The deputy testified Yamashita never gave orders for the atrocities which occurred in the Philippines. The tribunal determined that given the widespread nature of the human rights violations, and their repeated character, General Yamashita must be held responsible for not having stopped them.

  There I go again, in the Common Law tradition I compared another case to this one. However, if you review the materials available on the Jurist page, this is done even by modern Roman lawyers.
  
  Kurt Thornbladh
  Farmington
  Michigan USA

• Thursday August 08, 2002 at 2:46 pm
  Many thanx to J. N. who wrote, “considering comments like Croats and Slovenes can hardly be told apart from the Germans, while Serbs are Slavs and tough ones at that. I don't know what comments like that are meant to achieve.” This comment did not go unnoticed.

  “The guy in the black hat was Serbia, Slavic, connected to Russia, the chance to have a final jab at the Soviets, since the much-sought-after war never materialised while Russia was strong enough to fight back. The guy in the white hat...the hero of the plot...was he a Bosnian Muslim, a Croat or a member of the UCK?” Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

  Thanx again J.N. for your much appreciated posts.
  
  Kathryn Love
  SJC
  USA

• Thursday August 08, 2002 at 2:52 pm
  

  Q. Since you presented inaccurate information regarding the activities of your unit, I have several questions in connection with that. Do you know that in your unit during 1998 and 1999, 63 members of this unit were killed and 300 were wounded? A. I know about a small number who got killed, not a number that big, no. And the troops were getting killed for no good reason whatsoever on our side. And as for the KLA, I don't know about that. Q. I don't know what this means that "the troops were being killed for no good reason whatsoever." What does that mean? A. How do I explain this to you? For example, I know of a particular case when soldiers were driving in a military vehicle and then one soldier got killed by another soldier. His rifle went off and killed him by hitting him in the head. Q. All right. You explained that, that soldiers were being killed because of the poor organisation. A. Yes, that's it. Q. And I'm telling you that 63 were killed and 300 were wounded. Are you trying to say that these were not casualties due to combat but that it happened due to poor organisation, that they killed each other and wounded each other? A. As for this figure that you've given, it's not correct. Q. All right. There are official data to prove this. However, do you know that in the area that this unit was in, that is to say Prizren, Suva Reka, Orahovac, and Djakovica, 230 soldiers and 72 members of the police got killed in combat with the KLA and in the bombing, and 538 were wounded? A. That's not correct. Q. All right. And do you know, in connection with those lootings, and you said that you took part in them as well because you were seizing goods from shops without paying these goods. You said that you did that too; right? A. Yes. Q. Do you know that proceedings are under way before the military court in Nis against 45 members of your unit and the entire brigade? As for the entire brigade, it's over 300. And two are being tried for murder. A. I don't know about that. THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Please, there is a list here, a list of persons submitted to the Court in relation to what this witness has been speaking about. This testifies to the fact that he has not been saying the truth, and I would like to have this admitted into evidence, if you want to take it, of course.

  This is President Milosevic cross-examing a soldier twice a deserter who can hardly be compared to a commanding general and his responsabilities in the conduct of the war in the field. Yamashita was found guilty but the Emperor, the ultimate authority was not even indicted!

  I am affraid there is little in comon between the two cases: the Yugoslav chief of staff during the war General Nebojsa Pavkovic has not been indicted. Strange chain of command!
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Thursday August 08, 2002 at 6:04 pm
  There is a transitive verb in the English language which is a simple and compelling descriptive of what the US/NATO alliance achieved in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990's: "Balkanization" I would suggest that you look it up in the dictionary, and ask yourselves why it is there.
  
  Adrian Justin
  Seattle
  WA

• Friday August 09, 2002 at 3:15 am
  OK, I anticipated that: Markovic may not be completely credible. Let's start with the word "may". If you are in doubt, who do you decide for? For the defendant. Let's go on to the word "completely". How do you determine where he is credible and where not? By what you want to hear. And I won't go through the Markovic testimony again, because there are so many things that so many do not want to hear that he may be not be deemed credible at all. But there are mechanisms to remedy such perjury cases, and I doubt whether the prosecution is willing to rewind the tape by starting now a perjury case against Markovic.

  The July 22 is hardly enough to convince us of the charge that it was Milosevic who issued the orders. And even if it were, it was hardly a witness statement. And even if it were, it is based mostly on hearsay anyway.

  This is so basic that it is unbelievable one has to explain it. The point is not that Milosevic is ducking the witnesses by accusing Nato. He is tackling the witnesses in a completely professional manner, given the circumstances. Yes, you got pompous speeches from both the defense and the prosecution at the start of the trial. Milosevic has trouble in containing his anger against Nato, but there is your "gut feeling" again. It is agreed that the gut feeling doesn't necessarily damage the truth-content of the case, but that means anybody's case. It is also fallacious to dismiss Milosevic's accusations as a conspiracy theory. What else is the prosecution's case against Milosevic other than a conspiracy theory? There is no evidence against Milosevic, and because of the lack of the evidence the prosecution now argues that Milosevic destroyed the evidence in any which way. The argument is this: whatever Milosevic could have done he did. But miraculously that doesn't apply to Nato. It is agreed that Nato had all the expertise and funds to dispose of the evidence the way it reputedly did in Croatia. But no, that is just conspiracy stuff.

  The really miraculous thing in this is that Milosevic's case looks even this good. If this were a normal case in whatever "tradition", once the prosecution notices that it doesn't have enough evidence to substantiate its charges against the accused, it should prosecute the person for whose conviction it has the evidence. When this doesn't happen, you have those tirades against Nato by Milosevic again. The official won't do what they are supposed to do ex officio.

  It is inept to explain the obvious partitiality of the tribunal by its belonging to a certain legal tradition. This is certainly not in line with any legal tradition, unless you count the Stalinist era as a special legal system. This trial makes even the Reichstag fire trial under the Nazis seem good.

  And why don't we have the Nato leaders in the dock? Is it because Nato is innocent? I think Kurt gave the answer. Who could have said to Hitler: "Excuse me, excuse me, Herr Hitler, you are under arrest"?

  I think the unilateral immunity agreement between the US and Yugoslavia, which was mentioned above, really needs no comment.

  But just a comment on something else that was said: "Western leadership has little strategic interest in this part of the Balkans." This is certainly true if you don't know the history of the Balkans in the 19the century. But much more significantly, consider what happened just this week. A report was leaked from Pentagon to the press. It accused Saudi Arabia of supporting terrorism at every level. In the same connection it was suggested that the US cut its oil-dependency on Saudi Arabia and cooperate with Russia in developing the Caspian oil reserves. Now, how do you suggest that oil is to be taken to the West? By satellites?

  That fleshes out the old "it's-about-oil" consipiracies, doesn't it? Only, I just don't know why they have to be conspiracies. Producing oil is what oil companies do. On the other hand, they don't even have to be "it's-about-oil" theories. Oil is certainly a consideration, but only one of the considerations. To deal with such complex decisions, so-called decision-trees were developed. Just because oil is just one of the considerations doesn't mean it isn't there.

  By the way, the Albanians know this too. I read an article written by a Kosovar who just couldn't hide his disillusionment after realizing that the Kosovo independence movement was used for oil interests. That was when the "leftist" theories about Camp Bondsteel's connection to the oil pipeline came out a few months ago. It suddenly made sense to the writer why the Kuwaitis and the Malaysians had bought plots of land in Albania for a song.

  Now that the geopolitics are again vindicating Russia's importance, it may a very wise thing to re-evaluate the ICTY's propaganda value in Russia. And the longer the trial is going on, the tougher the sailing will get. Not only are the ICTY-bought sympathies in the Muslim world waning and proving even counterproductive, but also the awareness of the recent Balkan history is growing. And the trial's offshoots, the ICC, will hamper any efforts in the "war on terror", which may be one of the reasons for Blair's famous "enormous reservations" about the Iraqi campaign.

  Everybody is saying it these days, so why can't we? Read my lips: "We shall overcome".
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Friday August 09, 2002 at 4:37 am
  In the discussion archives we find the following passage, which should be interesting in the evaluation of the "Yamashita doctrine":

  "This trial will be seen as a joke -just like the US trial of Japanese general Yamashita has now been found to have a FRAUD (50 years after the event the US has been found to have deliberately with-held evidence of Yamashita's innocence because we now know General McArthur could not accept the defeats that he suffered against Yamashita) so it will be found that this trial is a FRAUD."

  And again to the question of whether Western leadership has interests in this part of the Balkans. As you know, memories last long in this part of the Balkans. The Bulgarians, for instance, may need some convincing that the Western leadership had no interest in the Balkansa, when it (i.e. the British) snatched away the Bulgarian victories under the Treaty of San Stefano and placed southern Bulgaria (Eastern Rumelia)under Turkish vassalship by the Treaty of Berlin, which was concluded just a few months later in 1878. If I remember correctly, Montenegro also had its victories snatched away from it under the same treaty. The Western interest was, simply put: to keep the Slavs out of the seacoasts, so the British wouldn't be threatened by the Russians later.

  But maybe Bulgaria and Montenegro are not "this part of the Balkans". Are Croatia and Albania? Albania was an Italian protectorate between the world wars (no wonder the Italian conquered better part of Kosovo in WW II). Parts of the Croatian coast belonged to Italy proper. Until the first socialist legislation half a million Germans lived in Yugoslavia, so there were more Germans than Albanians in Yugoslavia at that time! (Later they were declared outlaws. The Albanians were left because they were given the benefit of the doubt: they were exploited by the Nazis and Fascists.)

  The claim that Western leadership has no interests in this part of the Balkans is contingent on the assumption that this part of the world interests no-one. This in turn is contingent on poor education. Just a finger-nail sketch: Constantine the Great was born in Nish, Justinian was born 40 km south. Dozens of Roman emperors were born in the present-day Serbia alone, many of them in Sirmium (Sremska Mitrovica).

  And ironically, it is this heritage that both the Croatian and Kosovo nationalists (to put it kindly) are exploiting. The Croats and Slovenes consider themselves descendants of the Goths that lived there. One of the Roman emperors is even called Claudius II Gothicus, not because he was a Goth, but because he beat the Heruli in Croatia. No, he wasn't a Goth, he was in born in Dardania, or the present-day Kosovo, and you will find him in any Kosovar history book.

  About the reliability of the "leftist" theories (by which probably Jared Israel and the Emperor's New Clothes is meant), let me tell you that one prominent Finnish researcher at the Foreign Policy Institute (an ex-colonel if I remember correctly) has made extensive use of the Emperor's New Clothes in his research about the Kosovo war. Obviously not everyone considers it a virtue to have a tunnel vision. Neo-McCarthyism shall not overcome.
  
  J N
  Finland

• Friday August 09, 2002 at 6:31 am
  "Christians in my experience are blind to what is happening and do not even consider that we should think about the kind of issues I have raised in this article. If things continue in this way, we will sooner or later wake up to the fact that: 'Justice is turned back and righteousness stands afar off; for truth has fallen in the street and equity cannot enter. So truth fails and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.' (Isaiah 59.14-15)"

  http://www.tmtestimony.org.uk/library/feature.htm
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Friday August 09, 2002 at 7:00 am
  Is UN police officer Kathryn Bolkovac such a prey?
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Friday August 09, 2002 at 7:36 am
  At the end of the 19th century the “Eastern Question” for the Great Powers in Europe concerned the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire or as the Russian tsar called it “The Sick Man of Europe”. The Ottoman Empire was propped up by France and the United Kingdom because of their fear of the Russian Bear expanding into the Mediterranean and challenging their hegemony in this region. The Crimean Wars of the 1850’s were not fought because of the Br/Fr. love for the Turk but because of their fear of Russian expansion into the Middle East and India. In Britain support for Turkey started to vane after reports from the Balkans reached the British pubic of atrocities committed by Turkish soldiers during the 19th century Serb and Greek wars of independence. Many British nurses, volunteers and adventurers (the poet Lord Byron) found their way into this region to fight alongside the Serbs and the Greeks. Some of their reports turned the British public opinion against the Ottomans. This is the reason the Turks turned to the Germans prior to WWI. However Br./Fr. did not totally abandon their interest in the Dardanelles.

  Oil was the new energy source of industry and after WWI and after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire most of Middle East was placed under the control of the League of Nations as mandates. These mandates were eventually gobbled up by the British and the French in a new phase of colonization. The League was a vehicle for British/French colonization of this region.

  The Arabs were promised their independence when their help was needed to fight the Turks (Lawrence of Arabia). In the back rooms, however, the Fr./Br. diplomats Sykes and Picot had other plans. France took Syria and Lebanon and Britain took the rest of the Middle East in the post WWI colonial grab.

  In 1938 when Iraq finally received its independence the British conveniently separated oil rich Kuwait and gave it the Sabah family (the Trojan horse for the control of oil). Legitimately Kuwait was part of Iraq going back thousands of years.

  Things have not changed much other than that the Americans have replaced the British and the French as the guardians of Western interests in this region. With one of the worst human rights record, Turkey in the 20th century has been supported by America (Truman Doctrine) and again I would venture to say not because of America’s love for the Turks but because of America’s fear of the “ugly” Russian “commie” dominating the Mediterranean.

  America uses the United Nations in the same way the British and the French used the League of Nations to dominate, justify and control not only the Balkans but also the Middle East. To keep the friendly families in power America uses its policeman “Israel” and when they are unable to do the job the Marines are sent in. However, with all of this they have released a genie from the bottle in a form of Muslim Fundamentalism which has become a threat, not only for American interest in the Middle East, but also for Russia. Fundamentalism was a major factor in collapse of communism in Russia and terrorism in the West. To hit the terrorists, America could not be seen as a bully in the Arab world if they were to maintain their influence with the Oil Cartel (OPEC) and the families that control it. The sacrifice of the Serbs (who loved America and everything American) was a small price to pay for the loyalty of the Cartel. Clinton and Bush when they fire a few missiles into Baghdad or send Israel modern jets now could say “we are not enemies of Islam, look how we are helping your fellow Moslems in the Balkans”.

  So, Maybe Jari is right about what we write on this page. When the British public learned about the Turkish atrocities in the Balkans during the 19th century they put pressure on their government which led to Britain abandoning its love affair with the Turk. Our correspondence on this page may turn out as a wakeup call like the letters and speeches of the British nurses and adventurers in the 19th century Balkan campaigns. As Jari said "We shall overcome". Maybe, I am not as optimistic.
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops
  BC Canada

• Friday August 09, 2002 at 10:14 am
  America's support for the "new" Islamists parties in Turkey facing new elections is a telling story. The present Ecevit coalition which hastely passed all the European Unions demands to qualify for EU membership is hard pressed by a nationalist factions which supports the current US policy of hegemony in the Middle East and Central Asia.

  The need to keep Europe out of the region is for the US as critical as it was for England and France to keep Russia and Germany, her Baghdad railrod, her influence in Teheran, out of the region during the XIX century.

  I am convinced the Yugoslav crisis lasted over ten years, if it is finished at all, because of the rivalries between Europe and the US which tried with succes to get the EU and UNO out of the region by replacing it with NATO devastating and perhaps unrepairable effects.

  Who controls the Balkans controls the road to Asia, Europe and Africa. It was true for Alexander the Great and it is true for Exxon et al.

  The whole debate is whether Russia and her resources can be brought to the Empire, the Obelisk of Washington or to the new or resurgent European one.

  Jari is very right when rising concerns about education levels. No everybody can't be expected to have a deep knowledge of history, but I am a witness in my 24 years in the US to the very low level of general education in America's public schools where not only European history is carefully avoided but geography is not teached at all. Incidentally Finland is considered the most literate country in the World. Indeed a contrast.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Friday August 09, 2002 at 10:21 am
  The "Rape" of the Serbs

  In 1999 Cherie Blair, she who recently tried to sack the Mirror's editor for criticising Blair's government, speaking of the Serbs in Kosovo told the Sun she was "horrified about the rape camps". Her husband Prime Minister Blair wrote in the Times of the Serb "murder machine" and its "torture, murder and rape". In the Express he wrote of "women raped and men tortured", in particular he wrote of "mothers raped". In a speech to the Newspaper Society referring to the Kosvar refugees Blair said "When you have reported one mass rape, the next one's not so newsworthy, see one mass grave and you've seen the lot." According to subsequent UN official reports there was no "mass rape" and the "mass grave" he implied he had seen probably contained the bodies of Serbs murdered by the KLA. These two are highly trained lawyers, Mrs Blair occasionally sits as a Judge, so they know what constitutes truth. Blair also has information from the secret services of the Western powers so he always knows exactly what is going on. The "Belgrade Butcher" and his "Red Witch" wife have some competion I believe?

  Matt Frei of the BBC said " there can now be no doubt that Serbian security forces have been and may still be involved in the systematic rape of Kosovar women". Frei also wrote in the Sunday Telegraph " there may be scores, perhaps hundreds of rape camps inside Kosovo". Cook, Shea, Campbell, Radio and Television, the Press they were all at it: The "Rape" of the Serbs.

  Don't British people now feel disgust, shame and anger at being deceived in this way by their government and the media? Or do we all now believe that "Might is Right", that the principles of the Jihad, the evil end justifies the wicked means, prevails over the Christian values of truth and dignity that have sustained our Nation over centuries. History will note these wicked lies, and their evil purpose, of the Koran loving so called Right Honourable Member for Sedgewick and his chums.

  Source1: http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/
  kosov_killing_fields.htm
  Source2: http://www.fair.org/articles/hammond-propaganda.html
  Sources3: Google "Rape Kosovo Name of your choice"

  Police officer sacked for exposing UN links with sex trade. Read reports of this disgraceful event on the web. Read also reports of the rapes in UN clinics in Kosovo and the sex slave trafficking there and in Macedonia. Women forcibly detained for sex: beaten and raped by their 'owners', in some cases in league with UN staff. Troops, policemen and other UN staff availing themselves of these captive women - some of them under the age of 16. This is mass rape: these are the real rape camps rather than the fanciful tales told above by Blair and his chums. Another cause for shame and disgust. Or do we all say 'give me a piece of the action - one way or the other'. Is that why the Albanian mafia now controls 70% of the sex trade in Soho? My god what a state we have all sunk to!

  Source: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/decani/message/68597

  The only mass rape and rape camps in the Balkans are those now existing under Nato's overall control. No one now makes a big fuss about these real rape camps as they did about those of the machination - they keep the troops happy. The truth is Serbia has been gang raped by the Nato powers and Blair took the lead.

  Q. When will del Ponte indict the leaders of these dreadful events? A. Never. And another thing: in a court of true justice these manifestly deliberate and dishonest defamations of character, these libels, would preclude the possibility of a fair trial for Milosevic. So much for the ICTY's claims on Justice.
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Friday August 09, 2002 at 10:33 am
  Correction: http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/
  kosovo_killing_fields.htm
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Friday August 09, 2002 at 2:02 pm
  Someone once said: "You may think I am paronoid but there is plenty of reasons to be"

  I am not going to quote any sources, at least not yet, but do you know there is Law in the United States that prohibits the government and its agencies to use the US domestic press to implant misinformation what is otherwise known as propaganda?

  And do you know there is a US goverment agency which precisely was create after the illegal and criminal aggresion of NATO to Yugoslavia, to "manage foreign news" and in fact infect foreign media with US created propaganda?

  The agency which coordinates this not very noble effort, claims not to be responsible for any "misinformation" reaching the US media by quoting or referring foreign "implanted" sources.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Saturday August 10, 2002 at 12:11 pm
  

  The English had seen this opportunity, and it was the English power that was really acting, not the Church. The Church was being used as a blind, a disguise; and for a forcible reason: the Church was not only able to take the life of Joan of Arc, but ti blight her influence and the valor-breeding inspiration of her name, whereas the English power could but kill her body; that would not diminish or destroy the influence of her name; it would magnify it and make it permanent. Joan of Arc was the only power in France that the English did not despise, the only power in France that they considered formidable. It the Church could be brought to take her life, or to proclaim her an idolater, a heretic, a witch, sent from Satan, not from heaven, it was believed that the English supremacy could be at once reinstated.

  The Duke of Burgundy listened-but waited. He could not doubt that the French King or the French people would come forward presently and pay a higher price than the English. He kept Joan a close prisoner in a strong fortress, and continued to wait, week after week. He was a French Prince, and was at hearth ashamed to sell her to the English. Yet with all his waiting no offer came to him from the French side.

  Joan of Arc by Mark Twain
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Saturday August 10, 2002 at 8:33 pm
  

  The ICTY's Outreach Office today published some documents related to the Milosevic trial in the Albanian language (Shqip) on Internet. For the time being all documents are in Portable Document Format - you will need the (free) Acrobat Reader to read them. A link to Adobe's download page is included on the following webpage: http://www.un.org/icty/alb/basic-a.htm

  As an extra service to its (Kosova-) Albanian audience, Domovina Net has set its search engine to index these pdf's. To make use of the service, go to domovina.net and use the search ultility at the top of the page. The search software is configured to handle Shqip diacritics.

  Frank Tiggelaar

  
  
  Frank Tiggelaar
  Amsterdam
  Holland

• Sunday August 11, 2002 at 7:51 am
  In case of a misunderstanding about ‘Christian values of truth and dignity’

  Because the English Court of Henry Vl abused the Christian values it vowed to uphold this does not invalidate fundamental moral principles of the Christian teachings. Because corrupt churchmen condemned Joan of Arc this does not invalidate the eternal verities often described in their ancient language: In particular the need to uphold the truth.

  Because George Carey the Archbishop of Canterbury sanctioned the bombing of Serbia and thus the killing of innocents this does not invalidate the Christian teaching: “Thou shall not kill” Rather we should recognise that here we have a confused and foolish man who is not worthy of the post he fills. Because the Blairs, professed Christians of the English and Roman variety, tell massive lies about the Serbian people this does not invalidate the Christian teaching: “Thou shall not bear false witness.” Rather we should recognise that here we have a pair of arrogant and unprincipled people to whom the retention of power is supreme.

  I am not a practising Christian. If you must put a label on me make it ‘Agnostic’. Is there a God, is there infinity? We shall never know - but as Voltaire declared “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”. God and infinity are words used to describe what we do not completely know.

  But like most English people born in England before 1950 I was brought up on the moral teachings of the Christians: Tell the truth, do not covet, do not steal, do not kill and some nonsense as well. The Church of England is part of the Establishment and its moral teachings were (at least before 10% of children here now do not speak English as a first language) obliged to be taught in the Nation’s schools.

  In contrast the Blairs promote Islam as the mosques sprouting up all over the UK testify, while churches convert to Bingo halls and supermarkets: Some mosques being financed by monstrous dictators. A precept of this religion is the Holy War (Jihad) against infidels as opposed to the Christian teaching of tolerance. At least some of its religious leaders, the Imams, preach the murder of infidels (Christians). And so we see its consequences all around the World: most notably recently in New York. The associated Sharia law is alien to Christian teachings. It is harsh, cruel, and undignified: the beatings for minor crimes, the amputations for theft, the stoning to death of adulterers. Its Fatwa’s impose death sentences on writers they do not like. The zealots among the Islamic settlers in England have declared that they would impose these Sharia laws upon the English people if they could.

  I am sure there is a ‘Moral Law’ as described by Kant but in practice there are few sources of moral teaching easily available to the common man except those taught in the World’s religions. But if we want to live in a civilised world then be warned by Hobbes. Ignore the civilising principles at your peril. Without them life becomes “Nasty, Brutish and Short”. The surviving people of Serbia and the occupants of the World Trade Centre know exactly what he meant.

  In its failure to adhere to this first principle of Truth the ICTY is not only unjust, it is an outright danger to civilised mankind.
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Sunday August 11, 2002 at 5:41 pm
  The fundamental moral principles that Peter speaks of have been under attack in Western societies since the Second World War The racism and prejudice that led to gas ovens and extermination camps in German occupied Europe, internment of the Japanese in Canada and the United States led to the United Nations Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Western societies, due to paranoia rushed to be politically correct and implemented Charters of their own and Human Right Codes to protect their minorities.

  In the name of ‘freedom of expression’ and equality national traditions and Judeo-Christian values were compromised in order to give equality to Sikhism and Islam. I have no problem with this but I do have a problem when these same groups in Canada defend or excuse the totalitarian regimes in their homelands or when they use Canada for their acts of evil. I have no problem with ‘affirmative action’ laws that promote the well being of those previously disadvantaged but I do have a problem when Muslim nations like Sudan starve and kill millions of their citizens who are Christians without a word from Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush. I have no problem when Canadian courts examine culture in criminal law cases as mitigating factors in what we in Canada would view as criminal but I do have a problem when these groups bring religious practices that oppress women, teach in the houses of worship that it is OK to blow yourself up and others with you and you will be eternally rewarded for your acts of barbarity.

  I know that millions have been slaughtered in the name of this or that God, and every group that goes to war proclaims that God is on their side. The evil practiced in the name of God on all sides, be they Christians, Jews or Muslims, must stop. Groups that come to the West where for the most part differences are tolerated need to understand that the open door policy should swing both ways. They must criticize all evil in their midst and not be selective in what they criticize in their homelands. They know full well that in the totalitarian states like Sudan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and even Turkey I would be whipped for having a beer after work and I would be killed if I proposed building a church in lets say Medina or Mecca or Tehran. The practice of “honor killing”, circumcision of young girls, and kidnappings of European girls and children from mixed marriages is ignored by these communities.

  The Christian values as stated in the Ten Commandments are not necessarily practiced by Western leaders and I am sure that I have broken a few of them in my day. Nevertheless, a higher standard of behavior is expected from those who represent Western institutions. They should not use their positions to defend totalitarian regimes and break international law in order to enforce it.

  Western governments have silenced the media on the Milosevic Trial. BBC World, CNN and CBC here in Canada are not waiting for the verdict they are asking “In what country will Milosevic the “butcher of the Balkans” serve his sentence”? “And this is why the US government has a news blackout of the ICTY trial of Milosevic, the so-called landmark trial of the century. The US government/media is only awaiting the guilty verdict.” Why should this surprise us when the quislings “Gjingjic and Company.” in Belgrade would sell their soul for ten pieces of silver? The Western leaders and the Media are trying to justify their lies and next Sunday in church it will all be forgiven. For more information http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/031.shtml
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops
  BC Canada

• Monday August 12, 2002 at 3:25 am
  I wasn't really criticizing the poor level of education in America. That would certainly be choosing an easy target (in all-round terms, that is), and I am not going to exploit the mostly undeserved inferiority complex of the Americans. In North America, you can say anything in a European accent and you are instantly considered a scholar.

  The history of the Balkans is a black hole in any curriculum in any country. Finland may be in a slighly better position, because the Finns fought in some of those wars in the Russian army in the 19th century. Even in the Balkans, the history of the other Balkan nations was deliberately ignored. In Bulgaria, for instance, you could hardly even mention Yugoslavia in public, because that nation was an anathema to the communists (which now seems quite preposterous, considering that Yugoslavia is now an anathema to the Western renewers.)

  Even in the respective country itself, it was not popular (or even allowed) to speak of that country's contributions to the Western civilization, i.e. Roman Empire. For the Slavs, the history begins with Byzantium, so whatever happened before that was irrelevant. The Bulgarians, which I know better than the Serbs, would be quite surprised to hear that the Roman emperor Maximinus Thrax was born in Thracia, the present-day Bulgaria, and he was not a Roman but a Thracian (Thrax). They would also be surprised to hear that Constantine the Great considered establishing the Roman capital in Serdica (present-day Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria) because of its central location before choosing Bysantion (nowadays Istanbul).

  However, now that we are discussing (inevitably) what constitutes the West and what are the Western values and where they come from, we might be surprised that a lot of our Western values come to us from Roman Serbia. Constantine the Great was the first Roman emperor to legalize Christianity and later to embrace it on his deathbed (the way Blair now seems to go down to history as the first Western leader to embrace Islam). It was highly symbolic that Blair spoke about "fight against barbarism" while Nato was bombing Nish, the home town of Constantine.

  Constantine was at least half-Roman, but later, of course, a lot of farmer's sons from the surroundings began streaming to the Roman fortresses. Justinian's uncle, emperor Justin, for instance, was a former swineherd, who couldn't even read or write! Why is Justinian so important? He is important because without him we wouldn't have the so-called Roman law. He was the one who put together the famous Corpus Juris Civilis, the defining moment in the development of Roman law! No wonder one has the "gut feeling" that the Serbs don't feel the "West" is in any position to lecture them on justice!

  These people were not Slavs. For instance Justin tried to fight back the Slavs, but it is only obvious that even that part of the Roman Empire became a "meltingpot". The Bulgarians, for instance, declare unashamedly that they are the descendants of the Thracians, although they now speak a Slavic language. (That would make the most famous Thracians - Spartacus and Orpheus - Bulgarians!) Similarly, does anyone honestly believe that the Albanian mountainpeople are the only descendants of the Illyrians? It hasn't even been conclusively proved that the Albanian language has anything to do with the Illyrian language, the efforts of the Albanian scholars notwithstanding.

  But to come back to earth from these heroic heights, let's take a look at the Milosevic trial. We shall overcome in one way or another. It was said that it was necessary to bypass the decision-making in the Security Council because nobody would have gone to Hitler with an arrest warrant. This is where it gets interesting. Now that the US is busy negotiating immunity agreements with third countries to avoid the Americans ending up in The Hague (ICC), do you really think that those agreements are even worth the paper they are written on. It has now become part of the customary law that you can bend the rules - any rules - to get people to The Hague. And according to the Vienna Convention on Treaty Law, any international agreement that is against the so-called jus cogens is invalid. Jus cogens includes at this moment at least genocide. So the immunity agreement cannot be used at an excuse to harbour perpetrators of genocide of any nationality. Of course, the Americans do the darnedest things to make other nations comply, but that is also against the Vienna Convention. It is really no news that the agreement offered now to Yugoslavia is unilateral. A somewhat similar immunity was provided for Nato in the Rambouillet Accords, which are now valid law on the basis of UN Security Council resolution 1244 (1999).

  And what do you need to get Milosevic convicted on Kosovo? Either an explicit order to commit war crimes, which hasn't been produced, if it is not among the written depositions, or some evidence that the superiors of those who committed war crimes didn't prevent the atrocities or didn't punish them. First, Milosevic wasn't anybody's superior, because he didn't belong to the chain of command. But even if he were, the 200 war crimes convictions would exonerate him. Ah, but maybe the official sources do not recognize these convictions. After all, who would trust the Serb legal system. The question is: can the Serb legal system guarantee a fair trial? Well, I have news for you. A fair trial means that the trial can safeguard the defendant's interests, something we tend to forget in this victim's justice environment. So if the official sources cannot show that the Serb convicts were punished too harshly in the Serbian judicial system, they cannot complain of the lack of a fair trial. Neither can Markovic's testimony be rebutted by a simple perjury charge, because what is important in his testimony is the mention of the war crimes convictions in Serbia, which is easily verifiable regardless of the quality of his testimony in other respects (which few in their right minds would doubt).

  It was also mentioned that the Bosnians know the poor level of the ICTY's work and consider taking their cases to the Belgian or Dutch judicial system - probably the Belgian "universal" genocide law was meant. The Dutch judicial system showed its capabilities in throwing out Milosevic's plea for immediate release. The reasoning was interesting in its simplicity. The case law of the European Court of Human Rights in the case Naletilic was referred to. This case argued that because the fair trial was guarenteed in the Statute of the ICTY, nobody could criticize the ICTY for the lack of a fair trial in another court of law. Now what happens if the Bosnians take their cases to a Belgian or a Dutch court, because the ICTY cannot guarantee a fair trial? Will their cases be declared inadmissible?
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Monday August 12, 2002 at 11:22 am
  Bogdan, I think your very long post highly relevant. There is a need to understand what happened, and an observer in Serbia is better placed to explain that, than most. One cannot evaluate consequences unless one grasps motivating causes.

  The suggestion that observations on Milosevic's political policies are irrelevant, is only partially correct. There has been a huge tendency to consider Milosevic bad, and therefore guilty, sight unseen.. with the resulting lynch mob mentality that "hanging is too good for him". This gets things backwards.

  Personally, I think it important to understand clearly what Milosevic did wrong, so that one can determine what relevance these wrongs have to the charges he faces. The observing that (A) is not relevant to (B) may itself be a very relevant observation, because without such observations there is often an inference that (A) is somehow relevant to (B). Indeed it was this very inference which lead people to presume Milosevic guilty, before the trial even began, in a case of which the majority know virtually nothing.

  The question is not whether Milosevic was good or bad for Serbia, corrupt or saintly; it is whether he, and by extension Serbia are guilty of the charges levied against them. Strangely, few seem to grasp that a jurist could find someone innocent, while in no way supporting their policies. Arming this forum with the reasons why Milosevic's policies were wrong, or raising issues of his corruption, makes it easier for us to distance ourselves from the suggestion that we tacitly approved of his policies or behaviour, or are blind to his failings.
  
  Ian Davis
  Waterloo
  Ontario Canada

• Monday August 12, 2002 at 1:44 pm
  Religion is a two edge political weapon it unites and it divides. So far Carla del Ponte in her eagerness to convict Mr. Milosevic has not asked for the assistance of the Holy Seal although I suppose she still could, and I am not sure Judge May's (NATO) devotion to judeo-christian values will stop her bringing the Gran Inquisitor from Rome, or if you prefer from Istanbul; reassuringly nothing in that direction is noticed so far.

  My quote from Mark Twain's Joan of Arc emphasizes the misusage fo religion by the English to break the will of the French when under, and only under the leadership of Joan since the established King and his cohorts can't get themselves together to fight them. It is necessary then to demonstrate to the French people the "evil" in Joan, and only the church the highest authority, above the King can do it.

  During the weekend news reports have been saying the SPS wants Mr. Milosevic to run in the coming Serbian elections; how easily the required 10,000 signatures hev been obtained, the BBC admitting his popularity has increased during the last few months casting doubts to the official popularity reports putting him at the same level than Kostunica. It is because Mr. Milosevic is defiant, yes, but also because he is defending himself and telling the truth, making the truth be known and making NATO's lie be known.

  This truth can't have the same value for the Serbs, victims of NATO's crime than for the public living a first class peaceful life inside of the World NATO represents. In fact the NATO media does not tell the truth about the trial and NATO citizens can't find it unless they seek it and that with great trouble and effort; and of course education has everything to do with finding the truth, and the lack of it everything to do with not finding it, keeping the myth, and resorting to all kinds of twists and deformations of basic and fundamental principles to attempt making sense of what is on its face value a rather extraordinary event. How many International Criminal trials of legitimate heads of state has the World known since 1945?
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Tuesday August 13, 2002 at 12:53 am
  Bogdan’s comments remind me of "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" and blame Milosevic. He also seems to blamed socialism and communism for the economic and social failure of the Yugoslav experiment. I left Yugoslavia when I was ten years old. I missed my friends Ibro, Ivica and Perica because a ten year old does not think beyond the good things in ones childhood. Even though, these boys represented three ethnic groups, to me they were just my companions and anyone who challenged one of us challenged all of us.

  Bogdan the people of Yugoslavia allowed the dark side of their history, WWII in particular, to dominate their ten year old feelings. You and others did not see this evil emerging. As a result it was allowed to gain control over men’s minds and actions.

  As an outsider I saw this evil first hand. My wife’s family is Croatian while I am Serbian from Herzegovina. She was born in Canada and knows very little of the past history of her people and yet during one of our visits to former Yugoslavia she was subjected to an insult by an elderly woman with the same last name as mine, whose husband was thrown into a karst pit (Jama) by the Ustase.

  On several trips back to the homeland I was shocked at how the system functioned. I was used to the Canadian way of life where you work until you drop. What I saw made me wonder if any work was done in this society at all. First of all it was coffee time before you even went to work, and this was followed by one or two shots of brandy (Jedna ljuta pa druga) one sljivovica followed the next one and the day was gone.

  To do any meaningful work you had to have friends and these friends allowed most of you to jump the queue. The life was based on the principle of “It is not what you know it is who you know that mattered”. I know this is part of our social system as well, but in former Yugoslavia it was the system.

  As far as I could see no one wanted to change the way things went. I know that the Croatian community was very active in Canada and they wanted to see an independent Croatia at all costs. In 1972 several training centers were established in Canada to train Croatian mercenaries for a future campaign to destabilize Yugoslavia.

  Milosevic was not responsible for the work ethic and he was not responsible for the actions of the émigré groups. Very few spoke out against the system that seemed to be admired by the Third World nations. Djilas wrote the required reading: The New Class” in Dr. Young’s political science class at University of British Columbia. Djilas was jailed for his vision. Speak no evil prevailed. Milosevic was a high school student at that time do we blame him for the fact that the Yugoslavs did not heed Djilas’s warnings?

  Socialism did not fail Yugoslavia the Yugoslavs failed socialism. Milosevic did not fail Yugoslavia; it was the nationalists that failed Yugoslavia. Bogdan Milosevic may have played a part in the failure of the Yugoslav idea but he was not responsible for the breakup of Yugoslavia nor was he responsible for Kosovo and Bosnia. That was the agenda of others. As far as I can see he did the best that he could and in the processed he failed to save Yugoslavia. Does this than mean that he should face The Hague TRIBUNAL? Yes he should and that will give the Serbs one more Brankovic (quisling) and everything remains the same. Prosecute Milosevic, not because he failed the Yugoslav and Serbian economy, but because you feel that he is responsible for the 2000 Serbian dead in the NATO bombing and the expulsion of Albanians from Kosovo.
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops
  BC Canada

• Tuesday August 13, 2002 at 3:39 am
  A lot of the trial is indeed pure character assassination. One is still surprised to read articles or even books where the Milosevic trial is supported by statements like "he is a narcissistic, egotistical son of a bitch". Which one of the world leaders does this description not apply to? And how many of the Eastern European post-communist leaders came to power quite clean? They are not on trial.

  Some of the shortcomings of the trial were explained by the fact it is is a mixture of common law and "Roman law" (or civil law). This is not enough to explain the fundamental flaws in the tribunal, but it does shed some light on some "small but significant" problems. For instance, if the system belongs largely to the Roman law tradition, why is it that the presiding judge and the chief of the prosecution team come from the common law tradition? Yes, it is indeed revealing that Nice often says: "In cases like this..." That is a reflex for a common-law lawyer. It is easy to forget that in this case there are no cases like this.

  Be that as it may, the most problems in the trial don't have to do with the differences between common law and "Roman law". They have to do with the differences between American law and European law. I doubt if some of the evidence would wash even in England, which is a common law country par excellence. I have never heard that they have used polygraph (or lie-detector) tests in England. It may even be prohibited under the European Human Rights Convention. As far as I know, lie-detectors haven't been used in this trial, but even more dubious gadgetry has. I am referring to Mr Ball's simulations by which more that 10,000 dead Albanians were produced.

  Another thing that may be typically American is the "entrapment" policy. In America, the police can take part in an illegal transaction, like a drug deal, to produce evidence. In Europe, that would probably be called "entrapment". I am referring to Fred Abraham's testimony according to which Milosevic was sent e-mails of the latest atrocities, just to make sure he knew (the assumption being that he didn't). At this time it must have been clear to Human Rights Watch what role the reports sent to Milosevic would play in the trial, because - if I remember correctly - Fred Abrahams was involved in drafting the Kosovo indictment. That would be entrapment.

  And then there are the witness protection programs, like the one offered to "Nikola". In Europe you can't do that. The countries are too small, so if the mob or whoever wants to find you, they will. Besides, the dialects would give you away, whereas the American English is more uniform, so you haven't this kind of problem in the US. The assumption may then be that no-one even wants to find Nikola. The main thing was to offer him a better life in exchange of his testimony.

  This kind of innovations that suggest that Del Ponte isn't running the show. Please bear in mind that Human Rights Watch is an American institution and has been known to be involved in the work of the ICTY, so look no further for the American influence.

  And now that there is a lull in the trial and we have looked into the history of this region, let us not forget that the Albanian people, too, are known to produce some larger-than-life personalities. Mother Teresa, for instance, was an Albanian. She was from Skopje, but her family was originally from Prizren in southern Kosovo.

  Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkey, is believed to be an Albanian. His hometown was Thessaloniki in modern Greece. Kenan Evren, the Turkish dictator in the 1980's, was also, as far as I know, an ethnic Albanian.

  The founder of the last royal dynasty of Egypt, Mehmet Ali Pasha, since 1804, was also probably an Albanian. He was also born in the present-day Greece in the town of Kavala. The dynasty ruled until the establishment of the republic in the 1952!

  And last but not least, some Albanianian history books list even Alexander the Great as an Albanian. His father's family belonged to the Greek dynasty of Argeads, but his mother Olympia belonged to a Molossian royal family. The Molossians were not Greeks, they were "barbarians", and since the Molossians lived approximately in the present-day Albania (Epirus), the Albanians can boast, with some legitimacy, probably the greatest military ruler in the world history.

  It is also said that Karageorge, the founder of the Karageorgevic dynasty, to which the present titular king of Serbia belongs, may have belonged to a family that was originally Albanian. (At least he was another swineherd. Later in life, he was in exile in St. Petersburg in Russia.)

  The ugly side of these genealogies is that the Albanians are adamant that they are the original Illyrians, and the Slavic savages drove them up to the mountains. The Kosovo independence movement has largely been fueled by such ethos. It is impossible for them to accept the thought that these people have mingled in the course of their long history. For instance, all the Roman emperors, which are known to have been of Illyrian origin, are dearly presented by the Albanians as another justification to lay claim on most of the former Yugoslavia! It doesn't stop at re-establishing the ancient Dardania, which didn't only encompass the present-day Kosovo but probably Nish as well. But at least they may convince us that the Balkans region isn't just another basket-case.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Tuesday August 13, 2002 at 10:02 am
  The Albanians roamed the Balkans for centuries becoming shepherds and hardly settling anywhere. Their language carried orally over the centuries until the beginning of the 20the when it is given a grammar and the Arabic alphabet is abandoned. It is not until 1972 that the language is codified ending with the North South differences. Albanian is an Indo-european language but its links with Illirian are very vague since little written traces of Illirian are available, certainly not enough to draw any conclusive, meaningful results. Politically it is now very fashionable to push this line and make the Albanian origin of many historical figures a demonstration of the greatness of the Albanian race, nation, ethnicity, servitude, geographical claims, or whatever is it convenient. Benito Mussolini had also Albanian blood in his veins, which begs the question: and so what?
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Tuesday August 13, 2002 at 12:27 pm
  In Sophocles’s tragedy “Antegone” it was, I think, Creon the King of Thebes that said “No man can be truly known in heart and hope and purpose until the test of power and government make manifest his nature”. What is in the nature of world leaders like, Clinton, Blair, Bush and Milosevic to make them act above the law? Clinton the Rhodes scholar, Blair the campaigner for nuclear disarmament, Bush the cowboy and Milosevic the banker what is their character flaw? Did their mothers reject them or do they suffer from the Oedipus complex? Their background is as different as day and night and yet their actions while in government have many similarities. The common thread that ties them together is that they all manipulate the system to stay in power. Unfortunately some have more power than others and they cloak their ‘heart and hope and purpose’ in propaganda so Milosevic comes out smelling like skunk cabbage while the others come out smelling like a rose.

  Jari comments he is “not going to exploit the mostly undeserved inferiority complex of the American” and he does not wish to target our education system as this would be an easy target. It is a legitimate target Jari, even though many of our students achieve well in international testing they are the exception not the rule. When I see French high school students marching in the streets protesting against Le Penn the reincarnation of Francois Cote and his ‘Hommes du Roi’ I see some hope for the world. Most students in British Columbia are working at $6 dollars an hour jobs. Close to 50% of our students live with one parent. Some 20% our students in their grade 12 year live on their own, thus education for many of them is secondary. The situation in the United States is even worse. In Washington State two out of every fife children live bellow the poverty level while Bush wants to build more missiles. Talk about priorities. Many well to do Americans are moving from America to the UK because they don’t want to bring their children up in a society that every day is becoming more and more like a fortress.

  Jari mentioned “polygraph” and “entrapment” in connection with North American legal practices. If my understanding is correct, polygraph tests can be used to give credence to evidence but are not admissible in court. Recent spy case in America has shown that one can pass these tests by training and the use of drugs. Entrapment, on the other hand, is not admissible in court in situations where police convince someone to lets say deal in drugs when they have never dealt in drugs before. Entrapment is admissible in court when the accused has a record of drug dealing.

  I think that education in my mind is the most critical element in our society. Unfortunately, it has remained the same since Napoleon introduced public education to the citizens of France. Political leaders are afraid of education because it is education that exposes their “heart and hope and purpose”. Politicians want children to recite the national anthem and not question what political leaders do in the name of that anthem.

  The MEDIA in North America has also abrogated their responsibility to educate and in place of education they substitute titillate and entertain. CNN is more interested in some blonde “bimbo” in her thirties??? who married a 90 year old man, as she sighs in a Marilyn Monroe voice for LOVE, than in the Trial of the Century? Need I say more about Larry King Live?
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops
  BC Canada

• Tuesday August 13, 2002 at 6:05 pm
  

  DN bulletin - 14-08-2002 - 23:00 CET

  --

  The United States government has pledged a million dollars towards a monument for the 8,000 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre which is under construction in Potocari. The US called on other nations 'to contribute generously', several Dutch newspapers report on August 14.The alledged masterminds of the massacre, BSA general Ratko Mladic and the RS' political leader Radovan Karadzic, are on the ICTY's wanted list but have not been apprehended. Mladic is believed to be in Serbia and said to be protected by sections of the JNA.

  --

  Also on Aug. 14, Euronews TV reports that a former UCK commander was arrested by heavily-armed KFOR troops in Kosova on Sunday. The man, named as Rustem Mustafa, joined Kosova's new police force after the war, but was soon sacked for being a trouble-maker endangering the fragile peace. He is accused of committing war crimes in 1999, but it is unclear whether he will be handed over to the ICTY or stand trial in a local court.

  A few thousand Kosova Albanians, many of whom fought against Serbia under commander Mustafa, took to the streets to protest the arrest.

  Frank Tiggelaar
  Domovina Net

  
  
  Frank Tiggelaar
  Amsterdam
  Holland

• Tuesday August 13, 2002 at 9:35 pm
  Another obscenity: could they give the money for the care of victims of US bombs, US bombs victims in Afghanistan, or Colombia, or Yugoslavia. No so, since American largesse is so very self serving it isn't?

  Sbrenica victim's, what a pretty dance the Dutch parliament performed with resignations & all over the report. Were the Dutch and French troops witnesses to the "massacre"? No, therefor since they were supposed to be the protectors of the enclave one could conclude there was no massacre: far from the truth the protectors "failed", were "duped" by the canning Serbs, and the "evidence" found is once again like everything having to do with this Western "humanitarian" intervention rather unconvincing: 4,000 body bags containing no full bodies but body parts and if you could put it all together, what will be the total count?

  There should be a monument that is for sure to the victims of the biggest deception scam of modern times.

  Mr. Milosevic is right: unite behind Vojislav Seselj and sweap clean Yugoslavia of all her quislings!

  PS Rustem Mustafa, was declared "dangerous person" together with a few others by president Bush. That was his contribution to the Kosovo debacle. Mustafa will never visit The Hague, rest asured.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Wednesday August 14, 2002 at 3:34 am
  Now that it is agreed that one of the purposes of the war crimes trials is to teach the masses (their so-called didactic value), let us be wary that they are not used to brainwash people rather than educate them. This trial does look quite different when you know something of the real history of the Balkans. So, the historical remarks may not be beside the point.

  The Albanians like to present themselves as the original inhabitants of the Balkans. The case is flimsy. It is mainly based on some placenames like "Nish", which is said to be an Albanian word. So far so good, but then you hear that "Zeus" is an Albanian word, "Odyssey" is an Albanian word etc.

  And then there remains the unsolvable mystery why there are literally hundreds of Slavic place names even in Albania proper. As you know, Kosovo itself is a Slavic word (blackbird), but some villages in Albania are called Kosovnik, Kosovets etc. These names have been collected by the Russian linguist Selischchev, who argued that the Slavs were in the country before the Albanians.

  But if they weren't, when were the Slavs likely to bring their language to Albania? One candidate is the first Bulgarian kingdom, which reached Albania and the Adriatic Sea around 900 A.D. That is probably the reason the Bulgarians still call the Slavic-speaking villages in Albania "Bulgarian villages". Besides, the first Bulgarian kingdom was also the first real threat to Byzantium, and under the kings Simeon and Samuel, Byzantium was reduced to three pockets, one around Constantinople, one around Thessaloniki and one, a larger one, around Athens.

  The was also a second Bulgarian kingdom (1185-1396), but to come back to the Serbs, the Serbs marched to Albania, as well, under Stefan Dusan around 1350 A.D. He proclaimed himself the Emperor of the Serbs, the Greeks and the Albanians. He called himslef the Emperor of the Greeks, because the power in Byzantium was held by a usurper, John Cantacuzenus. After Dusan's death came the era of so-called despots, and this is when the first battle of Kosovo took place. It is interesting that the Sultan Murad I, who led the Turks, was a grandson of John Cantacuzenus! The Turkish sultans made it their policy to integrate to the West by marrying European princesses. For instance, the son of Murad I, Bayasid I, married the daughter of the Serbian prince Lazar, who was killed in the battle.

  Just before the fall of Constantinople, there was a second battle of Kosovo. At this time, there was an alliance between the Albanian Skenderbeg, the Hungarian Janos Hunyadi and the Rumanian Vlad III Tepes.

  To make it easy to remember, the Turks were led by Murad II, just as in the first battle of Kosovo, the Turks were led by Murad I. Murad II's mother was the daughter of the last Byzantine emperor Constantinos XI Dragases.

  Each of the allies is interesting. The Romanian Vlad was also called Dracula. Tepes means "impaler", and to show that history repeats itself, he was busy with his impaling activities among others in Srebrenica! The grandfather of Janos Hunyadi was called in the land register the "Serb". And Skenderbeg (actually George Castriota) is the Albanian national hero, and a Catholic. "Skenderbeg" means prince (beg) Alexander (Skender), and it has been suggested that this is a reference to Alexander the Great, another "Albanian" hero.

  After the defeat of the alliance, the Christian Albanians moved in the thousands to Italy. Italy was in tumult too, and the Albanians were good soldiers, so they were in demand. Skenderbeg send Demetrio Reres to southern Italy (Calabria). Demetrio became governor of Calabria, while his two sons, Giorgio and Basilio, were sent to Sicily to fight the pirates and the French. I have been led to believe that from this system evolved what we now know as the mafia. Anyway, the constant immigration of Christian Albanians changed the ethnic make-up of the whole of southern Italy. There are at least two partly Albanian popes, but I cannot remember their names.

  The family of Castriota (of Skenderbeg) itself became one of the most notable families in Italy. Skenderbeg's son, John, married a Byzantine princess, Irene Palaeologus.

  The Turkish court in Constantinople was truly cosmopolitan. Not only were there the European princesses, but nearly all of the high officials were European. The highest official was the Grand Vizir. In the years following the establishment of the Turkish capital in Constantinople (1453-1623), there were 48 Grand Vizirs, of which only five were Turks. Of these 48, 11 were Serbian or Bulgarian, 11 Albanian and 7 Greek. And there is no reason to belittle the greatness of the Turkish Empire at that time. When the Turkish territory was at its largest a little later in the middle of the 17th century, it reached the Caspian Sea in the east, the North African coast in the west, the whole of the Balkans in the north and the coast of the Red Sea in the south. The perpetual problem of the Turkish Empire, however, was that it was run mainly by non-Turks. The Albanian family of Köprülü even became a sort of dynasty within a dynasty, when the office of Grand Vizir was running in the family. They were a sort of Kennedy clan.

  The Albanians were in prominent places all along. The fight against Hunyadi in Varna was led by Sguro was an Albanian. One prominent governor of Romania was an Albanian, Vasile Lupu.

  But when the empire was falling down in the 19th, its most cruel defenders were the Albanians. The Albanians were the best soldiers in the Turkish army, but also the most cruel. When the Albanian soldiers, the arnauts were sent from Kosovo to quell a revolt in Nish (in 1840 something, if my memory serves me), they burnt down almost 300 Serb houses and thus established the tradition of torching houses. What brought the Turkish Empire really in disrepute in the West in the 19th century were the exploits of the so-called bashibozuks in Bulgaria. Many of them were Albanians.

  I think this is it in a nutshell. I didn't know Mussolini was partly Albanian. No wonder he annexed Albania in WW II. The fates of the Albanians (Arbënesh) in Italy (and later in America) are particularly interesting. A good and even a respectable link is http://members.aol.com/itaalb1/web/arb2.htm . There are others which highlight the later Albanian connections to Cosa Nostra or, in the other extreme, praise their faithfulness in cherishing the so-called Byzantine Rite in the Catholic Church.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Wednesday August 14, 2002 at 4:38 am
  America of today has a Calvinist vision of life where there is a sharp division between good and evil. If you don’t support us you are a terrorist or one who harbors terrorists, if you terrorize others that criticize us, you are a ‘freedom fighter’. Now monuments are being built to those who expelled all the Serbian population from Srebrenica. A British officer wrote in Time magazine that Muslims from Srebrenica fired on children and women as they fled the town. He further stated that these same people raided Serbian villages in the surrounding area of Srebrenica killing anyone in sight. This monument is another con job that was and is still being pulled on the American people.

  The Western press continues to twist the facts and as Yohanan Ramati, Director of the Jerusalem Institute for Western Defense states facts are “when convenient, disregarded”. Today’s reality in Croatia states John Ranz a Buchenwald survivor that “The murderers of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies in Croatia during WWII are back from US, Argentina and Canada” and MR. Tiggelaar Croatians are building statues for them today. Ranz states that “We owe the Serbs a debt of gratitude” for the price that the Serbs paid in the defense of Western values in WWII. Half of France and 80% of those in Holland collaborated with Hitler. Those values should not be used against them they should provide a fair and impartial forum for a people who defended “Brotherhood and unity”.

  We know full well that many Serbian women and children made up the bulk of the victims from this conflict. The indignity for many of them was death, and in death they were labeled by Western media as Croats or Muslims. George R. Copley Ed., Defense & Foreign Affairs stated in 1992 that “the war against the Serbs is being won by the Ustashi (Croatian Nazi Party of WWII)” ------- and the Muslim Fundamentalists “by an active, planned manipulation of international television”.

  Charles G. Boyd USAF (Ret.) states that the Serbs did not covet territory or a Greater Serbia but wanted “to hold onto what was already theirs”. To this mix Clinton introduced Holbrook, Johnson’s Vietnam policy advisor who according to syndicated columnist Charlie Reese “Round and ‘round the quagmires we go, and up pops one of the same weasels”. It was the Media that drove the American policy in Bosnia and now it is doing it again in Kosovo.

  The three worst hoaxes of this war were the breadline massacre, the marketplace bombing and Srebrenica. Read the report from the London Independent 22 August 1992. If you don’t have it Mr. Tiggelaar I will send you a copy. “Jean Daniel, Editor of the magazine 'Le Nouvel Observateur,' in the August 31, 1995 issue under the revealing title, 'No more lies about Bosnia,' made an unprecedented confession: that the Prime Minister of France at the time of the market massacre, as well as many other ministers and two French generals, had confirmed to him that Muslims were the true authors of that carnage. 'They (the Muslims) have committed this carnage on their own people?' I exclaimed in consternation. 'Yes,' confirmed the Prime Minister [Eduard Balledur] without hesitation, 'but at least they forced NATO to intervene.” “Yossef Bodansky (House Republican Task Force on Terrorism & Unconventional Warfare) in his book, "Offensive in the Balkans," writes” --------- “The UN concluded that a special group of Bosnian Muslim forces, many of whom had served with Islamic terrorist organizations, committed a series of atrocities, including 'some of the worst recent killings,' against Bosnian Muslim civilians in Sarajevo as a propaganda ploy to win world sympathy and military intervention. These attacks escalated into premeditated attacks and atrocities committed against Bosnian Serb civilians trying to flee contested areas." This was all done in the name of Alija Izetbegovic the man who stole the presidential elections from Fikret Abdic. This same man, Alija Izetbegovic wrote “in his "Islamic Declaration," "There can be no peace or coexistence between Islamic faith and non-Islamic faith political institutions....The Islamic movement must and can take place as soon as it is morally and numerically strong enough not only to destroy the non-Islamic one, but to build up a new Islamic one." The Croats and the Serbs who must live under his rule must be grateful for their salvation.

  Lets look at some of the big lies Mr. Tiggelaar. The Trnopolje pictures are an example of yellow journalism. The emaciated man behind the barbed wire according to “an expert witness to the UN War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague, German journalist Thomas Deichmann who says that the image of the emaciated Bosnian Muslim was created by camera angles and editing and insists that the image is misleading and has fooled the world. According to Deichmann, who has visited the Trnopolje camp numerous times, said that the man was actually in a refugee camp from which he was free to leave at any time. Deichmann further stated that: (1) there was no barbed wire fence surrounding the Trnopolje camp, (2) the camp was a collection center for refugees, not a prison, and (3) the refugees in the picture were not inside a barbed wire enclosure. The barbed wire surrounded the news team who were filming from inside a small enclosure next to the camp. Journalist Deichmann says: "I am shocked that over the past four and a half years, none of the journalists involved has told the full story about that barbed wire fence which made such an impact on world opinion.” Recent libel trial in England also concluded that it was “ITN’s journalists who were surrounded by barbed wire - not the men they were filming - was shown in court to be true.” The judge also concluded that the nature of what was reported “may not matter in the English libel courts, but surely to those of us seeking to understand the Bosnian war and its media coverage - indeed, to most reasonable people - this is exactly what matters most.”

  The next hoax Mr. Tiggelaar is the so called “Romeo and Juliet” love story of Bosko (Serb) and Admira (Muslim) who were killed while crossing to the Serbian side at Vrbanja Bridge. According to the Japanese reports garnered from friends and family members Bosko and Admira were killed by the Muslim side. Bosko was captured by the Muslim, tortured and forced to cross, under threats of death to the Serb held side of the river when the Muslims shot them.

  The so called sniper alley the Muslim forces shot at their own people as often as they shot at the Serbs on the other side in order to get western pres reports on Serb atrocities. “One of the most embarrassing stories that casts a far from amicable light on the work of certain Western journalists is the story by Zeljko Vukovic about a boy from Sarajevo. A certain Western television crew gave the boy a 10-mark bill to run across an intersection controlled by snipers. While running across for the eighth time, the boy was shot, clutching the corresponding number of bills." The story did not conclude who shot Zeljko and why, nor did it tell the readers that the Muslims shot at the people under their control for propaganda purposes.

  Christiane Amanpour, at that time US State Department spokesman James Rubin’s paramour or Tokyo Rose as I would like to call her, constantly lied in support of her lover. She reported that the Italian cargo plane was shot by the Serbs when in fact it was flying over Muslim territory and out of range of Serbian guns. Further she reported that journalist David Kaplan was killed by the Serbs while riding inside a vehicle in Muslim controlled territory. She never showed the Mujahedin from Saudi Arabia holding trophy heads of Serbs from the village of Jasenova, nor did she show the holly warriors roasting Serbs on a spit. The photos were taken by Japanese photo journalists and were censored by Amanpour and never shown in the West.

  The story that reminds us of the Kuwait baby incubator capper deals with babies being shot in a bus in Sniper Alley. The alleged snipers according to the media were Serbs. In facts are the babies were Serbian shot in an area under Muslim control. The press had the audacity to crop out the Orthodox priest and present the funeral as that of Muslim children. At the burial site sniping was taking place and the press reported it as coming in from the Serbian side.

  AS to your monument Mr. Tiggelaar it should be titled “The Massacre that Never Was”. Why? Because “between 5,000 to 8,000" Srebrenica Muslims left the enclave prior to the fall of the city and that the Muslim government had admitted that these men were reassigned to other units of its armed forces, and their families were not notified for reasons of "military security." “Furthermore, twenty-five journalists, including CBS's Mike Wallace, went to Srebrenica to investigate the "alleged," "thought-to-be," and "possible," mass grave "seen" by U.S. photo satellites. They returned empty-handed. However, Mr. Wallace neglected to inform the American people that there was no "mass grave," preferring instead to allow the American people to believe that there was.” I have not touched the lies about Krajina, the Rape Camps, Kosovo and on and on, but I think you get the idea Mr. T. Source: http://www.aeronautics.ru/markale7.htm
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops
  BC CANADA

• Wednesday August 14, 2002 at 5:02 am
  More on Nato's "mass rape" and "rape camps" in the Balkans

  Source: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/decani/message/68749

  Click here to view
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Wednesday August 14, 2002 at 5:34 am
  No not Nazi Germany: Nato's Kosovo!

  Source: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/decani/message/68723

  Click here to read
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Wednesday August 14, 2002 at 10:31 am
  I think there is need to clarify the origin of the Bulgars, today's Bulgarian since in fact they were not Slavs, like the Serbs or Russians, but of Central Asian, Mongolian race, close to the Turks, arriving to the Balkans in the seventh century, not like the Slavs which literally walked en masse into Europe, not in a military fashion but unarmed and settling as far as Hamburg. The Bulgars once settled south of the Danube adopted the culture and the language of the Slavs and the old Bugar Tuckish language came in disuse, they were converted to Christianity by the Serbs and and by the second part of the ninenteen century there is among the inhabitants of the Western regions of Bulgaria a great deal of confusion about who is a Serb or a Bulgarian. In fact when in 1878 the principality of Bulgaria came to be many of her inhabitans moved West to Serbia. These diferences between Bulgar and Serbs were exploited by the Ottoman in their effort to keep their empire from collapsing from internal and external pressures. The name Bulgar finds its origin in the name of the great Russian river the Volga, where it is assumed these people came from to the Balkans.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Thursday August 15, 2002 at 3:02 am
  OK, now we got to the rivalry between the Serbs and the Bulgarians. It is my understanding that the Bulgarians were not converted into Christianity by the Serbs. For instance, the so-called Church Slavonic language was first set in writing by Clement of Ohrid and Naum. (The University of Sofia is called "Kliment Ohridski".) This happened in the present-day Macedonia, the centre of the first Bulgarian kingdom, with its capital in Ohrid. The more technical term for Church Slavonic is Old Bulgarian.

  Clement and Naum were disciples of the Cyril and Methodius, the so-called Apostles of the Slavs. And now we get to the rivalry between the Bulgarians and the Greeks. The ethnic origin of these brothers must have been a bone of contention ever since they were born. It is known that their father Leo was a high Byzantine official, but the Bulgarians claim that their mother (I think Maria was her name) was a Slav. The Slavs were surrounding the city of Thessalonica, because the Bulgarian kingdom had pushed Byzantium back, so this sounds plausible.

  Anyway, Christianity came to the Bulgarians directly from Byzantium. I think Samuel was the first Christian king of Bulgaria, and his Biblical name is a sign of his faith, while it is true that he was a descendant of the khans, who belonged to the ethnic (Asiatic) elite in their own, predominantly Slavic state. (Serbia had a somewhat similar influx of Asiatic peoples in the form of the Avars.) The Bulgarians used religion to stay in good terms with Byzantium, while the Turks wanted to continue the Byzantine empire under Islam and chose to marry the daughters of European notables.

  I don't think there is much confusion who is a Serb and who is a Bulgarian, at least nowadays. Bulgarians have always been pride of their history, which was also one reason they stayed out of Yugoslavia, the state of the Southern Slavs, even if they are Southern Slavs themselves. This has indeed caused some friction between the Serbs and the Bulgarians. The confusion might in principle be greater in the southwestern part of Bulgaria, which belongs geographically and ethnographically to Macedonia, but even there the people choose gladly to be Bulgarians.

  --

  But let's come back to this day. It has caused a lot of confusion whether the Security Council had the power to establish the ICTY or not. The short answer is no. The powers of the Security Council are clearly delimited in the Charter. For instance, the Security Council has no power to determine the borders of any state. This is a commonly accepted rule, even if the Security Council has issued a number of resolutions referring to the borders of the Israeli state, which has no borders. These resolutions are interpreted in a way that would pre-empt the actual delimitation.

  However, the Security Council has no power to establish peace-keeping forces either (neither does any other organ of the UN.) This hasn't kept the Security Council from sending peace-keeping forces all around the world (when it wasn't done by the General Assembly). This practice was adamantly opposed by the Soviet Union, whose argument was based precisely on the silence of the Charter on the matter.

  Those who supported the peace-keeping forces adopted the doctrine of implied powers. Even if something is not expressly mentioned in the Charter, the peace-keeping ideal of the UN implies such forces.

  But it didn't stop there. On one occasion even the interpretation of the Charter had to be changed. The Soviet Union opposed the US-led peace-keeping forces in South Korea. So the Soviet Union stayed out of the Security Council vote, hoping to undermine the quorum, which required that all the permanent members had to give a positive vote. However, this strict interpretation was bypassed by the new interpretation that only the votes of the permanent members that were present counted. This also explains in part why even modern Russia is not a welcome partner in the so-called peace-keeping missions, which are more and more heavily led by Nato after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

  So you could argue that the establishment of the ICTY would be included in the implied powers. The shakiness of this argument is obvious. The tribunal is implied by the mission of the peace-keeping forces, which are based on implied powers themselves. So the situation was obscure from the start. The Statute was written by the Clinton administration. What really crushes this argument is the fact that Nato bypassed the Security Council altogether in starting the bombing campaign in Kosovo, so they would be precluded from delivering their opponents to the ICTY, which is under the Security Council. The only way to avoid this conclusion would be to admit that the temporal jurisdiction of the tribunal ended in 1995, as was meant. After all, it was an ad hoc tribunal. It was in this understanding Milosevic's signature on the Dayton Accord was elicited. Anyway, it doesn't seem to matter to many people if he recognized the tribunal or not, so why would these people make such a big deal of his supposedly recognizing it by signing the Dayton Accord?

  Things get really interesting if Milosevic is elected president. The Serbs could argue the constitution "implies" that the Scheveningen detention centre is then converted into a presidential palace. Besides, I don't understand the argument of the Electoral Committee. So what if a person can't be elected president twice in a row? If that is such a big deal now, is Kostunica really the legitimate president? Or maybe they know that Kostunica didn't get enough votes? It will be an interesting case of election fraud if all the votes for Milosevic in the coming elections are invalidated. Do the actually counted votes have to represent a certain percentage of the whole population? If so, the elections could go on for ever.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Friday August 16, 2002 at 2:37 am
  And how do we know Milosevic is guilty? Well, as everyone knows, the really hardened criminals never admit that they have done something wrong. For instance, they begin their letter by saying: "I am in this penitentiary for a crime I didn't commit." Milosevic says the same thing. He says he is innocent. So he must be guilty.

  Well, nowadays we are more enlightened than that. We know that the crime can also be a result of external factors, like mental incapacitation or social exploitation. First, Milosevic is conducting his own defense and he has proved very able in doing this. So he can't appeal to mental incapacitation.

  Second, any social exploitation must have been a result of the communist system, of which he was a supporter. The US did everything to turn the Yugoslav society into a vibrant capitalistic society with good relations to the rest of the world, but Milosevic turned down the offer. So he can't appeal to social exploitation.

  The conclusion: the more convincing Milosevic is in conducting his own defense, the more certain we can be that is guilty.

  Maybe the superior Western mind can also be seen in the current policy of the US to conclude immunity agreements with third states. The US has promised to keep the military aid coming to all states that conclude agreements that would keep US citizens out of the ICC. Note, this is a promise, not a threat. Now the EU has promised to conduct negotiations on future EU membership with every Eastern European applicant that doesn't conclude such agreement. This is also a promise, not a threat. However, the US sees it as a threat. Now the US accuses the EU of applying pressure to any country that would like to sign such an agreement! Such a threat would annul the US-made promise!

  The US calls most of its immunity agreements bilateral, except that offered to Yugoslavia. We know how bilaterally-minded the US is, so maybe the Yugoslavs wouldn't lose anything in this deal, even if the agreement would be unilateral. However, the beauty of these agreements is stunning. If you sign, the US promises to sent military aid to you. However, such a immunity agreement is not worth the paper it is written on when the country has to decide whether to transfer US citizens to the ICC. The agreements violate the customary law that the US itself has created by bypassing the Security Council in order to get Milosevic to The Hague. The customary law is now the following: any rule can be bent to bring war criminals to justice. Besides, the agreements seem to be against the Vienna Convention on Treaty Law, which prohibits agreements that are contrary to jus cogens (thus including treaties which would facilitate for instance genocide).

  So the immunity agreements are unilateral in a way that the US never imagined. The US promises to keep military aid coming, but their citizens would not be protected by the agreements. Of course, the US could bomb any country which would do that, but that doesn't affect the legal conclusion, it only confirms it.
  
  J N
  Finland

• Friday August 16, 2002 at 5:19 am
  Jari, are you sure that the agreement offered to Yugoslavia is unilateral? All the press reports I've seen, including B92 say that it is bilateral. Djindjic was quoted referring to 'bilateral agreement'. If the agreement is indeed unilateral Serbian president is laying.
  
  Neka Mira
  London
  UK

• Friday August 16, 2002 at 6:39 am
  You're right Jari, it is my mistake and I apologize to all for making it. The Bulgarians embraced, actually it was political expediency, Christianity from Constatinople directly after a failed German attempt to make them Catholic. I was trying to point at the non Slavic origins of the Bulgarians more than anything else.

  Worried about the United Nations being bypassed? The current campaign of psychological preparation for another aggression against Iraq, I think will make NATO's war against Yugoslavia look dim.

  The agreement is by nature unilateral, since no Yugoslav soldiers or peacekeepers are expected to be deployed in the US and in fact Yugoslavia has no problem with the ICC, in other words she is willing to hand over her "criminals" to the ICC. What the US is promoting is "obstruction of justice" something which is punishable under most legal systems including America's!
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Friday August 16, 2002 at 6:57 am
  Yep, Neka, you're right, the B92 report that I saw today said it is bilateral. An earlier posting above suggested that it was unilateral, which it is de facto anyway. But it seems the US painting itself in the corner, so that even Kostunica can now criticize the US. The US may indeed fight hard to get out, and Iraq maybe her trumpcard.

  It is just funny that after launching the ICC immunity agreements, the US is now suspending some of its aid to Egypt because of a human rights violation! It is all in the game, of course, and it is US money, but talk about human rights and war crimes coming from the US from now on? This discussion is a good way to keep reminding ourselves that ICTY was set up for a reason, no matter how hard it is now to remember what it was.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Friday August 16, 2002 at 12:06 pm
  With time between periods in our new blood sport we can reflect on other matters. Thanks for some new insight into history,Jari. British MP Mr. Kaufman recently called the present US administration the most iept he has ever seen. Condoleezza Rice after the failed coup on Hugo Chavais that just because he got the most votes does not make him ligit. Thats why her boss is in office. She is after Saddam and claims the no fly zones in Iraq have a UN mandate.Not so, they are the creation of the US and Briton. Rumsfeld, when asked to compare Iraq to Afghanistan said, wouldn't it be fablous if Iraq could become like Afghanistan with democracy and freedom. The US forces are afraid to leave Kabul and the warloards rule. The war has just begun. At least the Russians tried to build some infrastucture. Kosavo is a mess with camp Bonisteel the only safe place for NATO and yet they try to tell the world all is well and Pac's US is complete. All I can say about Bush is, He is a dunce. I am looking forward to the resumption of the trial, to watch Slobo link the Bakan wars to the right wing CIA that really makes US policy.
  
  Pertti Lindroos
  Quesnel
  BC Canada

• Friday August 16, 2002 at 1:09 pm
  There is an article by Nicholas Wood in the “Guardian” regarding the arrests of former KLA members in Kosovo. The Albanians are protesting the arrests of these men whom they view as their “heroes.” One Albanian is now accusing the International community of being somewhat like the Serbs, i.e., “imposing Serbian slavery.”

  This same article states that after the peace agreement was signed, Bernrd Kouchner who was then the acting head of the UN, blocked investigations into Albanian wrongdoing and ordered the release of prisoners. This was during the time of the free for all against the Serbian population. The strangulations of elderly Serbian women, the buring alive of a six month old baby, the brutal killing of a man who was pulled from his automobile along with his wife and friend and battered while a crowd of Albanians screamed with delight. The killing of the fourteen farmers, and the list goes on and on.

  Most of this was never covered by the media in the U.S. After the bombing the media here went on to other matters. From time to time they come up with a report to inform the public that Kosovo and Bosnia are the successes of the Clinton foreign policy. The Los Angeles Times recently had an article on the “crime wave” in Kosovo but managed to pin the responsibility on the Serbs by stating the Balkans always had this problem and Serbia was one of the countries that did. The article states that the Albanians have a dislike for peacekeepers who do not look European or American, and they have a dislike for police because the Serb police were so hard on them. (Why wouldn’t they be hard on them when they were being shot in the back.)

  If Bernard Kouchner had not been the head of the UN at the time the peace agreement had been signed, and someone who was fair to both sides, I do not know who, had been in charge at that time, would Kosovo be different today? Is the UN what it started out to be? Is this what Woodrow Wilson dreamed of? I do not think so.

  Milosevic should not have capitulated. Remembering l94l and the cry of the Serbs “better dead then slaves.”A peace agreement was signed but the Serbs in Kosovo were left in a state worse than war. No protection. The Albanians held all the cards, and the poor Serbs were the sitting ducks.

  Ivanovic the leader in the only Serb enclave left, Mitrovica, is being hunted down by the UN, on a phony charge. Once Ivanovic is gone, so goes the Serbs. Mission accomplished.
  
  Kathryn Love
  SJC
  USA

• Friday August 16, 2002 at 1:29 pm
  Kathryn, why blame the UMIK. Kouchner has taken his queue from the underlings in Belgrade. The Belgrade quislings have released most of the arrested terrorists from Kosovo from jail.
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops BC
  Canada