MILOSEVIC TRIAL DISCUSSION ARCHIVE

Is Slobodan Milosevic getting a fair trial?
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• discussion archive

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 2:16 am
  JP and GG

  I know that M is James Bond's boss, but who is W. Also JP when you say that W is the best thing that has happened to this country, which country were you referring to -- Iraq/US, or somewhere else.

  You say that W will make a better interim leader than Saddam. This is hard to judge since Saddam was never an interim leader. Did you intend to say that W would make a better permanent dictator than Saddam, or that the permanent dictator when installed by the US as Saddam was, will be better this time around than Saddam was. If so, I wonder how the US is going to ensure that this is the case, unless it remains the permanent dictator behind the scenes.
  
  Ian Davis
  Waterloo
  Ontario, Canada

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 2:55 am
  Josep Crow

  I personally think it unfair to suggest that Milosevic's decision to oppose NATO's dictates was futile.

  My understanding is that Serbian constitution makes it an act of treason to allow a hostile army to occupy Serbia, and that had he agreed to such an occupation the agreement itself being unconstitutional and thus meaningless. Perhaps those more familiar with the Serb constitution than I could comment on this key issue.

  I further think that Milosevic cannot be held accountable for deaths in a war not of his own choosing. Finally it was Serbia and not NATO who won that war.

  Prior to the war the three NATO demands were (1) an occupation of all of Serbia (2) the occupation to be a NATO/not a UN one and (3) unilateral separation of Kosovo from Serbia three years hence.

  When NATO negotiated the terms of surrender with Serbia they negotiated on Serbia's terms -- not their own. It was agreed that there would be no occupation of all of Serbia but only of Kosovo, that the occupation would be officially a UN one rather than a NATO one, and that there would be no further talk about unilateral separation of Kosovo from Serbia.

  These were precisely the same terms that Milosevic had proposed and the Serbian parliament had approved in a last ditch effort to avoid a war that no one in Serbia wanted or invited. It proved that the entire war had been futile, not on Milosevic's part but on NATO's part.

  Clearly NATO went to war for no good reason, if it was ready to abandon all its demands in favour of a peace that it could just as easily have obtained prior to the war, had it been willing to negotiate before dropping all those bombs rather than after dropping all those bombs.

  The only concession the Serbs made (that I am aware of) is that they agreed to a smaller Serb force in Kosovo to defend religious sites, and borders than had been offered them at Rambouillet, and since that part of the agreement has never been honoured anyway, it is rather pointless to include it in the equation.

  If it had been the US insisting on occupying all of Canada because of insurrection in Quebec, I would not blame my prime minister for acting as Milosevic did.

  In hindsight I would say he was right to defend Canada's interests as well as Milosevic defended Serbia's. I would be pretty impressed if Canada could win such a war against such overwhelming odds, without even having any weapons with which to fight it.

  At the end of the war it was reported that NATO had succeeded in destroying only 13 Serb tanks, while the Serbs had destroyed a state of the art stealth fighter. Any nation on earth could probably have have destroyed 13 Serb tanks.. Serbia is the only nation on earth ever to have shot down a stealth fighter. Had this been a board game (which obviously it wasn't) it would probably have been ranked as a tactical Serb victory, as well as a political victory for the Serbs.
  
  Ian Davis
  Waterloo
  Ontario, Canada

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 4:27 am
  Ian

  Hallelujah! Someone's finally pointed out that Yugoslavia WON the KosovO war against NATO, and not the other way around.

  Moreover, I believe it was a very nervous and shaky NATO that asked the Russians to negotiate the Yugoslav victory for them, rather than the Yugoslavs asking them to try to dig them out of the hole NATO had put them in.

  I meant to point this out in my last post, but it got forgotten in all the rambling there. ;-)

  You have it precisely right. Milosevic didn't lose the war, he lost the peace, always a great danger when you don't watch the CIA, MI6, BND and other intelligence agencies like a hawk.

  Castro reckons that another 10 days and NATO would have given up the ghost. Who knows if he's right, but you can't understimiate ol' Fidel, the World's foremost and most successful expert at stuffing it to Uncle Sam:

  "The CIA, proudly overthrowing Fidel Castro since 1959"

  Still, from my point of view, it's a difficult thing to argue that Milosevic should have strung it out, even just for another 10 days, with the inevitable extra fatalities that would have produced; you know, me not being inclined to mass murder, like Clinton and Blair. Who knows? If Castro was right about his "10 days", probably less lives overall would have been lost by now over KosovO.

  Makes me wonder what the hell kind of systems these are that we have come up with that put a man in a position to literally play God. That's irrespective of whether that man is Clinton, Bush, Blair or Milosevic, (or indeed Castro).
  
  Dennis Revell
  USA

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 6:22 am
  Dennis Revell makes two important points/observations. It WOULD be helpful if this website waited longer than 30 seconds before timing out. Today is the first day I'm able to read anything past June 12th. Poetic justice for defending Mr. Radovanovic? Perhaps.

  He also points out how certain individuals have helped to split the anti-war left, and I wish I could hear more people talking about this. Yes, I'll sound like a conspiracy theorist, but here's what I see. I see "leftist" individuals and organizations continuously harping on the need for human rights, etc. In effect, they build a certain legitimacy, albeit for causes considered non-crucial to the Powers-That-Be (PTB). But why is it that when it's crunch time, these individuals/organizations completely cave-in. And I mean all of them. Chomsky/Havel/Sheen/etc,etc,etc, not to mention Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Medicin sans Frontiere, etc, etc, etc. HRW, okay, we all know they're owned. But anybody else read AI's libelous report on Racak? Is anybody else suspicious of the methodology used by MSF whereby they "interviewed" Kosovo Albanian refugees after NATO bombing. Is it any coincidence that Bernard Kouchner was appointed interim leader of Kosovo after "peace" was established? We all know what has happened under his watch. So anyone else see a pattern here? Are they just stupid? Misinformed? The institutional Left dropped the ball (or threw the game). But what happened to the individuals we count on to connect the dots? ( Chomsky in particular). Why'd they fuck up so badly with Yugoslavia?

  Because Yugoslavia mattered so much to the PTB. And you don't have to completely block the truth. You just have to delay it. (Napolean) Milosevic may still be found innocent. But does it matter anymore?

  And how do they delay the truth? As per our own Church Commission (1976), it's possible to buy a journalist and academic or institution cheaper than a two-bit whores (an exageration, but not far from the truth) What are the chances that anything has changed since then.

  So is this a conspiracy or just the way this dirty, ugly world works? And if this is the truth, then why is it so hard to find?

  Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but here's how I see the history of the Yugoslavia confict and why it was so important to the PTB:

  After the cold war, the idea of a "peace dividend" had to be discarded with something. Iraq helped, but was short lived. NATO's raison d'etre needed an upgrade. The PTB aren't stupid. If you have a $350 billion a year business, you're going to make damn well sure you spend at least some portion of it making sure your "business" continues to thrive. Perpetual war? It's good business. Lots of other reasons to divide up Yugoslavia, least of which is because...they can.

  Imagine, if you, will you're working at the NSA/CIA/Pentagon. Your job is to divide and conquer the world for the PTB including confiscation of natural resources. You must practice and discharge your weapons and soldiers from time to time. You need NATO to remain intact, or better yet, should expand. Are we all in agreement? Great. Let's begin.

  But to do this, you need a villain. They might as well have drawn lots - Serbia was chosen. Couldn't have been Croatia - Germany has historica ties and wanted a warm water port. Slovenia was too rich. Certainly the Vatican must have been pleased with the choice of Serbia. The correct number of reasons lined up like the planets in our solar system and, voila, a Plan. Serbs are ruthless, warmongering, sex-crazed nationalists who want to expand their domain over the Balkans (greater Serbia), blah, blah, blah. Behold, the Big Lie is born. I'm sure they considered the fact that no country had a stake in defending Yugoslavia except Russian. Jeez, they're having a tough time of it. Maybe we can buy them off.

  Maybe with Iraq/Iran/Syria/Korea they're bitten off more than they can chew. Or perhaps that's part of the plan - the Great Clash of Civilizations. If so, we're in for one hell of a mess.

  Whatever this next Plan, the PTB are counting on us all falling into line. For me, Walter, you've identified the head of the snake. There is no such thing as real journalism in this age - at least no truthful media that we can readily find and read without having to scrounge around the internet. I propose that our supposed anti-establishment, anti-war Left can't be trusted. And by occupying both sides of the field, should we be surprised that PTB are winning the game? That's what Walter Lippman thought was needed. Leo Strauss refined it. The CIA perfected it. And Walter Cronkite (and others) have admitted this is "the way it is".

  Would you like to see how bad it's gotten? Take a gander at this:

  http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a441.htm

  So I would propose that, until this problem is dealt with - or, rather, perhaps until the collapse of the US economy and dollar-hegemony (which, in my, mind is what Iraq II is all about - USA vs Europe/Russian/China/etc), no amount of resistance or protest will stand in the way of the PTB.

  The breakup of Yugoslavia was played out like a Greek tragedy. A noble people with one tragic fault - pride - that does them in. Perhaps Milosevic didn't get his copy of "the Plan" before it was carried out. But should he have seen the writing on the wall? Could he have caved into the PTB, denied them their act III, and spared his people from their present misery? Should he have? I have no idea. But if this lack of awareness and foresight on his part in leading his sheep to slaughter is what pisses off Mr. Radovanovic, I can't for a moment blame him for his feelings. Mr. Radovanovic is the one living there. And it's morally wrong for us here in the West to offer up our undying devotion to "resistance" before going to Serbia and living with what they're stuck with now.

  I'm arguing that until real journalism and real history are allowed into our collective consciousness, traditional resistance, while not futile, will continue to fail. We need new ideas and approaches. Sure, there's reason to hope. We should all thank GWB for the ineptness of his administration. I suspect the PTB (and I don't mean GWB, Cheney, Rice) are getting tired of these pathetic neocons - hell, they can't even pull off a decent coup against Chavez. Iraqgate may very well prove to be as much a watershed event as was Watergate. I hope and pray that is becomes so. But we need more than a superficial house-cleaning (ie. Church Commision). Because until we reach a critical mass of people open to the idea of examining the system by which these lies get told and believed, until we successfully expose and defeat the propaganda mechanisms, we're in for more of the same. And God help the next Iraq/Yugoslavia/Panama, etc etc etc etc etc...
  
  josef crow
  New York
  NY

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 6:26 am
  Dennis, you've made many more than just two important observations. Regretfully, my first sentence above seems to limit you to just two. My apologies.
  
  josef crow
  New York
  NY

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 8:03 am
  Er, yea, thanks, josef.

  You're no slouch yourself; good comprehensive analysis you did, including getting in the name of that fascist Leo Straus. I've been meaning to check out another one called Ayn Rand. Some barking nutter called Dr. Yaron Brook heads up the Ayn Rand Institute. I've seen him a couple of times on TV. Boy, he's frightening.

  On the other hand, if you go citing the tbr web-site, you're likely to lay yourself open to unpleasant accusations of having fascist tendencies yourself. It appears to have more than a slightly unhealthy admiration for the good ol' days of Hitler and the NAZIs. (This is one example of many from that site).

  Assuming this was unintentional on your part, when you see something on a dubious site, that nevertheless may well still be true, then in order to avoid being "shot" as the messenger, and so the message lost, I suggest you do something like THIS. Then, yer takes yer pick.
  
  Dennis Revell
  USA

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 8:06 am
  Mr Peric What is there to answer about what the law in the United States is? Answer could be so what? Unless somebody now is going to tell me united states is fair democracy that the whole world must copy.

  Let us take the argument further. Now let us see about today the media in Serbia.

  We have Danas which got money from European Union and so on. We got B92 which got money from Soros and others. What about BETA news agency? We got Studio B TV station still funded by Belgrade city council. Four so called opposition media, traitors, stooges they can not wait for DOS to get in power so they parrot government propoganda can they?

  Sorry to abuse simple minds like Mr Revel but no. Of those 4 media on Vera's opposition newspaper list all of them are trying hard to resist Beba Popovic and his propoganda for DOS authorities. How does that work in the black and white world? Why is it that lackey media is not listening to the message of the West? Why is it that government mouthpieces BK, Pink, and Politika and their journalists sold their old masters and now obey the new DOS king?

  Am I to complain that Danas, B92 and so on exist today so all I watch is DOS propoganda on BK TV, so that I can not watch the trial? (oh hypocricy of people who watch B92 news and trial and complain about it right to exist). No, despite bad intentions of outside manipulators such as Soros they helped media in Serbia. Society would be much worse without media funded from outside. Pro Jovanovic propoganda would be non stop.

  Mr Trkla, they do use different ways to put the government message across. It is very different in Yugoslavia today. The traditional model of government pressure is used where in the United States business and government help each other to miseducate or misinform public. We too have our own 'businessmen' who put pressure on the media. Many of these types are only in the position today because they carefully obeyed the previous government. Fox news is a disaster that almost manages to make RTS during the war in Croatia look professional. During the war they showed picture of US soldiers flying the flag and the reporter telling them 'keep the flag flying'. What an idiot.

  But we cannot agree. It was not pride that saved you, it was food and the care and kindness of your parents. Pride can not keep a starving child alive.

  Ian Davis Yugoslavia was not special case. Any country has real problems letting in hostile foreign troops to occupy it. But saying that Serbia won the war must be great subject for theoretical thesis but means nothing to Serbs living here. Why if we won the war against NATO does nobody believe we won the war against NATO? Why are we going to lose Kosovo if we won the war against NATO? Why did we have to surrender if we won? Maybe you should tell families of victims of your Wests collateral damage that they won at least in theory and see what they say to you. Exciting talking about planes shot and tanks destroyed isnt it? Like it is a game but it was not some game for us and we had many victims. We were the losers, again like in all the other wars. Thats something Bosnians, Croats and others can never accept but we only have to look around to see how many refugees live with us to know we lost.
  
  s radovanovic
  s

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 8:19 am
  Hmmm. Josef, read the E-Mail at the end of this link.

  Looks like tbr was the original source, unfortuneately. Still, could be true. More of the conspiracy theorist coming out, if I was some media high-up, or CIA plant, and I thought this was going to get out anyway, I couldn't do much better than to make sure some nutty holocaust denial pro-NAZI web-site got it first, could I?
  
  Dennis Revell
  USA

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 10:43 am
  S. Radovanovic.. perception is reality. How you view yourselves is far more important to your future as a people than all the powers arrayed against you.

  Living in England, in the 1970's we perceived ourselves as loosers too. England was going down hill, anyone with any sense was getting out, and the topic of conversation routinely returned to the sad state of the nation, having been transformed from a super power to a nation of whiners. It was misery being there.

  I moved to Canada and discovered a nation that believed in itself, worshipped its values, culture and heritage, and was confident all evidence to the contrary that the 20th century belonged to it.

  If you don't believe in yourselves you will have every reason not to. It is a self fulfilling prophesy. If you do believe in yourselves, you will have every reason to believe that belief well founded, because people who believe in themselves are successful as a people.

  The choice is yours collectively to make. It aught to be a no-brainer.

  Yours was never one of the basket case nations.. that medal right now would go to Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq -- not Serbia.

  To what extend did lack of confidence in yourselves result in you as a nation projecting such a poor public relations image to the rest of the world, leaving the world little choice but to believe the lies told about Yugoslavia and Serbs by the internal and external enemies of your state.

  I sincerely hope that if Quebec drags Canada into a civil war that we as a nation would be somewhat better at presenting our case to the international community than Quebec was. But if we were not, given the strength of our intrinsic case, whose fault would that be.

  Don't make the mistake of looking at winning and loosing in dollars and cents. A nation will spend more than its total wealth to avoid loosing a war. Britain traded an entire empire for victory in two world wars. After WWII Britain "enjoyed" rationing well into the 1950's. Britain did not get the aid from the US that Germany and Japan got to rebuilt their nations, even though Britain was equally destroyed. But at least we occupied the moral high ground. We didn't start either WWI or WWII, and knew we had won both. Well, I am convinced that Serbia did not start the civil war in the Balkans, did a pretty good job of preserving peace in Serbia during that civil war in the Balkans, and as I have said, won a conflict not of its own making with Nato over Kosovo. Given all this, why are you not proud to be a Serb?
  
  Ian Davis
  Waterloo
  Ontario, Canada

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 10:56 am
  To anyone who thinks that because of the resistance to the Empire Serbs suffered more than they would if they caved in, I suggest to take closer look at the ex-YU republic of Macedonia.. Rade Plecas Amsterdam The Netherlands
  
  Rade Plecas
  Amsterdam
  The Netherlands

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 11:33 am
  Well, I lost it! There was an article in the News last week that I wanted to comment on. Seems Dubya was all in a dither because some other country wants "Americans" to also be subject to an International Court.

  So Dubya responds that no American Troops can be brought before any International Tribunal. (END of discussion)

  Of course he is just using "American Troops" to keep HIMSELF and PREVIOUS American Presidents out of trouble.

  Most here have followed Milosevic's "trial". Insert Clinton, Bush I and II in the dock and you can easily see that the Prosecution would have a heyday.

  You wouldn't need numbered or otherwise secret, witnesses. The whole world would convict them with the very obvious crimes they have committed before our eyes. He knows that, so he hides behind a "need to protect American Troops".

  Trouble is, the masses are so busy with their everyday lives that they just don't have time to look at the whole picture. A "Trial" would put it all in perspective. Dubya, Clinton, etal can not have that and they are very well aware of the fact.

  Just saying that American Troops are exempt from prosecution in such a court should have been a dead giveaway and should have been ample proof that this country has no intention of following any Democratic process. (How did Americans obtain this special privilege?)

  Americans had better wake up. Some of the other articles disussing the above "News release" by Dubya, were discussing the reactions of other countries Citizens to this "Proclamation". Even the majority of British subjects were against it. The only "majority for", were Americans............ How very sad.

  Heaven help us, because if we allow this trend to continue, many of us will be in the shoes of those being held in Cuba. Think it can't/won't happen?

  Watch!
  
  Rebecka Justice
  Portland
  OR

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 12:01 pm
  ID

  W is a enduring 'acronym' for George W Bush, and dumping Gore and the 90's cabal of Democrats, saved the USA. We would not have survived another 4 yrs of the Democratic Party's march to fulfill Orwells "1984"'s world. Likewise, Iraq will benefit when, like W.W.II Germany and Japan, a peoples choice government is put in place. It may take more than a few years considering a mired middle east culture. IMO, when 'cruel and unusual punishment' sentences are abolished, 'freedom from religion' is a fact, and 'a hate less education system ' is established, then we may consider it a success.

  Serbia is the opposite. Milosevic was a better leader of Yugoslavia than the EU is. Milosevic won the war as you say. Serbia has its' sovereignty and title to Kosovo, and that's what it was all about. All the quislings in Serbia now may sell out but it will all be 'post' Milosevic. At the Hague Milosevic is winning, he does Serbia proud.
  
  J, P
  USA,Wis

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 12:14 pm
  J.P. As a loyal fan of George Bush, you will no doubt appreciate the Bush/Cheney campaign web site.

  Check it out.. you will be one of the first visitors, but hopefully not the last.

  http://www.gwbush.com/
  
  Ian Davis
  Waterloo
  Ontario, Canada

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 12:25 pm
  RJ

  Not only is W's US against the ICC but so are the 30 countries with which we co-signed an aggreement. American troops get justice in US courts, the same way as Serbian troops get justice in Serbia. Concepts that W and Milosevic share. If you were charged, where would you like to be tried? In the Hague by a judge from 'whipping' Singapore?

  Would you put
  
  J, P
  USA,Wis

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 12:49 pm
  S Radovanovic, I really have a hard time following your arguments. You extol the media of Yugoslavia during Tito's time, while admitting that there were on negatives printed about Tito?

  Are you saying that the whole country was solidly behind him? Did you not see the demonstrations against Milosevic? Did you ASSUME this meant the whole country was AGAINST him?

  It never occured to you that the demonstrations against Milosevic PROVED that there was more freedom of expression under Milosevic? Even Bush is trying to silence his critics.

  I am really at a loss as to why anyone would contend that Milosevic stole ANY election. The elections were monitored by independent sources and pronounced fair. Perhaps you can prove otherwise???

  The guiding answer has more than come out in this supposed 'trial'. Please show me ONE instance where Milosevic has proven to be guilty of ANY of the claims. Even remotely!

  Then take a look at the Western 'leaders'. Line THEM up agaist the charges leveled against Milosevic. Each and every one.

  Most of the world will never forget the bragging of Clinton that the Serbian Airforce had been completely destroyed. Then that 'destroyed' Airforce FLEW out of Kosovo in front of the whole world. (I was cheering my head off) But I knew Milosevic would pay for having out-thought the 'brilliant' minds of the West.

  Milosevic did his very best, and held out longer than Saddam did, either time. An awful lot of people in Serbia (All Nationalities)had to be behind him for him to hold out that long.

  May I suggest you read the speech he gave at Kosovo Field and the "interpretation" presented by Clinton? You seem to have eaten up the Western propaganda whole hog.

  Try as I might, I can find nothing in any of your posts that prove any of your contentions about Milosevic. In fact, you come off seeming to be a parrot of the Western Propaganda. They too provide no proof.

  There was some discussion above regarding Racak. Once again, the French Paper, "La Monde" had sent Journalists to cover the 'action', complete with cameras. All that day the Photographer followed the Serbs around, film rolling.

  When the French and Serbs LEFT, there were a few dead KLA members. NO civilians. That the KLA immediately returned is NOT questioned. They were there when William walker showed up the following day.

  Where the La Monde Photographer had shot 'individual' bodies, there was now a pile. A running gunfight had turned into a massacre? Women and children had fled the village before the Serbs, and more importantly, the cameras, had arrived.

  How did a woman and child get into this 'pile' of 'victims'? It would help to go back to Sarajevo. Twice, mortar rounds hit a Marketplace in Sarajevo. BOTH times, independent experts PROVED the rounds came from BEHIND MUSLIM LINES. In other words, the Muslims Military fired on their own people and blamed it on the Serbs. Hard to believe? Read up on the opinions being bandied at the time. The Muslims were losing the Propaganda war. Serbs had to come off looking a bit more bloodthirsty.

  Of course, with our outstanding Media in the West, the FACT that the missiles were fired at their own people by the Muslims got little coverage. None in the mainstream media.

  Now you can continue to believe everything you are told by the Western Media, as long as it agrees with what you WANT to believe about Milosevic.

  As for me, I will consider the source when reading your posts. Looks like Muslim or Croatian to me. The last best chance of the people of Yugoslavia was Milosevic. Think not? Ask Rumanians how well they are doing under the NATO Umbrella with it's demands that they take out loans from the IMF at exorbitant interest rates.

  Milosevic tried, and had the population on his side far longer than any other world leader against such an array of power.

  Still want to say he stole elections? That standoff proves he never had to. The people of Serbia VOTED with their lives and Milosevic won, for 78 days.
  
  Rebecka Justice
  Portland
  OR

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 1:08 pm
  JP, When did we start allowing Serbia to try their own ALLEDGED War Criminals?

  I don't think I would care to be one of those KIDS being held at Guantanamo Bay. When was the last time they were heard from again?????

  If you think Bush gives a hang at all about American Troops being tried in an International court, I have a piece of Real Estate I would like to sell you.

  Explain to me why an International Court can try Milosevic (Throwing all safe guards known to Western courts, out the window) but Clinton, Bush, etal are immune? Despite the fact they could easily be found guilty with each and every safe guard in place?

  Explain to me how Bush can bomb a country by saying he HAS proof of WMDs, then turn around and say they have to FIND that proof? If you have something, why do you need to find it?

  Explain what gives an American President the RIGHT to hold Foreign Nationals in Guantanamo Bay, incommunicado, for well over a year? Some of them teenagers.

  When we give our President these powers, how do we know the same tactics won't be used against us in the future? We have already proven that he needs NO proof to use them......

  Guess we should just hope we don't have something he or his successor(s) want(s) further down the line. Like... Our Freedom.
  
  Rebecka Justice
  Portland
  OR

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 2:17 pm
  Ian, Loved your link. :)

  JP, You know, Supposedly there were '30 countries' behind our bombing of Iraq. Now you are saying there are '30 countries' voting with the US on the International Court? Something is really bothering me about that statement.

  In ALL of the statements Bush has made about the subject, the Military members of the US are the ONLY ones he has mentioned. ??? In other words, all members of Foreign Military units are fair game. By default this would include the Military members of those ...um.. 30 Nations. They don't care about their own Military members being tried in an International Court?

  Little background here. Sadly, I was a lifelong Republican until I finally listened to what the current official was saying. The exact same things I despised about the Democratic candidates.

  It is, "Oh so easy", to point fingers at Clinton. Quite another thing to admit that Bush is no better and ditto for EVERY American President all the way back to George Washington. Trouble is, the American people have just never paid attention or... figured what was being done to others would never be done to them.

  Of course I am well aware that nothing will change, no matter who is in Office. Until the US finally loses power. That is going to happen, much as most Americans believe otherwise. Bet the English would not have believed up until the '40s that their country would fall from being the world power either.

  Happens to the best of them and will happen to the US also. Looking around at the various wholesale destruction created by this country in the last decade and a half should prove that the rest of the world is going to HAVE to stop the US before long or go belly up themselves.

  I would really like a list of these (30?) countries that are so solidly behind us. The more I read in the News, the more it looks like we have turned most of our former friends against us. Not to mention the animosity we are gathering among our enemies. Future of America looks bleaker and bleaker. Course you have to pull your head out of the sand to see it.
  
  Rebecka Justice
  Portland
  OR

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 3:06 pm
  Dennis Revell

  Slobodan Milosevic is a hateful, crooked liar who's been put on trial for his despicable lies and actions. No matter how hard he desperately tries to defend himself against charges brought against him, WE know he's guilty and justice will be served.

  If you live in the Matrix, you probably take this statement to be self evident. You've seen the horrible images. Terrible, terrible, terrible. How could anyone even suggest that Milosevic is anything but guilty of the worst crimes imaginable? Shame on anyone who thinks otherwise.

  Now go back and replace the name Milosevic with Barnes. How does it sound now? Rings true, eh? Why is that? Perhaps you haven't spent as much time reading about the Holocaust as you have Yugoslavia? But, goddamnit, that Barnes is guilty of denying those things we know to be true. Shame on him.

  Now truth be told, I haven't read Barness work. Yes, there ARE hateful people out there. There are true anti-semites as well. Perhaps Barnes is one of them. I would like to know more about the so-called Holocaust revisionist movement, but there's only so much time in each day.

  My point is this. Why are we (the collective consciousness) so afraid get down and dirty and talk real history? Why should some subjects be taboo to the point that anything remotely approaching a denial of the "offical" truth is heresy and must be condemned? I would suggest to you that talking about Milosevic and the plight of the Serbs to most anyone caught in the Matrix yields (so far in my experience) a similar reaction as the one you've just presented me concerning Barnes. The writer of that email didn't have to discuss the Holocaust because we all know the "truth" about it already. Anyone who would challenge the "offical" version can't be trusted. The fact that the TBR site includes several unflattering articles about Israel confirms it. You get the drift.

  We live in weird times. There are certain things you just can not say. (One of them, by the way, is that Milosevic is NOT guilty of war crimes - you can NOT say this at this time in public). I've met people from many different backgrounds in my life, but I can't talk about some of my experiences. Yes, I can talk about the French being cold. And the ugly American is, well, ugly. Perhaps I can get away with saying the Irish and Scots I've met are more honest than the English. But let's get down and dirty for a moment. I can tell you that it's hard for me to tolerate reggae-Jamaican culture. Does that make me Racist? I don't know, but that's been my experience. I typically do NOT have the same problem with blacks from Africa. So am I prejudiced or am I discriminating? (There's a difference).

  This oughta seal my fate here. But what the hell. I work in a Jewish hospital. I know a lot about Jewish culture. When the boss asks us to work extra hours and is willing to pay us double our hourly rate because the situation is so desperate, only three people volunteer - all of them where Yarmulkes. Okay, we all know the cliche about Jews. Shame on me for suggesting there may be some truth to an overall greater interest and experience in finance by members of the Jewish faith. I can just feel the skin crawling on people's skin reading this. You can't talk about this. But am I prejudiced or am I discriminating.

  Of course, a disclaimer is probably called for, though probably not needed. Yes, I some of my closest friends are Jews. I've met the sweetest, most respectful Jews where I work. There's good and bad in every culture. But do you, Dennis Revell, have much experience with Orthodox or Hassidi Jews? I wonder. Do you have any idea how they came up with the number 6 million? Are you aware of the similarities between Nazi's and Zionists? They got along famously, in case you didn't know. Do you know the story of Rudolf Kastner and 800,000 Hungarian Jews? You should.

  Perhaps there really were 6 million Jews who were killed. Certainly a terrible number of people were exterminated. Or perhaps this number was plucked out of a hat. They said 500,000 Kosovo Albanian males had disappeared and were feared dead. Did you believe it? I did. Took 4 years of reading to learn the truth.

  This isn't the forum to be talking about the Holocaust, and I apologize for veering off topic. But it reinforces what I said earlier. We live in dangerous times where true journalism and historical analysis are painfully lacking. Is Barnes completely off base? Perhaps. But if you have any insight into history of Zionist intentions, their patterns of behavior and propaganda, you might be as suspicious as I am of dismissing a so-called revisionist without fully investigating.

  As for TBR, I'm as skeptical as the next guy. Probably much more so. I accept the possibility that this is disinformation. Hell, you could say the same about Rense. But go back and read all the articles on this guys site before you fall into the trap of dismissing everything there because he's a so-called antisemite. From my reading, he's not antisemitic. He's an anti-Zionist. There's a difference.

  Amazingly, I haven't heard you, Denis Revell, comment on the content of those memos, which, by the way, is a typical PR method of spin control. You want conspiracy theories....?

  So what about the content of those memos? Can you imagine similar memos back in 1999 concerning Milosevic? I can. Absolutely. Today it's a different cast of characters. Iraq, Iran, Hamas.....

  From a June 13 memo: "The Administration has gotten burnt by attacking Sharon. It won’t happen again. Human interest stories about Israeli families mourning their dead is always a good thing. The Hamas people are slated for utter destruction by a possible joint US/IDF action in the near future so point out repeatedly how they are sabotaging the sincere efforts of both the President and Sharon to achieve a real and lasting peace…"

  From today's (June 15) news: "A leading Republican lawmaker (Lugar) said on Sunday U.S. forces may have to help "root out terrorism" in the Middle East conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, including taking aim at Hamas ."

  http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=564&ncid=564&e=2&u=/nm/20030615/ts_nm/mideast_usa_forces_dc_2

  Scary stuff. To my reading, those memos are amazingly explicit and accurate. They pass the smell test and Occams Razor. In the case of Yugoslavia, the media slant couldn't have been any more biased. Could they have done this without a coordinated effort? I doubt it. The American people have to be prepared for what the PTB carry out. And, I still contend, as long as they're able to control our hearts and minds, it's going to be difficult at best to get justice for poor saps like Milosevic and the Serbian people.
  
  josef crow
  New York
  NY

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 4:56 pm
  G. Radovanovicu,

  If the Serbian media (B92, Danas, Studio B, Beta) were truly resisting Vladimir Beba Popovic (the DOS Goebbels) they would have gotten banned just like Nacional (the Belgrade one) or DAN (from Podgorica). It is one thing to challenge every so often the official line and another thing to be completely independent and directly oppose the official lies.

  In essence it is true to say that Milosevic's regime, no matter what we all thought of it, had a much wider spectrum of opinions. You had BKTV, TV Pink, Borba, Politika for the regime and Blic, Danas, B92, NIN, Glas Javnosti against it. Some were slightly more nationalistic than others, some were openly for Soros (catharsis and all that crap pardon my language). Unfortunately, that is no longer the case. Not only do all media (save for same brave or stupid journalists such as Milovan Brkic who challenged every regime from 1980's) support the regime (actively or passively) but most of the themes that they write their editorials are all the same. None of them challenge the government in any way, they just deal with issues from the DOS platform (if such a thing even exists?).

  No, I disagree that Soros did any good for the media in Serbia. He simply funded media outlets which published his version of the 'truth', thus you have one 'truth' and another symetrically-opposed 'truth'. Besides, I have had quite negative experiences with the censorship/moderators on B92's internet forum. Not so long ago they even had a little paragraph in their guidelines which stated that 'opinions differing from the acceptable norm shall be deleted'. Naturally, their 'acceptable norm' is the opinion of 5% of Serbia's public opinion. Other than that, the B92 internet site also provides space for comments concerning current news stories. By rule of thumb, they only post those messages which support the government. I think that says lots about them, if you can't allow difference of opinion on an internet site then you are a nuisance to society if you have the same people as newseditors on a TV/radio channel.
  
  Igor Jaramaz
  Canada

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 5:46 pm
  In other words, all members of Foreign Military units are fair game

  Not as I understand it, not all. We are signing agreements with countries that they will not take us to the ICC and we will not take them to the ICC. Discipline of the Military units will be handled between the signing countries evolved, not Brussels who have no standing.

  Brussels to insert itself as the world supreme court is as ludicrous as Iran's' sacking of the American embassy.
  
  J, P
  USA,Wis

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 6:26 pm
  
  Dear Godfred

  Sorry for my delayed response but I could not reply earlier as I have been away from home.

  No I do not have any up to date source for my statements. Yes I was quoting from a copy of Schedule A which may be viewed here:

  A source for: Schedule A

  You are correct in pointing out two errors in my statements. However neither of these errors detracts from my contention that all of those listed - given the missing ages - could have been combatants. Of the 45 names 43 are male.

  When I scanned down the list I did miss the age 13. However note that this is listed as an approximate age so the age might easily have been 14 or more. My father served in the Royal Navy around the time of WW1 at the age of 14. More amazingly a thirteen year old trained as an RAF pilot during WW2 and flew a bombing mission over Germany before his real age was discovered. In Nelson’s navy ‘powder monkeys’ half this age carried gunpowder to the gun crews.

  Regarding the one female without an ‘age’. You mean a “young girl” like the one who duped a Canadian journalist into reporting that her younger sister had been raped and murdered by Serbian security forces? On following up her story the journalist discovered that the younger sister was still alive. The “young girl” then admitted that she was serving with the KLA. Regarding the only other female, approximate age 30, why does she not have any father, brothers, uncles, listed among the dead: did they all run off and leave her?

  Racak is presented to us as the massacre of a Kosovar village. How is it then that the ages of these Racak villagers are not known? More than half of the ‘victims’ do not have even an approximate age! This is inconceivable.

  I find this whole business of incomplete records and changing figures from ‘official’ sources tiresome.

  I believe there was some comment in the past from an ICTY prosecution spokesperson that they were not interested in the full details: there were bodies of Albanians and that was enough for them. In other words they do not know how many were killed, when they were killed, why they were killed, how they were killed, where they were killed or who killed them. This would not be tolerated in any other court.

  Concerning the totals of those killed. We do have claims of some four and a half thousand missing persons, possibly inflated. We also have a number of bodies recovered in Kosovo amounting to something over four thousand, the vast majority of which have not been identified. Before this latest information from Baraybar his previous statements revealed a discrepancy of some 300 still missing bodies - being those claimed missing minus those bodies found but to not identified - with two or three hundred grave sites still to be examined in Kosovo. At that time, see sources in earlier posts, the Serbian authorities claimed they had more than 900 bodies - now reduced to 800 - which produces a number of bodies far in excess, by several hundreds, of those unaccounted for. This is another ludicrous situation which a proper court would not tolerate.
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 7:32 pm
  Reconciliation requires justice. Justice stems from truth.

  SREBRENICA

  VICTIMS:

  Was Srebrenica a safe-haven for unarmed Bosnian Muslim civilians?

  Bosnian Muslim forces located in Srebrenica frequently raided the surrounding Serbian villages (NY Times, 6/26/95; The Economist, 7/15-21/95). Ibran Mustafic, Bosnian Muslim MP and founder of SDA (the main Muslim political party) in Srebrenica, claims that these attacks represented purposeful provocations by the Sarajevo government to encourage the Serbian attack on Srebrenica (Interview in Sarajevo daily, Slobodna Bosna, 7/14/96). UN did not stop either side from attacking.

  Who was killed in Srebrenica?

  In 1992-93, more than 1500 Bosnian Serbs, mostly civilians from the villages around Srebrenica were killed by Bosnian Muslim fighters (well-documented, with graves in Bratunac). No international outrage followed. Naser Oric, blamed for these brutal killings (indicted by the Serbian authorities in Bosnia), today runs a disco club in the city of Tuzla, Bosnia.(curently in Hague)

  Undocumented number of Bosnian Muslims, mostly soldiers, either murdered or killed in regular fighting. Estimates of murdered Bosnian Muslim men vary from as low as 100 to as high as 12,000. 1,000-3,000 seems most probable, but this is yet to be determined.

  NUMBERS:

  Indubitably, tragic war crimes occurred but their extent appears to have been highly exaggerated. Figures vary according to the sources, which in addition interchange massacred with missing:

  Washington Post "12,000 Muslims massacred"; "Women of Srebrenica" -- "10,000 people massacred"; Bianca Jagger -- "8,000 civilians"; David Rhode, "7,000 Bosnian Muslim men"; AP "up to 7,000 men missing"; Hague indictments against Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic "6,000 Muslim men." When asked for an official figure of dead Bosnian Muslims the spokesman for Secretary-General, Mr. Eckhard "said that he did not think the United Nations had a final accounting, but estimates were between 5,000 and 6,000 dead, though not that many bodies had been found. Some 50 bodies had been found, the correspondent said. Were excavations still going on? Mr. Eckhard said his staff would look into it." (4/28/97, Daily Press Briefing, Spokesman for Sec-General) What is the source of the often cited figure "between 5,000 and 6,000 dead" Bosnian Muslims?

  Sept. 13, 1995, ICRC press statement:

  "The ICRC's head of operations for Western Europe, Angelo Gnaedinger, visited Pale and Belgrade from 2 to 7 September to obtain information from the Bosnian Serb authorities about the 3,000 persons from Srebrenica whom witnesses say were arrested by Bosnian Serb forces. The ICRC has asked for access as soon as possible to all those arrested (so far it has been able to visit only about 200 detainees), and for details of any deaths. The ICRC has also approached the Bosnia-Herzegovina authorities seeking information on some 5,000 individuals who fled Srebrenica, some of whom reached central Bosnia."

  Sept. 15, 1995, New York Times "reinterprets" the information:

  About 8,000 Muslims are missing from Srebrenica, the first of two United Nations-designated 'safe areas' overrun by Bosnian Serb troops in July, the Red Cross said today. (...) Among the missing were 3,000, mostly men, who were seen being arrested by Serbs. After the collapse of Srebrenica, the Red Cross collected 10,000 names of missing people, said Jessica Barry, a spokeswoman. In addition to those arrested, about 5,000 'have simply disappeared,' she said.

  EVIDENCE:

  Have any of the missing Muslim men been accounted for?

  July 18, 1995, New York Times: "Some 3,000 to 4,000 Bosnian Muslims who were considered by UN officials to be missing after the fall of Srebrenica have made their way through enemy lines to Bosnian government territory. The group, which included wounded refugees, sneaked past Serb lines under fire and crossed some 30 miles through forests to safety."

  August 2, 1995 the Times of London:

  Thousands of the "missing" Bosnian Muslim soldiers from Srebrenica who have been at the center of reports of possible mass executions by the Serbs, are believed to be safe to the northeast of Tuzla.

  Monitoring the safe escape of Muslim soldiers and civilians from the captured enclaves of Srebrenica and Zepa has proved a nightmare for the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross. For the first time yesterday, however, the Red Cross in Geneva said it had heard from sources in Bosnia that up to 2,000 Bosnian Government troops were in an area north of Tuzla.

  They had made their way there from Srebrenica "without their families being informed," a spokesman said, adding that it had not been possible to verify the reports because the Bosnian Government refused to allow the Red Cross into the area.

  George Pumphrey, http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/pumphrey/Srebrenica.html According to the Washington Post, "The men set off at dawn on Tuesday, July 11, in two columns that stretched back seven or eight miles." Even if the Red Cross did not know that they left Srebrenica in 2 columns, they at least knew that 2,000 were safe. And UN officials knew of the 3, - 4,000 that had arrived earlier. Yet the communiqué given in September failed to report that the 5,000 that "simply disappeared," simply disappeared back into the ranks of the Bosnian military.

  In the first election after Srebrenica’s change of authorities, 3,009 of the "missing" Bosnian Muslim men registered to vote What is the evidence for the alleged massacre of Bosnian Muslims?

  Nov ’95 Richard Goldstone (Hague tribunal's chief prosecutor at the time) letter to the Hague US Embassy, quoted in the Washington Post:

  "Judge [Goldstone] called the 'quality and timeliness' of intelligence provided by the United States 'disappointing.' He complained about the failure to hand over spy photos that he said could help the United Nations-sponsored tribunal identify mass graves that appeared after the fall of Srebrenica in July. The judge also complained that much of the information provided by the United States so far was based on 'open-source material' not relevant to the original requests."

  The White House spokesman, Michael D. McCurry, and other US officials responded to Goldstone's complaints by invoking a need for secrecy for US national security concerns.

  One of the main witnesses, Drazan Erdemovic, a Croat and a soldier in Bosnian Serb army who formerly fought for the Croatian forces in Bosnia, openly admitted to be testifying out of vindictiveness and was sentenced to only 5 years imprisonment.

  Other witnesses provided contradicting information American satellite photos show freshly ploughed fields.

  Identification of exhumed bodies (whether they are Muslim or Serb; soldiers or civilians) and the manner in which these people died remains problematic (many killed in regular fighting between the two factions; in addition, some Muslims died from internal Muslim fighting in Srebrenica). MEDIA:

  Exaggeration deprives us of truth, which in turn deprives us of justice. Loss of credibility of governments, organizations and media impairs their ability to contribute to reconciliation. All victims must be recognized and all criminals brought to justice. The media have mostly been one-sided in the civil war in Yugoslavia. Why a comparison to the Holocaust is not appropriate?

  -The extent of the war crimes is not comparable.

  -Bosnian Muslim women and children from Srebrenica were sent in buses by Serb officials to safety at Tuzla.

  -Bosnian Muslims were a warring faction, constantly raiding Bosnian Serb villages around Srebrenica.

  -The largest single incident of ethnic cleansing in the 1991-1995 war in former Yugoslavia was the exodus of 250,000 Krajina Serbs by the Croatian forces.

  -WWII Nazi in the former Yugoslavia were the Croats and many Muslims. Serbs were the victims of the WWII, together with the Jews and the Roma.

  
  
  Dakic Ana
  Serbia

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 8:34 pm
  

  I want to thank Dennis Revell for attacking me because I have been working at Emperor's Clothes for a while, I have produced quite a few pieces, and yet Jared Israel is always the one getting attacked. It is always Jared this, Jared that. But now, at long last, a personal attack directed at me!

  I also want to thank Revell for making his attack so kind. He says: "Jared Israel and the fairly recent addition to EC's staff, Prof. Francisco Gil-White are very good." Thank you! Of course, he also says, "They are so good that they are bad."

  How are we good? He writes: "They're good at sorting out pertinent facts and trends from the plethora, and performing the appropriate detailed analyses thereon... Who can fault the multitude of detailed pieces and interviews executed by Mr. Israel over the years? ...Or the Yugoslav related debut piece-par-excellence on media analysis by Prof. Gil-White?"

  We are good, and our work cannot be faulted... So how are we "bad"? Apparently, the only thing wrong with us is that we expose the lies of the Palestinian terrorists who have always advocated genocide against the Jews, who got their career started with Hitler's Final Solution (most people don't know this), and who kill and maim innocent people (as documented in my piece). Also, we are "bad" because we expose the lies told about Israel in the mainstream media, like we do with other mainstream media lies. Does that really make us "bad"? We are investigative journalists. If Revell thinks we got anything wrong, he could point it out (and, as with any other issue, we welcome that).

  It seems that our real sin is not to agree with Dennis Revell's assessment of the Middle East Conflict. Notice, so long as he agrees with us (e.g. Yugoslavia) we are wonderful, but if he disagrees (e.g. Israel), then we are "bad."

  
  
  Francisco Gil-White
  Pennsylvania

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 10:01 pm
  

  Francisco,

  Can I ask you if Palestinians have right to self determination or no.

  Further your comment:

  is that we expose the lies of the Palestinian terrorists who have always advocated genocide against the Jews, who got their career started with Hitler's Final Solution (most people don't know this), and who kill and maim innocent people

  If the Mufti of Jerusalem was in Berlin so were Nazi officials in Palestine negotiating with Zionists authority, and are you suggesting today's Palestinian are to be deprived of their land and rights because of Hitler and the Mufti?

  And doesn't your innuendoes about certain Muslim scholars not deserving the protection of the Law, because the nature of their crimes, goes perfectly in tune with the present situation in the USA where its authorities are keeping a concentration camp in Guantanamo like Hitler would excluding Ramsey Clark with similar arguments?

  I can only suggest to you, that if the Palestinians under the occupation of Israel had had just half of the rights the Albanians of Kosovo enjoyed under Serbian rule, perhaps the Palestinian problem would have been resolved long time ago.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Shangri-La

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 10:56 pm
  Let's have a reality check on the media. Not only they're not free in some arguably dictatorial countries, they're not free anywhere in the world. What the media represent is always someone's view, whether it's through a vulgar direct payment by an interest group or through a governmental influence. All that the public could hope for is that some of the media represent some of the existing different opinions. When such is the case in a certain country, we tend to pronounce the media as "free". But, this is only a formal freedom, because the opposed interests are represented in such a minuscule proportion that the general public fails to notice them at all. Whereas the Official Truth blasts across the mainstream media so that the public becomes deaf to anything else. This is how the things work and this is how the public opinion gets formed on any given subject.

  To make things more specific, here's how this works re this "trial". Since the current batch of "witnesses" was all made of anonymous, code-named persons who could state virtually anything and get away with it, even the most die-hard mainstream Western media avoided to report anything about them. I can sympathise with their predicament: although the so-called "trial of the century" has been in almost total media black-out from the very start (due to the immediate realization of how feeble the Prosecution's case is), they have to report something from time to time, to keep the general public "updated" about the great progress the case is making. Therefore, the media are obliged to occasionally pick up one of the witnesses and make him important.

  The last witness they wrote about was B-129, "the former secretary to Arkan ". Note how the choice is made: the witness to be pronounced important is always the one during whose testimony some technical problem occurs, so that even that small portion of the public who actually follows the "trial" is prevented to react immediately to the blatant lies. This is exactly what happened with B-129: the public was unable to see the last part of the examination-in-chief and the whole of the cross-examination, and voila, there were the mainstream media with their reports of how important and damning for the Accused this witness was. Months later, the transcripts for 16/17 April appeared, and this is how things really stand.

  B-129 was not "the former secretary to Arkan" (as The Observer boldly claimed), she was not even "a former secretary at the offices of notorious warlord Arkan" (REUTERS), nor she was "a secretary in the Belgrade headquarters of the notorious Serbian Volunteer Guards" (BETA). [For those who argue that the news agencies do not reach general public, this is where they're wrong: both REUTERS and BETA are the news agencies, who obviously do not report news but make or rather spin news, which are further quoted by other media, as being from some reliable source (B92 quoted BETA on this).] The simple truth is that nowhere in her testimony did B-129 even mention herself being any secretary at all. Answering to the question by Nice: 'In the Autumn of 1994, did you start working at the headquarters of the SSJ and SDG in Belgrade?', B-129 just simply answered 'yes'. The only time the word 'secretary' had been mentioned, was when Nice asked her about Arkan: 'And did he have a secretary?' , to which B-129 answered: 'Yes, he did. He had a secretary, his own personal secretary.' Furthermore, Nice let an interesting piece of info slip away in one of his questions: 'Did your work bring you into regular and close contact with Arkan, his office being one floor removed from yours…' During his cross-examination Milosevic established, reading from the previous written statement of the witness, that 'this was a temporary job' that B-129 had.

  Having all this in mind, does this question by Milosevic strike you as justified: 'And you are now saying that the late Arkan confided in you, who was a student at the time and an administrative clerk doing a part-time job, he confided in you about his relationships with the highest level officials in the police?' Yes, the things are downright ridiculous when you try to picture the situation: Arkan running up- and downstairs to the next floor offices to tell the clerks how the Tigers were not deployed anywhere without orders from the State Security and how they did not take prisoners. These two particular claims were the most quoted by the mainstream media. Others, even more preposterous claims, were that Arkan spoke directly to B-129 about specific secret operations that he plotted with the police, Security and the Army, as well as about the sources of his financing and arming. She went to such details as this: 'I was informed about the movement of the unit by the late Commander.'

  Could the media people not realize how illogical such claims were (her not being a secretary, but a temp, one floor apart from Arkan's office and unable to even see who's visiting, and what's more, not sharing the same political beliefs - by her own admission, she worked there 'strictly for money'). And yet, I'm certain that people in REUTERS and The Observer (or in BETA) are not stupid. Why then would they publish such garbage? Do they think their readers are stupid? No, they are aware that the large majority of their readers would not be bothered to watch the "trial" nor to read the transcripts. Thus, the concocted reports are produced and bingo, the public opinion is formed: Arkan's secretary has provided damning evidence.

  I will not go into all other monstrous stupidities of this particular "testimony", I'll give you only few of them, such as the claim that B-129 heard a pile of highly secretive info while contacting one Sladjana, alleged to be Frenki's secretary (Franko Simatovic from the Serbian Police special unit), with whom B-129, again by her own admission, was not even on friendly terms ('we were acquaintances'). Why on earth would a personal secretary within the Police blabber about the most sensitive stuff concerning her boss with a person she hardly knows? And why would a temp be charged to keep such and important alleged contact with the police instead of Arkan's personal secretary? This is what you get when hearsay is admitted as evidence: all kind of improbabilities are being told and listened to with a straight face.

  Everyone can read the transcripts and see for himself how the entire "testimony" of B-129 consisted of what she heard from somebody, and this somebody mostly remaining unknown, but I'll just point out one fact that had been established during the cross-examination: she allegedly started to work at the Arkan's Party headquarters in September 1994, the SDG (Guard or Tigers) became active again only in November 1994 (after being previously disbanded) and her testimony covered the events that happened in 1991, 1992, 1993 and 1994! How's that for hearsay? Milosevic was understandably interested to know: 'How can you testify here in this courtroom about 1991, 1992, 1933, 1994; that is to say, for almost four years before you came into contact with the affairs of the SDG in the first place?' The coherent, precise answer of B-129 was: 'I always stated that these were the --- what the people said…'

  That was the first time B-129 stumbled from her well-rehearsed story; otherwise, she answered like an automaton, with lots of details and displaying understanding of political and military things well beyond a common female student. Milosevic suspected somebody helped B-129 in presenting all the facts concerning 4 years before she started working, but she boldly answered that no one assisted her, that she was 'intelligent enough' to put things together.

  Her answers suggested almost official knowledge, a certain economy of expression. That is, until Milosevic pulled her into an impromptu political argument, which showed her real ignorance. Listen to this exchange. Milosevic made her confirm that the SDG was no secret, that other opposition parties also publicly organized volunteers. B-129 confirmed, but blundered stupidly: 'Yes. However, the Serbian Unity Party was not an opposition party.' Milosevic was amusedly interested: 'How do you come to that conclusion?' B-129: 'Because it states in the Statute of the Party that it is a party of the centre.' Milosevic fatherly lectured her: 'A party of the centre does not mean that it is a party that takes part in power and authority and ruling the country. The fact that it was the party of the centre means that it was neither the left nor the right but it was the centre.'

  Well, the previous exchange shows B-129 to be less than informed enough. And the following shows her to be less than intelligent enough. Milosevic innocently wanted to know why there were no documents submitted by the Prosecution from the headquarters where the witness supposedly worked (other than her "diary", which proved to be a mere scribbling-block with a few scattered words on each page, surrounded with circles, triangles and other involuntary sketches). B-129 came up with the reason: there were no documents 'because in the headquarters whatever was being done during the day would be destroyed in the evening'. Good and well, one inconvenient question was answered logically. But, B-129 forgot that, when lying, one has to think well in advance and always keep all the lies in mind, which eventually becomes impossible. The next question reminded her that she stated quite the opposite before - that she had the access to documents covering those 4 years before she started working: 'So tell me now, if everything that was done over the day would be destroyed in the evening, how, then, did you have access to documents covering a period of four years prior to when you started working?' Do you know how B-129 pulled herself out of this? By claiming that 'some documents relating to combat stayed behind, documents relating to operations in which the SDG participated'! So, according to her, the HQ would destroy all the documents relating to day-to-day obligations (what would be those, purchase of paper clips?), in order to keep the secrecy, and those unimportant ones, relating to secret combat operations of 4 years would simply lay about the office for a temp to have a free access to them?!

  See what kind of witnesses free media pronounce to be important in this "trial"? Have any of these free media bothered to read the transcripts and to publish the real story of B-129? Why should they? They're only free to avoid doing so. Why? Because they know which side their bread is buttered and what is the official line they are to follow. And if they don't? Then they suffer the consequences, like that British paper (I believe it was the LM) sued and closed after publishing the investigative piece about the veracity of the photographs of the Bosnian "concentration camp", taken by the ITN from within the wire fence of a building material area at the open refugee centre, focusing on that famous emaciated man amid the group of plump others. Knowing that, why should any paper print anything about, say, B-129 that goes contrary to the Official Truth?
  
  Vera Martinovic
  Belgrade
  Yugoslavia

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 10:58 pm
  I want to, again, thank whoever it is that makes this forum possible and I'd like to respond to Franciso Gil-White, though as above, the Israeli/Palestine issue is rather off topic. If this is too far off topic, please let me know.

  Francisco Gil-White: I'm a great admirer of Jared Israel and the work all of you at TENC have done concerning Yugoslavia. So it was with sadness that I read your piece on Palestine. I think you did an admirable job of challengeing the leftist status quo concerning the conflict - it's just those damn fascist Israelis - and you've given me personally several new pieces of information. But I'm concerned about several of the things you say are which are confused, or misguided or worse.

  You state: "The surrounding Arab states followed through with an unprovoked and simultaneous declaration of war on Israel in 1948."

  This is not completely correct. Yes, the Arabs declared war, but the Israelis anticipated this - who couldn't have anticipated it - and had already begun terrorizing villages before war was declared. Hardly an unprovoked declaration of war. Yes, the Arabs lost the conflict and lost even more land. (Israel gained about 30% more land than was given to them by the UN mandate.)

  You state: "It is clear from my reading that the 1967 war was provoked by Egypt, Iraq, Syria, etc. If they hadn't provoked a war, Israel would not now control Gaza and Judea-Samaria. Moreover, Israel tried to give this land back, in 1967, in exchange for peace, but the Arab instigators of the war refused to talk."

  I take it, then, that you haven't heard what Menahem Begin had to say about the conflict: "In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him".

  Or Itzhak Rabin: "I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to The Sinai would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive war. He knew it and we knew it."

  Or Moche Dyan: "Moshe Dayan, the celebrated commander who, as Defense Minister in 1967, gave the order to conquer the Golan...[said] many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights did so less for security than for the farmland...[Dayan stated] 'They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land...We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was...The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.'" The New York Times, May 11, 1997.

  So Mr Gil-White, who are we to believe. You? Or the Israeli leaders themselves?

  After presenting a quote from Prof. ‘Adel Sadeq elaborating the common Arab claim that "we will throw them into the sea", Jared Israel writes: "There is simply nothing like this on Israeli TV, or in any other kind of Jewish media. Nothing. Nowhere on earth will one find Israeli academics - or Jewish academics outside Israel - glorifying self-destruction in the slaughter of Arabs as “The height of ecstasy and happiness...”"

  This was the most concerning quote. You must be either very sophisticated or very naive to suggest that Israelis don't discuss/plan/debate the takeover of Palestine because you don't read it in their media. Or to suggest that Israelis aren't predudiced against Arabs because they don't make such ridiculous boasts as ‘Adel Sadeq. Israelis are much smarter than to do that, and I give them credit for that. You obviously know nothing about Orthodox Jewish religion, the status of the goyim (non-human animal), or have listened to the debates of modern Israelis (as racist as they get) or have read the writings of Jewish scholars over the centuries concerning their racist attitudes.

  Your piece puts all the blame for the Palestinian conflict squarely on the Palestinians. But did the Israelis ever really want peace within their limited borders? Is it possible you've never read about Eretz Yisrael? I wonder...

  Listen to Ben-Gurion himself from 1936: ""The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan; one does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today. But the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them."

  You contrast Arab boasts of driving Israel to the sea with Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence includes the following: “WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”

  It's very telling that while Arabs were boasting in 1948 they they would destroy Israel, that they couldn't for the life of them mount a unified attack or defense. Jordanians, Lebanese, Egyptians. Could they coordinate? NO. Saddam made the same boasts against the US before Gulf War I and II. Were they prepared? Did they stand a chance?

  Israelis, on the other hand, had a plan. They'd anticipated the 1948 war and had began selectively terrorizing villages before the declaration of war, beginning the exodus. They continued this terrorizing until enough Palestinians had left their homelands, all while telling the world they wanted peace and to defend their land.

  So here's what I've observed. Arabs commonly boast about great future conquests only to be woefully unprepared for the real fight. Israelis, on the other hand, talk peace and justice, but these people know how to gather intelligence, plan a war, win a war, and make it all seem like it was in self defense. So which is morally more defensible? I'm not kidding? I don't know the answer? Should we defend the inept, boastful Palestinians or successful Nazi Zionists? Somebody enlighten me please because I really don't know the answer.
  
  josef crow
  New York
  NY

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 11:17 pm
  Vera Martinovic

  I couldn't agree more with your conclusions. I haven't had time to read all the transcripts, but it's an obvious sham. Or... it's a great story. You could write a book with what's going on in the Hague. Or... maybe you should.

  You're right about Reuters, etc. They're completely controlled, whether directly by the CIA or by their own self-censorship. The end result is the same. How LM lost that trial I'll never understand. I forgot to mention my gratitude to Jared Israel for making the video "Judgement" available to us all. If only we could get this whole story told....
  
  josef crow
  New York
  NY

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 11:25 pm
  

  Gogol,

  Before I answer your question, allow me to list what I have documented in my piece:

  1) Hajj Amin al Husseini, the former Mufti of Jerusalem, organized thousands of Bosnian Muslim volunteers into the SS Handzar Division. He was an Islamist and a genocidal maniac, and responsible for the deaths of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Roma who were either killed in their homes or in the Croatian concentration camps. He also helped out Hitler's Final Solution elsewhere in Eastern Europe, and begged Hitler to conquer Palestine and exterminate all the Jews living in the Arab sphere. This not a mere historical footnote, for Hajj Amin is the father of the Palestinian movement.

  2) Fatah, Arafat's organization, was formed by veteran's of the genocidal Mufti's Arab Higher Committee, and its leader, Arafat, has publicly expressed how proud he is that he cut his teeth as the Mufti's soldier. There is hardly any difference between this and saying that he worships Hitler. Keep that in mind.

  3) Incidentally, it is well known that Hamas advocates genocide, so I focused on Arafat and Co. - the ones sometimes presented as relative "moderates."

  4) Palestinian leaders have never changed their stripes. They always considered the Oslo 'Peace' Process a "Trojan Horse" strategy to bring the terrorist troops directly to Israeli soil, and they have said that the whole point of Oslo was the Second Intifada. They explained this very clearly to their Arab audiences, but most people never hear this because, as most contributors to this forum well know, the mainstream Western media is not in the business of reporting the facts. The goal of the Palestinian leaders has always been, and continues to be, to wipe out Israel (through genocide).

  5) I also documented that the PLO explicitly said that it claimed no sovereignty over Gaza and the West Bank when these territories were being repressively ruled by the Egyptian and Jordanian governments, respectively. It began complaining about these territories when they came under quite benign Israeli control.

  6) And how did Israel come to control these territories? Because in 1967 Nasser and Co. provoked a war whose goal was genocide. But they lost. And yet Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol did something that to my knowledge has never before happened in the history of warfare. Though victorious, and though his enemies had provoked the war, and though the war had genocide as its goal, he offered to return those territories for a mere promise of peace. But Nasser refused!

  Now, I believe your question was "Can I ask you if Palestinians have right to self determination or no?"

  But with the above list of facts, why should that be the question? Your question takes the following premise for granted: that the Palestininians have been fighting for self-determination. But I would submit that what my documented facts establish is that those who pose as Palestinian 'leaders' are Nazi thugs with the traditionally fascist goal of exterminating the Jews.

  I notice that you chose not to challenge my facts, but went straight to the political question. However, we must deal with these facts. It seems to me that one may do one of three things:

  1) One may dispute my facts in order to argue that the balance of justice is on the Palestinian side. But this of course requires that my facts be properly challenged with documentation. Political flag-waving will not suffice.

  2) One may choose not to challenge my facts, but take the side of the Palestinian leaders anyway. That would be siding with the Nazis against the Jews.

  or else

  3) One accepts my facts while at the same time taking the position that Nazis do not deserve political support. In which case the question is not the one you posed, but this one: Can I ask you if Jews have a right to live without fear that they will be exterminated by Nazis or no?

  This list is for discussing the Milosevic trial and Yugoslavia, so I apologize if this is not interesting to many contributors. But I would like to point out the connection: Hajj Amin al Husseini, the father of the Palestinian movement, was a Nazi who organized a good part of the slaughters in Bosnia and Croatia, helping create fascist movements in Yugoslavia that were again put in motion in the recent US-led aggressions against that country.

  And there is another connection. Those who believe the balance of justice in the Middle East belongs to the Palestinians are basing their judgment on a set of impressions which they derive from the mainstream media. Since those who contribute to this list are aware that the mainstream media thoroughly lied about Yugoslavia, one has to wonder what an axiomatic acceptance of the portrayal of the Israeli-Palestinian clash could possibly be based on. After all, it is the same media, controlled by the same US establishment, which is always the best friend of fascists. Given that the Palestinian organizations are run by genocidal fascists, and given that they are funded out of Saudi Arabia (best friend of the US), there would seem to be ample basis for skepticism concerning the slant that the Palestinians are oppressed by the Israelis.

  One must not confuse compassion for ordinary Palestinians (which is certainly their due), with putting the blame for the Palestinian plight on the Jews. Compassion for ordinary Palestinians begins with recognizing that they are in the grip of fascists and that history could have been otherwise (and the future may yet be otherwise) if such fascists were not sponsored by the big powers. The Mufti, remember, became dominant in Palestinian politics because British intelligence backed him to the hilt, and because this allowed him to direct terror against his more moderate Palestinian political opponents. Similarly, Arafat has always been indirectly and directly sponsored by the US (remember, when Israel was getting ready,in 1982, to deal the PLO a final and decisive blow in Lebanon, it was the US that quickly intervened and spirited the PLO troops to safety. And, just like the Mufti, Arafat has followed an identical strategy of terror against his own people in order to cement his political power).

  Before signing off, just a quick note about Joseph Crow's posting. Yes, it is a matter of historical record that the Israelis attacked Egypt in 1967. It is also a matter of historical record that the Iraqis had already sent their troops to Syria, and that for several years Sryia had been terrorizing Israeli farmers from the Golan heights, while Nasser gave fiery speeches about a coming bloody battle if Israel attacked Syria in which the Jews would be exterminated. Under these circumstances, it is clear that there was a coordinated effort to provoke a war, and on the part of the Arabs, because it is also a matter of record that the Israelis tried hard, through diplomacy, to get the Arab warmongers to back down. Israel attacked first out of fear, and in self-defense, but it certainly did not provoke the war; Nasser did that. And if the Syrian attacks on Israeli civilians from the Golan Heights count (and why shouldn't they?), then Israel did not even attack first.

  About the war of 1948, it appears that you and I are using different sources. Here is one: "on November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to divide British-ruled Palestine into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab. This decision was immediately opposed by the Arabs who, under the ostensible leadership of Hajj AmYn al-SusaynY , the grand mufti of Jerusalem, attacked Jews throughout Palestine as the British withdrew.”

  Source: “Israel” Encyclopædia Britannica http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article?eu=109507 [Accessed September 23, 2002].
  
  Francisco Gil-White
  Pennsylvania

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 11:27 pm
  I forgot to repost the link to my piece in case some readers on this list wanted to check my facts. Here it is: http://emperors-clothes.com/gilwhite/Israel.htm
  
  Francisco Gil-White
  Pennsylvania

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 11:40 pm
  Though victorious, and though his enemies had provoked the war, and though the war had genocide as its goal, he offered to return those territories for a mere promise of peace. But Nasser refused!

  This is sheer nonsense, equivalent to Croatian requests that "good" Serbs come back after the terror, murder, expulsion, looting, and arson that took place in Krajina in 1995.
  
  P M
  USA

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 11:47 pm
  Mr Gil-White:

  I'm curious about two things. Tell me what you imply by "It's a matter of public record that Isreal tried hard, through diplomacy, to get the Arab warmongers to back down"? You must think we're idiots if you want us to believe that the proclamations of diplomats of a nation have any bearing on the real intentions of said nation.

  Second. Did you not read what Moche Dyan said about Jewish farmers in the Golan Heights? He's talking about before the 1967 war broke out. Let me reprint what he said: "Moshe Dayan, the celebrated commander who, as Defense Minister in 1967, gave the order to conquer the Golan...[said] many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights did so less for security than for the farmland...[Dayan stated] 'They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land...We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was...The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.'" The New York Times, May 11, 1997.

  As I said before and was confirmed by the quotes from Rabin and Begin, the Arabs didn't really want war, had no plan to fight it, and, after making boastful claims of future conquest, were horribly beaten in the war. The Israelis, while talking peace (as you claim yourself), were making war plans, making provocations in the Golan Heights which, after Arab boasts in the end, worked beautifully to justify their pre-emptive strike.

  This is the dirty ugly truth as I know it. You haven't written anything to counter my understanding. What I'm waiting for, and perhaps you can help, is for someone to tell me which position - Israeli or Arab - is more morally defensible.
  
  josef crow
  New York
  NY

• Sunday June 15, 2003 at 11:58 pm
  

  PM,

  Well, something is "sheer nonsense" if it is logically self-contradictory, or if it contradicts the facts. That people would want to exterminate the Jews is absurd, certainly, as all such genocidal wishes are. But such absurdities are not unknown to us, and therefore to claim that somebody had such a genocidal wish is certainly not "sheer nonsense".

  And to say that Nasser in particular had this wish is not "sheer nonsense" if Nasser in fact expressed this wish out loud where people could hear him. This is how Nasser spoke, immediately before the 1967 war:

  [Start Quote From Nasser To Arab Trade Unionists]

  http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH017x0

  “If Israel embarks on an aggression against Syria or Egypt, the battle against Israel will be a general one and not confined to one spot on the Syrian or Egyptian borders. The battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel. I probably could not have said such things five or even three years ago. If I had said such things and had been unable to carry them out my words would have been empty and worthless. Today, some eleven years after 1956, I say such things because I am confident. I know what we have here in Egypt and what Syria has. I also know that other States Iraq, for instance, has sent its troops to Syria; Algeria will send troops; Kuwait also will send troops. They will send armoured and infantry units. This is Arab power. This is the true resurrection of the Arab nation, which at one time was probably in despair.”

  [End Quote From Nasser To Arab Trade Unionists]

  [Start Quote From Historian Howard Sachar]

  "…Syria used the Golan Heights, which tower 3,000 feet above the Galilee, to shell Israeli farms and villages. Syria's attacks grew more frequent in 1965 and 1966, while Nasser's rhetoric became increasingly bellicose: 'We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand,' he said on March 8, 1965. 'We shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood.'" -- Howard Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), p. 616.

  [End Quote From Historian Howard Sachar]

  About Eshkol's offer to return the lands to the Arabs if they promised not to attack again, this is also a matter of historical record. Therefore, it cannot be "sheer nonsense".

  [Start Quote From Encyclopedia Britannica]

  http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article?eu=109507

  “It was not clear how military victory could be turned into peace. Shortly after the war’s end Israel began that quest, but it would take more than a decade and involve yet another war before yielding any results. Eshkol’s secret offer to trade much of the newly won territory for peace agreements with Egypt, Jordan, and Syria was rejected by Nasser, who, supported by an emergency resupply of Soviet arms, led the Arabs at the Khartoum Arab Summit in The Sudan in August 1967 in a refusal to negotiate directly with Israel.”

  [End Quote From Encyclopedia Britannica]

  Whether something is "sheer nonsense" is not, of course, a matter of taste.

  All comers are welcome do disagree with me, of course, but they are encouraged to read the article and its footnoted documentation before declaring any of my claims "sheer nonsense". Again, the link is

  http://emperors-clothes.com/gilwhite/Israel.htm

  
  
  Francisco Gil-White
  Pennsylvania

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 12:15 am
  Mr. Gil-White: I have not mentioned genocide at all in my post! All I suggested is that requests made for refugees to return after mass expulsions, are hypocritical and mere posturing. And I made an analogy to Croatia after Krajina.
  
  P M
  USA

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 12:44 am
  Mr Francisco Gil-White:

  You present the following as being the truth. "Eshkol’s secret offer to trade much of the newly won territory for peace agreements with Egypt, Jordan, and Syria was rejected by Nasser, who, supported by an emergency resupply of Soviet arms, led the Arabs at the Khartoum Arab Summit in The Sudan in August 1967 in a refusal to negotiate directly with Israel."

  Those hateful, deceiving, lying Arabs. But wait. What's the source for this insightful analysis you present as truth? Encyclopedia Britannica. Hmmm. Interesting.

  I ask you, what is your purpose in quoting the analysis of the from Encoyclopedia Britannica? Are you trying to persuade us of a particular argument? Should we trust what is written in this Encyclopedia Britannica? Do you think we are stupid?

  Here's what Encyclopedia Britannica has to say about the Kosovo Conflict. I hold these lies to be self-evident. In the future, please bring something more credible to the table to back up your charges.

  Kosovo Conflict.

  Ethnic war in Kosovo, Yugoslavia. In 1989 the Serbian president S. Milosevic abrogated Kosovo's constitutional autonomy and began systematic oppression of its ethnic Albanians, who constitute some 90% of its population. The Kosovars set up a shadow government and began a campaign of nonviolent resistance. Growing tensions led in 1998 to armed clashes, involving both the police and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The Contact Group (U.S., Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia) proposed a unified policy, demanding cessation of fighting, unconditional withdrawal of Serbian special police and army forces, return of refugees, and unlimited access for international monitors. Milosevic agreed to meet most of the demands, but did not. The U.N. Security Council condemned excessive use of force by Serbian police forces, incl. so-called ethnic cleansing (killing and expulsion), and imposed a comprehensive arms embargo, but the violence increased. During diplomatic negotiations at Rambouillet, France, Milosevic massed troops and tanks for a new offensive. When talks broke down, Serbia launched military forces in a renewed assault, and NATO forces began bombing to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe. Refugees fled to Albania, Macedonia, and Montenegro amid reports of extensive Serbian atrocities. An 11-week NATO bombing campaign extended to Belgrade and significantly damaged Serbia's infrastructure. The bombing halted after NATO and Yugoslavia signed an accord in June 1999 outlining Serbian troop withdrawal and the return of nearly a million ethnic Albanian refugees as well as 500,000 displaced within the province.
  
  josef crow
  New York
  NY

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 1:12 am
  To "PM"

  It is shocking to hear compared Israel's offer to return the West Bank and Gaza to Jordan and Egypt in exchange for a promise of peace, to Croatia's phony offer to let Serbs return to Krajina.

  1) The Croatian attack in 1995 was an unprovoked act of genocide: the goal was to wipe out the Serbs. But the Israeli strikes in 1967 were a defense against genocide. The Krajina Serbs did *not* carry out terrorists raids against Croatian civilians for 19 years prior to 1995. Quite the contrary, starting in the late 1980s, terrorist attacks were organized *against* the Serbs by Croatian Ustashas. But the fedeyeen, sponsored by Arab states, *did* carry out terrorist attacks, regularly slaughtering Israeli civilians out of bases in the Jordanian West Bank and Egyptian Gaza strip from the time the Arab leaders lost in 1948 up until the 1967 war.

  2) The Israeli strategy in 1967 was driven by military goals. The Croatian attack on Krajina in 1995 was a war of liquidation of a population - 250,000-plus Serbs were driven from their homes.

  3) The Jews had no history of attempted genocide against Arabs. Quite the contrary, starting in 1920, Arab leaders had been organizing slaughter of Jews in the British mandate area, and when the Arab leaders launched the 1948 war it was with the declared purpose of carrying out Hitler's final solution. But the Croatians *did* have a history of genocide against Serbs. This was true both in World War II, when the first Nazi death camp was established at Jasenovac, and it was true in the 1990s. And by the way, the same Hajj Amin al Husseini who declared in 1948, "Kill the Jews! Kill them all!" had just a few years earlier organized the Bosnian Waffen SS which helped slaughter Serbs - including from Krajina.

  Arab populations were *not* driven from the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. Thus the Israelis were *not* offering to let evicted populations return; they were offering to return land to states *if those states promised them peace.* Since all that was required on the Arab side was to make a promise, which if the Arabs had agreed would have put all burden of action on the Israelis, how can this possibly be compared to the Croatians, who were not suing for peace, but making a propaganda statement which they could easily *seem* to fulfill, while in fact making the returning Serbs' life hell on earth, knowing the international media would never report this. (Which is exactly what the Croatians have done). The attempt made by some people to divide Serbs and Jews - which started with the mobilization of *a section* of Jewish leaders (the same ones who support a Palestinian state, by the way) to attack Serbs in 1992 and which is also furthered by those pushing anti-Semitism among Serbs - this attempt serves only the goals of the US-led Empire, which uses hatred of these two ethnic groups to forward its horrific aims.
  
  Jared Israel
  US

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 1:52 am
  

  Mr. Crow has now twice quoted the NY Times' account of Rami Tal's *supposed* interview with Moche (sic!) Dayan. Both times Crow leaves out the context, which once understood casts strong doubt regarding the credibility of the "interview." He also leaves out part of what Tal quotes Dayan as having said. Giving Crow the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he was just reprinting a quote whose source (the Times) he never read. If he *did* read the original, then he was deliberately attempting to deceive.

  Regarding context: when the supposed interview was first "revealed" in 1997, Moshe Dayan had been dead 16 years. The Times article, which was clearly written with the intent of convincing readers that the interview was real, stated:

  "General Dayan did not mean the conversations as an interview, and the reporter, Rami Tal, kept his notes secret for 21 years -- until he was persuaded by a friend to make them public. They were authenticated by historians and by General Dayan's daughter Yael Dayan, a member of Parliament, and published two weeks ago in the weekend magazine of the newspaper Yediot Ahronot."

  The problem is a) both Rami Tal, the supposed interviewer, and Dayan's daughter, are supporters of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza and of giving the Golan Heights to Syria. The supposed interview therefore served their political goals. In addition, Dayan is widely viewed in Israel as a grandstander. And of course Tal gained celebrity by "revealing" this.

  A supposed interview with a dead man, supposedly kept secret while he was alive, and now conveniently revealed when he can't contradict it, and which serves the personal and political goals of the people who vouch for it - plus some unnamed "historians" - were they present? - is a joke.

  That the Times article *fails to mention* the politics of both Tal and Dayan - the latter of whom was notorious for her 1993 visit to Arafat in Tunis - is strikingly dishonest: if the Times had correctly described Tal and Ms. Dayan, readers would know these were *not* disinterested witnesses; therefore by *not* telling readers the facts about Tal and Dayan, the Times writer demonstrated that he was interested not in reporting a news story but in hawking a position: that Israel was morally wrong in 1967.

  Aside from that, Mr. Crow leaves out the part of this phony interview where Dayan is quoted as saying, "They [the cooperative farmers] suffered a lot because of the Syrians. Look, as I said before, they were sitting in the kibbutzim and they worked the land and had kids and lived there and wanted to live there. The Syrians across from them were soldiers who fired at them." [Not to mention the artillery shooting down at them from the Heights....]

  Even Tal had to include the above in his phony interview because the slaughter of these cooperative farmers prior to 1967 is a matter of public record. So he admits the truth but then claims Dayan told him that "he knew" the farmers weren't *really* upset about getting slaughtered - they were just greedy. Shades of the Protocols of Zion.

  The New York Times; May 11, 1997, Sunday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section 1; Page 3; Column 1; Foreign Desk; LENGTH: 1291 words; HEADLINE: General's Words Shed a New Light on the Golan; BYLINE: By SERGE SCHMEMANN
  
  Jared Israel
  USA

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 2:09 am
  Jared Israel

  Your own brand of historical revisionism is scary, especially in light of how effective you've been in bringing the truth to light concerning Yugoslavia.

  You state: "But the Israeli strikes in 1967 were a defense against genocide."

  Come on, Jared. What are you talking about? You degrade the use of the word genocide with such talk. Yes, they threatened to "drive Israel to the sea". Could they have accomplished this? Not on your life. Typical Arab hyperbole? Absolutely. I suppose the US was defending itself against genocide after Saddam threatened to "destroy America" in 1991? Not even GB would make such a ridiculous claim. To compare Arab hyperbole to the real genocide that happened in Croatia is shameful. Please, stop with this or tell us all your agenda.

  Equally shameful and shocking is to hear you claim that "The Jews had no history of attempted genocide against Arabs." That's just utter nonsense. Historical revisionism at its worst.

  From Norman Finkelstein, "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.": "By 1948, the Jew was not only able to 'defend himself' but to commit massive atrocities as well. Indeed, according to the former director of the Israeli army archives, 'in almost every village occupied by us during the War of Independence, acts were committed which are defined as war crimes, such as murders, massacres, and rapes'...Uri Milstein, the authoritative Israeli military historian of the 1948 war, goes one step further, maintaining that 'every skirmish ended in a massacre of Arabs.'"

  From Israeli author, Simha Flapan, "The Birth of Israel.": "For the entire day of April 9, 1948, Irgun and LEHI soldiers carried out the slaughter in a cold and premeditated fashion...The attackers 'lined men, women and children up against the walls and shot them,'...The ruthlessness of the attack on Deir Yassin shocked Jewish and world opinion alike, drove fear and panic into the Arab population, and led to the flight of unarmed civilians from their homes all over the country."

  From Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest.": "Menahem Begin, the Leader of the Irgun, tells how 'in Jerusalem, as elsewhere, we were the first to pass from the defensive to the offensive...Arabs began to flee in terror...Hagana was carrying out successful attacks on other fronts, while all the Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Haifa like a knife through butter'...The Israelis now allege that the Palestine war began with the entry of the Arab armies into Palestine after 15 May 1948. But that was the second phase of the war; they overlook the massacres, expulsions and dispossessions which took place prior to that date and which necessitated Arab states' intervention."

  Were Sabra and Shatila real massacres or not? Was Sharon not culpable?

  And if inflammatory rhetoric is equal to threatened genocide, try telling me that the Israelis are not as guilty as the Arabs. Here, how does this sound?

  "When Israel liberated the land in 1967, the normal , sane thing to have done would have been to drive the scum out. But we are not normal. We are not sane. We allowed them to remain along with all the rest of them -- murderous Ishmaelites who cannot live with Jews or with themselves." Rabbi Kahane, May 19, 1989.

  http://www.jdl.org/israel/words.shtml

  This is from the Jewish Defense League. Are you going to write an article about them now?
  
  josef crow
  New York
  NY

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 2:30 am
  Jared

  You are quite correct. I was not aware of the controversy surrounding the Moshe Dayan quote. I lifted this quote, as I did others, from the Jews for Justice in the Middle East website. Here is that site.

  http://www.cactus48.com/partition.html

  This is the problem with trying to get to the truth. Not enough time and having to rely on secondary sources.

  Are you now going to claim that Israel never provokes conflict for strategic gain? Okay. Tell me what was Ariel Sharon doing walking into the Al-Aqsa Mosque accompanied by 1,000 police? How about their plans to build the Temple Mount Synagogue? What do you call all the settlements, (which, by the way, are typically located at the most strategically located hill, etc)? Shall we really call this the defense against... genocide, or is the stupid Arabic inflammatory rhetoric used by Israel to continue its agenda?

  Are you denying that certain Zionists have intentions to form a greater Israel?

  Are you going to deny again that Isael was guilty of massacres? (call it what you want, genocide, atrocity, blah, blah, blah).
  
  josef crow
  New York
  NY

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 3:18 am
  

  Yeah, the Jewish Defense League wants Arabs out of the West Bank. But it was not some minor Arab group which advocated *evicting* Jews in 1948, 1967, and today. It was/is the organized Arab leadership - Arab states and semi-states - which advocated and still advocates *killing* them. Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian leaders, etc. It was the Arab national leaders and the Nazi Arab Higher Committee in Palestine who in 1948 ordered Arabs to leave Israel so that they could march through the area and kill everyone (i.e., Jews) without endangering Arabs. It was Nasser who massed an army of 200,000 in the Sanai and announced that he would slaughter all the Jews.

  A note to my dear Serbian friends: Anti-Semites have suddenly 'discovered' the Serbian cause. Why? Because a) they wish to influence Slavs in a fascist direction and b) simultaneously to discredit the Slav resistance to destruction by the US empire - by giving that resistance the false appearance of being fascist! This is a deadly double danger. It is precisely this kind of link which Ramsey Clark (who is NOW NO LONGER co-president of the ICDSM!) tried to foist on the Serbs in that National Press Conference which Nico and I wrote about.Ramsey article

  By the way, I am glad that I can say: President Milosevic considers supposed "support" from anti-Semites to be an attack against the Serbs. So, a message to the anti-Semites: you may claim you love Milosevic, but he sure does not love you!

  In President Milosevic's view, we have only to look at history - namely World War II - to know that Slavic people can never be allies of Nazis and their holocaust-denying apologists, the deadliest enemies of all who defend the Serbs from lies and murder.

  We of course know that the neo-Nazis and their holocaust-denying friends *flocked* to the Croatian cause in 1991. Some of them are interviewed in the Movie, "Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War." The blood of many Serbs is on the hands of these non-Croatian fascists. But now, suddenly, the holocaust deniers tell us they love the Serbs. Yeah, sure they do. Love 'em to death.

  
  
  Jared Israel
  USA

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 4:16 am
  

  Crow says: "You are quite correct. I was not aware of the controversy surrounding the Moshe Dayan quote. I lifted this quote, as I did others, from the Jews for Justice in the Middle East website."

  Do tell. I say, this shows the credibility of the "research" of the Crows of this world. He presented the Times quote *as if he knew it was true* but now says he was copying it from another source *without even telling us* that he didn't know if it had appeared in the Times, something was left out, etc. And he did not admit that he had no idea if it was true, false or whatever, until *after* I suggested that if he *had* read the Times he was deceiving us. But in fact, either way he was deceiving us. Nothing these holocaust deniers say should be trusted.

  By the way, regarding the 'brilliant' argument about Greater Israel - Israel is the only country I know of that has given up an area *much* larger than its remaining territory - the very valuable Sanai desert - in exchange for the in my opinion useless promise of peace from Egypt.

  
  
  Jared Israel
  USA

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 4:37 am
  It's a little sad and disillusioning to see one of your heroes (Jared Israel) turning out to be as agenda-driven as the rest. I'd pinned some of my hopes on the possiblity of real honest journalists out there.

  Instead of commenting on the content of what's been written (with the exception of commenting on the JDL), Jared has stooped to calling me an anti-semite, not directly mind you, but in the third person. Suddenly, one's intentions are thrown into question, and a fog has rolled in that's supposed to shut down any line of questioning that's a little too direct and deliberate.

  No, this fog doesn't put an end to the questions. It just obscures the truth. Or any discussion of the truth. It's dishonest and shameful.

  Excuse me, but did you just say I'm trying to "influence Slavs in a fascist direction and b) simultaneously to discredit the Slav resistance to destruction by the US empire - by giving that resistance the false appearance of being fascist!"???? I thought you did. I wish I had a clue what you're talking about. Come to think of it, no I don't.

  It's a dangerous fucked-up world we live in. The truth is, I'm a lone individual - a physician - trying to understand the world. I feel bad for the poor saps whose lives are ruined or worse by the Powers-That-Be. I feel a responsibility to try to do something about it. I will do something about it. It'll just have to be in a different venue.

  I still contend you've done an amazing job with Yugoslavia, Jared. But like all the rest of the intellectual anti-war left, you seem destined to remain perpetually scorned by the public at large. Because the type of individual that regular people hate more than anything else, more than neo-fascists or skin-head nazis or god-fearing republicrats, more than all these greedy, lying, selfish fucking neocons we've had of late, is a self-rightous, self-deluding, name-calling hypocrite. And whether you like it or not, experiences like this are one of the sad reasons this propaganda Matrix continues to be the mode of existence that regular people prefer.

  
  
  josef crow
  New York
  NY

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 5:10 am
  Jared

  You're disembling...

  Deceiving you? Holocaust denier? "Nothing these Holocaust deniers say should be trusted"? Wow.

  I've already admitted the source of the quote - the NY Times from the website for Jews for Justice in the Middle East. Your own collegue who writes for your own website uses a summary from the Encyclopedia Britannica. Is that deceiving? Are we now not allowed to believe anything he writes?

  The difference here is, I don't have an agenda. I never said there wasn't a Holocaust. I believe quite strongly that it occurred. I am skeptical of most everything I read (and increasingly so with your own agenda). I defended the TBR website. Truth be told, I didn't even know what the letters stood for. What I objected to was Mr Revell denying TBR the right post what I believe to be legitimate internal memos from news organizations (I'd love to hear your comment about these), and by extension Mr Barnes right to state his own arguements.

  Maybe Mr Barnes has done so, though I'd like a little time to read what he's written. Perhaps you can save me the time and tell me exactly where Mr Barnes is off base. What I had originally objected to the fact that Mr Revell threw the baby out with the bathwater, much like you're trying to do with me now.

  The day that individuals and institutions decide which people can't talk and which people can't present their arguments and which ideas are off limits is the day liberty ceases to exit. You're not one of those liberty deniers I hope. Are you?P> If you've got an arguement to make, I'm all ears. But try not to act like you're the owner of the truth. You're not.
  
  josef crow
  New York
  NY

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 6:03 am
  

  Deja vue, all over again.

  Josef, yes the HOLOCAUST as was used during the CLinton administration (8 years of it ) made the War against Yugoslavia acceptable to 100's of millions in Nato land. Without that background in mind the demonisation of the Serbs in general and Mr. Milosevic in particular would not have been possible. Months back this issued was covered in detail here in this forum.

  And as we can all see it has erupted in the clear once more. According to Francisco the question of "national determination for the Palestinian people" can not be answered without considering the facts , the facts he considerers suitable and then :

  But with the above list of facts, why should that be the question? Your question takes the following premise for granted: that the Palestinians have been fighting for self-determination. But I would submit that what my documented facts establish is that those who pose as Palestinian 'leaders' are Nazi thugs with the traditionally fascist goal of exterminating the Jews.

  I notice that you chose not to challenge my facts, but went straight to the political question. However, we must deal with these facts. It seems to me that one may do one of three things:

  1) One may dispute my facts in order to argue that the balance of justice is on the Palestinian side. But this of course requires that my facts be properly challenged with documentation. Political flag-waving will not suffice.

  2) One may choose not to challenge my facts, but take the side of the Palestinian leaders anyway. That would be siding with the Nazis against the Jews.

  So, I take your answer to be that given the facts, your facts, or any facts, the Palestinian nation does not deserve the Universal Right of All Nations to Self Determination

  Having said that, I wish the holocaust and the present conflict in the Middle East will be discussed only as reference in this forum in order to save it. Shall any one like to exchange views on the subject please do so by email or by moving to another more suitable forum, if you can find one.

  Thank you very much.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Shangri-La

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 8:48 am
  Former Yugoslav President, Zoran Lilic will be testifying at The Hague Circus tomorrow.

  Nothing much happened there today.

  Dr. Babovic the so-called "expert witness" continued to prove his ignorance of the Serbian Constitution and the Serbian penal code.

  Following Babovic was "B-1047." Apparently, Arkan's men unsuccessfully tried to execute "B-1047."

  After the attempted execution, "B-1047" made his way to a VRS base and the VRS arranged for him to be transported to a hospital in Banja Luka for medical treatment. It is important to note that Banja Luka was always held by the Serbs.

  "B-1047" is an invalid because of his wounds, and he tells a very harrowing story, but he has nothing to do with Milosevic. I would really like to see the prosecution explain why he should be brought in to testify against Milosevic.

  What does B-1047's plight prove against Milosevic? They aren't saying that Milosevic ordered that he should be shot, and so I really don't see what the point here is.

  This isn't unique. Witnesses who aren't relevant to anything Milosevic is accused of testify against him all the time. All I can see is that the prosecution is wasting time.

  Anyway, tomorrow should be interesting. That is the day to watch. I'm churious what Mr. Lilic will say (or what he'll be prohibited from saying).
  
  Andy Wilcoxson
  Washington, United States

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 10:52 am
  Dear Peter Taylor

  Thank you. I agree that all of those listed in the socalled "Schedule A" could have been combatants; in fact they could also have been killed somewhere else some other time - and by someone other than the FRY police or military forces.

  In other words: As it stands attached to the Indictment this list of 45 names is utterly insufficient in support of the allegation of a "massacre" in the village of Racak, - which is crucial for the entire "trial".

  I did not mean to challenge your contention, but to ask for facts: Surely the Prosecution must have (been forced to) come up with something more substantial and coherent than a mere "body count"!

  Otherwise the judges would have had to dismiss the count concerning the incident at Racak, - wouldn't they?
  
  Godfred Louis-Jensen
  Copenhagen
  D E N M A R K

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 12:10 pm
  

  Gogol,

  You say: "So, I take your answer to be that given the facts, your facts, or any facts, the Palestinian nation does not deserve the Universal Right of All Nations to Self Determination."

  And then, having had the last word, you ask everybody to drop the subject of Palestine!

  But I will answer this. What you take my answer to be is not my answer. It is not even within a mile of my answer. So let me explain very clearly what my answer is.

  It is this: Given the facts - not my facts or any facts, but the facts - which I have documented, the Palestinian movement has been Nazi from the beginning - and not in a metaphorical but in a literal sense, since the founder of the movement, the Mufti Hajj Amin, led Hitler's Final Solution and had cabinet rank in the Nazi administration. I also documented that the Palestinian leaders never changed their stripes and said themselves (to their Arab audiences) that Oslo was a Trojan Horse strategy to destroy Israel through genocide.

  You may choose to call these my facts or any facts, but the fact is, you haven't really stated that I am mistaken, much less ventured documentation that would contradict my statements. Thus, if (1) you agree that the Palestinian leadership is Nazi, literally; (2) has been so from the beginning; and (3) has the goal of exterminating the Jews; then why are we asking the question whether Palestinians have a right to self-determination? What they don't have is a right to genocide against the Jews! And so long as that is the goal of all their leading organizations, then to allow a Palestinian state is to endorse the goal of these Palestinian leaders: genocide against Jews. Is that what you are for?

  That is my question, and that question is my answer, not what you took my answer to be.

  Now, how about answering my question?

  And it won't do to answer, as a few on this list have done, that the Arabs exaggerate because they can't carry it out. First of all, they do carry it out, as much as they presently can: their strategy is to deliberately target Jewish civilians, and they blow a few up every week. Whether they can finish the job now or not is entirely beside the point. Historical circumstances are always changing. If I cannot now succeed in my goal of killing you that does not make the goal any less despicable, and you would be right to be offended if other people supported me in my short term goals even as I explain that the purpose of these goals is to be in a better position to kill you.

  I noticed there was a lot of melodrama as soon as Jared pointed out who is an antisemite. Apparently it is beyond the pale to suggest that someone is an antisemite? Even when a person (Joseph Crow) is openly defending the Holocaust deniers? Well, then it must have become polite to attack the Jews! Let me explain: whoever suggests that those whose goal is to exterminate the Jews should be allowed to establish a state right next to the Jews is an antisemite. And it is easy to spot such people because they are quite exercised about the "rights of Palestinians" whereas other conflicts - much worse conflicts - around the world do not attract their attention, and even though their professed defense of the Serbs, who fought violent and antisemitic Islamists - just as the Jews are fighting the same - is in complete contradiction with their support for the Palestinian Islamists. The Serbs would do well to examine who their friends are. Somebody who supports Islamists cannot possibly be their friend, for it is Islamists - and Islamists who explicitly glorify the memory of the genocidal Hajj Amin al Husseini, founder of the Palestinian movement (as documented here) - who among others destroyed Yugoslavia and slaughtered the Serbs.

  It is one thing to support the Palestinian cause when in ignorance of the facts concerning the nature of the Palestinian movement. A lot of decent people are in this position: they support the Palestinian cause because they falsely believe it to be a reaction to Israeli provocations. I was once in such a position. But having seen the facts, which document that starting in 1920, the Mufti Hajj Amin, father of the Palestinian movement and Arafat's hero, was calling for genocide and organizing terrorist attacks againts defenseless Jewish civilians (whether or not they were immigrants to Palestine), and against those Palestinians who did not wish to attack Jews... And having seen that the PLO explicitly said that they did not claim sovereignty in Gaza and the West Bank when these lands were repressively ruled by Egypt and Jordan respectively, but then discovered these were "Palestinian" lands when Nasser spat at Eshkol's offer to return those lands for a mere promise of piece and in so doing forced Israel to keep those territories, then... what follows? It is really quite obvious: when the Palestinian leaders say that their goal is to exterminate the Jews, they are saying what they mean, rather than what Gogol says they mean: that they are supposedly fighting for "self-determination." Thus, given such facts, how does one justify support for Arafat, Hamas, and Co?

  That, again, is my question. And that question is my answer. I will not hold my breath for a real answer to my question, however.

  (And by the way, answering me properly does not rely on quoting the views of antisemitic Jews. The facts are the facts, and the views of antisemitic Jews who think Jews are always to blame are the views of antisemitic Jews who think Jews are always to blame. If anybody thinks that any of my claims concerning

  the Palestinian movement

  are in error, let them point out a specific claim, instead of getting distracted, and then let them give the refuting documentation. But if they cannot do so, then the entire question of where the balance of justice lies in the Middle East Conflict needs to be evaluated in light of such facts concerning the true nature and history of the Palestinian movement. If we agree that the Jews in Israel are fighting, literally, Nazis, then whatever conclusion we come to cannot ignore that important fact.)
  
  
  Francisco Gil-White
  Pennsylvania

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 12:14 pm
  Idon't know why you people are trying to make a point on something most of the world allready know , after the USSR collapse , the USA arrogancy has made their policy to the rest of the world to look alongside with the nazis to be the other end of the same shit.
  
  Milan Prika
  Panama
  Panama

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 1:14 pm
  Now we know what Chomsky meant when dealing with Jared 'the prophet' Israel. What kind of an expert is Jared Israel if he says something like 'In President Milosevic's view, we have only to look at history - namely World War II - to know that Slavic people can never be allies of Nazis'?

  Mr Milosevic no doubt knows that Croats are Slavs. Where does Israel think Croats come from - Germany? In case Israel thinks he can get off easily perhaps he might explain to us who Ljotic was? Maybe he can tell me what land that is todays Sijam building in Belgrade was used for in second world war? Maybe Mr Israel might expalain statistics of Jews in Serbia at the start of second world war and after. Jewish Serbs made a greater sacrifice than civilian Serbs in second world war. That debt is remembered by deep Serbian sympathy for jews today. What was lost is reason just why Serbs had such sympathy. What Serbian jews need is complete facts about second world war Nedic and so on. We still dont have them and no amount of blowing trumpet for emperors clothes or talk of eternal victims will help
  
  P Rabinovic
  CG

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 1:51 pm
  Mr Gil-White

  Unless you think Milosevic is guilty of Genocide, then you too are a Holocaust denier. Mr Jared Israel is making a career out of denying a Holocaust. We are all here Holocaust deniers. What of it?

  Do you have any concept at all what it sounds like for a regular person in the US to hear the words "Milosevic is NOT a mass murderer"? If I had been influenced by someone like yourself 4 years ago, I'd still believe Milosevic was guilty of everything charged.

  I can't know what makes you believe you can eliminate debate about Zionism so easily, unless making the charge of "anti-semite" recklessly has worked for you in the past. Although this is not a forum about Zionism, Jared Israel and yourself have been the ones that have tossed the Palestinian problem into this circle. You've used your legitimacy concerning Yugoslavia to distort history as we know it. So as a debate relates to Serbia and Milosevic, all peoples and their collective ideas, including Zionists, Arabs, Serbs, Croatians, neo-Nazis, Neocons, etc, etc, etc, while be called to defend their arguments. It is an well known that Zionists try to use the word anti-semite to silence dissent, just as McCarthy used the word Communist to silence dissent. Since you appear to support the Zionist cause, you can expect more of the same - you too will be called to defend your arguements.

  Mr Louis-Jensen

  Apparently, a list of names is all the prosecution needs to convict Milosevic concerning Racak. Everyone "knows" Milosevic is guilty - hence the need for only one witness from the Racak "massacre". Very telling. But as there is no real journalism in mass media today, it would seem to matter little the content of happens in the Hague these days.

  Does anyone know when the extended 100 day prosecution ends? And will Milosevic ask for dismissal after the prosecution rests? My understanding is he has the right to do this.
  
  josef crow
  New York
  NY

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 1:53 pm
  

  Francisco

  I must have made a mistake hen, that if your answer is not that the Palestinian don't have the right to self-determination it is then that your answer is they have the right to self determination .

  Thank you for answering my question.

  Now, and I hope you will agree with me, this forum is dedicated to legal issues and about the Trial of President Slobodan Milosevic. I know the issues of the Middle East are very important to you and to Jared Israel, but in order not to take importance to such an important issue as this trial, international law linked as you know to the historical trial of the Nazi leadership at Nüremberg, it will be most desirable to keep this forum focused on the subject. You challenge me to answer your questions, but i am sorry Francisco, it is me who asked you a question and I have to say it has been pretty hard to guess what your answer has been. The rest, again I wish not to discuss and again let me ask you another question, do you think Mr. Nice, prosecutor Nice and Judge May, do you think they support the right to self determination for the Palestinian people?
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Shangri-La

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 3:12 pm
  

  Mr. Louis Jensen,

  You say: "Unless you think Milosevic is guilty of Genocide, then you too are a Holocaust denier. Mr Jared Israel is making a career out of denying a Holocaust. We are all here Holocaust deniers. What of it?"

  This is an absurd play on words. The term "Holocaust denier" does not refer to a someone who says that a particular event was not a Holocaust, it refers to somebody who denies the existence of an event that was in fact a Holocaust. If we say that the Serbs did not carry out a Holocaust, we are denying a lie. If we say that the slaughter of Jews in WWII is greatly exaggerated, then we are denying a Holocaust.

  It is an outrageous statement to say that everybody on this list is a Holocaust denier. On the contrary. This list is devoted to telling the truth about Yugoslavia. Please do not confuse us with the neo-fascists who try to minimize what was done to the Jews in WWII.

  
  
  Francisco Gil-White
  Pennsylvania

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 3:40 pm
  Over [three-quarters] of the federal budget in Washington's time was spent on various methods of killing Indians and taking their land -- intentional genocide is a whole other subject for another time -- and you can see how, at the dawn of the 20th century, those 12-15 million Indians were reduced to just [250,000]

  Is this also holocaust denial? Was this also "ethnic cleansing"? Clean up your own actions before you judge somebody else.
  
  Dakic Ana
  Serbia

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 3:48 pm
  Gentlemen,

  Making a parallel between Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the conflict in Yugoslavia is not productive.

  Although Hague is labeled as an “International Court of Justice” I do not know whether legally precedents will be usable in the process.

  The other drawback is that Israel-Arab conflict is not too well known to us from Yugoslavia.
  
  D Jovanovic
  USA

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 4:05 pm
  Just for the record, the issue of Francisco (and my) writings on the Middle East was raised on this discussion list by Dennis Revell, to whom Francisco responded. Regarding the focus of this list, Yugoslavia, let me make a comment about Slavs and Nazism. First of all, there is overwhelming evidence that during World War II the Serbs *as a people* a) fought the Nazis b) were themselves the target of Nazi extermination policies and c) defended the Jews. That of course doesn't mean there couldn't be Serbian anti-Semites. Second, of course some Slavs, or even this or that Slavic nation, can "ally" or seemingly ally with Nazis. But taking Slavs as a people, or more correctly as a collection of related peoples, Nazism was an unmitigated disaster - as was the neofascism that attacked Yugoslavia in the 1990s. While not downplaying the role - and social base - of fascism in Croatia, it is legitimate to ask: have even ordinary Croats benefited? I think not. *That* is Mr. Milosevic's point. He talks some about this in the interview, 'What is my Offense?'
  
  Jared Israel
  USA

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 4:11 pm
  Correction: In my last remarks on "Holocaust denial" I thought I was responding to Louis Jensen when in fact I was responding to Joseph Crow. My apologies
  
  Francisco Gil-White
  Pennsylvania

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 4:30 pm
  Dakic

  Yes, I believe this was ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. Dehumanization of an entire race.

  Mr Gil-White

  I'm sorry, but you can't have it both ways. You can't throw into question the conventional wisdom about the details of Milosevic's supposed genocide and then claim that the details of the Jewish Holocaust are beyong discussion.

  Was there a Jewish Holocaust? Absolutely. (don't forget there were many other Nazi holocausts). I see the evidence of it regularly in my hospital. Jews with numbers on their arms. Jews who lost family members in concentration camps. You don't have to tell me the extent of the crimes in WWII because I continue to see it in 2003.

  Exactly how is "claiming that the slaughter of Jews in WWII is greatly exaggerated" a denial of a Holocaust? On an intellectual basis, you're on shaky ground. Dakic Ana has just given the number of 12 to 14.75 million Indians (15 mil minus 250,000). Is this number now beyond discussion? As I'm sure you're well aware, everybody plays the numbers game. From mild exaggeration to outright lies (500,000 Kosovo Albanian males?), everyone plays the numbers game. Why is the number 6 million so sacred that it can't even be discussed? I'd love to hear a discussion of how that number was arrived at. Perhaps you'll enlighten us here.

  What scares Zionists like yourself to death is an honest discussion about the WWII Jewish Holocaust. It must remain completely taboo. Because if people understood the Zionist mentality and the contribution of Zionists like yourself toward the Jewish Holocaust itself (800,000 Hungarian Jews needlessly sent to slaughter by Rudolf Kastner), your cause would suffer tremendously.

  I know full well what happened to a massive number of Jews in WWII because I see it on a regular basis. What I also see is the predudice of Zionists and Orthodox Jews (not all) against secular Russian Jews. I see the Hassidic community regularly extort money out of Russian Jews. But you don't want anyone to talk about this. You don't want people to know the similarities between Zionism and Nazism (they understood each other and got along well) and, as I said, the contribution of Zionists towards the ethnic cleansing of Jews (1600 Zionists spared at the expense of 800,000 secular Hungarian Jews slaughtered). So discussion must end. Ben Hecht's (wonderful American playwright/screenwriter) book Perfidy becomes nearly impossible to find. Jim Allen's play Perdition must be run out of town. Scares you to death the idea that people might know all of this. You have to accuse the messenger of being anti-semetic. You'll do anything to shut them up. So someone like myself has to resort to reporting a Jew saying the exact same thing. Does that make anything I said more or less true?

  Read what the Rabbi Weissmandl website has to say about how Zionists shut down the play Perdition down in London in 1987.

  http://www.weissmandl.org/book_Text/Uri_Davis/CrossingTheBorder_pt1.htm

  Unlike you, most of us here don't claim to own the truth. We're not afraid of discussion. And we don't have an agenda. We want to know the truth about what happened and what's going on today and how the two relate. So sway us with facts. Knock us over with your arguments. But, please, spare us the shameful McCarthyisms.

  
  
  josef crow
  New York
  NY

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 5:07 pm
  

  Tito's partizans included Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Muslims (there was even a Communist Muslim group) Macedonian, Montenegrins, Albanians, just to name a few and they all fought the German, Italian Nazi and fascist. Hitler despised all Slavs but don't kid yourselves he despised even more the communists and when they marched on the USSR and captured millions of WPO their first victims out of their ranks were, in this order, communists, political commissars and Jews shot on the spot.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Shangri-La

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 5:20 pm
  

  Shameful McCarthyisms?

  Perhaps I should point out the obvious: you attacked Jews for being supposedly greedy and you defended Holocaust deniers. Then you got called an antisemite. It seems to me you got what you deserved. Calling a spade a spade and a "McCarthyism" are hardly the same thing.

  Kindly spare me the melodrama.

  Now you say that the Holocaust really did happen. Why, many thanks! But you immediately point out that there are all sorts of bad Jews out there and that I supposedly don't want to talk about it. Say what? Again, let me point out the obvious: you are using non-sequitors in order to again attack Jews. There certainly does appear to be a pattern, and quite a lot of passion on your part.

  The longer this goes on, the better we will get to know you, I suppose.

  
  
  Francisco Gil-White
  Pennsylvania

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 5:22 pm
  Apologies, my last post is in response to Joseph Crow, which I neglected to point out.
  
  Francisco Gil-White
  Pennsylvania

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 8:01 pm
  Mr Milosevic no doubt knows that Croats are Slavs. Where does Israel think Croats come from - Germany? In case Israel thinks he can get off easily perhaps he might explain to us who Ljotic was? Maybe he can tell me what land that is todays Sijam building in Belgrade was used for in second world war? Maybe Mr Israel might expalain statistics of Jews in Serbia at the start of second world war and after. Jewish Serbs made a greater sacrifice than civilian Serbs in second world war. That debt is remembered by deep Serbian sympathy for jews today. What was lost is reason just why Serbs had such sympathy. What Serbian jews need is complete facts about second world war Nedic and so on. We still dont have them and no amount of blowing trumpet for emperors clothes or talk of eternal victims will help

  Mr. Rabinovic, perhaps you had better stop falsifying history, since what you have just posted is a supreme absurdity? If you will talk about individuals such as Ljotic, we can also talk about individuals such as Kastner and Kvaternik (Jews). Where would we get that way? Yes, some Slavs were allied with fascism and others opposed it, like everyone else. The point is that the German variety of fascism invoked a racial theory in which Jews were fiends and Slavs were subhuman. That is why the Slavs should be singled out from many other European peoples. And everyone knows that the Partisans were 90-95% Serb, not Jewish or Croatian.

  I truly wonder whether you were perhaps surprised to see people discuss the Serbian GENOCIDE (i.e. Jasenovac etc.) as such. Perhaps it disturbed you, since it makes the Holocaust an event among several (the Serbian, Armenian, Gypsy, Rwandan, etc. genocides). Which, unfortunately, makes you use of this as a tool in squelching anti-Zionist opinions (such as Josef Crow's) null and void.
  
  P M
  USA

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 8:06 pm
  Regarding Mr. Israel's (and several others') comments on Krajina.

  It was NOT genocide. You must distinguish between war crimes and crimes against humanity and outright genocide. Otherwise, the word loses its meaning. And if we accuse the Croats in the recent war of genocide, then we may certianly accuse the Serbs, Bosnian Muslims, Albanians, and NATO as well. Then it completely loses its meaning.

  Jasenovac and Auschwitz were genocide. Krajina was a vicious campaign of expulsion, accompanied by looting, arson, and murder, but was certainly NOT genocide.
  
  P M
  USA

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 9:53 pm
  

  Chief international war crimes prosecutor sworn in

  "There are so many divergent interests in the world today that there is not even consensus about the basic goal of punishing the authors of genocide," he said:

  "If we destroy the hopes and increase the misunderstandings, not only will we have failed as individuals but we also will have wasted efforts of more than a century and destroyed an institution essential to global peace."

  
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Shangri-La

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 10:07 pm
  How LM lost that trial I'll never understand

  English libel law is a trifle odd from a US perspective.

  by way of explaination....... LM in its article alleged that Penny Marshall intended to deceive using those images.

  The onus was on LM to prove Penny's intentional manipulation of the film. Hardly possible when the raw footage of Penny's tape mysteriously dissapeared.

  Penny's legal team was paid some 1 million pounds. LM spent perhaps 1/10 of that on its legal case.

  Finally, if one reads the Judges instructions to the Jury, it becomes abundently clear that LM firmly established that Penny lied. The Judge mades it obvious that he agrees with LM.

  However, LM failed to prove that the lie was intentional and therefore Penny 'wins'

  =============

  could we please stop with the MidEast digressions ?

  ==============

  Thank you Vera for your report on B-129 'secretary to Arkan....leader of the party of the center.......'
  
  Max Sinclair
  NY
  NY

• Monday June 16, 2003 at 10:51 pm
  Max Thanks for the explanation.

  But how does one ever prove the intentions of another individual? Or is that the point in English law, that one can claim someone did something, but one is not allowed to claim that the same person intended to do what they did?

  Sounds like an awful lot of unintended behavior going on over there...
  
  josef crow
  New York
  NY

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 12:27 am
  D Jovanovic,

  I agree with you. This business of dragging the Israel/Palestine conflict into this discussion is not productive.

  I have an idea, if you all want to discuss the Israel/Palestine conflict in a discussion about Milosevic then perhaps it should be discussed in terms of what Milosevic has said about that particular conflict.

  If it turns out that Milosevic never said anything about it then it would make sense not to say anything about it here. Tieing Milosevic to other issues, especially issues where he has never made his views known, is not right.
  
  Andy Wilcoxson
  Washington, United States

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 12:59 am
  Max I am not sure if LM lost because they could not prove intent. It seems to me that in civil action for libel the plaintiff must prove that they suffered some sort of LOSS because their reputation was lowered in the eyes of right thinking members of society. The idea of ‘sticks and stones” does not apply. Therefore, intent is not necessary in civil libel law.

  For an act to be criminal libel or seditious libel a specific person or a specific group must be exposed to hate, ridicule or persecution. The person or group must be identifiable. Let’s say the Serbs in Bosnia. Most people would be hard pressed to identify a Serb, Muslim or Croat on the street in Sarajevo. I am not sure if one can libel a nation in the mind of right thinking people. That said, lie always remains a lie. I stand to be corrected on the libel question?????
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops BC
  Canada

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 7:27 am
  P.M.

  Could you please explain, how you can take Jasenovac, or Jadovno .. out of Krajina?
  
  Pero Peric
  Canada

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 7:36 am
  Walter and Josef

  Regarding the LM case vs. Penny Marshall..........one should read the Judge's instructions to the Jury. It spells out in clear terms what the basis for the Jury's deliberations were.

  Beyond reading the Judge's instructions, we'll just get into a lengthy time wasting arcane discussion of English vs. US. vs. 'real' rule of law and frankly Scarlet I just don't give a d...

  The Judge's instructions to the Jury were posted somewhere in cyberspace, perhaps on E-C.
  
  Max Sinclair
  NY
  NY

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 8:52 am
  While accepting the apologies of Francisco Gil-White (who believed to respond to me, when in fact he was responding to Joseph Crow on some issue other than this socalled "trial") I take this opportunity to second the suggestion of Gogol (on June 16, 2003 at 6:03 am, later supported by several others) that "the holocaust and the present conflict in the Middle East be discussed only as reference in this forum".

  Dear Josef Crow:

  While mr. Nice and his collegues may believe, that "a list of names is all the prosecution needs to convict Milosevic", I am personally convinced, that they will eventually be proven in fatal error on this point.

  There is no reason for us to accept neither the "Schedule A" nor the Indictment's tale on Racak, to which it is attached, - however not clearly related!

  Quite on the contrary! I believe, that we, the public, have every reason to challenge the Hague Prosecution on this crucial point:

  If mr. Milosevic were in fact guilty as charged with regard to the alleged "massacre" at Racak on 15 January 1999, that (in my understanding) would be "enough" for his conviction. If on the other hand even this crucial count, which was announced by US/NATO as a direct "casus belli" (1), proves to be without much substance, then the entire case against mr. Milosevic falls. (1) NATO's statement of 28 January 1999 (which threatened air strikes on FRY territory if steps were not taken to bring "those responsible (for the "massacre at Racak") to justice").
  
  Godfred Louis-Jensen
  Copenhagen
  D E N M A R K

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 9:29 am
  
  The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

  Like many in this forum I believe that a comparison of the Nato advanced Albanian incursion of Kosovo with the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is proving unhelpful. But there is a Jewish connection that could prove productive - if we don’t destroy it!

  The destruction of Serbia and the annexation of it province of Kosovo was not called ‘Madelaine’s War’ for nothing. Albright’s assistant was James Rubin and the Secretary of State for Defence was William S Cohen. There is no escaping the fact that people of Jewish ethnicity led the destruction of Serbia in support of an Islamic terror campaign. Others like Eli Wiesel trades his prestige in order to justify this attack by giving hearsay ‘evidence’ against Milosevic in this corrupt court.

  As was pointed out, when this incomprehensible fact dawned on me, every group has its good and its bad: But so many bad in such prominent positions?

  The good, among many referred to in this forum, include Jared Israel and I quote from his letter ‘Fighting Misinformation’:

  The Serbs, who lost 750,000 to Holocaust extermination camps because they refused to help Hitler round up the Jews during W.W.II are justifiably appalled that some Jewish organizations have helped demonize them. Amazingly, this has not yet produced widespread anti-Semitism. When I spoke at a protest rally in Washington, April 24, to a crowd including perhaps 10,000 Serbian Americans, I began my speech by saying: "I am a Jew." What I can only describe as a roar of welcome sprang from 10,000 throats. I condemned the war and the avalanche of anti-Serb lies in the press. After the speech I was thanked by literally hundreds of people. Many told me how their families had hidden Jews from the Nazi's how they had been taught that Serbs And Jews are brothers. My writings attacking the Protocols Of Zion are universally approved by Serbs. These people are anti-Semites? Right, and I'm the Easter bunny.

  Clearly local invective is being aimed in the wrong direction. A legitimate target for example would be James Rubin: During the Blair Bush war on Iraq Rubin was wheeled out regularly by Blair’s BBC to comment upon events. At least on one occasion he referred to ‘Milosevic’s genocide in Kosovo’!

  I continue to be baffled by the motives of Albright and her colleagues’ in their support for Islamic terror in the Serbian province of Kosovo: Even though these terrorists were driving Jewish people out to their homes there!

  Most leaders of Jewish-American organisations supported the bombing of Serbia, in support of an Islamic terror campaign which included Mujahedin and elements of al-Qaeda- Israel’s sworn enemies - while the Serbs under those bombs, as in WW2, took in Jewish refugees from Albanian Islamic terror driving them out of Kosovo. Does no one else see how I can’t get my head round this?

  Supporting the many good Jewish people who denounce those amongst them who continue to hound the Serbian people with their lies is surely the way forward. A few more like Jared Israel would haul in the likes of Rubin and this trial would then collapse.

  The Ugly: Islamic terror and its leaders Thaci and Company who Cohen, Albright, Rubin, Wiesel, Blair and his cronies continue to support in Kosovo.
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 10:04 am
  To agree with others who say that Israel is off topic but just one thing. Mr Crow your argument seems logical for me and I dont understand Mr Gill-White reaction. This kind of discussion is very important and I would say is productive but not relevant here. Can I suggest to you Mr Crow to send a letter to have it published in Emperors clothes for readers to see?

  Mr Jaramaz Your arguments are contradictory you cannot say first that media was more balanced and better (that Soros money allowed) and then straight after say that he didnt do good for Serbian media. Dont misunderstand me he did good by accident. Argument that his intentions are not good can be agreed but as result of his interference we have a better media today.

  For example if I had not watched B92 TV Sunday night I would never know that BK news did not have Stolic murder on the night when the family was murdered in cold blood in Kosovo. Instead BK thought the public should be mobilised in propoganda campaign against Mr Dinkic the national bank governor. Mr Karic when asked about it replied that he worked in Austria and Germany... Surreal? And that fool Karic is from Kosovo! But a real scandal, BK is 2nd most received public station. They and Pink the TV with best equipment and most popular are working hard for DOS or not even DOS but Democratic Party. The government is trying to make sure B92 dont get liscense to broadcast around the country so only BK and Pink will get frequencies. Before that Pink propoganda technique to attack Covic on Popovic's orders because Ceda Jovanovic used to assort with Zemun criminals and Covic was too open about that. BK and Pink are used in crude way. We have no alternative but to support B92, Studio B. They are not in any way perfect. Let me give you example to show you. B92 in early eveing news on day of refusal to give Milutinovic bail did not report this fact. This is most serious error / ommision of truth I have seen on B92 for a time but there has been no propoganda campaign against any politician on B92 or studio B for another political party.

  Popovic was under enough pressure from Europe with Serbian government and he could not just ban any newspaper just like that. Now he is using the old tactics of calling up editors to put pressure on.

  Your list omits RTS and you dont include any (1) TV stations on the opposition side. Studio B was only received by Belgrade area anyway and half the time controlled by government, Draskovic and Seselj. To show that Im not complete pro opposition freak will say that BK TV just sometimes would report on opposition protest or something RTS, Politika etc would not. That was very rare but it happened.

  To today. We have at least 3 new newspapers on market. One is called Balkan in same type headline style to Nacional. Maybe they are some of same journalists I dont know. But Balkan is 10 times better than Nacional. It has gossip but also serious news and few times I bought it it attacked Zarko Korac and Zivkovic. The other two newpapers maybe Vera looked at. If you are interested I will look at them sometime these days to tell you what position they take. So this is a similar thing. State of Emergency (Soros) no it wasnt fair but sometimes by mistake it improves media.
  
  s Radovanovic
  S

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 10:25 am
  The Indictment dated 22 May 1999 has it, that:

  "Beginning on or about 1 January 1999 and continuing until the date of this indictment, forces of the FRY and Serbia, acting at the direction, with the encouragement, or with the support of Slobodan MILOSEVIC, Milan MILUTINOVIC, Nikola SAINOVIC, Dragoljub OJDANIC, and Vlajko STOJILJKOVIC, have murdered hundreds of Kosovo Albanian civilians. These killings have occurred in a widespread or systematic manner throughout the province of Kosovo and have resulted in the deaths of numerous men, women, and children. Included among the incidents of mass killings are the following:

  a. On or about 15 January 1999, in the early morning hours, the village of Racak (Stimlje/Shtime municipality) was attacked by forces of the FRY and Serbia. After shelling by the VJ units, the Serb police entered the village later in the morning and began conducting house-to-house searches. Villagers, who attempted to flee from the Serb police, were shot throughout the village. A group of approximately 25 men attempted to hide in a building, but were discovered by the Serb police. They were beaten and then were removed to a nearby hill, where the policemen shot and killed them. Altogether, the forces of the FRY and Serbia killed approximately 45 Kosovo Albanians in and around Racak. (Those persons killed who are known by name are set forth in Schedule A, which is attached as an appendix to this indictment.)

  Schedule A (Persons Known by Name Killed at Racak - 15 January 1999):

  ASLLANI, Lute 30 Female AZEMI, Banush Male BAJRAMI, Ragip 34 Male BEQIRI, Halim 13 Male BEQIRI, Rizah 49 Male BEQIRI, Zenel 20 Male BILALLI, Lutfi Male EMINI, Ajet Male HAJRIZI, Bujar Male HAJRIZI, Myfail 33 Male HALILI, Skender Male HYSENAJ, Haqif Male IBRAHIMI, Hajriz Male IMERI, Hakip Male IMERI, Murtez Male IMERI, Nazmi Male ISMALJI, Meha Male ISMALJI, Muhamet Male JAKUPI, Ahmet Male JAKUPI, Esref 40 Male JAKUPI, Hajriz Male JAKUPI, Mehmet Male JAKUPI, Xhelal Male JASHARI, Jasher 24 Male JASHARI, Raif 20 Male JASHARI, Shukri 18 Male LIMANI, Fatmir 35 Male LIMANI, Nexhat 19 Male LIMANI, Salif 23 Male MEHMETI, Bajram Male MEHMETI, Hanumshah Female METUSHI, Arif Male METUSHI, Haki 70 Male MUSTAFA, Ahmet Male MUSTAFA, Aslani 34 Male MUSTAFA, Muhamet 21 Male OSMANI, Sadik 35 Male SALIHU, Jashar 25 Male SALIHU, Shukri 18 Male SHABANI, Bajrush 22 Male SMAJLAI, Ahmet 60 Male SYLA, Sheremet 37 Male SYLA, Shyqeri Male XHELADINI, Bajram Male ZYMERI, Njazi Male

  I have a few queries concerning the relation between the tale and the schedule of victims, including:

  - Which of the persons named in Schedule A are proven to be "villagers" of Racak? And which of these are proven to be present there on 15 January 1999?

  - Which of those listed "were shot throughout the village (while attempting to flee from the Serb police)"?

  - Which 25 of the 43 men listed "attempted to hide in a building, but...were removed to a nearby hill, where the (Serb) policemen shot and killed them"?

  - Why and how did up to (43-25=) 18 persons who were reportedly "shot throughout the village" (but were apparently nowhere to be seen when the KVM entered the village) end up in this "nearby hill" (to which William Walker was led on the following morning)?

  Now, I can think of many other questions, which need to be answered by the Prosecution (even before discussing what is supposedly "systematic" about this particular incident at Racak). But if the Prosecution has not yet been able to answer these ones satisfactorily I would in fact dismiss the allegation of a "massacre" altogether.

  And why not then dismiss the entire "case" against Milosevic?
  
  Godfred Louis-Jensen
  Copenhagen
  D E N M A R K

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 10:39 am
  I don't think that Mr. Nice got everything he wanted from President Lilic.

  It was apparent that Lilic didn't think that Milosevic was any great politician, but he did not implicate him in any war crimes, nor would he say for Mr. Nice that Milosevic had control over the R.S. and R.S.K. authorities. Mr. Lilic also established that Milosevic reacted angrily when he heard that crimes were committed, and he said that Milosevic was involved with decisions that people committing crimes against civilians should be punished.

  If this is what we have from the examination-in-chief then the cross-examination should prove really interesting.
  
  Andy Wilcoxson
  Washington, United States

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 11:57 am
  VERY POWERFUL PIECE OF EVIDENCE THAT "RACAK MASSACRE" IS HOAX

  Racak was mentioned in several posts In the last few days (most notably in Godfred's informative and compelling today's 10:25 post). I take the opportunity to note an underappreciated forensic finding that effectively refutes the prosecution's "execution-style killing" hypothesis and can be easily understood by the public.

  The Finnish forensic team published a scientific report in Forensic Science International (2001), 116(2-3):171-185. The full text of the original publication can only be accessed from the above link by subscribed academic institutions and individuals, but a copy of the text (albeit without figures & tables) can be found elsewhere, e.g. in yahoo Kosovo forum.

  In the text we read: "Signs of contact or close-range firing were noted". In Table 3, only 1 out of 40 examined bodies is tabulated as being a case of "close-range or contact discharge" , and even this only as "probable close-range discharge". Therefore, no more than one of 40 bodies could have been victims of an execution-style killing, effectively refuting the execution theory.

  Milosevic, when cross-examining Helena Ranta, head of the Finnish forensic team and witness for the prosecution, did not comment on this point (although he did comment on other findings described in this scientific paper). I believe that he was simply unaware of this crucial detail. I want to bring the point to the attention of the forum participants because I believe it has great potential to alert the public to the fact that Racak was a hoax and to destroy the Racak indictment. Milosevic should call at least one of the authors of this scientific report as witness for the defense.
  
  Pythagoras Crotoniatis
  Greece

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 12:24 pm
  
  Godfred: Further to your recent post may I add that the indictment dishonestly claims that the killings at Racak were carried out in a “systematic manner” by leaving out the provocations described below by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Kosovo Verification mission:

  Racak is half a kilometre south of Stimlje town, and had a population of some 2,000 inhabitants prior to the 1998-99 population displacements. After the Serbian crackdown on the villages in the area in July 1998, during which houses and shops were looted and burnt, most villagers had left to live with family members located mostly in Stimlje and Urosevac. In January 1999 some 350 villagers remained in Racak. The UCK was there, with a base near the power plant. The OSCE-KVM reported the following events leading up to the mass killing:

  On 8 January, the police informed the OSCE-KVM of a UCK attack on police vehicles near Dulje/Duhel, in Suva Reka municipality (west of Stimlje). An OSCE-KVM patrol already in the area heard the shooting and on going to investigate found that police vehicles had been ambushed. Two policemen were dead and another two were wounded - one of them died later in hospital. In the attack three Kosovo Albanian civilians travelling in a taxi which had inadvertently been driven into the ambush were also wounded. The ambush was well prepared: there was a camouflaged firing position for up to 15 men, which had been occupied for several days, and small arms, heavy machine- guns and rocket-propelled grenades were fired at the police convoy.

  On 10 January, another ambush was reported in Slivovo/Slivove, south of Stimlje, in Urosevac municipality, in which one policeman was injured and died later in hospital. The OSCE-KVM found evidence of an exchange of small-arms fire, but could not confirm whether there had been an ambush. Some 100 civilians had fled to the mountains and returned only after the 50-strong Serbian police force had left the scene.

  So there you have it. Four policemen dead, one policeman and three innocent civilians injured in ambushes carried out a few days earlier probably by KLA forces based near the power plant at Racak.

  Now what would any other security forces do but - legitimately - attack this terror base? We have the examples in Anglo/US reprisals against ambushes in Afghanistan and Iraq: I’ll spare you the bloody details!

  Read the Source
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 12:30 pm
  Godfred

  The case against Milosevic falls on its face the moment one scratches below the surface. Yes the whole case should be dismissed. They have a list of bodies and one witness. But Milosevic's trial is far away in the Hague and the story just isn't getting out.

  If I might, I'd only like to add a few other questions to your list:

  There was a TV news crew filming this firefight all day. Why didn't they see the Serbs taking the 25 men to the hill to be slaughtered?

  How did the Serbs manage this "massacre" in the midst of this firefight?

  Does anyone really think the Serbs would have the audacity or stupidity to commit mass murder when a TV news crew is in the village?

  The Serbs left the scene around 4PM after which OSCE observers returned to the village. If a massacre had occurred, why did no individual in the village (KLA or villager) think to mention that a massacre had occurred?

  If villagers were locked in their basements by the Serbs, how did they "witness" the men being taken up the hill. (I believe Milosevic did ask the one witness this question)?

  When Serbian officials returned from Pristina to Racak to deliver the corpses to their families, why did no families come to claim the bodies? (the officials had to return to Pristina)

  Witnesses described decapitations and mutilation of the bodies, yet forencic scientists found none of this. Are we then to believe the witnesses? Is this why there was only one witness at the trial?

  Peter Taylor

  Capturing the hearts and minds of American Jewish organizations was the master stroke of Rudder Finn - they're on record bragging about this accomplishment - by using the LM photo of an emaciated Bosnian (who I've read was actually a Serb and had TB) behind barbed wire at the supposed "death camp" and Newsday "journalist" Roy Guttmans timely disinformation campaign. It's revealing to go back and read the Newsday articles during that period and the tremendous fear and hype in this nation concerning this modern-day version of the Holocaust. Seems everyone (politicians and journalists) got in on the act to add their two cents.

  My own sense is that the CIA works very hard to plant just a few images or ideas into peoples minds that can be referred to at a later date ad nauseum. While most everyone here in the US thinks Milosevic is guilty of atrocities, etc., they can't really give any specifics. But they remember seeing that photo. So when Albright or Clinton stand up and say "we've all seen the photos" of blah blah blah, an emotional response is evoked and people fall into line in support of the next military adventure. Was the same with the Hill and Knowlton incubator story. Same with Srebrenica. Same with Racak. The general public doesn't have time (or desire?) to find the larger truth, but they do remember these few "atrocities" that they know to be true. And since this is all they know, they're left with confabulating the rest of the story - with a little help from our friends in the media.

  My apologies about the off-topic debate. But I can not understand being accused of predudiced for trying to find the truth and discriminate between good and bad. I could be equally charged with being anti-American because of my criticism of American ignorance, naivity and arrogance with regards to foreign policy. That was an emotional accusation commonly used (and still used today) to silence dissent and discussion during the McCarthy period. But I am not anti-American. I am American. And, as has been said through the years, dissent is the highest form of patriotism. Something many seem to have forgotten.
  
  josef crow
  New York
  NY

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 12:50 pm
  

  Read the (missing) Source
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 2:34 pm
  Josef Crow said this:

  My apologies about the off-topic debate. But I can not understand being accused of predudiced for trying to find the truth and discriminate between good and bad. I could be equally charged with being anti-American because of my criticism of American ignorance, naivity and arrogance with regards to foreign policy. That was an emotional accusation commonly used (and still used today) to silence dissent and discussion during the McCarthy period. But I am not anti-American. I am American. And, as has been said through the years, dissent is the highest form of patriotism. Something many seem to have forgotten.

  Mr. Crow, you did not try to discriminate between good and bad, you went out of your way to defend the common stereotypes that antisemites promulgate about Jews (e.g. greedy) and you defended Holocaust deniers. When called on it, you conceded that the Holocaust indeed happened (!) but then immediately went out of your way to say that there are all sorts of bad Jews out there.

  That's what you did. And if you think you will get away with such things on this list you are quite mistaken. If you do it again, I will point out what you are doing.

  I will not let stand the standard where antisemitic remarks can be made under cover of being "objective". What you did is obvious, and calling you on it does not constitute any form of McCarthyism. Opposing racist attacks and McCarthyism are hardly the same thing.

  Those on this list who would like the topics on this list not to be Israel or antisemitism can stop making such remarks. As you may recall, this all began with an attack by Dennis Revell on the writers at Emperor's Clothes for their position on Israel. We responded, and more controversy followed. Whoever finds this tiresome andoff-topic can drop it, of course. But whoever makes any kind of racist remark on this list should expect to be called on it, whether they make it against Serbs, against Jews, against Mexicans, whatever. I see no reason why anybody should play nice with racists, and it should certainly not be expected that politeness requires that racist remarks be tolerated.

  
  
  Francisco Gil-White
  Pennsylvania

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 2:39 pm
  About Racak, I noticed that Pythagoras Crotoniatis posted something about the Finish report on the Racak Massacre. For those of you who are interested in that report, and other material concerning Racak, it is all analyzed in detail in a piece of mine, very recently published on Emperor's Clothes.
  
  Francisco Gil-White
  Pennsylvania

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 2:51 pm
  re: Racak

  don't forget that during the Milosevic hearings the KLA commander for Racak testified that he gangpressed (er asked for "volunteers") Racak villagers to fight that day.

  Also don't forget that Racak was apparently a neutralist/anti-KLA village.

  It caqn't be conclusively determined at this time, but a reasonable supposition is that KLA rounded up locals and either threw 'em in the firing line and/or shot those who tried to run away.

  The guerilla technique of using a neutralist village as a battlefield is tried and true. The Viet Cong and Partizans both appear to have used this strategy to 'mobilize the masses'.
  
  AP V
  NY
  NY

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 3:09 pm
  At this link you can hear a recording of morning's broadcast on CBC RAdio, A feature about Srebrenica. http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2003/200306/20030617.html
  
  Nikole J
  Canada

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 3:16 pm
  Sorry -- I just checked -- don't know what happened to that picture of Mostar! So I'll be more clear.
  Go to the link I gave above.

  http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2003/200306/20030617.html

  click at
  Listen to The Current: Part 3

  
  
  Nikole J
  Canada

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 3:32 pm
  Well, josef, since you are interested in the truth, I am going to help you. You have quoted a couple of Jewish 'authors', including Moshe Dayan, via an Interview, (Read his book???) so I am sure you would be equally interested in the remarks of Prominent Arabs as to the Palestinian Refugees....

  Now, this is going to get a bit off topic but you can't go off topic, only until you get your point across, then decide that that is all that will be said on the matter.

  http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~peters/refugees2.html

  Palestinain Refugees invited to leave in 1948

  The people are in great need of a "myth" to fill their consciousness and imagination.... -- ***Musa Alami, 1948

  Since 1948 Arab leaders have approached the Palestine problem in an irresponsible manner.... they have used the Palestine people for selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and, I could say, even criminal. -- ***King Hussein of Jordan, 1960

  Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees... while it is we who made them leave.... We brought disaster upon ... Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave.... We have rendered them dispossessed.... We have accustomed them to begging.... We have participated in lowering their moral and social level.... Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon ... men, women and children-all this in the service of political purposes .... [36] --*** Khaled Al-Azm, Syria's Prime Minister after the 1948 war

  The nations of western Europe condemned Israel's position despite their guarantee of her security.... They understood that ... their dependence upon sources of energy precluded their allowing themselves to incur Arab wrath. --*** Al-Haytham Al-Ayubi, Arab Palestinian military strategist, 1974

  You have decided that the Arabs are a bunch of kids that are just bragging about exploits they have no capability to perform. ???

  Here is an interesting quote from a Pro-Palestinian Web site.

  >It is worth noting that even after five decades of ethnic cleansing, occupation, and dispossession the demographic ratio between Palestinians (8.2 million) and Israeli Jews (4.5-5 million) is still the same as it was in December 1947, which was (and still is) 2 to 1 in favor of the Palestinian people. However, for Israel to maintain its democratic "Jewish State", and above all its "Jewish character", it opted to ETHNICALLY CLEANSE 80% of the Palestinian people out of their homes, farms, businesses, boats, banks, ... etc.<

  Now, a couple of interesting things about that quote. I'll stick to the less interesting one for now. In Israel, Arabs outnumber Jews, 2-1. That is just in Israel. Hopefully the State of Israel will never be lulled into believing they can pose no real threat.

  For the OTHER interesting thing; reread the quote. Could have come straight from NATO or even one of your posts. Hint:The Palestinians must have had one heck of a birth record... Keep in mind that the ratio remained the same despite 80% of the Palestinians having been "ethnically cleansed".???????????????????

  BTW, The State of Israel refused to participate in the 'war' against Serbia. Their only paticipation was on a strictly Humanitarian basis. You really need to check your facts a bit more. The Arab States ORDERED the Palestinians to leave the new State of Israel before the war ever really got under way. Then when those same Palestinians started making trouble in Jordan and Syria, it should have become apparent to the world that they only wanted power, and didn't care who they got it from. Arab or Jew.

  Trouble is, Israel didn't back the Palestinians in their bid to take control of Jordan, but the Arabs did decide to back Arafat in his effort to push Israel into the sea. Never try to convince anyone that Arafat did not expect to do just that. He certainly repeated it often enough.

  Actually, when you stop to think about it, this is all ON topic. History has a great deal of relevance to any current event. Ever heard the old quote, "He who doesn't learn from the mistakes of History is doomed to repeat the." So if we allow History to be distorted by illegitimate 'quotes' and erroneous 'facts' and 'numbers', we really aren't going to learn anything.

  In other words, pretty much the same tactics that are being employed against Milosevic.
  
  Rebecka Justice
  Portland
  OR

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 3:52 pm
  Timeline for Racak.

  When NATO used Yugoslav police attempts to curtail KLA sabotage as a pretext to attack Serbs, the American public wasn't ready enough for war. Total losses on both sides, of 2,000 were a skirmish- scrub, not ethnic cleansing-- and German reports said Serbs weren't acting against Albanians (as an ethnic group) but only against the KLA and supporters.

  Then on January 15, '99 Serb police told American and Kosovo news sources they would arrest a KLA terrorist in Racak for killing a cop. AP newsmen followed police into a deserted town and into the midst of guerilla snipers.

  Filming from an overlooking hill (and later in the streets) reporters documented police under fire by KLA snipers in the woods. Finally police encircled the guerillas, killed 15 KLA (while the others escaped into the mountains) and confiscated one machine gun, four rifles, and 30 Chinese-made kalashnikov assault weapons before leaving with the AP team at 3:30 PM.

  By 4:40 French newsmen arrived, talked to international observers in orange vehicles, and saw them evacuate four slightly injured elderly people at 6 PM. That night, the KLA came back and claimed the village.

  By morning Kosovo newsmen returned and armed KLA escorted them to a ditch. Twenty-three bodies (mostly male) were stacked and William Walker, head of the US-Kosovo Verification Mission declared indignation at these atrocities by Serb police, and the Yugoslav army.

  "KLA said these men were marched to this ditch and executed with a bullet to the brain. This massacre is ethnic cleansing," Walker told the world.

  But the facts didn't match the horror. There were few shell casings and little blood at the massacre site and no one had seen anything close to the incident described.

  It would have been impossible amidst the sniper-bullets to calmly march people to the edge of town and shoot them. Besides the town had been almost empty. >P>Walker knew the 23 body massacre was staged ****(remember truck loads of his observers were there that day watching everything)****. (Not to mention the French Film crew)

  Where-ever the CIA is most heavily involved, Walker appears. He was our top man in Kosovo until the Yugoslav government ordered him out after this Racak massacre.

  (Walker's personal history makes deception possible. He ran the anti-Nicaragua Contra War for Ollie North and Elliott Abrams. Walker's bogus Ilopango Air Base humanitarian mission was a cover to fly weapons to the Contras and run drugs to the US. He was also ambassador in El Salvador during the worst death squad massacres, including killings of American Jesuit Priests by School of Americas graduates.) Where they have now come up with (40) is a mystery. Also, no females or children were included in earlier accounts??? Seems like they would be able to count the bodies and note their gender and age, more carefully, at the time or shortly after. Oh, I see. The others were buried so deep that they just now dug them up.....
  
  Rebecka Justice
  Portland
  OR

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 4:03 pm
  Headline on Yahoo. Did you think it couldn't happen here? Did we think Milosevic's 'trial', was scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as "Justice" was concerned?

  Court Backs Secrecy for 9/11 Detainees

  1 hour, 27 minutes ago Add White House - AP Cabinet & State to My Yahoo!

  By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer

  WASHINGTON - The government properly withheld names and other details about hundreds of foreigners who were detained in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday, deferring to administration warnings about continued threats from terrorists.

  If you didn't see all our supposed rights just fly out the window, you are blind. Not even a mention of a trial...... and no 'end' in sight. I wonder who gets to be next???
  
  Rebecka Justice
  Portland
  OR

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 4:40 pm
  Finnish team: No close-range firing in Racak
  Professor Francisco Gil-White's Racak analysis in Emperor's Clothes is extremely informative and thorough. Emperor's also has a link to the original Finnish team Racak article in pdf format. Among the abundant evidence that the "Racak massacre" is a hoax, I have dwelled on the lack of "close-range firing" as one of the few single pieces of evidence that is conclusive, simple and could easily make a headline in the mainstream press if promoted. Gil-White is among the few who have appreciated its value. Milosevic, on the other hand, appears to have been unaware of it, as judged by his dwelling on less clear-cut points, but NOT this one, during his cross-examination of Dr. Helena Ranta.
  
  Pythagoras Crotoniatis
  Greece

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 5:08 pm
  

  Francisco,

  You said:

  Those on this list who would like the topics on this list not to be Israel or antisemitism can stop making such remarks. As you may recall, this all began with an attack by Dennis Revell on the writers at Emperor's Clothes for their position on Israel. We responded, and more controversy followed. Whoever finds this tiresome andoff-topic can drop it, of course. But whoever makes any kind of racist remark on this list should expect to be called on it, whether they make it against Serbs, against Jews, against Mexicans, whatever. I see no reason why anybody should play nice with racists, and it should certainly not be expected that politeness requires that racist remarks be tolerated.

  In all fairness to Dennis Revell I have to point out that wasn't him who brought the subject up to him forum, but Jared Israel when he had to tell us how indignant he was about Ramsey Clark for not having clarified his positions as not being a defence council for Slobodan Milosevic. In his attacking of Ramsey Clark he mentioned the fact Ramsey Clark had defended a Muslim scholar, event he considered the most damaging for the reputation of Slobodan Milosevic. Now, that brought about quite a reaction not only for distorting what Ramsey Clark said and the context in which such questions were put. I repeat jared Israel, not Dennis Revell.

  Second I have to say your comments and Jared's about Islam are certainly more than border line with religious intolerance, if not outright racist. Your vociferous denunciation of others alleged faults should perhaps begin with you exercising a little bit of self criticism.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Shangri-La

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 5:39 pm
  

  Gogol,

  If you think I made a religiously intolerant remark, you can point it out. You didn't, you just made an accusation in the abstract.

  You accuse Jared Israel of distorting Ramsey Clark's remarks? Well, here are the linksto everything Emperor's Clothes has recently published on Ramsey Clark:

  http://emperors-clothes.com/milo/ramsey1.htm

  http://emperors-clothes.com/milo/ramsey2.htm

  http://emperors-clothes.com/ramsey/ramsey3.htm

  If you would like to defend the argument that Ramsey Clark has not been attacking Milosevic I am sure everybody on this list will find your arguments very interesting.

  
  
  Francisco Gil-White
  Pennsylvania

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 5:56 pm
  

  So be it.

  
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Shangri-La

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 6:21 pm
  Fellow members of this Forum,

  I would like to clarify my opinion that Israeli-Arab conflict should not be the subject of this Forum.

  While stating that position I want you to know that my sympathy is with Israelis. Ever since I heard the first hand description of what has happened in 1947 from a fellow student at the University of Chicago I developed empathy for the little, brave state of Israel. That combined with witnessing my best friend and school mate Josif Levi being taken to Sajmiste and gassed, was enough to create in me an immutable empathy for Israel.

  What is hard to understand is that beside Clinton, all key people in high administrative position who strongly advocated the bombing of Serbs were Jews: Albright, Cohen, Clark, and senators Lieberman, and many others. That hurts and I do not forgive them.

  I can not just attribute this position of these people on ignorance. They knew. What other “higher principles” they were upholding is a mystery to me.

  Since I am not religious I could not say that the present demise of Israel is “God punishment” for these acts, I can only contemplate.
  
  D Jovanovic
  USA

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 8:25 pm
  

  Mr. Jovanovic,

  You are indeed correct that several prominent Jewish individuals and organizations were mobilized to demonize the Serbs and apologize for the fascists among the Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians. However, it is important to note that "The Jews" did not do this - some individuals did.

  The public relations company Rudder Finn was responsible for this campaign against the Serbs. James Harff, the director, himself bragged to French journalist Jacques Merlino, that Rudder Finn's entire propaganda campaign was predicated on the moral authority of Jews who took to condemning the Serbs. Why? Because the whole point of the propaganda was to turn the world upside down and portray the traditional enemies of the fascists, the Serbs, as the new Nazis, and the traditional allies of the Nazis as the new victims of fascism (much like what is happening with the portrayal of the conflict in the Middle East, where the Palestinians, whose leaders are fascists with an ideology nurtured by participation in Hitler's Final Solution, are presented as victims of the people they say they wish to exterminate!). In order to turn the world upside down in this manner, Rudder Finn needed the moral authority of the victims of the Holocaust.

  I have just published an analysis of how the world was turned upside down in Bosnia and the shameful role that the influential French-Jewish philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy played in it.

  But let us be clear: most Jews are not collaborators with the NATO empire, and they do not know what really happened in Yugoslavia. Although some individual Jews knowingly lied (Lévy is an example), so did prominent members of other ethnic groups. In fact, quite a few Serbs are treasonously collaborating with the destruction of Serbia, but this cannot justify an indictment of "The Serbs". And, as James Harff himself explained, it was necessary to use fabrications and disinformation in order for the portrayal of the Bosnian Muslims as victims to succeed, because otherwise most Jews would have rebelled.

  Finally, the fact remains that Israel sided with the Serbs, despite all of the propaganda.

  
  
  Francisco Gil-White
  Pennsylvania

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 9:22 pm
  

  And I wonder what category of Jews Mr. Sharon and the Likud party represents.

  It is interesting Francisco claim's:

  (much like what is happening with the portrayal of the conflict in the Middle East, where the Palestinians, whose leaders are fascists with an ideology nurtured by participation in Hitler's Final Solution, are presented as victims of the people they say they wish to exterminate!

  Is this not demonizing a whole nation by any chance? Was not Saddam Hussein also a Hitler, very much like Slobodan Milosevic also demonized by those individuals working in the administration of Bill Clinton as a Hitler, but obviously any one having any remote or alledged connection with Hitler is doomed. Palestinian children included. Is that it?
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Shangri-La

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 10:19 pm
  Gogol Charlemagne,

  That "Muslim scholar" you spoke of is Abdel Rahman, the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

  Abdel Rahman connected to the Third World Relief Agency (TWRA), which was an Al-Qaeda front organization that funneled arms to the Bosnian-Muslims durring the war.

  It is interesting that you consider it to be "religious intolerance, if not outright racist" when somebody objects to the making of a connection between Muslim terrorists and Slobodan Milosevic.
  
  Andy Wilcoxson
  Washington, United States

• Tuesday June 17, 2003 at 10:24 pm
  I would like to know the evidence on which Mr. Gil-White bases his assertion that "Israel sided with the Serbs." My recollection is that Israel supported NATO's 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia. In addition, Diana Johnstone in her superb book, "Fool's Crusade," recounts Israel's involvement in the clandestine arming of Croatia during the 1990s.

  Israel's sale of arms to Slovenia in 1995 can be read here: http://www.aimpress.org/dyn/trae/archive/data/199804/80429-030-trae-lju.htm

  In 1995, of course, Slovenia, with US assistance was busily arming the Croats in preparation for Operation Storm.
  
  Robert Hessen
  Seattle
  Washington