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22 Jul 08 - 03:31 AM (#2394813) Subject: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: alanabit It looks like a major hood has been jugged. Radovan Karadzic has been arrested. He must be looking enviously at Karl Rove's American citizenship and wishing ruefelly that he too was guaranteed to be above the law for life. I am glad to see it all the same. I would rather see some justice than no justice. |
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22 Jul 08 - 08:07 AM (#2394956) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: GUEST,lox Good! |
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22 Jul 08 - 08:27 AM (#2394969) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: GUEST,Arnie at work Unbelievably, his lawyer claimed that the arrest was illegal as Kardzic had been held in custody for three days and should have appeared before a judge on day one. What his lawyer forgot to mention is that this war criminal had spent the last 13 years as a fugitive evading the very justice that he is complaining about. Now that the Serbs have decided to round up these butchers they may soon get around to handing over Mladic - although he is apparently being protected by his army pals. |
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22 Jul 08 - 09:00 AM (#2395000) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: manitas_at_work He used to look like Father Ted Crilly, now he looks like Dr Rowan Williams ( Archbishop of Canterbury). |
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22 Jul 08 - 09:22 AM (#2395011) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Rapparee Can't say I'm disappointed.... |
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22 Jul 08 - 09:23 AM (#2395012) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Roger the Skiffler ...one photo I thought was Micca....Where is he again? *BG* RtS |
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22 Jul 08 - 03:44 PM (#2395345) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: ard mhacha An evil monster, yet a hero to most Serbs, after watching again on C4 News the horrors inflicted by Karadzic and his henchmen, a lifetime in prison will be some form of justice for the relatives of slain. |
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22 Jul 08 - 04:36 PM (#2395382) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Donuel In my collection of holcaust photos, the massacres ordered by Radovan are among the most sickening. |
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22 Jul 08 - 06:18 PM (#2395461) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: McGrath of Harlow I hope this makes a few other leaders who have carried out wars of aggression in recent years sleep a little less easily at night. And they'd maybe better watch where they go for their holidays abroad. .................... a hero to most Serbs I'd not be so sure of that. I hope the trial is conducted in such a way to open the yes of those who do see him in that way. |
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22 Jul 08 - 06:29 PM (#2395470) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Riginslinger That's important, right, to open the yes? |
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22 Jul 08 - 07:55 PM (#2395524) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Charley Noble Justice is probably more important than a typo. "yes" = "eyes." Riginslinger- Do you have any favorite Hitler jokes you'd like to share as well? Evidently Karadzic was hiding in plain view but disguised as a monk who coordinated group therapy workshops. He deserves to spend the rest of his life behind bars. Charley Noble |
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22 Jul 08 - 09:39 PM (#2395596) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Riginslinger Okay, Charlie, if yes=eyes I'll take your word for it, but what's the reference to "Hitler Jokes?" |
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23 Jul 08 - 04:38 AM (#2395747) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: ard mhacha McGrath do you have to nit-pick?, surely Karadzic and his henchmen would have been handed over years ago, Mladic and the rest of his death squad are still being hidden by his fellow countrymen. I seen enough on last nights news to convince me that all of these murderers still have much support among their Serbian friends. It was a very brave move by the present Prime Minister to arrest Karadzic, although a little persuasion from the EU did help matters. |
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23 Jul 08 - 05:17 AM (#2395765) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Paul Burke Sadly the evil of racism is growing in the EU and Europe. Our own (UK) BNP is bad enough, but Italy has passed openly racist laws against the Roma, and anti-Roma racism is commonplace elsewhere, particularly in the "new" EU members. And in Switzerland, the racist Swiss People's Party has widespread support. Serbia should be an object lesson to everybody on the effects of racism; as a part of Yugoslavia, it was an advanced economy, just outside the Western European standard and way in advance of almost anything in the Warsaw Pact; after the civil war, it is a useless wreck, unable to crawl out of the mire of its own obsession and resentment, and living on pointless myth and the hope of Russian mischief- making. |
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23 Jul 08 - 06:23 AM (#2395790) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: GUEST,Shimrod After Karadzic has had a fair trial, and if he's found guilty, I can think of no good reason for not hanging him - just like Saddam was hung. No doubt he'll end up in a comfy cell with all mod cons - or perhaps even a little light community service. Why do we appease, protect and preserve the lives of genocidal monsters? |
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23 Jul 08 - 08:25 AM (#2395874) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Wolfgang His homepage (scroll for the English) Wolfgang |
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23 Jul 08 - 08:49 AM (#2395891) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Paul Burke Pointless Shimrod, hanging them didn't reduce the appeal of the Nazis hanged after Nuremburg, though I'll refrain from giving the obscene proof. Remember, one of the reasons we're better than Kadadzic is that we don't do things like he did. |
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23 Jul 08 - 09:37 AM (#2395923) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: ard mhacha There is no worse punishment than confinement for life, when he is looking at four walls in a prison cell he will realise that hanging would have been preferable. |
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23 Jul 08 - 10:08 AM (#2395940) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: GUEST,DV Thank you, Paul Burke. This man, along with his supporters, are living proof of how easy it is to allow our prejudices and bigotries to drag us down into the cesspool of the most depraved human behavior history has ever known. Sadly, history is nothing but several thousands years of this barbaric behavior. The World Court is our best hope of transcending man's murderous and depraved impulses to seek tribal vengeance, and smugly and self-righteously commit heinous atrocities and acts of genocide against the innocent. When we will ever learn that torture and genocide, in the name of vengeful retaliation, is destroying our civilizations? |
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23 Jul 08 - 01:50 PM (#2396117) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: GUEST,Shimrod "Pointless Shimrod, hanging them didn't reduce the appeal of the Nazis hanged after Nuremburg, though I'll refrain from giving the obscene proof. Remember, one of the reasons we're better than Kadadzic is that we don't do things like he did." The same old smug, self-righteous 'arguments', the same old appeasement of murderous butchers (just like the British Tory Government appeased him when he was instructing his thugs to murder, torture and rape). I wonder what the survivors of Srebrenica think should happen to him (I bet know one asks them)? |
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23 Jul 08 - 06:43 PM (#2396351) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: McGrath of Harlow one of the reasons we're better than Karadzic is that we don't do things like he did. Depends what you mean by "we". I think there are people in "our" governments, and in the employment of our government, who are quite capable of comparable atrocities. As ard macha said there, "There is no worse punishment than confinement for life." |
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23 Jul 08 - 07:19 PM (#2396369) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Teribus Oh but Ard is rather selective in who he wishes this punishment upon. He actually applauds those who wantonly murdered around 2500 and maimed over 30,000 of his own countrymen and advocates that those murderers go free. |
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23 Jul 08 - 09:27 PM (#2396454) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Riginslinger Of course, a lot of this depends on who wins and who loses the wars. Isn't Margaret Thatcher still wanted for war crimes in Argentina? |
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24 Jul 08 - 05:31 AM (#2396616) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: GUEST,Shimrod I believe it was Stalin who said something like (can't remember the exact quote - I paraphrase), "if you murder one person it's a crime, if you murder thousands (?), millions (?) it's just a statistic". And I believe that there are many people in positions of power, throughout the world, who know that this is still true. They also know that the world will let them get away with it, for a while (will even supply them with the weapons), and if their crimes become too revolting the worst that they can expect is a fair trial (with the possibility of being acquitted) and a comfy cell with full amenities. Normally, I don't support the death penalty (except for crimes involving great cruelty) but genocide and organised mass murder are NOT the same, either qualitatively or quantitatively, as murder within 'every day' civil society (extraordinary and terrible as such a crime may be). The penalty for genocide and mass murder HAS to be different from 'ordinary' murder because it is different and we are all in extreme danger from it happening to us. |
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24 Jul 08 - 10:02 AM (#2396729) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: bobad It appears that one rat was ratted on by a fellow rat: Ratko Mladic gave up ally Radovan Karadzic to save himself |
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24 Jul 08 - 10:09 AM (#2396733) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: GUEST,Rema Not true bobad Es gibt keinen Beweis, sich als allgemein Mladic zu erweisen, der auf ihm informiert wird. Es ist rein Spekulation |
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24 Jul 08 - 10:11 AM (#2396736) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Peter K (Fionn) It takes something like the arrest of Karadzic to bring out the lynch-mob mentality of Mudcat in all its glory. If Karadzic had not let the Bosnian-Serb rebellion, Serbs in their thousands would have been queueing up to take on the job. Why? Paul Burke said: Serbia should be an object lesson to everybody on the effects of racism; as a part of Yugoslavia, it was an advanced economy, just outside the Western European standard and way in advance of almost anything in the Warsaw Pact; after the civil war, it is a useless wreck, unable to crawl out of the mire of its own obsession and resentment, and living on pointless myth and the hope of Russian mischief- making. I agree with most of that. But anyone who blames Karadzic for the transformation is living in a make-belief world of justice US-style. Yes, things were better before the civil wars. They were better because of the stability achieved during the Tito years. But in the decade following his death in 1980 there were many signs that the stability would break down. The Vatican, US and Germany seized the moment to pursue their own selfish interests and incite catholic Slovenia and Croatia to secede from the Yugoslavia that Paul Burke recalls. They were happy to leave the economically disadvantaged rump, destabilised by a suddenly unweildy Serb majority, to fend for itself. With one exception: Bosnia & Hercegovina. Bosnia too was invited to seek independence, even though the whole world community knew that with its heady mix of muslims (a majority), Serbs and Croats the tiny country had no prospect of sustaining itself. The western media at this time - the US media in particular - was as unidimensional as it has ever been on any matter. The US ambassador to Yugoslavia at that time launched a devastating attack in July 1990 on US reporting, singling out in particular the National Geographic for "misleading literally millions of Americans" with its anti-Serb rhetoric. "In a sense," he said, "Yugoslavia invented perestroika and glasnost and has been seeking, in fits and starts, to reform its political and economic systems. The process has moved more slowly than we would have hoped... Indeed I have been asked by people who should know better, 'When is Yugoslavia going to follow the pattern of Hungary, Poland and other east European countries?'" That unthinking anti-socialist mentality, still deeply ingrained in many a US psyche, found a welcome fellow traveller, if I may use that term, in John Paul II, who had allowed his own experiences of communism to cloud his worldview. At that time the US had no major problem with Islam and was funding and arming the muslim warlords of the Mujahaddin. What matter if Bosnia was ruled by a defeated presidential candidate, Izetbegovic, who had declared his muslim-fundamentalist credentials years earlier and republished them in his (failed) election campaign? But as I have said before, Isetbegovic wore a suit. How different might American perspectives of the Middle East have been if Yasser Arafat had worn a suit. In the subsequent civil wars, Serbs, Croats and muslims engaged in bilateral and multilateral fighting in every possible permutation, and throughout it all, according to the simplistic mentality of the US-admin, the Serbs were the Bad Guys. Thus the ICTY - the kind of institution that would never be allowed to exercise jurisdiction over an errant US soldier or politician - has indicted slightly more than 100 people for alleged war crimes. Just six (I think) of those were none-Serbs and at least two - Haradinaj and Oric - were either acquitted or given derisory sentences for their crimes. In any war, such an imbalance in the perpetration of crimes is plainly farcical. The ICTY will have to weigh the respective responsibilities of Karadzic and Mladic in some outrageous crimes, bearing in mind that the two were sometimes openly at adds - for instance when Mladic point-blank refused Karadzic's order to withdraw beseiging artillery from Sarajevo. For that reason justice will be better served if circumstances arise whereby he and Mladic can be tried together. Maybe the trial will also take a look at episodes such as the Sarajevo market atrocity in August 1995. UK and French ballistics experts found no evidence of Serb involvement, and suspected it had been ordered by Izetbegovic to induce the massive NATO bombing raids on Bosnian-Serb positions which followed within two days. Maybe too, at last, there will be opportunity for measured assessment of Srebrenica. Received wisdom in the west is that 8,000 muslims were killed there, whereas acording to the New York Times about 3,000 of those 8,000 made it back across the front lines into muslim-held areas. Izetbegovic denied the Red Cross access to pursue the matter, just as muslims and Croats, under guidance from the American PR agency Ruder Finn, always denied international access to their holding camps, unlike the Serbs. The court may note that Srebrenica, far from being a "safe haven," had never been demilitarised. Instead it had become a base from which muslim forces, under the aforementioned Oric, wnet out and destroyed some 90 surrounding Serb villages - killing about 2,000 people, overwhelmingly civilians, in the process. And maybe the tribunal will address the question of why Isetbegovic withdrew his forces from Srebrenica, leaving the civilian population undefended, shortly before the Serb offensive was launched. Of course, Srebrenica was a sickening outrage anyway and if it can be established that Karadzic had a hand in it he will get no sympathy from me. And many Serbs too would be content to see justice done (McGrath is right about that). Mladic is a different proposition altogether. He was rated by several of the most senior western commanders as a general of outstanding genius, for which reason he is still widely revered by Serbs both military and civilian. He was also a cultured individual, which makes it inexcusable that he was also a thug. I would not pass judgment on him for Srebrenica but will settle for the tribunal verdict if he ever stands trial. But more than anyone he carries responsibility for the three-and-a-half-years seige of Sarajevo, which was a grossly disproportionate response to the deaths of about 120 Serb soldiers, travelling in convoy before the wars had begun. And I would be pleased to see him made to account for the devastation he wreaked on Dubrovnik and its population. So let justice be done. But let's not overlook the stupendous hypocrisy whereby America imposes justice on everyone else while itself refusing to accept the authority of the very international courts that apply that justice. Let us not forget Thatcher's decision to bomb the Belgrano, with the loss of nearly 200 young Argentinians, as it headed away from the battlefield. Let us not forget countless other criminal decisions by leaders of the western democracies. (America has bombed 40-odd countries since WW2: how much of that aggression would withstand scrutiny by an international court>) And let us remember that after any war the only justice will be victor's justice. I find it disturbing that people are ready to nail their colours to that unsavoury mast with the enthusiasm that some Mudcatters have brought to this thread. |
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24 Jul 08 - 10:26 AM (#2396743) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Riginslinger Well, Peter K., I agree with a lot you have said here. Some of it is less familiar. But the idea of the leaders on the winning side of an armed conflict bringing "crimes against humanity" charges against the leaders of the losing side has to be hypocrisy of the first order. |
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24 Jul 08 - 01:54 PM (#2396926) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: GUEST,Shimrod "So let justice be done. But let's not overlook the stupendous hypocrisy whereby America imposes justice on everyone else while itself refusing to accept the authority of the very international courts that apply that justice. Let us not forget Thatcher's decision to bomb the Belgrano, with the loss of nearly 200 young Argentinians, as it headed away from the battlefield. Let us not forget countless other criminal decisions by leaders of the western democracies." Which is probably closer to the real reason why the death penalty for war crimes is so vigorously opposed in the West. |
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24 Jul 08 - 01:54 PM (#2396928) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: ard mhacha Poor Teribus twisted like a cork-screw, if the Irish were seeking revenge for past wrongs the savagery of the the former Yugoslavia would be a mere pin-prick, stick to the Threads T and enjoy your holiday in Iraq via Afghanistan. |
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25 Jul 08 - 06:36 AM (#2397462) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: ard mhacha I agree with Shimrod regarding the hypocrisy of the western powers, the US and Britain cannot take the high moral ground considering their past record in world conflicts. There is no disguising the fact that Karadzic and his hencemen cannot get away with the horrors of Srebrenica, not forgetting the role played by the Dutch UN troops who left those poor people to their fate. Channel 4 news showed the Serbian troops having their fun with the Bosnian youths by mock executions before shooting them down, all of this filmed by the Serbs,it was very hard to view, they cannot be allowed to get away with this. |
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25 Jul 08 - 07:42 AM (#2397486) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Peter K (Fionn) It is simply childish to attach blame to the Dutch troops. They were hopelessly ill-equpped for their task, their mandate was constricting and they were protecting a "safe haven" which had armed itself to the teeth in the preceding years under the noses of various UN troops who had preceded them. Also they could not have foreseen the fate awaiting the men and youths among the prisoners. It was customary for all factions in the conflict to separate out males of fighting age when releasing other prisoners. Whoever gave the order to murder the male prisoners captured at Srebrenica (and it certainly was not General Radislav Krstic who is now serving a ridiculously long sentence for the fact that some of his troops were put on to the task outside his control), it was an act of sheer insanity as well as a criminal outrage. The blame belongs overwhelmingly with those who gave the orders and those who carried out the orders. And perhaps some blame should be attached to those who stirred up the mood for vengeance by destroying scores of surrounding Serb villages and their civilian populations. Blaming the Dutch would just be adding to the game of finding scapegoats. |
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25 Jul 08 - 09:14 AM (#2397519) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: ard mhacha So Peter they are beyond blame, they stood by and were well aware of what was to take place, childish?, my ass, Dutch courage was certainly wanting, and yes, the UN were useless in this situation, |
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28 Jul 08 - 01:13 PM (#2399563) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Peter K (Fionn) Easy to say from your safe distance ard mhacha. But read my words. They were NOT aware of what was going to happen. What makes you think they WERE? And I notice you say nothing about Izetbegovic, who took the so-far unexplained decision to withdraw his forces and leave Srebrenica's muslim civilians unprotected. |
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29 Jul 08 - 07:45 AM (#2400192) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: ard mhacha Peter, Are you aware that the Dutch troops refused the Bosnians entry to their compound closing the gates in their faces and left them to their fate, also the fact that the Widows and mothers protested to the UN and were powerless to sue the Dutch troops for leaving their relatives to certain death. It certainly didn`t require much awareness to see what was taking place, no excuses for blatant cowardice. |
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29 Jul 08 - 08:03 AM (#2400197) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: ard mhacha Commentary June 26, 2008 Login or register to post comments email print Dutch dishonour and the ghosts of Srebrenica By Gwynne Dyer Last week in The Hague, a Dutch court began hearing a case brought by surviving relatives of the 8,000 Bosnian Muslim civilians, supposedly under UN military protection, who were murdered by Serb forces at Srebrenica in 1995. The survivors are claiming $4 billion in damages from the Dutch state and the United Nations, which had created the "safe haven" at Srebrenica and sent Dutch troops there to protect it. It's about time. Everybody knows that the survivors are not going to end up with $4 billion from the UN, the Dutch, or anybody else, nor would it bring their fathers, husbands, and sons back to life if they did. But, at the least, it may force the Dutch to come to terms with the behaviour of their troops at Srebrenica, and it would be nice if the victims got an apology and some compensation. Good people make mistakes, and innocent people die; it happens all the time, especially in war. But Srebrenica was the worst mass killing in Europe since the Second World War, and it probably could have been avoided if the Dutch troops had shown a little more courage. If not, then they could have died fighting to stop it, because that was their duty. Soldiers talk with understandable pride about the "unlimited liability" of their profession: the same phrase appears in many armies in many languages. Few other callings require that on some occasions you must die in order to do your duty, and the military profession is quite right in claiming that this sets soldiers apart. But you can't just talk the talk. You have to walk the walk, and the Dutch didn't. The Dutch soldiers were sent to Srebrenica in 1995 to relieve the Canadian battalion that had been holding the UN-protected enclave. I happened to be in Canada at the time, so a Dutch television crew came looking for me for advice on what their soldiers could expect in Srebrenica. I told them that the Canadians were very glad to be getting out, because it was potentially a deathtrap. I didn't mean a deathtrap for the tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslim civilians who were trapped there; that was obvious. I meant a deathtrap for the few hundred lightly armed Canadian soldiers who were protecting the Muslim civilians from the thousands of Serbs with artillery and tanks who surrounded the enclave. If the Serbs attacked, the Canadians would have to fight despite the odds—anything else would be a shameful betrayal of their duty—and they might lose dozens of people. They would probably save the enclave in the process, because even the Serbian commander, General Ratko Mladic, would stop short of killing hundreds of UN troops. But it was a dreadful situation, and the Canadians were greatly relieved to be going home. Good luck to the Dutch. The Dutch were unlucky. In July 1995 the Serbs began to make probing attacks on the enclave's perimeter, which was much too long to defend with only 400 Dutch troops. The Dutch commander, Col. Ton Karremans, was in a difficult position, but his course was clear: protest loudly to Mladic and to the world, and call in NATO air strikes if the Serbian attacks continued. Meanwhile, give the Muslim men within the enclave back the weapons they had surrendered to the UN and prepare to fall back to the town of Srebrenica, which could probably be held for a day or so—time enough for help to arrive, perhaps. But if the Serbs kept coming, some Dutch soldiers would die. So Karremans went to see Mladic, drank a toast with him, and agreed to hand over the Muslims in return for 30 Dutch soldiers who had been taken hostage. The Dutch commander didn't know that the Serbs were planning to exterminate all the men and boys in Srebrenica; the Serbs themselves only decided on that after meeting with Karremans and realizing that they faced no opposition. But this was three years into the war, and he must have known that at the very least many hundreds of Muslims would be tortured, raped, and murdered. So the Dutch troops came home safely. In 1999, the UN admitted that it had failed to protect the Muslims of Srebrenica from mass murder but said that none of its officials could be held responsible and invoked its legal immunity. In 2002, an official Dutch report blamed the Dutch government and senior military officials for the massacre, and prime minister Wim Kok's entire cabinet (which had been in power in 1995) resigned. But in 2006, the Dutch government awarded those who had served in Srebrenica with a special insignia "in recognition for their behaviour in difficult circumstances". They still don't get it. Even if all the higher authorities had failed them, the soldiers' duty was clear, and they didn't do it. I have talked to Canadian soldiers who served in Srebrenica before them, and they wonder if they would have behaved any better when the Serbs attacked. But at least they know that they should have. Real soldiers are old-fashioned people who still believe in honour, and that is the most attractive thing about them |
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29 Jul 08 - 07:27 PM (#2400810) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Peter K (Fionn) One thing I do agree with in that diatribe, ard mhacha: the UN should be made to account for its role in the atrocity. But this will just tell us what we already know: the UN is only as effective as its member nations will allow it to be. That is why there was no attempt to disarm the "safe haven." That is why the deployment amounted to a few hundred hopelessly inexperienced and hopelessly outnumbered troops, equipped with little more than side arms. That is why the UN was unable to prevent weapons pouring into the haven in food parcels. The article you've pasted is pie in the sky. Give the muslims their weapons back, Dyer says, as though they weren't already armed. (How else had they been killing each other in internal feuding before Serbs entered the enclave?) Let the Dutch commit heroic mass suicide in a cause on which even Gwynne Dyer virtually admits they could have made no impact. Oh, and of course the Dutch should have seen it coming, even though there had been nothing remotely like it in the previous three years of bloodshed. The suggestion that Mladic would baulk at taking on a few hundred UN troops is more wishful thinking. The guy was committed to his nationalist cause almost to the point of insanity and completely reckless about his own safety (you should be familiar with such folk, ard). He had used UN personnel as human shields, releasing them only in the face of intense pressure from Milosević, and he had openly defied Karadzić's order, issued in the face of international pressure, to withdraw his artillery from the seige of Sarajevo. If soldiers - whether UN or any others - got in his way, he knew only one response. It's easy to find scapegoats, especially if you're sitting in an armchair 1800 miles away. But stop relying on fairytales, ard. |
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30 Jul 08 - 03:45 AM (#2401021) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: ard mhacha I didn`t know you were present in Bosnia at the time of the murders forgive me. I know what I witnessed on C4 News it was the Serbs relishing the murder of young Bosnians, this footage was taken by one of the Serbian killers, did you see it?, I talked to people that did and they found it harrowing viewing. The Serb fool that filmed the slaughter never imagined that his film would have borne witness to the Serb atrocities, also included was the Serb concentration camp housing starving Muslim prisoners. I never seen any similar film of the Bosnian Muslim atrocities against the Serbs, I am not saying there wasn`t, but Peter what I seen was no fairytale. |
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30 Jul 08 - 08:58 AM (#2401171) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Peter K (Fionn) Sorry if I implied I was in B&H at the time of the massacres. I wasn't, and equally I don't pontificate about the alleged cowardice of soldiers who refused to lay down their lives as a futile gesture. I was however in Bosnia - the Republika Srpska entity - the day Karadzic was lifted. The most common reaction I heard was that he should be hanged without the time and expense that a trial will cost. Not quite my view, but I wouldn't be sorry to see him convicted and banged to rights. His alter ego, Dragan Dabic, on the other hand seems to have been a thoroughly decent sort - sociable, urbane, cultured, running his own website and singing traditional songs (accompanying himself on the single-string gusle) in the Madhouse bar, the walls of which are adorned with photos of Karadzic and Mladic. As the Daily Mail's loathesome pontificator par excellence Richard Littlejohn used to say: You couldn't make it up. |
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30 Jul 08 - 12:08 PM (#2401384) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: ard mhacha Peter, I seen Dragan Dabic on that C4News slot, that bar was a shrine to the Serb leaders and yer man on that Gusle twanger [and everyone thought the Bodhran was bad],he looked a right nutter. |
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30 Jul 08 - 01:24 PM (#2401468) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: GUEST,Shimrod "I was however in Bosnia - the Republika Srpska entity - the day Karadzic was lifted. The most common reaction I heard was that he should be hanged without the time and expense that a trial will cost." I had to read that a few times for it's import to sing in. You mean that Karadzic isn't a hero in Republika Srpska? Really? So I could go into a bar in Pale and gloat over Karadzic's arrest, and not get killed, could I? |
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30 Jul 08 - 01:47 PM (#2401506) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: ard mhacha I wouldn`t advise it. |
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31 Jul 08 - 10:45 AM (#2402241) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Teribus "Let us not forget Thatcher's decision to bomb the Belgrano, with the loss of nearly 200 young Argentinians, as it headed away from the battlefield." - Peter K (Fionn) Ah, the Belgrano was "bombed" was it Peter? News to me, to Margaret Thatcher and to Christopher Wreford-Brown RN (The man who sank the Belgrano). I rather suspect that you would have seen her sail clean away until dusk, then reverse her course. There would have been potentially much greater loss of life then, a disproportionate number of them British servicemen. The Argentinian Navy had two "ships of force", the Belgrano was one the Aircraft Carrier 25th May was the other. Sinking the Belgrano, when they did put the entire Argentinian Navy out of the conflict and saved hundreds of lives, by making the expulsion of Argentinian forces from the Falkland Islands that much easier. Ard mhacha and Gwynne Dyer want to have a good look at the UN Charter and Mandates for Peace Keeping Operations as a whole before they start spouting about what UN "Peace-keepers" should and should not do from the safety of their armchairs. "Which is probably closer to the real reason why the death penalty for war crimes is so vigorously opposed in the West." - Guest Shimrod I think that "the death penalty" period is vigorously opposed in the West. I do not get the impression that it is particularly opposed in case of "war crimes". "I agree with Shimrod regarding the hypocrisy of the western powers, the US and Britain cannot take the high moral ground considering their past record in world conflicts." - Ard Mhacha I could not disagree more. Talking about track records, these two pearls of comments from Peter K (Fionn) are absolutely priceless: 1 - "the UN should be made to account for its role in the atrocity." "made to account"????? To whom???? 2 - "the UN is only as effective as its member nations will allow it to be." The United Nations from day one has been absolutely useless. It's "member nations" would howl with indignation if it were ever to come even remotely near effective in the pursuit of the aspirations of it's Charter. |
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31 Jul 08 - 12:48 PM (#2402372) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Peter K (Fionn) Can't see your issue with that second priceless point of mine, Teribus. Your following sentence endorses it completely. The answer to your question about my first priceless point is: The UN should be made to account to the people who lost friends and family - to the people who are now pursuing an action against the UN in the Netherlands. I would have thought that was obvious, but I'm happy to spell it out. I was using "bombed" in the loose "blew up" sense in my previous post but that was too casual, for which apologies. Shimrod, I think that yes, you could do that in Pale and not get killed. But there, more so than in most parts of RS, you would almost certainly provoke an argument. People would simply be keen to present another perspective. (I'm not making this up. I have seen just how tolerant people ar about the ignorance of some visitors - most recently a Guatemalan guy who was showoing off what he had learnt from a year at a US military academy.) For my own part I consider gloating distasteful whoever does it and from whatever perspective. But people shouldn't be killed for it. On my last visit I was variously in Banja Luka; a small village near Bosanski Gradiška, and Prijedor. The family I stayed with in the village - a widow and her two daughters - are Serb refugees who in 1993 fled from Slavonski Brod, which is on the other side of the Sava in Croatia. The widow had her widowhood confirmed only in March this year when it was established that human remains found near some road workings were those of her husband, last seen in 1993. A couple of years ago a guy who had been taken away in the same van as her husband testified, in a Zagreb court action against the Croatian police, that he and the others seized had been hung on meat hooks overnight. The damage to his rectum was severe and when he was taken down he managed to reach and break a piece of glass, and slash his wrists. Unaccountably - the witness could not explain it, and the court was incredulous - his captors then took him to hospital. But the hospital produced records that confirmed his account. (The court case was adjourned while recently discovered bodies were examined and is not yet concluded.) That family, and many others I know, blame Karadzić in large part for the depravities that descended on Bosnia in the 1990s wars. Mladić on the other hand is widely revered as an oustanding soldier who took three appalling decisions - to besiege Sarajevo, bomb Dubrovnik and murder the male prisoners taken at Srebrenica. In Prijedor many Serbs are ashamed of what went on in notorious detention camps nearby (Omarska and two others). It was a Serb in Prijedor, whose family fled from Sanski Most in 1995 when US-aided Croats ethnically cleansed the Krajina region, who made exactly the comment I mentioned about hanging Karadzić. Nothing excuses what took place at Omarska but it is at least worth remembering that northwest Bosnia came in for exceptional ravaging in WW2 when the catholic-fascist Ustasha first announced, and then implemented, a genocidal campaign of slaughter on Roma, Jews and most particularly Serbs, in which all but a handful of Jews and hundreds of thousands of Serbs were butchered. Throughout the Tito years, "brotherhood and unity" suppressed all discussion about WW2, let alone any prospect of retribution. This preserved an uneasy peace that lasted just a little longer than Tito himself, but it also fuelled deep resentments. In Banja Luka - which has replaced Pale as the administrative centre for RS - there is a marked difference in perceptions between refugee Serbs, who make up a large proportion of the population now, and indigenous Serbs. The former survived many horrors inflicted by Croats and muslims and are inclined towards hardline positions. The latter bemoan the loss of the city's mosques, destroyed largely by incoming refugee Serbs, which they regarded as part of their cultural heritage - in particular the Ferhadja, which had been the oldest and finest mosque in Europe. And some resent that they had to surrender property and space to IDPs. The resentment is not against the IDPs themselves of course, but against the politicians who they believe created the mess. That is, politicians in general, because - as the world over - many in the population take no interest in politics at all and simply blame all politicians for everything. In other words, Shimrod - surprise surprise - Serbs are human beings just like the rest of us. They are as much inclined to be steered by self-interests as the rest of us. And if you cut them, they bleed. |
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31 Jul 08 - 08:53 PM (#2402724) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: Teribus If that is what you believe Peter K (Fionn) what is the point of the United Nations? Tell us that it is absolutely useless and have done with it. Then desist from holding people, governments and nations up to holding to principles that that parent organisation abandoned years ago and has no intention of holding anyone to. Difficult thing for an avowed "socialist" to be but just "Be Honest" for once. |
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01 Aug 08 - 07:39 AM (#2402947) Subject: RE: BS: Radovan Karadzic Arrested From: McGrath of Harlow Imperfect = totally useless. That's a tricky principle to apply in any walk of human life. |