MILOSEVIC TRIAL DISCUSSION ARCHIVE

Is Slobodan Milosevic getting a fair trial?
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• discussion archive

• Wednesday October 09, 2002 at 1:36 am
  RE: The Jewish role in evoking Holocaust similes.

  Ruder-Finn started a PR avalanche banking on the attention factor, and boy did they reap handsome results! Those Jews who welcome any attention to their painful past by way of phony similes whenever a new international conflict hits the fan ought to have been more careful about giving legitimacy to fraudulent imagery parallels.

  They ought to have exercised extra caution not to be pawns in public relations games whenever the Holocaust card is yanked out by those dishonest and cynical players whose interests the Jewish experience ultimately intends to serve. Instead, they ought to have remembered who their comrades in misery and their enemies were during the years of suffering. During WW II Serbs were the staunchest fighters against Nazism in Europe, and were slaughtered by hundreds of thousands along with Jews. At the same time Bosnian Muslims and Albanians were serving in Muslim Waffen SS divisions set up by Germans following the recommendation of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to Hitler in 1943.

  Jews, having paid a dear price during Holocaust, should not sell its memory cheap. Instead we have been had by the types of Tom Lantos, the friend of Albanians, Joe (“KLA”) Lieberman (“the KLA represent our values”), Susan Sontag milling in the besieged Sarajevo rehearsing O’Neill plays at candlelight for CBS camera crews, and Elie Wiesel, the self-styled prophet of tolerance and the vastly overrated expert in suffering, etc.

  The suffering of one man or, for that matter, one people ought not to carry more value than that of other. Not a big deal, mind you, but 30 million Russian lives lost 1941-1945 years. Anyone impressed yet? Hello?!

  We allowed one people to have a monopoly of victimhood and let the public relations value of any suffering to become an institution to itself.

  More importantly, those burdened with tragic experiences, like Wiesel himself, ought to exercise extra caution not to be pawns in public relations games whenever the Holocaust card is used by those dishonest and cynical players who are in the game for political expediency. Sharing the podium with the late Franjo Tudjman, one of the most notorious WWII-revisionists of our times and a crypto-fascist at the opening of the Holocaust Memorial in Washington D.C. in 1993, calling for military intervention in Bosnia was one of lowest points of Wiesel’s career as a great humanitarian and ethicist.

  In sync with the geopolitical aims of our imperial masters, the PR firms, political strategists, politicians, the media end up clamoring for the blessing of those who hold the Holocaust cards - they have to be leased for any next campaign, intervention, or war as an unbeatable PR ace. Holocaust similes need to be sanctioned by Those In Charge.

  Bosnia? Genocide. Barbed wire? Concentration camps, big time. Kosovo? Holocaust, yeah! Albanian refugees leaving to Macedonia by train? The TRAIN! Refugees? Ethnic cleansing, sure!

  The Holocaust authority underwrites it all, as it sees fit. Sometimes it does not see it fit though. Some mass killings are not so appealing as some other lesser or phony ones. U.S. Jewish groups lobbied the Congress on behalf of the Turkish government to prevent the “Armenian Genocide” resolution from passing: http://www.turkeyupdate.com/tu2000/res596.htm

  Those professional whiners and Holocaust-peddlers who are selling their people’s collective agony for cheap by pushing fraudulent and politically expedient analogies proved to be consistent in avoiding an obvious one: where has their compassion been while Palestinian refugees, forced out of their homes, have been living in Israel’s shadow in the last 50 years?

  Wish had more time. Gotta run.
  
  Andre Huzsvai
  U.S.

• Wednesday October 09, 2002 at 3:37 am
  Vera. You are right, there is no logic in this trial. The more I study the Bosnia and Croatia indictments, the more convinced I am that Milosevic had it right: these indictments are written by people with the mental capacity of a retarded 7-year-old. But that may be all the more reason to reiterate that there is no logic. Maybe it is Gogol who has persuaded me that maybe there is some fallout there somewhere, even if we don't see it. And even if this forum is just what it says, a discussion, there is no reason why it couldn't lead to something more "establishment"-like.

  Technically, this trial is about Milosevic's individual responsibility. If he manages to cleanse his name, the Serbian people will cleanse its name too. That was the thought behind my words.

  I think people are not so stupid as to believe that the verdict this tribunal reaches is the truth. And when one has a consistent and credible alternative explanation for what happened in the trial (and before that), who knows, someone might listen! And at least when Blair is gone (and Peter is quite right that he is now our biggest headache), the people will be eager to reassess the Clinton-Blair era.

  I am not torturing myself by trying to find a logic even if there is no logic. In fact at this point it is actually getting more fun to demolish the prosecution's case.

  First, why is this trial not held in Serbia? There we would have expert judges who have at least an idea who the members of the alleged "joint criminal enterprise" were. Now the prosecution has just heaped up a lot of exotic-sounding names in the Croatia and Bosnia indictments and called them a "joint criminal enterprise". Many people will buy their phony expertise. I for one cannot remember the last names of half of them, and when someone produces a long list of half-utterable Serbian names who am I to say that the prosecution has no idea what it is talking about? On the other hand, maybe it is the prosecution's idea that ignorance is a virtue, because ignorance immunizes the outsiders against the contamination of the sinister Serbian influences. They may even be willing to take the risk of sounding like retarded 7-year-old to the Serbs.

  In case I didn't manage to express my thoughts about this phony "joint criminal enterprise" clearly enough, here is another go. Let's take the analogy of the resignation of Kok's government as a sign of "collective guilt" over the Srebrenica "massacre". Kok and his ministers did this of their own volition, but the idea should be the same in the case of the "joint criminal enterprise". They have a collective guilt, and when they don't have the nerve to answer for what they've allegedly done, someone has to exert pressure on them from the outside. But since the guilt is collective, the pressure has to be somehow homogenous. For instance, when a government resigns, some ministers can't stay in the government. And when the prosecution prosecutes a joint criminal enterprise, some participants in the enterprise cannot be left uninvestigated. And that is exactly what has happened in this joint criminal enterprise. The prosecution had included Seselj's name in the list, but they entertained the idea of an investigation just a few weeks ago. I mean, how can his name be named in the connection of any criminal enterprise, even if it was a "joint" one, if the prosecution hadn't even opened an investigation? No wonder one has to take into account their possible retardation!

  The investigation is the bare minimum to establish someone's participation in the joint criminal enterprise. Before that is done, there is no reason for the prosecution to suggest that a joint criminal enterprise even existed! Another sign of retardation.

  But if the prosecution insists on the joint criminal enterprise, it should indict all the members. Has it done so in this case? Don't make me laugh! It hasn't indicted even half of the names it has mentioned in connection with the joint criminal enterprise. Then why has it included the names at all? Does it have any criteria, and if it does, what are they?

  The Bosnia and Croatia indictments contain more or less the same list of participants in this joint criminal enterprise. This is the first fishy thing. The Bosnia indictment thus includes Milan Martic, the president of the self-styled Krajina republic. In fact, he has already been convicted. He was convicted for using cluster bombs in the Zagreb bombing.

  This is like return to innocence in itself. These cluster bombs killed five people and injured several others, and Martic got indicted for this. Are we supposed to think that it was a coincidence that he was also the president of the Krajina republic, which the Western powers were eager to eliminate? And how stupid it now seems that Martic was convicted of causing five casualties by cluster bombs, when a few years later Nato caused many more deaths by these same weapons.

  But my point is: if Martic's "crime" is connected exclusively to the Zagreb bombing, why on earth should he be included in the joint criminal enterprise, the purpose of which was to remove Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims from Bosnia?

  Talking about the other members of the joint criminal enterprise, we already know Karadzic and Mladic, who have been indicted twice. We know Plavsic. We know Zeljko Raznatovic a.k.a Arkan. We should know Momcilo Krajisnik, who was an associate of Plavsic and who has now a joint indictment with Plavsic. Maybe the genocide charges against him will now be dropped as well (just kidding).

  But who these other guys: Borisav JOVIC, Branko KOSTIC, Veljko KADIJEVIC, Blagoje ADZIC, Jovica STANISIC, Franko SIMATOVIC, also known as "Frenki," Radovan STOJICIC, also known as "Badza"? I can't find their indictments anywhere. So why are they included in the joint criminal enterprise?

  Jovic was a member of the SFRY presidency, and hence "commanded, directed, or otherwise exercised effective control over the JNA and members of the TO and paramilitary units acting in co-ordination with, and under supervision of, the JNA" (§ 14). A great crime!

  General Veljko KADIJEVIC, as Federal Secretary for National Defence... directed, or otherwise exercised effective control over the JNA and other units acting in co-ordination with the JNA" (§ 15). A appalling crime!

  "General Blagoje ADZIC, in his capacity as JNA Chief of Staff ... commanded, directed, or otherwise exercised effective control over the JNA and other units acting in co-ordination with the JNA" (§ 16). A mind-boggling crime!

  "Jovica STANISIC, in his capacity as chief of the State Security (Drzavna bezbednost or "DB")... commanded, directed, or otherwise exercised effective control over members of the DB" (§ 17). An inexcusable crime!

  "Franko SIMATOVIC, also known as "Frenki," as head of the special operations component of the DB of the Republic of Serbia, commanded, directed, or otherwise exercised effective control over agents of the DB" (§ 18). Ooh, State Security, need I even say it!

  "Radovan STOJICIC also known as "Badza" as Deputy Minister of Interior of Serbia and head of Public Security Service, commanded, directed or otherwise exercised effective control over special forces of the Serbian MUP" (§ 19). The inclusion of this "Badza" is interesting because he hasn't been indicted, whereas his subordinate in the MUP, Borovcanin, recently has!

  Let me remind the prosecution of Art. 7(2) of the Statute: "The official position of any accused person, whether as Head of State or Government or as a responsible Government official, shall not relieve such person of criminal responsibility nor mitigate punishment." This means that if there is reason to suspect a person of a crime, the official position of the suspect should not be an obstacle for the prosecution. It doesn't say that a person should be a suspect just because of his official position. The prosecution has got it all wrong, like so many other things!

  But if it does include such persons in a joint criminal enterprise and mentions their names in an indictment of somebody else, it should at least produce some evidence for this inclusion. And this cannot be done until there is an investigation (this sounds so stupid I cannot believe it). If such investigation (if there ever was any investigation in this case, I don't know) points to a crime, an indictment should be issued. If not, their names should not be included in a joint criminal enterprise.

  In other words - if the prosecution still doesn't get it - there is no joint criminal enterprise! The prosecution bears this out by its own actions. First, there is no joint enterprise, because the prosecution has not taken some collective measures against the participants, like a joint investigation. It seems it has just studied the JNA and DB hierarchy in some official publication. Second, there is no individual responsibility, because the prosecution has not produced any individual investigations. Third, there is no reason to suppose that these people were involved in anything criminal, because their business was to uphold the law. They were JNA and DB men. It doesn't help if you include their aliases beside their names as if they were some mobsters (like the DB men "Frenki" and "Badza").

  So back to the question: why can't this trial take place in Serbia? Could it be that the Serbs would now that a member of the SFRY presidency is not necessarily a criminal? But maybe that is exactly why the trial cannot be taken to Serbia.

  On the other hand, the tribunal doesn't seem to regard the Yugoslav judicial system as "diseased throughout", because in Art. 24(1) the Statute says of the penalties: "...In determining the terms of imprisonment, the Trial Chambers shall have recourse to the general practice regarding prison sentences in the courts of the former Yugoslavia". Well well well. If the former Yugoslavia had sentences for the same crimes, why cannot the people be tried in Serbia? If the former Yugoslavia could act as a guidance for the tribunal, why did it have to be dissolved? Somehow I can't see the logic here.

  So if there was no joint criminal enterprise, Milosevic cannot be guilty, because he is prosecuted for his "participation in a joint criminal enterprise as a co-perpetrator" (§ 5).

  Besides, American criminal law breaks a crime down to actus reus (the criminal act) and mens rea (the criminal mind). There is no "actus reus" because there was no joint criminal enterprise. There is no "mens rea" because, as Milosevic argues, he was a peace-maker and recognized as such by the West. If his state of mind was that of a peace-maker, how could he have a "mens rea" necessary for the commission of these crimes?
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Wednesday October 09, 2002 at 5:25 am
  

  Frank, There was no audio for quite a long time. Then when Mr. Milosevic turn came the image went blank and the audio dead once again.

  Did someone blew a fuse once more or is it just pure incompetence?
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Wednesday October 09, 2002 at 8:54 am
  

  Nikola Smardzic is proven to by telling "untruths" by Mr. Milosevic who read him his speeches, minutes of the meetings, etc. Judge May (NATO) seems to have mellowed a bit towards him and rejected some of Mr. Nice (NATO) objections and "documents".

  If Kosovo was bad I think Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina is going to be a total disaster for Carla del Ponte.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Wednesday October 09, 2002 at 12:56 pm
  The Elie Wiesel connection sounds good. The reason I say this is because I saw him on TV after the Kosovo bombing had begun, and I was appalled that a Nobel Peace Prize winner could talk like that. I can't remember his exact words of course, but his message was: "Life is a bitch, so the bombing victims should stop whining".

  It just didn't make sense: Nobel Peace Prize winner and a holocaust survivor talking like that. But of course, if he had called for military intervention in Bosnia posing together with Tudjman, we should have seen it coming. Which is not to say that I can understand his motives better now.

  Maybe it tells something of this man that he has honorary doctorates from 77 universities (including one Finnish one) but no academic degree. Which leads to the question: is his accent real?

  As the Israelis have complained, there are those alternative Jews out there (meaning in their case the critics of Israel). The point is: what is the "Jewish opinion"? There were Jews were among those people who ran to the Palestinian gunmen who were holding hostages in the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem while the church was under siege by the Israelis a few months ago. Maybe these alternative Jews got the media's attention when the media needed them most in the Balkans imboglio (though Elie Wiesel wasn't perhaps the kind the Israelis meant by "alternative Jews").

  I remember reading somewhere that the Israelis themselves were not too happy with the Bosnia-type of genocide charges where a simple murder becomes genocide because the killer was a Serb and the victim was not. And read the schedules at the back of the Bosnia indictment to see that individual killings have indeed been qualified as genocide for that reason alone.

  James Harff may be telling the truth. But then again, he might not. If he was callous enough to boast B'nai B'rith and the ADL on his brainwashing list, saying his firm is not paid to be moral, he could just as well use his interview with the French journalist to achieve the desired publicity effect, even if he hadn't succeeded with the Jewish organizations. That would also explain the disappearance of the book that contained his interview (among other possible explanations).
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Wednesday October 09, 2002 at 9:20 pm
  Gogol, this is so decent of you to come up with the idea of sending written support to Milosevic; he surely could use some. But, think of the thousands and thousands of pages constantly unloaded upon him by the prosecution and of his nightly poring over them. I would like to be able to send him some more time for sleeping and walking in the fresh air.

  I remember that well-groomed old Dutch gentleman, carrying a bouquet of red roses, who was waiting in front of The Hague prison that night when Milosevic was brought in; but he was whisked off through the back door and the old Dutchman was not allowed to give him the flowers, nor to have them sent later on; this is what he angrily explained to the press people standing around, threw the flowers to the ground and walked away. A kidnapped man in an always-lit cell could not be comforted by roses.

  Where's our friend Frank with his "pretty humanely treatment of those in detention"? I cannot decide which of his understatements I like more: "pretty benign way of influencing elections" is also good. One of your posts, Frank, has a curious plural in the last sentence: "As for Mrs Plavsic, I spoke of age/health. We have no particulars about Mrs Plavsic's health, we do know that she is in her seventies." Care to explain who is "we"? And what were you doing in Beograd/Srbija on Saturday October 05, 2002 at 1:08 pm?
  
  Vera Martinovic
  Belgrade
  Yugoslavia

• Thursday October 10, 2002 at 2:54 am
  Hello there, This is a really varied and interesting forum you have here. A bit about myself. I was born in Australia, my parents are Croatian. I am proud to be of Croatian heritage. My family has been active in the Croatian Community here for over 30 years. To cut to the chase..... There has been a lot of talk about Ustasa here. I was brought up thinking Ustasa was good. I used to look upon the photos of Ante Pavelic in admiration. In my house there was a lot of Ustasa literature, and I read it and understood it (not very well) as being good and wholesome. It is not so. I regard the Ustasa as a quisling fascist government which had medieval type ambitions, and practices for achieving this. I also am ashamed that the Ustasa ever allied itself to the Nazis, who had no interest in the future of the Croatian people, and saw them as slaves and valuable workers. For all this I am truly sorry to any people who are still harmed and hurt by those purporting to be representative of Croats, through the mouthpiece of this abhorrent regime. I am ashamed of the Croatian Ustasa past, even though my father still prescribes by it. My family, and the Croatian Diaspora have been cut off from life in "the old country", and did not know what it was like there. When my relatives came to visit from Yugoslavia they loved their life, and my father would have arguments with them. I did not know what these arguments were about. Now I know, it was about armed struggle. I strongly agree that there was an element of right-wing nationalism (even fascism) in Croatia's politics at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, which mirrored the politics in Slovenia, Serbia and Bosnia. Nationalism is in the spectrum of politics which creates nations. As it was, Croatia had not ever been a legitimate nation, and with the break down of communism, this was its best chance to achieve it, with minimal struggle. Tudjman was a clever tactician, and he was a hard-line nationalist, not an ultra-nationalist (in that he did not want to destroy Serbian people in Croatia, such as those from the Croatian far-right, ie, the HSP). Tudjman used many of those in the far-right to make himself look moderate, just as Milosevic used Seselj to do the same. I doubt Tudjman wanted war, obviously he would have preffered a peaceful solution. Nor was he dumb to what was happening in Yugoslavia. He knew the Krajina Serb attitudes to an independent Croatia. He knew they feared it in relation to what occurred in WWII. However, he was not going to allow this to stop Croatia achieving independence (hence his hardline). Hence his attempts to arm the Croatians, which proved to be quite fruitless against the onslaught which followed. Secession from Yugoslavia, in my eyes, was the only logical move for Croatia to make; -politically, with the climate being so internationally favourable with the fall of communism in Europe -economically, with Yugoslavia in its 6th year of economic downturn, with unemployment at about 15%,and inflation at 2,600% -and in relation to the other republics of Yugoslavia, with the Slovenes pushing for independence, and with Milosevic's Serbia cracking down on its autonomous regions, and carrying out a purge of all anti-Milosevic officials there. I think there was a better way to pronounce independence. I think there was a more tolerant way as well. Perhaps a loose federation, such as with the CIS, which slowly would fall apart after all issues of import had been understood. Definately there was scope for less economic integration. One thing which did disturb me, and which ties in to my intial point. The Croatian democratic elections of 1990 allowed the votes of those Croats in the diaspora. As I mentioned before, these people were mostly of the hardline view. If I was of voting age I would have voted for Tudjman (without a Yugoslav passport), not because I knew what I was talking about, but because of all the Ustasa literature I had read, and of all the views of my father. Indeed Tudjman won the election with 200 of 350 seats. The problem is, the Croatian diaspora was accorded more seats in parliament than to those Serbs living in Croatia. What a message..What a mistake!!!!! One more point I have to raise, regarding the question of the Krajina. I understand the Serbs there wanted to protect their land and heritage. I also understand the reason for this, fearing Croatian domination of them, considering the recent past of WWII. I do not understand the methods they used to do so. My father's family is from a place in Lika. My ancestors have lived in a village there for well over 500 years. If the Serbian Republic of Krajina was still in existence there, I would not be allowed to visit the village of my heritage when I indeed go there, nor would my relatives still be there. Like I said before, there had to have been a better way. ....and just as I hold the Croatian run government of Tudjman at fault for raising tensions and fears among the Serbs there, I equally hold to blame the Serbs of Krajina for creating a Serb only state, which basically pushed all those non-hardline Croats (remember the seats were 200 of 350 for Tudjman, with only 10 seats going to the HSP) into becoming so. Indeed, I would not blame those Croats for defending their history as well, just as the Serbs of Krajina saw themselves as doing. I believe the Serbs there had no call of duty to establish Krajina in the fashion with which they did, and as far as defending their land, they went well beyond this, for throughout the Serbian peoples inhabitation of places such as Knin and Benkovac, there had always been a Croatian population there as well. In creating the SR Krajina they were actually destroying the past and creating a new history, as their past had a common history with those Croats who lived there. I also think, judging by the demolition of most of my father's village, the Croat side, they wished to do so. I accept all responsible responses to this. I only wish to express my view, and do not seek to push it onto any of you, so I would appreciate it if you would do the same in return. Thankyou, and continue your struggle for the fair and legitimate justice of Slobodan Milosevic. For he is not receiving any.
  
  Ivan Kokotovic
  Sydney
  NSW

• Thursday October 10, 2002 at 3:32 am
  Another possible explanation for the curious Plavsic plea agreement: Together with Momcilo Krajisnik she is called an associate of Karadzic. But where is Karadzic? It is no use elaborating on the "joint criminal enterprise" if you can't try at least the key figures - like Karadzic. And it seems Karadzic won't be caught. So to save money (and the energy which is needed to nail Milosevic) the prosecution cut off this branch of the "joint criminal enterprise". Which meant Plavsic wasn't important any more.

  But it would seem that if you cut off one branch of this "joint criminal enterprise" you cut off all of it. The Bosnia and Croatia indictments would then be unfounded, because Milosevic's responsibility rests solely on the assumption of a "joint criminal enterprise". Besides, you can omit any other associate of Milosevic but not Karadzic, because he was supposedly Milosevic's right-hand man in Bosnia.

  But here I am at a loss again: what is the prosecution actually trying to prove? If it wants to argue that Milosevic is guilty on account of "command responsibility" the prosecution should convict his subordinates first (and I guess Karadzic is in this case a sort of "subordinate"). If they want to argue that Milosevic gave direct orders to commit any crimes in Bosnia, they have to establish that he had any real power in Bosnia, i.e. reconstruct the chain of command, no matter how informal (in fact, this may be done in the form of Borovcanin, but is that enough?).

  Anyway, all the prosecution can probably come up with is events like "facilitating" the meeting between Bildt and Mladic and signing the Dayton Accord. Alas, that would point to his being a peace-maker. And that eliminates his mens rea. And besides, why was Carl Bildt not indicted? He had dealings with Mladic too. (Not to mention anything about the Dutch Srebrenica troops.)

  A more holistic approach to the three Milosevic indictments also reveals the following.

  There was a sort of joint criminal enterprise in Kosovo too. It included the Serbian President Milutinovic, the Yugoslav Deputy PM Sainovic, the Chief of the General Staff of the VJ Ojdanic and the Serbian Interior Minister Stojilkovic (§ 38). Whatever the justification of the inclusion of these persons in the "joint criminal enterprise" (a term which is not used in the Kosovo indictment at all), at least they were all indicted. So there is no question that they were supposedly jointly responsible.

  But the joint Kosovo indictment didn't pan out, even if the prosecution isn't keen on reminding us of the fact. One of the joint indictees committed suicide. That's OK, because a little mortality has never deterred the tribunal. But the rest of the indictees came to The Hague after Del Ponte had issued the Croatia and Bosnia indictments against Milosevic, so the other indictees suddenly became quite irrelevant. Milosevic was now the only person all these criminal enterprises had in common, so it was understood that it didn't matter if the other persons were indicted or not: if they were needed at all, they were needed to build a case against Milosevic.

  In fact, I can't find any details of the current proceedings of Ojdanic and others on the ICTY's website.

  And to be really nasty to the prosecution, I would have imagined that just as the Bosnia and Croatia indictments are contingent on the existence of the "joint criminal enterprise", the Kosovo indictment is contingent on the joint responsibility of the five indictees, too. The prosecution is violating its own logic. And to use my favourite expression, I would like to argue that the Kosovo proceedings were null and void due to that fact alone.

  That's the formal side of this debacle. Then the "material" side.

  It was pointed out above, quite rightly, that the death of 6 million Jews is called a genocide whereas the death of 30 million Russians in WW2 was not. And that shows exactly why the Bosnia "genocide" is not genocide at all! No matter what the learned textbooks now purport. If the death of 30 million Russians wasn't a genocide because it was a side-effect of the military campaign, then the death of the few thousands Bosniaks shouldn't be called a genocide: no-one can deny that the military campaign was the foremost concern at this time on both sides - Bosniak and Serb - so the "genocide" was a sort of side-effect, which a true genocide can never be. If you call the death of a few thousand Bosniaks in a civil war a genocide, then we have to go back in history to WW2 and call the death of the 30 million Russians a genocide too. But if we do, then it becomes quite pitiful to call the death of a few thousand Bosniaks a "genocide". In fact, it becomes quite ludicrous even to argue if there were two thousand or nine thousand dead Bosniaks in Srebrenica. Compared to the death of 30 million Russians, this figure is nothing. So the argument in favour of the genocide in Bosnia would seem self-defeating.

  It is argued in the amended consolidated indictment of Krajisnik and Plavsic (§ 16) that the genocide was designed to destroy the "foreign" elements in some municipalities. OK, so we have the Croats and the Muslims as the "foreign" elements. That accords with the definition of genocide in Art. 2 of the Genocide Convention, which mentions as part of the definition "national, ethnical, racial or religious group". But the Krajisnik-Plavsic genocide was not meant to obliterate these ethnical and religious groups as such. In fact, § 16 of the amended consolidated indictment says that the campaign was primarily targeted at the leaders of these communities. And what communities are we talking about? The Croat or Muslim communities in general? No, the communities in the respective municipalities.

  But this won't wash. Genocide can target ethnical and religious groups as such but not some geographical or administrative groups. In other words, a "group" in the sense of Art. 2 of the Genocide Convention cannot be defined by the location it is living in!

  So good luck for the prosecution in the Krajisnik case, which it still has on its hands. Nothing seems to stop the prosecution. They already agreed to try Plavsic for the simple persecution. In any case, their case is flying in the face of the very definition of genocide!

  There is another interesting thing about the definition of genocide. Genocide doesn't have to manifest itself as "killing members of the group". That is just one possibility, according to Art. 2 of the Genocide Convention. Of course, a group can be destroyed in many other ways too.

  And here I would like to return to what was said of the nationality of "Yugoslavs" above. The population group called the "Yugoslavs" was destroyed by destroying their home land, Yugoslavia! It wasn't just an administrative category that was eliminated. The bulk of these "Yugoslavs" seem to have been descendants of mixed marriages. Where do they now belong? The nationality was destroyed.

  And indeed, this qualifies as genocide. The definition doesn't restrict itself to the destruction of ethnic and religious groups alone, but national groups as well! So if the Yugoslavs were not a "national group" in this sense, show me an example of a national group!

  The Yugoslavs may not have been a very sizeable group but that doesn't matter. Besides, the Yugoslavs acted as a cushion to protect the special characteristics of certain groups within the other nationalities. For instance, it is not true that all "Muslims" by ethnicity are "Muslims" by faith. There are some "Muslim" villages where the inhabitants are for instance Jehova's Witnesses. So now that the common Yugoslav identity was removed and the different national groups were pitted against each other, where do the "Muslim" Jehova's witnesses belong? Doesn't that mean the destruction of a religious group within a national group? How would you feel if you were more Christian than a Muslim and at a given moment you are lumped together with the Muslims just because of who your ancestors were? So let the prosecution think about that when it proceeds with its Mickey Mouse genocide cases. (It won't.)

  It is getting quiet in this discussion. Perhaps the page is getting too long for everybody to be able to access it.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Thursday October 10, 2002 at 4:03 am
  

  Gogol Charlemagne wrote:

  Frank

  There is no audio, just video. . . . .

  Thanks

  
  
  

  Should you encounter such a problem again, then please e-mail . I was in Belgrade for the past six days and only read your msg on this forum today.

  When I am away e-mail to the above address is monitored by a Domovina team member in The Hague who can take action.

  
  
  Frank Tiggelaar
  Amsterdam
  Holland

• Thursday October 10, 2002 at 4:16 am
  Thanks Ivan for the interesting views. But if we want to pinpoint it a bit, I think that in retrospect at least the conviction of Milan Martic for being a "superior" of those who killed five people (!) with cluster bombs in Zagreb really takes the biscuit! By "in retrospect" I mean that whatever Martic did was pretty innocent compared with the bombing of the marketplace in Nish with cluster bombs. But no retrospect is needed. I hope you can agree with me that Martic was indicted and later convicted just because the SR Krajina had to be blotted out. And that shows the real function of this tribunal. Maybe the reason Martic is unexpectedly mentioned in the Bosnian "joint criminal enterprise" is that he is the only one of the "joint criminal enterprise" in Bosnia or Croatia that has actually been convicted. So maybe the prosecution wants to show off its achievements and show to Milosevic what the name of the game is: judicial elimination of political undesirables.

  Back to the Wiesel story. I did a quick Google search and found that Wiesel had actually accused Tudjman of revisionism. And a very interesting quote:

  "French newsman Jacques Merlino said that Elie Wiesel told him that there was no comparison between the Nazi slaughter houses of World War Two and the prison camps where Muslims and Croats had been held prisoner by Serbs. Wiesel had visited these prisoner of war camps in ex Yugoslavia.

  This doesn't square with the TV interview that I saw with my own eyes. I mean Wiesel's "life-is-a-bitch" interview. What an enigmatic character.

  More about Jacques Merlino, James Harff and Elie Wiesel on http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/wk2balkans.html .
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Thursday October 10, 2002 at 10:26 am
  Jari,

  Just a quick comment: the prosecution gets more PR mileage out of Karadzic and Mladinc NOT being caught. Having them at large for 7 years BY DESIGN allows for more room in further manipulating the Srebreninca hoax and the related RS issue.

  Trust me, had they wanted to catch them, they would have done so a long time ago. Having the two in hiding contributes to the dark and mysctical value of the wanted - and of the Srebreninca matter by extension, while having them behind bars would strip them, and more importantly, the prosecution of the smoke-and-mirrors quality of the controversy that is still a major factor in manipulating the unresolved RS matter, and the future state of the Balkan mess in general.

  K&M are the ones who know what exactly happened in Srebrenica, and the prosecution cannot take the chances of yanking them into the limelight on the issue - Carla could well kick the chair from under herself.

  So, when the international munchkins claim that Karadzic and Mladic are of utmost importance, and that the "fate of Bosnia" cannot be resolved without getting them, they right - except that the "fate of Bosnia" is unresolvable by definition, hence the two bogeymen are allowed to roam free.

  The site is slowing down - but isn't the trial getting out of stem as well? Again, I wish I had more time.
  
  Andre Huzsvai
  U.S.

• Thursday October 10, 2002 at 10:34 am
  JN It may be quiet, but others including me are logging on daily. Too bad the 'archives' are not available on a daily basis.
  
  J P
  USA

• Thursday October 10, 2002 at 12:05 pm
  

  Nikola Smardzic (EXILED)was hopping mad at the end of his cross examination so skilfully conducted by Mr. Milosevic.

  His denials have apparently rised many reactions in Montenegro and no wonder this turncoat does not venture back in his old country. At the time of the events he said one thing, as numerous sources, official sources and news media reports indicated and now he is denying it all, accusing Mr. Milosevic of producing forgeries, official "forgeries" from the Montenegrin Foreign Ministry, or "forged" newspaper articles. Mr. Milosevic was delighted. Then the usual judge May (NATO) "one more question, one last question Mr. MIlosevic" arrived. "Dobro, gospodin May, dobro" Mr. Milosevic said, "Mr. Smardzic, do you know the Serbian say, the one who lies has short legs? After the court morning break prosecutor Nice (NATO) told the court of his anger about this insulting comment.

  A new face among the prosecutors besides Frau Ingerhard Uertz-Retzlaff whom I assume, unless she is Austrian is also NATO, Mr. MacKeyna (?) (NATO) began the examination of a Serbian journalist with excellent credentials for the porsecutions: CNN, B92, UPI, Times Mag. NTY, Vreme, etc., and a recent award to study journalism, the state of the art in deception at Harvard University. He also edited a book for the famous, or rather infamous IWPR.

  Amici curiaeMr. Kay (NATO) objected to the evidence being given as hear say of the third degree since the journalist was testifying to comments made during interviews of third parties, some dead, some interviews given in 1994-5 about events from 1991-2, in any case people who could not be cross-examined. The troika, this wonderful bunch of Balkans aficionados excluded major portions of the testimony but not all, after all Mr. Milosevic is entitled to some opportunity to make his case.

  While waiting for the journalist to arrive to the witness stand, judge May (NATO) remembered about Professor Wladimiroff (NATO) and issued the court's order: "Mr. Wladimiroff's appointement to be revoked from the court" in other words, fired.

  Strange thing, of no surprise of course, Mr. Wladimiroff was not present.

  Mr. Milosevic will have at last the promissed 4 day weekend and the trial will resume Tuesday.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Thursday October 10, 2002 at 1:00 pm
  Just a quick note. I don't know why Karadzic and Mladic have been indicted twice. There is the general "Bosnia and Herzegovina" indictment and the later "Srebrenica" indictment. Perhaps the reason is that the "Srebrenica" indictment had to be "cleansed" from some elements that occur only in the "Bosnia and Herzegovina" indictment.

  One of these elements is § 9 of the "Bosnia and Herzegovina" indictment. It tells us how we know that Mladic had the effective control over what happened in the Bosnian Serb army:

  "RATKO MLADIC has demonstrated his control in military matters by negotiating, inter alia, cease-fire and prisoner exchange agreements; agreements relating to the opening of Sarajevo airport; agreements relating to access for humanitarian aid convoys; and anti-sniping agreements, all of which have been implemented."

  Maybe this has something to do with Ying and Yang. His criminal mind is demonstrated by the positive moves he has made!
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Thursday October 10, 2002 at 1:23 pm
  

  Head of Chicago-area Islamic charity charged with funneling money to al-Qaida, AP, October 10th 2002

  CHICAGO (AP) - The leader of an Islamic charity was indicted Wednesday on charges of funneling donations to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, with Attorney General John Ashcroft vowing, "We will find the sources of terrorist blood money." Enaam M. Arnaout, 40, head of the Benevolence International Foundation, has been in federal custody since April.

  The indictment said a criminal enterprise that existed for at least a decade used charitable contributions from innocent Muslims, non-Muslims and corporations to support bin Laden's al-Qaida network, Chechen rebels fighting the Russian army and armed violence in Bosnia.

  More details at URL
  http://news.serbianunity.net/bydate/2002/October_10/2.html

  Comment: Why Carla does not ask to take over this trial too? What a statement: Armed violence in Bosnia not atrocities, war crimes genocide? Who broth this "nice gentlemen" to Bosnia? Aren't they responsible too? Albright kissed with Izedbegovic infant of TV cameras now he can not be guilty of anything. Americas dearest ally from Balkan wars turns out to be an enemy, and man in the dock turns out to be friendly Mr. Milosevic. What an irony? What a disgrace to America?

  
  
  Pera Bora
  Canada

• Thursday October 10, 2002 at 1:50 pm
  Ivane

  You said:
  Secession from Yugoslavia, in my eyes, was the only logical move for Croatia to make; -politically, with the climate being so internationally favourable with the fall of communism in Europe -economically, with Yugoslavia in its 6th year of economic downturn, with unemployment at about 15%,and inflation at 2,600%"

  Secession was the problem - it was not the only logical move - That move caused the war, in which Croats and Serbs where losers.

  The statement that it was unemployment 15% and inflation at 2,600% was not true. Your figures could be applied later, during the war. We are talking here 1989-90. When Tudjman came to power we had a stable economy. (Not the best, but stable) We had Markovic's dinar tied to German Mark with inflation less than 5%. Unemployment rate was in Slovenia less than 5% in Croatia 7.5 % - 10%. (BTW - It was as well calculated differently than in US where you get counted as unemployed only if you had worked and lost a job - so if you never got a job on the first place you would be never unemployed according to US laws - in Croatia and Yugoslavia anybody who did not officiallyhave a job was counted as unemployed. Then we had part time tourism, farms, fisherman and construction jobs that were not calculated at all, what would probably make it more jobs than workers with unemployment rate close to 0%. (Ever thought of it?). For the sake of argument - we call that “gray economy” - which was contributing as high as 40 percent during 80ies (as oppose to 7.5 - 10% unemployed in Croatia).

  Climate being internationally favorable to Croats - comes altogether with your observations - West used Croatian immigrants to downplay social achievements in Yugoslavia. (As you said they remembered only life there from 50 years ago and they thought it was in 80-90 ties like that - West needed it to show their citizens that Capitalism is the only way.

  Competition with Socialism cost The West losing so much profit to paying its workers salaries (To make them feel better than citizens from Socialist countries). Only Western citizens and a labor force benefited from it. There is no need for competition any more and the profit will maximize. Hourly rate will go down. Capitalists paid then - they will maximize profit now.

  Among other things, that's why West favourably look at Tudjman - they both needed old Croatian immigration. They used Croatian immigrants and their non-knowledge for time being.

  West and Tudjman could not achieve their goals with Croats living in Yugoslavia; that’s why they needed Croatian immigration and among them they needed Ustashi the most, since they were oldest immigrants with memories since 1930ies and they really did not have any idea how Croats were organized and lived in Jugoslavia after WWII. West needed them since they truly believed that standard and life in Yugoslavia as socialist country was really poor, so they were truly believers and the best representatives of the Western values. Besides that they were the enemies of socialism too. West did not have on the agenda having Yugoslavia as socialist country on the beginning of this century.

  Tudjman as neo fascist, and a hard line Croatian nationalist, new that Croats under European jurisdiction (Excluding Germany) peacefully cannot get an independent State - So they needed small war, to justify it. (And a war between Croats and Serbs was really small - it lasted couple months - until Croatia was recognized as independent state in December 1991. Since then to 1995 Croatia was just preparing to expel Serbs from Krajina). Ustashi believed that Croatia had to be ethnically cleaned from Serbs in line with Mile Budak’s ideology - (Third need be killed, third expelled and third converted). Having Ustashi returning their existence and ideology in Croatia was the best way to start war. That was on Tudjman’s agenda and Western agenda, small war, fast recognition (promised from Germany) and other countries, and distortion of socialism, and at that time general test for future happenings in Russia, and at last promotion of US new strategic international policy - which is meant to play a crucial role in the Globalization.

  Krajina’s and Serbs in Croatia were just victims. Croats and their nationalism with Ustashi was just a card that Western played on in achieving their ultimate goal.
  

  Serbs did not dispute Croatian rights to have their own state.

  Serbs did not want to lose their own state and did not want to live under nazi symbols . Nazi symbols were used purposely to invoke overreaction from Serbs (under instructions from Western masters). These symbols caused reaction from Serbian people and in some cases pushed neutral people towards right wing. There were committed crimes - however JNA at that time was not what tribunal is trying to show - aggressor and a warmonger.

  If Serbs and JNA were what they had been accused of - They would destroy Croatia completely - What stopped them then? Nothing - they did not have that goal, period. By the way Serbs in Croatia voted mainly for Racan. There were no Milosevic representatives in Croatia nor people that belonged to his party. Serbian Democratic Union with its president Raskovic, which represented Serbs in Croatia, was extremely anti-socialist party, and Serbs did not vote for it since they were scared to show any sign of Serbian Nationality.

  Tribunal is not interested to investigate. They are interested to cover activities that accompanied Western distortion of Socialism and aggression on Yugoslavia, which included occupation of Croatia too.

  Only Tudjman and Ustashi could have dreamed about independent state. (And only hard line nationalists could see that Croatia is independent today).

  Croats were only independent in SFRJ when they leaved together with Serbs, in both SFRJ and SRH.

  Ivane I agree with you - It must have been the other way, but main roles did not want it.
  
  Pero Peric
  Canada

• Thursday October 10, 2002 at 2:52 pm
  Jari you bring up an issue that I have alluded to in one of my previous posts. Most Serbs in the international community viewed themselves as Yugoslavs while the Croats seldom said that they were Yugoslavs. One of my cousins in Vancouver who was a welder on the docks finally started saying to those who asked that he was Serbian When a Croatian colleague asked him about this he told him that the events in former Yugoslavia have helped him find his identity. The older generation that was not influenced by WWII continues to identify with Yugoslavia and this is true of many Croats and Muslims who are children of the generation that came to Canada in the 1920’s. It is the post WWII generation like Ivan that lived the dream of an independent Croatia that seldom said they were Yugoslavs.

  Ivan I find your post refreshing and if I am reading correctly there is hope for reconciliation The Serbs in Krajina could have made Croatia richer by providing diversity just as the French, Ukrainian; Italian communities make Canada culturally richer. Maybe the Croats saw the ethnic strife in Kosovo, Sandjak and even in Krajina and they applied the lesson of Fredric the Great which was “He who defends everything defends nothing”. I think, however, that the divorce could have been more humane rather than barbaric.

  Ivan, I was shocked that after years of claiming Nikola Tesla as Croatia’s native son, his home and the museum was destroyed by those that when it suited them claimed him as their own even though he was a Serb. He was born in Croatia of Serbian parents so what would be wrong if both sides showed pride in his contribution to humanity. Those who build will be remembered much longer than those who destroy and this goes for both Croats and Serbs.

  I read a book By Slavenka Drakulic, who was married to a Serb from Lika. She and her former husband were children of Partisan families and they had one daughter together. In her book she writes in one chapter telling her daughter to choose between her Serbian and Croatian heritage. What a sick mother. All those who abandoned their families as a result of this conflict are sick people. I know several mixed families Croat- Serb, Serb-Croat, Muslim-Croat and so on here in Kamloops who chose emigration from Croatia and Bosnia rather than live in a society where they were vilified because they chose their partner rather than their ethnicity. I say BRAVO to them.

  Allow me to digress on a point of interest that indicates how deep the propaganda has penetrated Canadian society. A new book “All About Law” that is used in many schools has a case about Slobodan Milosevic. In this case and the questions that follow the authors have convicted Milosevic of all the crimes that he is charged with even before the end of his trial. A whole generation of students will be brainwashed by ill informed teachers.

  Ivan, those who want to rewrite history usually delude themselves because it is history that exposes them in the end. Most of our prejudices are learned from those close to us but when one has an open mind truth usually prevails.

  I have been following events on this post diligently, but because of commitments at work I have not had a chance to tune in to the trial so I have been silent for the last few days. Ian from Toronto, if you are still with us I will be in Toronto sometimes at the end of (November early December Smart Ask school quiz show) would be nice to have a coffee with you and speak to you in person.
  
  Walter Trkla
  kamloops
  BC CANADA

• Thursday October 10, 2002 at 6:40 pm
  Samardzic has both legs amputated. Milosevic's mentioning of the proverb 'who lies has short legs' has something to do with that fact too.
  
  pera peric
  petrovac
  yu

• Thursday October 10, 2002 at 6:58 pm
  

  Yes, Pera. Samardzic lied and denied so much, and yet the judges were so kind to him I can understand Mr. Milosevices anger. The fact remains, most of the witnesses pesented by the prosecution are despicable characters.

  Vera, I still think it is a good idea to send Mr. Milosevic support mail, even if he does not read it, the mounting pile will tell him the world outside thinks of him. It will tell also his guards, the person they guard has friends and supporters.

  If you think, as you might see it from your prespective in Belgrade, there is anything more practical I can do from this heck of the woods, please by all means let me know.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Friday October 11, 2002 at 12:17 am
  Another blunder of the prosecution: the written statements of witnesses, given before their investigators more than 2 years ago and now introduced as prosecution exhibits, differ dramatically from what the witnesses say "live". They are loaded with outrageous exaggerations, fantastic constructions and brazen lies.

  The latest example was Nikola Samardzic. What he said as "evidence" against Milosevic was less than nothing, but he wrote plenty beforehand, and it was read and challenged.

  When examined by Nice about the meeting that he had in 1991, Samardzic (a petty Montenegrin politician)said it was unimportant, just a casual stroll that he had with the then Premier (now a president) of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, and the two of them briefly met with Bosnian Serb leaders Plavsic, Krajisnik and Koljevic in an open-air restaurant at the seaside; Djukanovic just introduced them, they exchanged few niceties and the witness left "in my summertime attire". I was wondering why Nice paused and looked obviously unpleasantly surprised; but then he dropped the issue, although he introduced this "meeting" as very important.

  It all became clear when Milosevic cross-examined: he read the written statement of this witness, where the aforesaid event was described as follows: Djukanovic brought the witness to his house in Bar, where they met with Plavsic, Krajisnik and Koljevic, whom the host received there on a regular basis, and they discussed their plans to seize as much of the Bosnian territory as possible and to dispose of the "Turks" (a derrogatory name for the Bosnian Muslims). When asked about the appalling discrepancy, the witness said that the accused is "obviously adding things"; Milosevic said he's just quoting; witness said "there must be some mistake, they were in a restaurant, not in a house, and Djukanovic doesn't even have a house in Bar", it was a "totally innocent short meeting", he was in his "summer clothes"... Milosevic asked whether this means the prosecution has made up this written statement; witness hurried to reassure he's "not claiming that, but there's some misinterpretation", and besides he "didn't even signed anything"(?!)

  After embarrassing the prosecution in this way, the witness calmly continued with unsubstantiated and construed political accusations against Milosevic. I was confused, until the next issue came up which regarded Milo Djukanovic: the previously described pattern was repeated again, step by step. This time it concerned the brother of the Montenegrin President, Aleksandar-Aco Djukanovic, who (according to the written statement of this witness) was organizing arms smuggling from Montenegro to Bosnian Serbs. But when Milosevic read this piece of the statement, the witness said that "it was not Aco who was involved, but Jezdimir Vasiljevic, the notorious gazda-Jezda (the boss), a friend of Milosevic; the investigators must have misunderstood it."

  How do you like such credibility? (For those unfamiliar with the colourful personality of Milo Djukanovic: a mobster playing a separatist posing as a democrat; a pet of the US because anti-Milosevic; currently under investigation by the Italian Anti-Mafia Prosecution from Bari for his tobacco-mafia connections; obviously it is not healthy to accuse his brother of anything).

  Yes, Andre, the trial is getting out of steam. See what kind of witnesses the prosecution has to come up with.
  
  Vera Martinovic
  Belgrade
  Yugoslavia

• Friday October 11, 2002 at 3:32 am
  It has been said that it is good to hear from Yugoslavia. It is doubly good to hear from Yugoslavia when you also hear what happens in the trial! Believe me, I wouldn't have a clue otherwise. I wouldn't know where to find any credible summaries.

  Covering the trial may in fact be the most important thing this discussion can do right now. If the trial is getting out of steam (at least it is running out of ideas), the prosecution's strategy of wearing the informed public down (i.e. us) is backfiring and it ends up wearing down itself. If the discussion goes on as normal, even dummies like us can get a comparative advantage over the ICTY machinery.

  If there is nothing much happening in the trial, the ICTY website ( www.un.org/icty ) has a lot of provoking stuff. In fact, the website used to be quite a trite place, but recently it has been updated quite often and started providing some more background information. On the ICTY homepage we run into our friend Domovina Net too.

  I am not afraid of the tribunal in itself. The prosecution may win this trial, but judging by the changes the rules undergo every time the prosecution seems to be losing makes that sort of victory is absolutely worthless. The tribunal may deprive Milosevic and others of their freedom, but even that is relative.

  The really scary thing is how we justify everything we see even to ourselves by saying that this is not a normal trial. Well, it may not be a normal trial - yet. Imagine the legal standards set here becoming the accepted standard of a fair trial in general.

  But then comes the really, really scary part, which Walter alluded to: the textbooks. I have witnessed it myself. The learned writers won't wait until the trial is over but start peddling their own verdicts. The more respectable the publication (and there is no lack of these) the easier it becomes for the judges to convict Milosevic - based on the common opinion of the learned writers.

  It is a topsy-turvy world (I might say a Looking Glass World), but we have seen it ourselves. The ICTY supports won't be deterred by any fatal flaw that is pointed to them in the ICTY proceedings. The prosecution has come up with 66 charges (or thereabouts). That number is supposed to shut us up by its overwhelming numerical strength. But even if the flaws we detect in the proceedings were twice that number, the ICTY supporters are quite undeterred.

  It is not just individual mishaps. The proceedings couldn't go on without the pervading fraud!

  And as to the lack of logic in the indictments, the same old rule applies: allegans contraria non est audiendus (he who alleges contrary things must not be heard).

  Once in a while one would like to ask the ICTY staff the simple question: why are you doing this? Maybe we can answer that ourselves - at least on the general level.

  Why does the tribunal exist? As we remember, Warren Christopher threatened to set up the tribunal in case the Serb didn't accept the American plans of cutting Serbia to size, i.e. retaining the official borders of Serbia. The inevitable side-effect was the sprouting up of numerous Serb republics outside Serbia, like the SR Krajina and Republika Srpska (actually I don't know if there were others). The main task of the tribunal was to eliminating the leadership of these metastasized republics.

  Frank mentioned the "benign way of influencing elections" (I can't remember what it was - maybe money). He suggested that a malevolent way would be to bar the country's EU membership (which is not a real deterrant for those who irritate the EU just because they don't want EU membership). I know what the really malevolent way of influencing elections is: an ICTY indictment. It happened with Martic, Karadzic and many others. And that is the real mission of the ICTY. Milosevic was indicted for the same reason: to make a regime change in Belgrade possible. This means that the trials are purely political, which used to be regarded as something bad - way back when.

  An interesting question came up: does the tribunal want Karadzic and Mladic in The Hague or not? I think it does, but I am not so sure any more.

  Why do I think it does? Marinic is at large too (even if he might be at large so that the tribunal has an excuse for having K&M at large). But would Nato necessarily find K&M if they wanted to? Look at the uncertainty surrounding Osama: we don't even know if he is alive! Besides, Nato has an excuse (of sorts) for not harassing K&M for about seven years. No-one would have believed a few years ago that Milosevic would be in fact indicted, and when he was, the prosecution realized that they need K&M too. It certainly wouldn't make sense making Nato look like fools every time they fail to catch them. And let's not forget that there is quite a sizeable monetary reward for catching them.

  On the other hand, Seselj, who has been named among the "joint criminal enterprise" has done everything to get to The Hague, but he has been refused a visa. Obviously, the prosecution doesn't want him. And judging by the way the prosecution's failures in the Milosevic trial have altered at least my perception of K&M (they used to be villains but now they don't seem to be any worse than Milosevic), it would be a mistake to let K&M appear in The Hague in person. I have seen Karadzic on TV a couple times very briefly, and then I realized that he doesn't have horns!

  Indeed, it is better to keep him in the realm of the untouchables. If K&M are caught, the prosecution seems to have something to fear. The new Judicial Supplement No 36, as far as I can make head or tail of it, means that the review of earlier judgements is possible only if new facts previously unknown to the "moving party". As long as the Krstic judgment remains unchallenged, Milosevic will be convicted of genocide. As long as Srebrenica "massacre" is regarded as genocide, he will. And the "massacre" was recognized as genocide in the same Krstic judgment.

  On the other hand, that judgment can't be reviewed as long as no new facts emerge, and the only ones that could provide such new facts would be K&M.

  Indeed, it makes sense to keep them away from The Hague. It is even a minor nuisance that convicting Milosevic for something they did is preposterous until they are convicted. And how will the tribunal solve this minor problem? I guess it will do what it has already done in the "Bosnia and Herzegovina" indictment of K&M where all the good things that Mladic did - like letting the humanitarian aid pass unhindered - that son of a bitch! - shows that he is the prime suspect.

  But letting humanitarian aid pass is nothing to the things Milosevic did. After all, he was the damned peace-maker to sign the Dayton Accord. The success of the Dayton Accord shows that he would have been powerful enough to stop all the atrocities earlier, which he didn't, which shows he is guilty!

  It is nonsensical (in the traditional sense of the word) to argue that since a person had the power to do good things, he must be responsible for the bad things too. This might be called an inductive error: from a few samples we cannot generalize to explain all the cases. Even as a character assassination such an appeal to good things fails appallingly. But more importantly, it cannot be done, because technically the accused is presumed innocent. It even says so in the ICTY Statute.

  And let's not forget about the other damned good things Milosevic did, like facilitating the meeting between Mladic (or was it Karadzic?) and Carl Bildt, as we know from the Akashi telegram. Oh what larks. Milosevic can go on with his arguments about his being a peace-maker. That shows to the world he is the father of all lies too!

  As I said, I used to view K&M as the biggest bogeymen in the former Yugoslavia, but Carla DEL PONTE, a.k.a. "The Hyena", has relieved me of my misconceptions. The real bogeymen and women work for the ICTY. The ICTY is now using its genius to write such judicial supplements as the new No 36, instead of using its mental powers for handing down sensible judgements that wouldn't have to be protected from possible later review. And judgements used be subject to review for other reasons as well beside the simple emergence of new facts. One of those reasons was the fact that the judgement made no sense. But again, that was way back when.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Friday October 11, 2002 at 7:57 am
  FYI Taken from http://www2.inet.co.yu/ 12:20 Bivsi crnogorski predsednik Momir Bulatovic uputio je izjavu Tribunalu u Hagu povodom svedocenja Nikole Samardzica, u kojoj je istakao da je svedok izneo vise neistina i kontroverzi, i najavio spremnost da se pojavi u Hagu na zahtev Miloseviceve odbrane. Former Montenegrin president Momir Bulatovic sent a statement to the ICTY regarding the testify of Nikola Samardzic, former Montenegrin foreign minister, saying that a witness had presented series of lies and controversies, announcing his rediness to appear in the Hague by demand of Milosevic's defense.
  
  Michael Thomas
  London
  UK

• Friday October 11, 2002 at 11:11 am
  I understand that Wladimiroff was fired from the ICTY. Something ain't right. I also understand that it was one of Milosevic's counsels, the Dutch Nico Steijnen, who complained to the tribunal and the Dutch law society of Wladimiroff's conduct. It was quite a surprise for me to hear that Wladimiroff was actually tried by the Trial Judges. This is surprising because Judge May had said in the Haagsche Courant that this professional tribunal won't be swayed by anything that appears in the press (in this case, the same Haagsche Courant, where he gave his statement himself). So whence May's sudden change of mind? Is May running out of shot, and if so, where do the shots come from?

  One bugging thing, as I hear, in Wladimiroff's defence was that he said he is trying to learn his lesson. Oh boy, is this century of the trial now a workshop for would-be lawyers? At least he admitted to his own unprofessionalism, and the question is: where does that leave May?

  Another thing. It is no trifle that §9 of the "Bosnia and Herzegovina" indictment of K&M makes such a big deal of the fact that Mladic let the humanitarian aid pass through, and uses this fact against him. This is certainly more than we can say of the former Secretary of State who said that the Serbs should be curbed not only by the to-be-established war crimes tribunal but denying them humanitarian aid as well. I ain't kidding. Search the archives by "Warren Christopher" and you will find the article. And we do know that Médecins sans Frontières sacked its Greek contingent for going to help the Serbs in 1999. And how about the EU's plan to influence the elections "benignly" by its luminous Energy for Democracy: those municipalities which had voted in favour of the anti-Milosevic forces should be rewarded by heating oil.

  Do you think the ICTY is sending a positive message by condemning in the end Mladic's humanitarian aid policy? The lesson is now that every good deed will be held against you in the trial. This isn't a joke. I may be an Internet bozo, but I am sure there are dozens of people in responsible positions who are seeing the same things that I am. And I am thinking of the latest Israeli moves when saying this. What choice do they have? Every move out of humanitarian motives has to be paid for dearly.

  And talk about "joint criminal enterprises", I think the ICTY is one. A really big one. Its self-perceived task is to uphold the law, like that of the JNA, MUP and DB. Where is the difference? And the chief mobster, the hub of the enterprise is Carla DEL PONTE, a.k.a. "The Hyena". I don't see if we do wisely to mince our words about this fact any more. The ICTY is a grand-scale enterprise to demolish every rule that has existed and every rule that it has lain down for itself.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Friday October 11, 2002 at 12:52 pm
  More similarities. If you check the ICTY website to find out what the OTP's general task is (under Job opportunities), you will find out that the OTP is primarily trying to grill the leaders. Now read § 23 - 24 of the "Bosnia and Herzegovina" indicment of K&M: They are accused of "targeting of political leaders, intellectuals and professionals". This is called persecution. That is exactly the word I would use for the OTP's policies. Persecution of the leaders of SR Krajina and Republika Srpska and the SPS leaders in FRY.

  In other words, persecution is what get - by the tribunal's own vocabulary - when you are running political trials. It doesn't seem to make the trial any more innocent if the latent objective is to ensure or reinforce a regime change. Read § 18: "Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat civilians were persecuted on national, political and religious grounds..."
  
  J N
  Finland

• Friday October 11, 2002 at 12:56 pm
  

  From the point of view of the ICTY prosecution this type of criminal activity is irrelevant. This never happened to Albanians or any other nationality under Mr. Milosevic rule in Belgrade, Pristina or anywhere else. Boy they would love to have a chance to present this kind of accusation associated with him.

  NATO, U.N. police clash with ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, AP, October 11th 2002

  PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - A crowd of ethnic Albanians clashed Thursday with U.N. police and NATO-led peacekeepers who were escorting a group of Serbs in western Kosovo, an official said. Some 600 hostile ethnic Albanians attacked U.N. police and Italian peacekeepers with stones and molotov cocktails after they brought a group of 50 Serbs to the center of Pec, a town some 50 kilometers west of province's capital, Pristina, said Andrea Angeli, a U.N. spokesman.

  The Serbs, a group of recently returned refugees from the village of Osojane, were taken by bus to a building in the center of town to enroll in the U.N.-run pension fund, Angeli said.

  "Once the Serbs entered the building, the angry crowd attacked the peacekeepers and police," he said. Police responded with tear gas to disperse the crowd.

  Two police officers were slightly injured by stones, and some police vehicles were damaged. There was no information whether any of the protesters were injured.

  The Serbs managed to leave the building after two hours after the protesters had been dispersed, Angeli said.

  The incident came amid increasing efforts undertaken by the U.N. mission in Kosovo to bring back Serbs who fled in the aftermath of the war in the province. Tens of thousands of Serbs fled out of fear of revenge attacks. Dozens have been killed over the past three years.

  
  
  Pera Bora
  Canada

• Friday October 11, 2002 at 1:09 pm
  It frustrates me to watch commentators mention Slobodan Milosevic only in passing when talking about some totally unrelated matter. They portray the trial as being all but over, with Slobo in jail for life,Using this lie as an example of sucess to justify preemption in other places. They do the same thing with Afganistan, claimming to have brought freedom to the previously ravaged country. The truth there is, the Taliban are gone, The warloards are back and the poppies are doing well,much as it was before the Soviet occupation. Have journalists no shame?
  
  Pertti Lindroos
  Quesnel
  BC Canada

• Friday October 11, 2002 at 1:45 pm
  I agree with Jari, it is good to hear about what happens in the trial. Thanks to those who provide that information. I do not bother to read the articles by the west, and most certainly not the Institute for War and Peace. The articles are incomplete so I stopped that along time ago. Please keep posting what is happening there.Gogol is not from Yugo. but he is helping us to know what is going on in the trial as well as the Yugos. Thanks Gogol.

  There was an article a few days ago when Bosnia was having their elections, wherein the same nationalists won, about the difficult times for the Bosnian Serbs. This article mentioned that Karadzic’s wife, is held in “almost reverence.”All stepped aside for her to vote first. Maybe this can tell us something.

  About a year ago I went on the website for Misha Glenny who has made a fortune off the Yugo wars, and is not a friend to the Serbs. There was a piece where he was being interviewed and that was interesting. He was very angry with Clinton about “Operation Storm.” He said “the Krajina Serbs did no harm to anyone.” He said they had lived there for centuries.He also said that as far as he was concerned Milosevic had the right to relocate all of the Krajina Serbs into Kosovo.Just lately I went on that website again and that piece is no longer there. All the other is still there. I wonder why?

  I wonder what happened to Dennis Revell? He had some good posts.

  
  
  Kathryn Love
  SJC
  USA

• Friday October 11, 2002 at 3:42 pm
  

  Dennis Revell I think, I have reasons to believe was banned from this very forum, read the archive and you will understand, althought I suposse his relevant posting is deleted.

  Wladimiroff was not a "Milosevic Lawyer", nor his counsel as all the gutter press is describing the affair. His dismissal which judge May (NATO) wanted to avoid came about when judge Kwon (OCCUPIED) raised the question of perception, if the court was perceived as unfair, it was as bad as been unfair, was his argument and judge Robinson (COLONIAL) found in that the scissors that will cut paper and gave a little speech about it. Judge May (NATO) following the rule of this adorable trinity, joint the concensus and ruled days later to expell their friend. "It is your friend, not mine!" had Mr. Milosevic shout at them.

  It rejoyce my heart to read from Yugosolavia, it tells me her people are not down as the oppresive NATO-GLOBALISM regime would like us to believe. This forum of course is a tiny window, from where a tiny ray of light shines from few cornes of the world, but it shines strong when people like Vera clearly tells it.

  I am in New England, the civilised part of the, well you know what I mean. I have to set up my alarm at 3:30 or 4:00 AM depending on the schedule of the trial, fight the horros of the inconpentent staff working the video-audio transmission, its black-outs, the sudden private sessions, the deleted passages and above all keep awake. Sometimes I have to say, I loose it. Forget about Bart College, there every day there is an exception and I wonder if anybody tries still to put up with it.

  There is the New York Times, their forum on "Milosevic Trial" now dead, terminated. Now they have a substitute encompassing NATO expansion East and pegged to it, the Trial. It is the same thing after all, isn't? I have been there for nearly 4 years. The best pariticipants were kicked out, for being too articulate.

  I have to say, it is anger, frustration, which drives me to speak up: from injustice and from the realization that the world I live in is dominated by the same forces of darkness that once almost destroyed European civilization, the difference today being that there is no oposition of any meaningful strenght.

  The Washington clique lets the world know their plans to occupy Iraq, try their leaders, re-educate the masses like during the US occupation of Japan. This is in today's New York Times, hours after the Congress of the biggest "democracy" has granted president Bush its blessing to carry a war of aggression against a UNO member . . .

  In this world everything is political, hence the ICTY, all weapons at their disposal for deceipt and hiding their crime. Where debt defaulting in Argentina or refusal to submit in Yugoslavia.

  The enemy is us!
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Friday October 11, 2002 at 4:59 pm
  

  Kathryn, you mentioned an outrage about victory of the three nationalist parties in the Bosnia here after is my comment on that issue.

  What current rulers of Bosnia are saying is that they hate the victory of nationalist parties in the recent elections. One who does wrong and has military power can afford a short memory. In order to destroy so-called single party rule in Bosnia so called International community recognized the same three nationalist patties as a means of accomplishing a new multi party system for Bosnia. All of them were hailing this as a big victory of democracy. They ordered that the multinational JNA and Yugoslav police be disbanded and left the control of the law in the nationalist hands. So who is guilty of the results of the recent elections and atrocities committed in Bosnia? Ones that destroyed the lawful multiethnic government backed by the multiethnic military and police in Bosnia i.e. the International community i.e. USA/NATO.

  
  
  Pera Bora
  Canada

• Friday October 11, 2002 at 5:37 pm
  Walter, re: Drakulic

  Drakulic is quite a character, let me tell you. On April 2, 2000 issue of the The New York Times Book Review ran a page-long introduction of her book, entitled "A Novel About the Balkans", narrating what the reviewer called “the practice of systematic rape in Serbian-run internment camps.” The third sentence of the piece was perhaps the most revealing. The reviewer, Rand Richards Cooper, mentions that having “set out to interview the survivors, intending to publish a straight-forward account of her findings”, Ms. Drakulic “eventually… decided to put aside the documentary technique, and tell the women’s truth through fiction.”

  Very educational, indeed. Apparently she could not locate a few live interview subjects to give her book at least a whiff of "non-fiction" credibility.

  The marketing of Drakulic’s fiction was curiously timed. Within a few weeks ICTY “took an important step in legal history… as it opened the first United Nations trial focusing exclusively on widespread sexual crimes against women during wartime”. (NYT, March 21, 2000).

  The trial by the own admission of the article’s writer, was “based on accusations” and “estimates”, rather than proof, where “no one has precise numbers”, with “none of the victims… present”. During the Bosnian war Serbian rape camps became a commonplace notion in mass media promoting the image of Serb soldiers as mass rapists.

  As a sad footnote to a failed public relation campaign in the mid-90s trumpeting the Serbian “mass rape” of as many as 50,000 Muslim women, only 16 women took the witness stand, their identities sealed by the court. The total of all documented cases amounts to not more than 50 raped Muslim women in a three-way civil war where there were rape victims on all sides.

  The “mass rape” trial resulted in meager three convictions: Dragoljub Kuranac, Radomir Kovac, and Zoran Vukovic for individual rape. The fourth accused was acquitted.

  I mean if THAT'S ALL the ICTY could squeeze out of the "Mass Rape" hype, what can they possibly hit Milosevic with 2 years later?
  
  Andre Huzsvai
  U.S.

• Friday October 11, 2002 at 6:30 pm
  I received a second response from the CRTC the licensing and regulatory agency for the media in Canada. Dear Walter Trkla: Thank you for taking the time to contact the CRTC.

  The Commission's jurisdiction to regulate the programming aired by its licensees comes from the provisions of the Broadcasting Act (the Act), and the regulations under it. The Act states that all persons licensed to carry on broadcasting undertakings have a responsibility for the programs they broadcast, subject to applicable statutes and regulations. The CRTC's function is to ensure that broadcasters have acted responsibly in this respect, to ensure that programming originated by broadcasters is of high standard, and to hold them answerable in instances of doubt. However, you should also note that the Commission does not have the power to censor programming before it has been aired. Moreover, the Commission has made it very clear that when considering complaints, it will continue to take into account the guaranteed right of freedom of expression contained in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and reflected in section 2 (3) of the Act.

  As it is the licensee that is responsible for its programming, I'm asking CBC to respond directly to your concerns within three weeks. By copy of this message, I'm asking it to send a copy of its reply to us for review. You will hear from us again if any regulatory action is required.

  Your message will be placed on the licensee's public file at the end of three weeks and all subsequent related correspondence will be added to this file, which may be consulted by interested parties and reviewed by the Commission at the time of licence renewal.

  You have rights under the Privacy Act. You can refuse to have your message placed on the public file. If you don't want us to place your message on the public file, please contact me.

  Sincerely,

  Michelle Edge Client Services CRTC - Western & Territories Region Phone 1-877-249-2782 (CRTC) Fax 604-666-8322 Email info@crtc.gc.ca

  This is my response. In my initial letter I listed my concerns on Media Neutrality and competence.

  Dear Sir; Thank you for responding to my concern about the nature of reporting by CBC. I am quite aware of our fundamental freedoms as guaranteed in section #2 subsections (b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, I am concerned that this kind of reporting can't be "demonstrably justified in a free and a democratic society"?

  Since CBC is a publicly funded and publicly owned corporation and since Canada is a multicultural society a higher standard of reporting is expected. CRTC has the power in law to see that this corporation meets this higher standard.

  CBC, not only, promotes the cultural diversity, but more importantly they indirectly educate the Canadian public. Their reporting accurate or not winds up in the classroom of our nation and shapes attitudes towards national and international events. School texts are already using material from CBC programs that in many cases comes from questionable sources. Therefore, what one may expect from ones local newspaper, a higher standard is expected from a publicly funded agency.

  What is this higher standard? The higher standard that I am referring to must be neutral, objective, competent and verifiable. The role of CBC is not to rewrite history. Their role is to present a balanced picture. As an example CBC has rewritten the Canada-Russia hockey serious as some sort of national epic when in fact it was a shameful display of sportsmanship. I saw some of those games in person and the tactics we used to win would make any backstreet gang proud, however CBC for whatever reasons wants Canadians to wrap themselves in the flag of nationalism and forget the lesson that we all learned.

  On a more important note we pride ourselves as a nation where the rule of law and due process marks our democracy as an example to others. This should not only apply to our justice system it must apply to the media under whose watchful eye justice is seen to be done. CBC must not expect a carte blanche right to report for the sake of entertainment when they violate the rules of neutrality and competence. What I find most appalling is that they treat the viewer as a bonehead who they think is as uninformed as they are.

  What do I expect? I expect the truth. I expect reports on past news to be updated even when the new facts on that event make them look incompetent.

  The Milosevic trial, in particular, is galling. CBC reported for ten years on the "Butcher of the Balkans" and now that he is exposing the mountain of lies, which CBC reported, they are silent. What is even more galling the trial, if it was held in any Canadian court would have been thrown out ab initio for lack of due process and the rule of law? I accuse CBC and its affiliates as parties to a lynching, as Greenspan had stated. Thank You Walter Trkla Kamloops BC
  
  Walter Trkla
  BC
  Canada

• Friday October 11, 2002 at 6:50 pm
  Andre, I spoke to Ms. Drakulic on an open line show and she was very conciliatory. I purchased her book on the basis of the first few chapters and did not realize that most of the book was fiction and good guys were nice Croatian children and bad guys were drunken Serb paramilitaries. I wonder if she regrets the good times she had in her early days of marriage????
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops BC
  Canada

• Friday October 11, 2002 at 8:59 pm
  

  I wonder and perhaps our friend Jari can give us a hint, how the newspapers and media in general outside of NATO reports on the trial or on events related to the bad deeds of NATO.

  Remember how the president of Finland, a neutral country, -- can you imagine what neutrality means -- had to negotiate the terms to end NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia before the NATO alliance began to publicly tear apart.

  Is there the same visceral bigotry when describing the evil nations, peoples etc.,?
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Saturday October 12, 2002 at 9:00 am
  Reporting? What reporting? I will let you know if I find any reporting, because I am not aware there is any. I saw a short article on Mesic's and Milosevic's encounter in the largest Newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, and it relayed to the readers how the newsagencies perceived the trial. I am not aware that there has been anything on the radio or TV.

  The little they do tell us has concerned the part the Finns displayed in negotiating the peace agreement with Milosevic and later in keeping the peace in Kosovo. Martti Ahtisaari wrote a book about the "Mission in Belgrade", which I haven't read. The yellow press floated the rumour that actually the conditions for Ahtisaari's mission had been negotiated by some Swedish businessman. I also heard that the present president Ms Tarja Halonen criticized the then president Martti Ahtisaari for going to Belgrade, because she would have liked to go because she was Foreign Minister.

  Any Finn understands that there is a hint of sexual discrimination here: she was supposedly discriminated against because she is a woman. And indeed, we have had many illustrious women doing honour to our country in Kosovo, like Helena Ranta (Racak) and Pirkko K. Koskinen (who was involved in the Ombudsman Project).

  Koskinen wrote a book on "Kosovo's place" which I haven't read. Or actually I read the bibliography, which contained the usual suspects, so I refrained. Helena Ranta wrote a report on Racak, which perhaps the then foreign minister Tarja Halonen read (Finland was holding the EU presidency) but few others have.

  But I interrupted my customary weekend silence for something more important.

  I discovered that in Italian the word for "hyena" iena is a feminine noun. Did you know that? I looked it up because I think it is more appropriate to use a person's nickname in that person's native language, instead of translating itself, as in this case into "The Hyena".

  Even that is not the real reason. The reason is the Nobel Peace Prize. I would never have imagined that I would be so happy Jimmy Carter won it. I am happy because I heard that Del Ponte was a nominee too! If she had won it, the reason would have been just as political as in Carter's case. One Swedish member of the Prize committee admitted that this was to criticize Bush's war plans in Iraq. Surely, that tells you more about the Nobel Peace Prize than about Carter or Bush. Not long ago, the Prize committee threatened to take back the Prize from Shimon Perez, because he didn't quit the Israeli government! Imagine the Swedes putting pressure through the Nobel Prize on the Israelis for their defense policy!

  And I can't resist the temptation to comment on Elie Wiesel's Nobel Peace Prize. If you don't know what suffering is, read one of his novels. I did this week - for the first and hopefully the last time. You will also understand why he won the Nobel Prize for Peace and not for Literature.

  If Del Ponte had won the Peace Prize, that would have left no-one in any doubt about the political character of the trial. So in a way, it is a pity she didn't win. It would have been interesting to see the three judges worry about the image of the proceedings then!

  Maybe it tells us enough that she was nominated in the first place. The Canadian General Lou MacKenzie (mission in Sarajevo) once joked about the KLA being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Well, we came close. Maybe her time will come, or if it doesn't, maybe they should indeed award the Prize to the KLA instead. Same gesture, same message.

  In fact, the nomination shows how desperate the "international community" is getting. This is a sign for us to keep going on, because we are making a difference! I mean, why else would they nominate Del Ponte for Nobel Peace Prize?

  "L'Iena" has richly deserved any prize she will get. Nobody has done so much to expose all the lies that we have been told about the Serbs in general and the high-level indictees in particular. Nobody has done such a marvellous job in bringing the political machinations in the Western capitals into broad daylight.

  Maybe the judges won't get it, but we get you, Carla. It is now obvious that Slobo is innocent, and we are deeply grateful to you, Carla, for showing us the truth, no matter how this trial ends. Nobody has done so much for truth and reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia. If the Nobel committee is too political to choose you for the Peace Prize, I guess the Serbs have some shining medal somewhere just waiting for you.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Saturday October 12, 2002 at 12:56 pm
  Jari, I would be interested in knowing where I can find the transcript to the Wiesel "life is a bitch" interview. In his NEWSWEEK article during Kosovo, Elie was careful to draw a distinction between the Nazi Holocaust and Kosovo.

  Holocaust commentators usually try to show that the H. was anti-Semitism at an extreme unparalleled in human events.

  Actually, after Sudoplatov's revelation about "synagogue gatherings" by NKVD officers in Kiev -- after their extermination of ?? million Ukrainians -- the H. appears to be another ethnocidal act too tragically common among humans.
  
  Lou Coatney
  Macomb
  IL USA

• Saturday October 12, 2002 at 4:23 pm
  

  As part of its plans for “regime change,” the US government is already advancing plans for a war crimes tribunal against Saddam Hussein and other senior leaders of Iraq’s Baathist regime. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer indicated this week that the Bush administration would seek the creation of a special international tribunal. Asked why Washington did not sign on to the ICC and use that body to conduct such a trial, Fleischer declared that the international court “has nothing to do with” the US proposal for trying the Iraqi president. “What worked for Serbia, will work again,” he added.

  Click HERE to read the whole article.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Monday October 14, 2002 at 10:28 am
  Gogol, to quote Tony Blair: "I know the game that you're playing". You are trying to embarrass me in front of all these people and as a bonus undermine my belief in Bush's politics. But I won't concede defeat yet. You know, I think Bush is playing a game as well. He hates the Milosevic trial so much that he promises to set up an Iraqi war crimes tribunal to parody the ICTY! How else do you explain Ari's words: "What worked for Serbia, will work again". Good heavens! The war hasn't started yet and they are already sure that the Iraqis will commit war crimes! Considering the principle "no war, no war crimes" (I just thought of it now), this would surely be a case of entrapment (a term that I learned from American law)!

  Ari is very generous. He says that the ICTY "worked" in Serbia. Never have we had such an open admission of anti-Serb bias. Technically, the tribunal is established for crimes committed in all of the territory of the former Yugoslavia (and strictly speaking Serbia isn't part of it, because it is still Yugoslavia).

  Consider the context. Ari is asked what is wrong with ICC. We know what is wrong. It could create a level-playing field and prosecute Americans. So in order to deny the obvious Ari says things he should regret later.

  And relish the comparison with ICC. Under the ICC, even aggression is a crime. Something Ari seems to forget. OK, the US may have a Security Council resolution, but who cares! It would attack Iraq all the same.

  Such is the power of this discussion that I borrowed the memoires of Martti Ahtisaari, "The Mission in Belgrade" from the municipal library. I can keep you posted on the latest developments in my research.

  Thus far I have learned that Milosevic actually attacked Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia, which were independent. The Serbs were occupying Krajina and Western Slavonia. Kradzic lost much of his power after the war (even if Ahtisaari doesn't mention that he got two ICTY indictments hanging over his head). And anyway, his successor Krajisnik was just as great a son of a bitch.

  But on the more serious side, one of the reasons Yeltsin wasn't so keen on saving the Serbs was, according to Ahtisaari, that Milosevic had supported Yazov, who attempted a coup against Gorbachev.

  OK, that is interesting, but then begin the more interesting admissions. Like the fact that according to the Dayton Accord, Kosovo was part of Serbia. Remember, Dayton was signed in 1995, so if the Western powers were not happy with Milosevic having revoked Kosovo's autonomy, they shouldn't have let Milosevic sign it, only to start a ruckus in Kosovo four years later. So who's to blame?

  On the other hand, the reader is also reminded of the fact that Bush Sr had threatened to attack Serbia in 1992 (?) if Milosevic messed up in Kosovo. Like father, like son. I think Bush Jr hates the ICTY, but sticks to it, however reluctantly, because his dad has a track record in Kosovo.

  But then to answer Gogol's questions about the Finnish neutrality. That is a relative concept, my friend. Nato is not a problem. Don't let Nato fool you. The problem is the EU. The EU, you see, has the Common Foreign and Security Policy. Nato may do the bombing, but it is OK'd by the EU member states collectively. And that is what happened with the Kosovo bombing. Finland had to accept the new reality: no matter how hard it was to accept the bombing, the orders came from Brussels, because they were quasi-agreed-upon. The Finnish President Ahtisaari was singled out for the mission in Belgrade, because Finland was to hold the Council Presidency from July to December 1999, and the peace mission had to be accomplished by then.

  If you don't believe in the relative insignificance of Nato, think of Norway. Norway didn't take part in the Kosovo bombing. Yet it is a Nato country. But it is not a EU member state. Funny, we Europeans.

  More legal stuff. Remember the "Bosnia and Herzegovina" indictment of Karadzic and Mladic. Its § 9 speaks of all the good things Mladic did, like letting peace convoys pass through. And of course, that is more than we can say of Warren Christopher, who said that blocking humanitarian aid is one way of bringing the Serbs to their knees.

  OK. Suppose this was the situation in Kosovo. The Serbs letting humanitarian aid pass through, while the Nato is denying it to the Serbs. And indeed this seems to have been the situation, as we know from the fact that Médecins sans Frontières sacked its Greek contingent for helping the Serbs. BUT WAIT A MINUTE! This was called a humanitarian intervention. If it was humanitarian, surely the intervention should have benefited both sides, as human beings.

  In § 9 of the said indictment, the prisoner exchanges are also mentioned. In his opening statements, Milosevic mentioned them as the explanation for the "detention centers". As he may have too little time to read anybody else's indictments, it is improbable that he made that up. So once again another example of the rule that no good work goes unpunished.

  Now what I am driving at is this. The prosecution is so perceptive as to see through Mladic's humanitarian rubbish. Why isn't it perceptive enough to see through Nato's humanitarian rubbish? Add this to the fact that it is very dubious to induce an evil motive of all the good things Mladic did. That is bias. If the prosecution wants to qualify the humanitarian rubbish as "perfidy", it should do so in both cases and apply it to Nato too. Anyway, questioning someone's noble motives seems to me an example of the classical rule allegans contraria blah blah.

  And this shows ones again that the ICTY is a joke. That shows that Paddy Ashdown is a joke. Remember he was the one who enriched the English language as we know it in this discussion with the expression "take the biscuit". Well, Paddy, I must say that if you still deny that their is some Western plan for world domination, your denial takes the biscuit.

  Maybe my Finnishness has learned me one thing: despite all their good qualities, the Russians have some problems too. Their legal system is bankrupt. Laws change all the time. At the executive level we have what Dostoyevski called "administrative ecstasy": an official's tendency to do everything to show his power. And then we have the hopelessly incomprehensible laws.

  In a word, the Russian legal system is a lot like the ICTY. So the ICTY figured that if they have no Russian judges (they have one Ukrainian now), nobody would noticed the Gogolesque nature of the whole criminal enterprise.

  And about the "joint" nature of this enterprise, let me say this. ICTY is a joint criminal enterprise. Maybe Milosevic's Serbia was so too. The difference is enormous. Suppose you accuse an ICTY official of participation in a joint criminal enterprise. He will say that he only followed orders. And that's it. In ICTY's case the "firm" bears the responsibility and exonerates the individuals. In Serbia it was supposedly the other way around. The individuals bear the blame jointly for the things that the others have done. In this sense, there was no joint enterprise. Everybody has to bear the guilt of the whole lot. In ICTY's case we might call the rule respondeat superior and in Serbia's case joint and several responsibility.

  Our last chance is Del Ponte. I was worried that we might have a mole here. My worry was just a smokescreen. My intention was to keep people from noticing the fact that La Iena is our mole. Maybe she read our postings and got the contamination. At least she is behaving just the way she is on our side.

  The Wladimiroff incident gives us some hope that the two other judges might consider outvoting Richard May. Let that be an answer to an earlier question by Lou. Lou, by the way, I wrote you an email as a response to your latest message.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Monday October 14, 2002 at 10:46 am
  “What are you doing here?” raged the Kosovar pension clerk.

  Promised a safe return: This was the greeting afforded a group of elderly Serbs registering for their pensions upon arrival in their centuries old homeland in Kosovo from which they had been driven by UCK terror three years ago. No “sorry” for the fact that their properties had been destroyed and they were housed in shacks or tents with winter upon them.

  Screaming insults the clerk ran from the building shouting “Call the UCK” whereupon the forty two pensioners were attacked with stones and Molotov cocktails by a mob of some one thousand Kosovars. Their lives were saved by the intervention of UNMIK police and Spanish and Italian KFOR forces at the expense of injuries to themselves and the pensioners. In recent weeks several other returnees to villages in the vicinity of Pec have been attacked with machine guns and bombs.

  Read what local press reports state about these incidents, reports we did not see in the British media:

  What Blair’s spin machine does not want you to know

  Ditto

  This is Blair’s Kosovo: Genocide, racism, religious intolerance, murder, physical and verbal abuse of any of the ethnic minorities. As he slides away, withdrawing his troops for future foreign adventures elsewhere, Blair remains silent on the evil he and his cohorts have visited upon Kosovo. In contrast to these facts he frequently boasts of his ‘humanitarian’ attack upon the Serbs - most recently during his messianic rant at the New-Labour Party Conference. Sadly party members forgot the proverb “Actions speak louder than words” as they hysterically applauded the arch hypocrite’s finger-wagging and dishonest rhetoric.

  “There has then to be an agenda that we construct at an international level that involves the whole of the international community in dismantling the machinery of international terrorism, how it's financed, how these people move about the world, the countries that harbour them and give them help. At every single level, we have to pursue and dismantle this machinery of terror” Blair during his CNN interview 16 September 2001.

  Not only did Britain support terrorist attacks, including those by Mujahedeen and al Qaeda, upon the Serbs in Kosovo before Nato’s own attack upon the Serbs for combating this terror: But it continues to do nothing effective to stop them now. Britain is one of “the countries that harbour them and give them help”. One effective means of combating terror in Kosovo would be to honour resolution 1244 of the peace agreement that Blair dishonourably ignores.

  Civilised conduct requires statesmen to act upon principles. The fundamental principle from which all others are derived being admirably expressed by Immanuel Kant among others “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”. Using terrorists when its suits his purpose, claiming to “pursue and dismantle this machinery of terror” then ignoring it will not do. These are contradictions and as we should all know contradictions imply nonsense. Nonsense is grist to the mill of the Blair spin machine where it serves to confuse but nonsense leads to a world of uncivilised conduct in which many lives are “Nasty, brutish and short”.

  What exists in Kosovo today is what Milosevic set out to prevent in deploying his forces against the terror encouraged by Blair among others and wrought by the UCK. What exists in Kosovo today are the very genocide, racism, religious intolerance, murder, physical and verbal abuse of minorities which Blair’s gibble gabble “condemns” but his practice has imposed upon a province of another sovereign state: facts which he and his spin machine hide from the British public. In Blair’s Kosovo members of the minorities are often murdered simply because of the language they speak. No great effort has or is been made to bring to account these continuing murderers of some two thousand persons to date and destroyers of some one hundred Christian churches in Kosovo.

  No amount of gibbering rhetoric now by Blair can erase the fact that he supported Islamic terror, including al-Qaeda, in Kosovo. The fact that the ICTY has not indicted a single UCK leader during an on-going four-year reign of terror speaks volumes. Actions or the lack of them speak louder than words. Handsome is what handsome does.
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Monday October 14, 2002 at 10:58 am
  A must read:

  America’s For-Profit Secret Army, by Leslie Wayne The New York Times, Sunday, October 13, 2002 Section 3, pp. 1, 10-11.

  Excerpts:

  “Mercenaries… are thriving - only this time they are called private military contractors..”

  “In the darker recesses of the world, private contractors go where the Pentagon would prefer not to be seen, carrying out military exercises for the American government.. In the last few years, they have sent their employees to Bosnia, Nigeria, Macedonia… and other global hot spots.”

  "Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Company that operates for the [U.S.] government in Cuba and Central Asia. DynCorp; Vinnell, a subsidiary of TRW; SAIC; ICI of Oregon; Logicon, a unit of Northrop Grumman. One of the best known, MPRI, boast of having “more generals per square foot than the Pentagon.”

  “Private contractors are not obligated to take orders to follow military codes of conduct. Their obligation is solely to an employment contract, not to their country.”

  “When a UN arm embargo restricted the American military in the Balkans, private military contractors were sent instead to train the local forces.”

  “In Bosnia, employees of DynCorp were found to be operating a sex-slave ring of young women who were held for prostitution after their passports were confiscated. In Croatia, local forces, trained by MPRI, used what they learned to conduct one of the worst episodes of ‘ethnic cleansing’, an event that left more than 100,000 homeless and hundreds dead and resulted in war crimes indictments. No employee of either firm has ever been charged in these incidents.”

  “..while working in Bosnia, where DynCorp was providing military equipment maintenance services, DynCorp employees kept underaged women as sex slaves, even videotaping a rape. Among the charges was that while the DynCorp employeed trafficek in women - including buying one for $1,000 - the company turned a blind eye. Since the DynCorp employees involved were not soldiers, their actions were not subject to military discipline. Nor did they face local justice; they were simply fired and sent home.”

  “MPRI, formerly known as Military Professionals Resources, Inc., may provide the best example of how skilled retired soldiers cash in their military training…. ‘We can have 20 qualified people on the Serbian border within 24 hours’ said Lt. Gen. Harry E. Soyster, the company’s spokesman and a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. ‘The Army can’t do that. But contractors can.’”

  “’These new mercenaries work for the Defense, and the State Department and Congress looks the other way’- says Col. David Hackworth [a frequent critic of the military]. ‘It’s a very dangerous situation. It allows us to get into fights where we would be reluctant to send the Defense Department or the CIA..”

  “Private military contractors … even formed a trade group, the International Peace Operations Association…. Doug Brooks, [its] president [says] .. ‘We can do things on short notice and keep our mouths shut.”

  “If you sent in troops, someone will know; if contractors, they may not” - said Deborah Avant, an associate professor of political science at George Washington University.”

  “There are inherent difficulties with the increasing use of contractors to carry out U.S. foreign policy’ said Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, and the chairman of the foreign operations subcommittee. “This is especially true when it involves ‘private’ soldiers who are not accountable as U.S. military personnel.”

  “In Croatia, MPRI was brought in to provide border monitors in the early 1990’s. Then, in 1994, as the U.S. grew concerned about the poor quality of the Croatian forces… it turned to MPRI. A UN arms embargo in 1991, approved by the U.S. prohibited the sale of weapons or the providing of training to any warring party in the Balkans. But the Pentagon referred MPRI to Croatia’s defense minister, who hired the company to train its forces.

  “In 1995 MPRI started doing so, teaching the fledgling army military tactics that MPRI executives had developed while on active duty commanding the gulf war invasion. Several months later, armed with this new training, the Croatian army began Operation Storm, one of the bloodiest episodes of “ethnic cleansing” in the Balkans..”

  “The operation drove more than 100,000 Serbs from their homes in a four-day assault. Investigators for the ICTY found that the Croatian army carried out summary executions and indiscriminately shelled civilians. “In a widespread and systematic matter, Croatian troops committed murder and other inhumane acts,” investigators said in their report. Several Croatian generals in charge of the operation have been indicted for war crimes and are being sought for trial.”

  “No MPRI employee played a role in planning, monitoring or assisting in Operation Storm,” said Lt. Gen. Soyster, the MPRI spokesman. He did say that a few [sic!] Croatian graduates of MPRI’s training course participated in the operation.

  “Yet what happened in Croatia gave MPRI international brand recognition and more business in that region. When Bosnian Muslims balked in 1995 at signing the Dayton peace accords out of fear that their army was ill-equipped to provide sufficient protection, MPRI was called in.

  “The Bosnians said they would not sign unless they had help building their army,” said Peter Singer a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution who is writing a book on contractors. “And they wanted the same guys who helped the Croatians.”

  “ That is what they got. Under a plan worked out by American negotiators, the Bosnian Muslims hired MPRI using money that was provided by a group of Islamic nations, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Brunei, the UAE, and Malaysia. These nations deposited money in the United States Treasury, which MPRI drew against.

  “It was a brilliant move in that the U.S. government got someone else to pay for what we wanted from a policy standpoint,” Mr. Singer said.

  END QUOTE

  A virtual cornucopia of stuff most closely related to the Milosevic “trial”. From the Gotovina case to clandestine train & equip program paid for by the same Islamist forces that bankrolled Al Qaeda to sex-slave trafficking in the Balkans before the KLA turned it into an industry to the U.S. refusal of the ICC to the legality of such operations under U.S. law.

  In view of the above, as well as of the mysterious and still unresolved Racak and Srebrenica controversies, therefore

  A Memo to Milosevic: call as witnesses those MPRI and DynCorp officers who were in charge of the Bosnian, Croatian and Kosovo operations. We may learn a helluva lot even from their refusal to testify.
  
  Andre Huzsvai
  U.S.

• Monday October 14, 2002 at 11:07 am
  There is something I don't get. Del Ponte has done some investigation of the busting of the UN arms embargo in the Balkans. We got Milosevic's photo in one American newspaper and the the headline saying that Milosevic's associates were involved in sanction-busting. This admission together with the Milosevic photo is supposed to do the trick: Milosevic is guilty. We got Israel implicated too. They helped the Serbs. (I still don't know if that is any of Del Ponte's business.)

  But somehow we are not told of DynCorp and stuff. Could Del Ponte be really that unfair?
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Monday October 14, 2002 at 11:37 am
  

  More interesting stuff:

  Prosecution lawyers in the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic have warned journalists to stop criticising their performance and evidence.

  Click HERE and read the whole thing.

  Jari,

  I agree between the differences or lack of it between EU and NATO policy, yet NATO is dominated by US policy while EU foreign policy is not. "What a tangle . . ."
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Monday October 14, 2002 at 11:44 am
  The Hague Tribunal announces new indictments

  PODGORICA -- Monday - Spokeswoman of The Hague Tribunal prosecution Florence Hartmann has said that this court is preparing new indictments against those who had committed war crimes in former Yugoslavia’s territory.

  If these suspects are from Serbia and Montenegro the Yugoslav Government will have to act in line with the Tribunal’s requests, Hartmann told the Podgorica daily Dan.

  Hartmann’s statement came in reaction to that recently issued by Yugoslav Justice Minister Savo Markovic who said that Yugoslavia does not recognize new indictments issued by the Hague Tribunal.

  No country can avoid cooperation with the Tribunal, and that goes for Yugoslavia as well, said the spokeswoman.

  I'll bet there's no member of the KLA on the new list

  What's ICTY stand for...oh yeah I remember...Injustice!
  
  Simon Joseph
  Amman Valley
  UK

• Monday October 14, 2002 at 12:40 pm
  There is a lot of good stuff coming right now. I love this. Nice said starts whining that "these proceedings are in public in order that the public can see [that] our work is done properly..." He didn't say the public can see if the prosecution does its work properly.

  According to one story about the Jesuits, if the Pope said black is white, the Jesuits were to say black is white too. So Nice is acting a lot like the Pope and the journalists as his Jesuits.

  Take heed. This whining comes from Nice. This follows the presiding judge's warning that the protected witnesses shouldn't be identified by the press. Look at the seamless co-operation between May and Nice. Poetry in motion.

  And look at how they have managed to persuade "the chosen few" in the press by the slightest hint by May. Mr T was even kind enough to inform us about the new policy. In this case it seems any co-operation has to be seamless, which raises the question if that kind of co-operation really co-operation at all or just bullying.

  So wonder no more where the news blackout in the media has originated. At least that silence doesn't seem to bother the team Nice & May a bit. Maybe they have their own channels to relay to the media that they would appreciate some privacy.

  The encounter Markovic-Hartmann doesn't seem to be so much about war crimes as the new doctrine that the states have no sovereignty. It seems the ICTY is now issuing indictments as a punishment for the Yugoslav Justice Minister's crime of talking back to La Iena. (Note, I am not criticizing the quality of the prosecution's evidence, but rather the chief prosecutor's hair colour.) Or maybe Hartmann has had it with the criticism that this tribunal isn't even-handed and wants to shut up the critics by indicting Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Monday October 14, 2002 at 2:06 pm
  

  La iena, It. La hiena, Sp. La hyène, Fr. Hyäne, Ger. Hyaena Eng. Hijena, Ser/Croat

  And what is it in Finnish-Suomi(?)?
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Monday October 14, 2002 at 2:50 pm
  Hun: hiéna, Rus: giena, In Albanian-Shqip: hienä (fig.) cruel and vicious person
  
  Andre Huzsvai
  U.S.

• Monday October 14, 2002 at 3:52 pm
  

  Enough democracy!

  The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) called on Serbia to urgently change its electoral laws after the failure of weekend presidential elections.

  Click on the text for the whole article.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Monday October 14, 2002 at 7:23 pm
  There's nothing more practical that I could suggest you can do, Gogol, apart from what you're already doing: trying to follow this monster-trial (bulky as well as ugly) and share your thoughts with others. But it does help, believe me.

  It helps those who see the injustice of this trial to sort out their opinions and to get reassured and comforted, why not?

  It helps those with open minds and lack of information to get some bits and pieces of it that will perhaps induce them to research further beyond press headlines.

  It helps those who oil the gears of the trial to see that their neat mechanism is not universally admired. Who knows, maybe they will at some point realize that their job description is only to manage their employer's hardware/software and receive remuneration for it, and not to think like robots. Robots tend to blow their fuses.

  It helps C.Black and other professionals from the team advising Milosevic to see the "analyses" made by us, wannabe-lawyers, to smile maybe but to discern support of their efforts and to transfer it to their client.

  Let me remind you what Nice said to the judges on 26 Feb. 2002, complaining that the lengthy cross-examinations by Milosevic could deter future witnesses from testifying: "It would be foolish to pretend that this process isn't being given very wide publicity." You see, Pertti, those passing comments of this trial, made by shameless journalists and always from the Prosecution side, constitute a "very wide publicity"! Maybe this forum was what Nice had in mind?! It is publicity they fear, any publicity.

  The protest of the powerless against the mighty is just that - powerless. But it annoys them. The US General Michael Short, in charge of NATO air raids agains YU in 1999, said he wanted to demolish also those bridges "on which they held their rock concerts, singing with target signs on their heads". Notice the caustic, spiteful tone, the details that the valiant warrior observed. Hope he didn't develop an ulcer.

  Ergo, keep up. It helps.
  
  Vera Martinovic
  Belgrade
  Yugoslavia

• Monday October 14, 2002 at 10:49 pm
  Jari.Naiveainen.Sorry,couldn't download full page to post.I'll do it soon.Just to make few things clear."U lazi su kratke noge"--"In lie are short legs" which means "lie has short legs".For shure Milosevic didn't intend to be vulgar.He wanted to make Samardzic ashamed.Even May smiled.But Nice was sensitive like Croatian TV(HRT) which made it second news:"Milosevic shocked Hague".

  Huzsvai is married with Serbian woman.Nice ordered Tiggelaar to post here.He does it rare and unwillingly.Jari appreciate that.Tiggelaar's wife is Croat(Florance Hartmann is also married to Croat).Jari is Seselj's radical("few thousands of Moslims").Trkulja is naive, too.
  
  milan masic
  serbia

• Tuesday October 15, 2002 at 12:18 am
  Didn't really get Milan's second paragraph. I wonder if someone else did.

  Anyway, Vera, the grand prize for the most vicious anti-Serb comment ought to go to Thomas Friedman of The New York Times. Consider:

  “Let’s have a real air war. The idea that people are still holding rock concerts in Belgrade, or going out for Sunday merry-go-round rides, while their fellow Serbs are “cleansing” Kosovo, is outrageous. It should be lights out in Belgrade: Every power grid, water pipe, bridge, road and war related factory has to be targeted. Like it or not, we are at war with the Serbian nation (the Serbs certainly think so), and the stakes have to be very clear: Every week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back by pulverizing you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can do 1389 too.”

  Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist, The New York Times, April 23, 1999
  
  Andre Huzsvai
  U.S.

• Tuesday October 15, 2002 at 5:26 am
  Believe me, this discussion is a smasher. I mentioned it to a couple of persons who I thought might know about it, and they did! Their response was so positive that even I was surprised.

  To know if something is working, one has to define the the objective. If one of our objective was to dispel the prejudices against the "Butcher of the Balkans", he have more than succeeded. Now the same bogeyman effect is dependent on Seselj. Milan is now the second - after Simon - who accuses a Milosevic supporter of a being a Seselj's man. Believe me, Milan (once you sober up), this discussion has been going a lot earlier before Milosevic indicated that he supports Seselj in the presidential race. Few even know what he looks like (I don't), so being called a Seselj's man for simply supporting the defendant in this trial uses the kind of twisted logic I don't get.

  You are right Vera. My speculation that the prosecution might indict Blair and Clinton was irony of course (which Milan may have missed), but on a more somber note, I would be surprised if the new indictees don't include many in the celebrated "joint criminal enterprise". They have even unsealed the amended indictment against Karadzic, who was of course on the list. That is simple prosecutorial overkill as long as there isn't even the slightest hope of ever catching him. That way the prosecution only magnifies its own failure. Maybe they want compassion.

  And yes Vera, it may be that the prosecution is ticked by this discussion. Why wouldn't they? The mainstream media hasn't surely been too critical of the prosecution, no matter what Mr Nice says, so that leaves - us. Or do you know of any other forum which is as independent as this? So maybe the prosecution wants to shut us up by realizing the worst of our fears - the indictment of the whole "joint criminal enterprise". They may want to make us feel that we are betraying those who are trying to help. I mean that wouldn't surprise us at all after all the other administrative misconduct they have been guilty of. Ah but we are wily. Blair said that he wanted to take Serbia to Europe, and we make the prosecution live up to that promise. The mass deportation of Serbs to The Hague has already begun. And notice, they strike at the leaders first. Soon they will have to turn the Scheveningen detention centre into the de facto administrative capital of Serbia. Is that so bad? That way the Yugoslav budget won't have to shoulder the immense costs that commuting between The Hague and Belgrade entails.

  So you see. The trial is at a turning point. The prosecution is resorting to less and less subtle means to shut up the informed public, which has until now been one of the elements of a fair trial. The case is analougous to that of ICSDM. They used to get some attention in the media before the trial started. Now they complain they get next to nothing, because the prosecution is losing its case.

  Yes, Milan, I said that appreciate Frank's participation in this forum. I don't know which I appreciate more: his posting here or his posting here rarely and unwillingly. But his greatest contribution is to convey to us how the judge-prosecution team thinks. Where else would you find such information? I think he knows that too, which may explain his posting here rarely and unwillingly.

  Milan, from your most recent post it is obvious that your father is a Muslim and your mother an Albanian (I mean, how old are you?). Maybe the only true piece of information is that Florence Hartmann's hubby is a Croat. If so, that might narrow down the margins of the new list of indictees (which she says contains more of those who committed crimes against in the territory of former Yugoslavia). Let's see if they have any Croats on the list, beside the obligatory "consensus-minus-one" type of Croat among the many Serbs.

  By the way, Milan, when I speak of anti-Serb bias I am referring to a legal concept. Outside court we may have just as much anti-Serb bias as we want, and I must tell you that you are not helping a bit. If you want to do something useful you could enlighten us about this enigmatic Seselj character, who we are supposed to know everything about anyway. You could be especially specific about his "few thousand Muslims" statement, which doesn't ring any bell right now. That may come in handy when the Serbs start electing a new president once more.

  Boy Andre. Sounds like Friedman was using the "cleansing" only as a pretext to take the Serbs back to the Middle Ages. Hallo, Milan: irony.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Tuesday October 15, 2002 at 7:00 am
  As Seselj seems to be on-topic again and some have looked at why the ICTY has not indicted him, others have commented on why Milosevic has thrown his weight behind him. Personally I'm no too sure whats what yet. I was reading some old reports a while back and came across this from 24/1/1996:

  MEETING WITH MILOSEVIC. On Monday, Shattuck traveled to Belgrade, where he reportedly told Serbia's President Slobodan Milosevic he saw "very clear evidence" that Bosnian Serb troops massacred thousands of Muslim men. Shattuck said Milosevic agreed to cooperate with war-crimes investigators, and to push Serb nationalists in Bosnia to release all prisoners. Officials from the war-crimes tribunal reportedly have threatened to seek reimposition of sanctions on Serbia if Milosevic does not begin cooperating with its work, as required under the Dayton accords. Meanwhile, Serbian ultranationalist Vojislav Seselj, head of one of the most brutal paramilitary units that fought in Bosnia and now an opposition figure in Serbia, reportedly offered to testify against Milosevic in the Hague. Seselj says he has evidence that Bosnian war crimes were planned by Milosevic, and that his government is paying Serb generals fighting in Bosnia. Western media reports have made similar charges.

  http://world.std.com/~slm/twib0124.html

  A reason for Milosevic to support Seselj or a reason for the ICTY not to indicte Seselj, blackmale, bribary or coincidence?
  
  Simon Joseph
  Amman Valley
  UK

• Tuesday October 15, 2002 at 7:39 am
  

  Kostunica and Labus are both working in various degrees for the G17, Seselj is certainly not.

  That is the big difference!
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Tuesday October 15, 2002 at 8:13 am
  Any info from our Yu based contributors on the recent International conference on truth, reconciliation in Belgrade? BELGRADE-CONFERENCE-RECONCILIATION International conference on truth, reconciliation opens 12:29 BELGRADE , Oct 11 (Tanjug) - A two-day international conference on the best model of truth and reconciliation for the former Yugoslavia, organised by the Serbian Victimology Society and Germany's Friedrich Ebert Foundation, opened in Belgrade on Friday. Welcoming the participants, Serbian Minister of State Administration and Local Self-Rule Rodoljub Sabic said that because of the developments that had caused the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia and misfortune of many people, newly created states had the need for good neighbourly and friendly relations and for finding the paths of truth and reconciliation.
  
  Simon Joseph
  Amman Valley
  UK

• Tuesday October 15, 2002 at 9:47 am
  RE: "the best model of truth and reconciliation for the former Yugoslavia, organised by the Serbian Victimology Society and Germany's Friedrich Ebert Foundation"

  I wouldn't go near anything organized even in part by German entities in the Balkans. Just a gut reflex.

  On a more cheerful note:

  SARAJEVO, Oct 14 (AFP) - Experts from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) on Monday began tests for contamination in several locations in Bosnia where NATO forces used depleted uranium shells during the country's 1992-1995 war.

  "The UNEP's aim is to determine whether the use of depleted uranium during the conflict in Bosnia may pose health and environmental risks either now or in the future," team leader Pekka Haavisto told reporters.

  Last year the UNEP concluded that depleted uranium shells used by NATO forces in Yugoslavia had not caused widespread contamination.

  But in early 2001 many NATO and non-NATO countries raised concern over possible link between the use of depleted uranium ammunition in the Balkans and increased cancer rates among soldiers who had participated in peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and the Serb province of Kosovo.

  Over the next 10 days, the 17-member UNEP team plans to take soil, water and vegetation samples from 12 sites across the country.

  Six of the sites have been identified by NATO as having been struck by depleted uranium weapons during air strikes against Bosnian Serbs in 1994 and 1995.

  The samples will be tested in nuclear laboratories in Italy, Britain and Switzerland, Haavisto said, adding that the final conclusions were expected be published in March next year.

  At the request of the local authorities, the UNEP will also examine cancer rates in Sarajevo, Banja Luka and the eastern town of Bratunac, where many refugees from areas hit during bombing raids now live.

  Bosnia was hit by three tons of depleted uranium NATO shells in 1994-1995, Haavisto said.

  Bosnian officials said at the time that the number of cancer cases increased after the war, but gave no evidence to link it with depleted uranium.

  A NATO committee has said that scientific and medical research has so far not shown any link between depleted uranium and reported health problems.
  
  Andre Huzsvai
  U.S.

• Tuesday October 15, 2002 at 10:09 am
  Indictments so far have been mostly political. The Hague has indicted those individuals who are in the way of NATO’s political agenda for this region. Milosevic has to be eliminated in order to shape Serbia in the image of Cocacolaism and Macdonaldism. Karadjic has to be eliminated because he is not willing to live in a fundamentalist Muslim state. Karadjic, like Fikret Abdic, wanted a multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina so they had to be eliminated because this is not what NATO wants. Abdic was sentenced to 20 years for no other reason than the fact that he placed his name on the ballot in the last Bosnian elections. His policy of reconciliation was not what NATO wants. Anyone who seems to be a political thereat will be indicted. Why indict KLA or Isetbegovic, NATO needs them, since NATO’s bureaucracy thrives on destabilization. When “More anarchy is loosened upon the world” as Yeats wrote optimism dies and name calling and acrimony begins. When America sees herself as others see her, peacemakers will inherit the world.

  Mr. Masic, I think is referring to me (Trkulja) as being naive. If my desire for reconciliation makes me ‘naïve’ than I wear that label with pride, since I rather be an idealist than a realist in this situation. Milane I rather be naïve than stupid. My Yugoslav (Serbian) name is Trklja. My wife is Croatian (born in Canada), so I must be suspect like Mr. Tiggellar. I hope he has made as good a choice as I have. Trust me, from what I have seen in his posts, that is about the only thing we have in common.

  Milane, my uncle changed his name to Trkla to help the Anglo-Saxons pronounce the name. Some of the new arrivals in Canada have stayed with the (lj) while others in America have changed it to (Terkla). By the way Milane Trklja is a Serb, Croat and Muslim last name. In fact there is a village called Trklje in Dalmatia.

  The West does not like the electoral process in Yugoslavia. The West wants to reshape the electoral system in their image as well. They want a democracy where most people become disinterested in voting and a political party can get elected with 27% of the popular vote, as is the Case of Mr. Bush.

  Milane we are here in “race between ignorance and education” so I am here to be educated. Your ethnicity matters zero to me, what matters to me is your ideas and if I don’t like your ideas I will challenge them in my naïve way.
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops BC
  Canada

• Tuesday October 15, 2002 at 10:31 am
  

  Precisely. If such a Law existed in the United States where often 50% of the registered electorate does not vote politicians in order to get elected would have to serve the people, their issues and not the corporations which buys them.

  Kostunica and Labus, both working and financed by G17, or AKA as foreign capital and multi-nationals.

  But, be happy soon Serbia will have the same Western system whether the choices, the very democratic choice is betweeen an imbecile and a hitler's aprentice.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Tuesday October 15, 2002 at 11:04 am
  Referring to the latest Seselj info posted by Simon: it is mysterious, isn't it? So Shattuck said Milosevic had promised to cooperate with the ICTY investigators in Bosnia. That is again one of the good deeds that the ICTY will never forgive.

  An even more unforgiveable step was to sign the Dayton Peace Agreement. Then, a year later, ICTY said it would like to see sanctions re-imposed on Serbia (not Bosnia), if Milosevic (not the Bosnian Serb leadership) wouldn't start cooperating with the ICTY.

  ICTY said this is all spelled out in the Dayton Peace Agreement!

  Maybe they refer to Art. II (8) of Annex 4 of the Agreement. It says:

  "All competent authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina shall cooperate with and provide unrestricted access to...the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia..."

  This refers to the competent authorities in BiH, of which Milosevic had promised to let go by the Dayton Agreement. It doesn't seem he would be bound to "co-operate" with the ICTY by the Dayton Agreement!

  The same provision goes on: "...and in particular shall comply with orders issued pursuant to Article 29 of the Statute of the Tribunal".

  Article 29 of the Statute speaks to the "States" in general (i.e. all former Yugoslavia), but then it cannot be argued that Serbia should cooperate on the basis of the Dayton Agreement. In no case can the Dayton Agreement justify the imposition of sanctions on Serbia!

  There is something the ICTY seems to forget - maybe sincerely so: the meaning of co-operation. Art. 29(1) of the Statute says:

  "States shall co-operate with the International Tribunal in the investigation and prosecution of persons."

  It says "co-operate". Nowhere has the term "co-operate" been defined as the tribunal would have us believe. It doesn't mean blind obedience to any order the OTP may give. Co-operation in the prosecution of persons would have to be understood as, well, co-operation: the national courts do their part and the ICTY does its part.

  The blind obedience to ICTY orders seems to be excused by the Dayton Agreement: "...shall comply with orders..." in Art. II (8) of Annex 4.

  This word "orders", in turn, is based on § 2 of Art. 29: "States shall comply without undue delay with any request for assistance or an order issued by a Trial Chamber..."

  But the context is not that of bullying, as we have been led to assume: the context is that of co-operation and assistance to the ICTY (I can't believe I am defending the ICTY Statute here!).

  Anyway, the Dayton Agreement only bound the Bosnian authorities, not Serbia. So it seems Milosevic owed the ICTY big time for all the good deeds he had done, especially signing the agreement in the first place! This must have led him to believe that the charges were bogus too and his consent had been acquired by fraud, which made the agreement null and void (here we go again).

  Confused? At least the prosecution doesn't seem to get it.

  There is another thing this Annex 4 of the Dayton Agreement reveals. There can be no doubt that a malevolent way to influence elections is an ICTY indictment. Art. IX(1) says:

  "No person who is serving a sentence imposed by the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and no person who is under indictment by the Tribunal and who has failed to comply with an order to appear before the Tribunal, may stand as a candidate or hold any appointive, elective, or other public office in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina."

  Still wondering why Karadzic disappeared from Bosnian politics?

  As if the message to Karadzic weren't clear enough with the two indictments he is already under, the prosecution has now unsealed an amended indictment (which can be found on ICTY homepage, with the tempting text "NEW" flashing beside it). This is Karadzic's solo indictment, which mentions Mladic only in passing.

  The information Simon provided on Seselj and Milosevic is interesting. If Seselj threatened to testify against Milosevic, at what point was there a "joint criminal enterprise" between them? Maybe the joint enterprise started when they were mentioned in the same indictment by the prosecution.

  But that is of secondary importance. I have done some research on the hyenas, and I now know more of them than I would ever have believed. Hyena is in Finnish is "hyeena". But there are so many types of them. I think Del Ponte's general appearance would be closest to that of the spotted hyena (in Italian: la iena macchiata), judging by the conspicuous white things in places where you would least expect them.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Tuesday October 15, 2002 at 11:19 am
  

  It seems the prosecution is playing for time. The pace is slow, even judge May (NATO) is not complainning about time lately. Frau or fraulein Hildegard Uertz-Retzlaff (NATO) examined protected witness C122 and it was so that not only Mr. Milosevic objection was witheld, but a petite English (NATO) woman wearing the characteristic wig and sitting with amici Tapuskovic reminded the court fr. Uertz-Rezlaff (NATO) was not giving evidence but C122 was; he should not be given the answer during the questioning.

  Mr. Milosevic was practically not interrupted by the presiding judge (NATO), he made good time and wants more tomorrow, presumably to advance his case with such a nice witness from the prosecution.

  Previously the cross-examination of CNN, Times Mag., Vreme, etc, journalist Dejan Anastasijevic ended after having established he had in April 1999 left for Vienna to avoid being drafted for the lenght of the criminal agression of NATO against Yugoslavia.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Tuesday October 15, 2002 at 12:40 pm
  

  Interview with Cedomir Prlincevic, Chief Archivist of Kosovo and leader of Pristina's Jewish Community.

  Click on text to read the whole interview.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Tuesday October 15, 2002 at 10:49 pm
  Jari.Irony?I don't know what that is.Tell me.You'll excuse my cave English."Few thousand Muslims" are just your words."Serbia didn't break the rules.What rules?" is what I'd like to discuss with you.My second paragraph was the best I could do and very relevant.I expected more understanding in my search for the truth.Tiggelaar shivers now.Trkla understood me well and I respect his illusions.Trust me it's not so bad to be stupid.Pozdravljam te brate preko okeana.Trkla is my Muslem-Albanian brother.

  I had right about Huzsvai.His perception is reliable and he has good gut reflex ( not only Germans,but all NGO's).Gogol is wrong about Kostunica.I can't say everything about Seselj,it could "harm his case"(poor spies).Vera could help.Just this:he is irresistibly funny.

  Tiggelaar, tell us is he guilty or not so that we could go to sleep.
  
  milan masic
  serbia

• Tuesday October 15, 2002 at 10:50 pm
  It was a pleasure to see him stammering on the witness stand. But the Belgrade journalist Dejan Anastasijevic was sitting on the wrong bench: he and his sort richly deserved to be those accused.

  I remember an American journalist who came to Belgrade local TV, Studio B, back in 1989 to report about the rise of Milosevic. He came with the article already written! He asked to be escorted by a girl from Studio B around the town, and insisted to be shown the signs of the "cult of the leader". The girl was willing to oblige (Studio B was the opposition TV), but our professional wasn't satisfied: not enough idolatry, too many cool people sitting in outdoor cafes not caring about any politician, too much of European atmosphere for his US Mid-Western mind. So, he decided to drop any idea of footage accompanying the ready-made piece, simply read out his text into the camera standing in front of some dilapidated wall and left Belgrade in haste.

  Let me see what Mr Anastasijevic actually said that could be relevant for the indictment: a Bosnian Serb guy on the bus travelling through Bosnia in 1992 told him he "participated in the units of Fikret Abdic fighting Alija Izetbegovic" (remember Muslim-Muslim portion of the war?). The desperate Prosecution tried at least to insinuate that this person was from Serbia (remember the indictment: Serbia exported war to Bosnia); even the translator helped, always rendering "Republika Srpska" as "a man from the Republic of Serbia", until Milosevic saw it on his screen as being put in the transcript and corrected the "mistake". Then he asked what was this person's name; the witness said "his name slips me at the moment, I have it written somewhere in my notes". Similarly, all other people that he interviewed, implicating Serbia in wars in CRO and B&H were anonymous and/or the place and time of interviews slipped his mind.

  When describing his visits to Bosnia in 1994, he said he saw the YU-imposed blockade on the border river Drina against the Bosnian Serbs, which "didn't apply to military shipments". Milosevic asked "why was the blockade imposed?"; the witness said Karadzic and Milosevic disagreed on a peace plan, but didn't know which and stumbled upon some names like Stoltenberg; Milosevic said it was the Vance-Owen plan, which Karadzic eventually signed soon thereafter and the blockade was lifted, but all this happened in 1993, and not in 1994. May jumped in to help the well-informed journalist by saying that "it's barely relevant what witness knew or didn't know"(??!); Milosevic remarked that the witness knows nothing of the events of which he's testifying and which are a common knowledge; May snapped that "this is not a general-knowledge test"(??!) and besides "you've made your point".

  Finally, when all else failed, the witness ran to our usual suspect - Seselj: he supposedly told him that he was chummy with the State Security Chief Jovica Stanisic, who just had to ask and Seselj would immediately organize "120 volunteers from Serbia to go to Bosnia". Another "deep throat" that our man of typewriter named was the General Aleksandar Vasiljevic, the Counter-Intelligence Service Chief, no less. He supposedly told him that the YU Army co-operated with the Serbs from CRO in Vukovar.

  Ah, journalists, my favourite kind of ignorants. You know, Peter, we have an expression for them, similar to that of your "naive idiot"; we call them "useful idiots". Just slip them some money (not much, enough to keep up their drinking habit or a one-year scholarship) and you've got yourself a slave for life, who even ends up believing what he's writing.

  Btw, re Jackie Rowlands "testimony": few days after her in-depth story of cadavers of Dubrava prison inmates, which "didn't seem to me like bomb-victims", an interesting little interview appeared in our press. The escort to foreign journalists on that occasion simply told that Ms Rowlands was scared out of her wits ("hysterical" was the word that the guy used) when viewing these corpses, because NATO airplanes were constantly flying over the prison, and actually attacked again only moments afterwards. She remained in the room with the bodies "only few seconds" and then fled; the guy wasn't sure that she actually managed to see the bodies at all, let alone examine their wounds.
  
  Vera Martinovic
  Belgrade
  Yugoslavia

• Wednesday October 16, 2002 at 3:25 am
  OK, Milan I've got to hand it to you. I think that is what you want to hear. Just to make clear, I never said you didn't know what irony means, so your irony is out of place. On the other hand, your "harm his case" works much better, because I think that is what you are trying to do to Milosevic. As a reminder, this discussion is about the Milosevic trial and not anything else, so if you insist this is another plan for Western domination, you are demonstrating that this discussion is much more powerful than any of us imagined, and second, that there is no reason to build a cult-following around the Serbs, because they can be the kind of paranoid and ungrateful bastards you are now trying to have us believe. So let's keep this discussion on topic.

  If you want discuss another topic, maybe you could start by expressing your thoughts, instead of accusing those who do as spies. If this discussion makes you nervous, as you said, why do you keep on hanging here, unless it is you that has some secret mission?

  On a more positive note, you and I both seem to agree that Seselj is going to be among the new indictees (although it makes no sense to accuse me of being a Seselj's man and a spy at the same time - did you ever think of that?). Sestov makes a perfect indictee: he is part of the "joint criminal enterprise" and a serious presidential contender (again). So the prosecution thought it might be good to step in to help the Serbs make the right choice (or not to make the wrong choice) and decided to conclude its pre-election "investigation" and indict him.

  But still, Serbia is not Bosnia. Serbia has no Dayton Peace Agreement, so in Serbia an indictee can be elected to a political position, whereas in Bosnia he can't.

  It is also revealing that the OTP came up with the amended indictment against Karadzic now that it turned out that the nationalists won the elections in Republika Srpska. This is the prosecutorial orgy that accompanies elections. In Republika Srpska the politically incorrect vote may have come as a surprise, so the ICTY has to punish the Bosnian Serbs afterwards. In Serbia they already know that Seselj can be a threat, so they practise some malevolent election-influencing in advance, even if an indictment isn't so ruinous in Serbia as in Republika Srpska.

  Also, it is somewhat astonishing that of the Kardadzic & Mladic team, it is Karadzic that is now singled out fro indictment. He is a "superior" in the sense of Art. 7(3) of the Statute even less than Mladic. So this shows the political motivations behind his indictment.

  To come back to Simon's Shattuck/Seselj/Milosevic news from 1996, let's not forget that Shattuck was the "trap" guy, who said in the Boston Globe that the trap against Milosevic worked perfectly (although Vera pointed out that this trap existed even before Milosevic became a cult-leader). Only, by a trap I mean something clever. This "trap" is based on fraud. If Shattuck's exchanges with Milosevic before the Dayton Accord were already intended to trap Milosevic, we have no reason to believe that he really saw clear evidence of Bosnian Serbs massacring thousands of Bosnian men (so maybe that makes me the most reliable source?). Anyway, what happened after Dayton is not a trap. It is simply a lie. If they wanted the Dayton Peace Agreement to work the way they made it work, they should have formulated the agreement otherwise, in which case Milosevic wouldn't have signed it. So Milosevic didn't break the agreement when he didn't hand the Bosnian Serbs. If he had meddled in Bosnian Serb business, he would have broken it. As it is, it was the ICTY personnel (maybe together with Shattuck) who broke the Dayton Agreement by extending it to situations where it was never meant to apply.

  Finally, about those video tapes that are made at the trial. They are not working as the sort of excuse they were supposed to. Remember, justice must not only be done but also be seen done. Only, Nice would prefer that justice were not seen done, because he would prefer justice not being done. He doesn't object to the video tapes, though, so the "wide publicity" effect he speaks of seems to be achieved by some other means than the video archives.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Wednesday October 16, 2002 at 6:31 am
  Let's take another look at Srebrenica.

  What have we got? Erdomovic and Krstic judgments. The Egyptian Fouad Riad was one of the judges in both cases. As we know, the latter judgment declared Srebrenica a genocide and estimated the Muslim deaths at 7,000 - 8,000. This was a substantial increase from 1,200 Muslims in Erdemovic sentencing judgment (§ 77). (Erdemovic's "unit" was responsible for the whole massacre according to § 2). This substantial increase from 1,200 to 7,000 - 8,000 also explains that the same crime amounted to genocide in the Krstic judgment. The discrepancy in the qualification of the same crime is also accounted for by the fact that Erdemovic was needed to testify against Karadzic and Mladic (§ 1). A lenient charge might make him more co-operative (especially as he had fought on all three sides of the war) and might reflect the hierarchical structure of the Bosnian Serb leadership: for subordinates lenient charges - for superiors tougher ones.

  All the alternative explanations for Srebrenica can be found at http://www.antiwar.com/srebrenica.html .
  
  J N
  Finland

• Wednesday October 16, 2002 at 9:50 am
  Persecution of ethnic minorities in Kosovo: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Rifati_Kosovo.htm

  Depleted uranium in BH: http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2002/2002-10-15-02.asp
  
  Andre Huzsvai
  U.S.

• Wednesday October 16, 2002 at 11:56 am
  Milan Masic writes “Trust me it's not so bad to be stupid.” and ”Trkla is my Muslem-Albanian brother.” This is a bit of a riddle to me Milane. If you are insinuating that I am stupid in believing that reconciliation is out of the question you know “hope springs eternal” so I can hope that Hobbes was wrong that human nature is “nasty brutish and short”. I tend to be an optimist like Locke and Rousseau that education will save us from ignorance and superstition. I am not sure what you mean with the words that Trkla is my Muslim-Albanian brother? If you mean that it is not possible to have friends among Muslims or Albanians your vision of the world is very narrow. On the other hand, it was exactly those that had a village mentality that caused the chaos in Yugoslavia in the first place.

  Milane NATO used that village mentality and subjected Yugoslavia to a great injustice, and those who believe anything different have simply not looked at the role played by the West. So Milane we need to open our eyes it is terrible to wake up and find out that one has been deceived. This Tribunal is a deception and I would hope that if anything good is to emerge from this lie, it will expose the need for the South Slavs to work together. This trial will bring into the open the “boil” of chauvinism and past wrongs (Croat, Albanian, Muslim and Serb). This boil has been festering and hidden for the past sixty years and blaming and pointing fingers is not the cure. The cure lies, not in war, but in each person from that region, in your humanity and in your conscience. Milane you would do well to heed Gandhi’s words “War with all its glorification of brute force is essentially a degrading thing. It demoralizes those who are trained for it. It brutalizes men of naturally gentle character. Its path of glory is foul with the passions of lust and red with the blood of murder”.
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops BC
  Canada

• Wednesday October 16, 2002 at 12:10 pm
  My theory is that Milan Massage is a drunken bum and as such the ICTY's equivalent of a Palestinian suicide bomber. If he fails, he will take his secret with him to the grave. Milan is exactly the reason I said that Milosevic may be hurting his case by speaking in name of his people. What do the people care? Let him save his own skin, as they are doing now. That way he will win their respect.

  But naivete is an admirable quality, at least if it manifests itself as optimism. Even such a lowlife as Milan can bring Milosevic closer to victory. You know, Milan is an example of the worst kind of Serb. Did Milosevic's transfer to The Hague remedy the Serbs? Not at all, he must have been their last hope.

  These Kostunica supporters, and Milan Massage seems to be one, are even more paranoid than Milosevic and his cronies ever were. That means the we got the wrong guy in The Hague! It is not true that this Milosevic is not about the Serbs. As long as Milosevic identifies himself with them, he is a goner, let Milan bear witness to that. If instead he makes a break with them, he has some hope. Let the ICTY take Kostunica and his nationalists to The Hague instead. Of course, another war is necessary, but that will only harm his case.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Wednesday October 16, 2002 at 12:30 pm
  Jari,

  Külla!

  I know it's a slow season, but do we need to waste ourselves on bickering with Milan?

  Indicting Kostunica when his time comes is not as far-fetched an idea as one may think. I, for one would not be surprised by ANY scenario on the Balkan stage any more. Note Kostunica's refusal to accept the cancellation of the results of the second round yesterday. By December 5 the Djindjic-Labus tandem could well pull known strings in NATO capitals and have Kostunica eliminated. With his 66% of the vote over Labus' meager 31% the only way to ensure the triumph of the pro-Washington democracy would be to book a one-way ticket to The Hague for Kostunica along with Milutinovic. There is a footage of him brandishing a gun in Kosovo, isn't there? We have witnessed that under the right circumstances that's more than enough to get indicted.

  To paraphrase H.L.Mencken's legendary line: "No one should go broke by underestimating the ability of ICTY to indict."
  
  Andre Huzsvai
  U.S

• Wednesday October 16, 2002 at 12:37 pm
  I am sorry Andre. Well, Milosevic tends to lose his temper once in a while, not to speak anything of May. As to another war, I was wrong. Another war is not needed. I also remembered the photo of Kostunica with the machine gun. That should hurt his case. I thought it was a fake, but who knows? Truth is very relative. As Labus reveals his true colours, some of the cells in Scheveningen will be empty by then, so there is always room for another indictee. Soon Milosevic will be the only one I have never seen with a gun, let alone a uniform.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Wednesday October 16, 2002 at 3:35 pm
  Jari.I really don't know what irony is.Russians say "drunk as a Finn".You are ordinary Radical.This discussion isn't so narrow and you had my topic- "Serbia-rules".And your insults.I won't ask for your age.From now on I'll be clear like manual.

  You have to think in absurd way if you want to understand Seselj phenomenon. No indictment? He is spy maybe. His interview?Just message to the West that they can count on him.Nothing serious. Milosevic's support?Family reasons-his doughter Marija is member of SRS(Radical party-you can see his picture there).His wife has bad relations with SPS(Socialists-Milosevic feels betrayed by them). Seselj wrote interesting books about Milosevic and his wife.Vera could help with titles. I can't tell you other reasons because of spies.The only poor spie here is Tiggelaar who has been ordered by Nice(MI6) to follow this "important" discussion.

  New witness worked for the most vulgar newspapers of that time "Politika Ekspres".I don't know how long and that is very relevant.I didn't hear about "lions in Sarajevo" but it isn't truth that there were "many,many such stories".Previous one ,Anastasijevic, said that Seselj was on TV all the time.That's also untrue though many people would agree with that.This witness leads the story professionaly and knows what to point out.But knowing Seselj's speech by heart was too much.Can you do that Frank?
  
  milan masic
  serbia

• Wednesday October 16, 2002 at 5:46 pm
  Greetings compañeros!

  Another useful idiot was at the witness bench today. Also dedicated to Vreme he told the court about all the things he heard, saw and wrote while he wondered in Bosnia during the war. Mr. Groove (NATO) the new prosecuter asked the mostly yes or no questions prompting judge Robinson (COLONIAL) to ask for a more detailed account at one point. He aslo wanted to know what 9 milion Dinars meant in German and US currency.

  I wonder why to bring so many (second in a row) journalists, I mean useful idiots when the troika could just read the newspapers of the time or have Vreme translated for bedtime reading.

  The misterious wigged petite was at last introduced by judge May (NATO) her name is Higgens and she will be replacing Mr. Kay (NATO) who will be absent for the next 6 weeks. Judge May (NATO) told miss Higgens (NATO) she will be renumerated.

  Prosecutor Nice (NATO) told the court about the new applications for protected witnesses status to the court. Judge May (NATO) said the court was concerned they were too many to which Mr. Nice, not untypically, reacted emotionally and frustrated the court could not undertsand how difficult it is to have witnesses coming to testify at the ICTY, former Yugoslavia he said was a dangerous place and the protection of the witnesses was utterly important for the tribunal. Nice people n'est pas?.

  Well, interestingly enough witness C4 the journalist in question just had told the prosecutor he had changed his mind and wished to give testimony in open session and unprotected. Not surprisingly Mr. Milosevic objected as a matter of principle to the fact, repeatly protected witnesses had by "a touch of magic" changed their mind once at the tribunal. He had in the past objected to this since the preparation of a protected witness crosss-examination is harder than if the identity of the person is not withheld. A simple fact wouldn't you say?

  Judge May (NATO) came to the rescue of the prosecutor and instead of asking Mr. Nice (NATO) an explanation May (NATO) spoke on his behalf by saying the prosecutor was not being "trickery" at all!

  Well, there you have it , two Englishmen, two NATO buddies understanding each other: "we have to be perceived as fair" they told the amici Mr. Wladimiroff (NATO).

  If we have now established under Jary's suggestion Carla to be hyeena I submit Nice (NATO) to be a scorpion I had thought toad first but I like scorpion better.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Wednesday October 16, 2002 at 5:53 pm
  

  Milan, you said I am wrong about Kostunica, do you mean about his economical agenda linked to G17 or is it something else?
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Wednesday October 16, 2002 at 7:47 pm
  Every day this trial continues one sees the depth of NATO’s criminality. To put liars (journalists) on the witness stand makes one want to take a shower. These people would frame their grandmother in order to get a story that will sell. It is also impossible to describe NATO’s culpability in these lies. From the outset of their decision to break up Yugoslavia this organization’s propaganda machine has been fueled by desire for power. Those that work for it lie for pay but what is more dastardly they train, blackmail, bribe and use duress to have others perjure themselves in the media and on the witness stand.

  I am amazed by the power of this bureaucracy and the fact that there are only few with integrity who have stood up and said this is wrong. From the thousands of bureaucrats diplomats and functionaries who are in the system day to day we should expect more honesty from those, not only in NATO, but also those in the governments of NATO countries. Saddam Hussein needs an organization like this since even his dictatorship has not been able to silence internal criticism. The silence for pay is more efficient than silence from fear.

  NATO is expanding or I should say cloning and the lies they tell are so simple and the media who is in their pocket sells them as the truth. The gullible masses go on with their heads in the sand. I am not sure if European readers of this page understand the extent of North America media culpability in crisis after crisis created by the West to justify their economic domination. In sweetheart deals between liars silence pays for both parties. If Stalin had used money, rather than fear, we might not have had the purges. Gogol, useful idiots need to eat so they prostitute for money.

  Jari I am not sure if you are a soccer fan? I understand that Finland played a great first half in Belgrade but were unable to get any goals. At least Finns will have a second chance while Milosevic will not.However, every soccer game has two halves and Milosevic has not played the second half yet.
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops BC
  Canada

• Wednesday October 16, 2002 at 10:33 pm
  Walter: Thanks for the sports analogy. Avid fan that I am I would say the score is 40 love Slobo. Even judge May must agree that the bull has goured the matador and layed waste to the picadors. The offence is in disarray and ready to punt. Give Slobo the ball and we will see some real fun.

  I predict; A sack before the half and a stong air game in the second. ie; two goals in the last chucker or the matador is impaled on horn.
  
  Pertti Lindroos
  Quesnel
  BC Canada

• Wednesday October 16, 2002 at 10:37 pm
  When dealing with people from a region other than your own, you have to at least try to get some basic info on these people's mentality. I know I'm setting too high standards here for Nice & team; they have trouble sorting out who seceded when and who fought whom; to expect psychological subtleties would be expecting the impossible. But, look what happens when the Prosecution completely disregards the fact that they have in front of them people who react somewhat differently than, say, people from Surrey or Alaska.

  Enters a protected witness C-1220, another Serb from CRO, with his image distorted, but not his voice. By his voice I could tell that, unlike the previous Serb from CRO, C-037, who was a city-man, this was a peasant from Dinaric mountains, which means a man of epic manners: those people possess innate story-telling quality and they need their story to be heard.

  Now, our Prosecution did their homework in that part wich concerns "witness preparation": they obviously instructed the poor, uneducated man to stick to monosyllables and to confirm whatever the Prosecution asks (remember: C-1220 has to go back to CRO; he resents being "betrayed" by Milosevic).

  So, here we start merrily: Madam Hildegard weaves her long, suggestive questions and the mountaineer, shocked by the atmosphere of the courtroom and strict instructions, answers in the shortest possible way, almost sullenly, but confirming everything, and all's well.

  True, Madam Hildegard got carried away a bit, so much that the new character in the courtroom, a young bewigged female amica curiae stood up and complained to the judges that "my learned colleague" should not put words in the mouth of the witness. May was displeased: "I'm sure she will have this in mind. You are maybe too severe in your criticism."

  Nevertheless, Madam Hildegard proceeded unperturbed and managed to spin a terrifying story: In November 1991, local Serb rebel forces (of which C-1220 was a simple soldier), together with YU Army units using tanks and artillery, attacked a small, peaceful Croat village of Saborsko (population of no more than 50-60 elderly people). When all was over, there were houses burning, looting, Army soldiers everywhere, a trench excavator to bury corpses, a friend of C-1220 who came crying, saying one of his Croat friends from the village, Pero, has been killed...

  I knew nothing of that event beforehand, so I thought this must be a very bad case of war crime just described.

  Then Milosevic cross-examined. Unlike the Prosecution, he knew a thing or two about the Dinaric mentality (his family originating from Montenegro and Dinara massive stretching all the way down there). He didn't ask lengthy questions this time (as Madam Hildegard did: "When you came to Saborsko, the Army was there, houses were burning, trench excavator was already digging?" C-1220: "Yes.") Instead, he simply asked the man: "Why was Saborsko attacked?" This started an avalanche, an eloquent and coherent report of events that goes like this:

  Saborsko was a wedge within Serb villages not far from Knin that November 1991 (remember: before CRO secession). The nearby strong YU Army garrison with one of the largest shooting ranges in the country has been blocked for months by armed Croats, having their stronghold in Saborsko. It's a densely wooded area, and with Croats blocking the only access road there was no supplies neither for the garrison, nor for the surrounding Serb villages ("We ran out even of salt", said C-1220). There were several unsuccessful attempts to negotiate with the Croats to let few trucks pass just to get some food (imagine the Army still within its own country to be forced to such negotiations with illegal armed groups). Finally, the Army decided to deblock the road by force and engaged local Serbs to guard their flanks (C-1220 was with his local unit in a nearby hamlet during the whole action, on guard). An Army unit came out of the compound with couple of armed vehicles, shelled the outskirts of Saborsko killing some cattle in the process (thus the trench excavator, to bury the carcasses; "This was the first time I ever saw the battlefield sanitation", said C-1220). Croats fled, the road block was removed and 50-60 elderly Saborsko Croats were taken to a nearby Serbian villages (some of their houses were hit), given sandwiches and tea and tomorrow morning taken in 2 buses to the line of separation between the Serb- and the Croat-held area and released to go across. Noone was killed, except a wealthy Croat merchant Pero ("My friend came crying, saying Pero was killed by two local ruffians, who wanted to rob him of his thousands of Deutsche Marks; those two also looted the only small village shop", said C-1220. Milosevic put in: "Why didn't you report them to the police?" "No, no, who would dare to report them, they were armed and bullies even before, robbing and beating people", earnestly explained C-1220.

  So, you see how a story is like a velvet: depends to which side you rub it. The Prosecution rubbed C-1220 the wrong way, making him look stupid and he just wanted to explain what really happened.

  P.S. Do not judge Milan too harshly. He's OK, you just don't recognize when he's talking tongue-in-cheek or with irony and when not. And Seselj is indeed incredibly funny: about 2m tall, with huge pot-belly and terrible lisp (his "r" is "v", which is a source of endless jokes at his expense). But he's sharp and has a nasty habit of telling the truth right to the face of anyone he's talking to, anywhere.
  
  Vera Martinovic
  Belgrade
  Yugoslavia