BS: Milosevic found dead in cell

Subject: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: Rasener
Date: 11 Mar 06 - 07:35 AM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4796470.stm

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: Purple Foxx
Date: 11 Mar 06 - 08:11 AM

Doctors should describe his condition as "Satisfactory"

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 11 Mar 06 - 08:33 AM

You can never tell.............. you know what a lying bugger he is.

eric

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Mar 06 - 09:07 AM

Well, I won't miss him!

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 Mar 06 - 11:05 AM

All that money for the trial wasted. The least he could have done was to survive so the court could sentence him to death, eh?

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Mar 06 - 01:43 PM

Tough beans, guys. There's nothing more you can do to him now.

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Mar 06 - 01:53 PM

Shame it was so quick.

Strange bit in that link saying both his parents commited suicide, must try and find out more. Interesting though and I wonder what effect that would have had on him.

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Mar 06 - 02:10 PM

Just imagine what effect it would have on you, and you'll probably be fairly close.

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: kendall
Date: 11 Mar 06 - 03:14 PM

As Mark Twain said, "I wasn't invited to the funeral, but I did send a letter of approval."

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: Peace
Date: 11 Mar 06 - 03:22 PM

What though no friends in sable weeds appear,
Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year?
And bear about the mockery of woe
To midnight dances, and the public show!

Alexander Pope.

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: GUEST,clogger
Date: 11 Mar 06 - 03:49 PM

His family (and lawyer) are "insisting" that the body be taken to Russia for a P.M.!
Apparently Mr M claimed that he was being poisoned whilst on trial!
And so the worm turns

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Mar 06 - 05:08 PM

Just imagine what effect it would have on you, and you'll probably be fairly close.

No reason why anyone elses emotions would mirror milosevic's. His ethics/morals/beliefs were not those of joe public. If his emotions contained a shred of humanity his conscience would have killed him.

But will still delve into his parents suicide out of interest. It isn't a 'normal' occurence.

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 11 Mar 06 - 07:57 PM

Guest, if you know enough about Milosevic to regret that he died in his bed, how come you didn't know that well known fact about his parents? And what exactly do you mean when you talk about the ethics/morals.beliefs of joe public?

The US and UK governmental positions are easy enough to explain. They threw the might of NATO at Milosevic, after all. They are stuck with their agreed line. But I am always surprised at how readily people flock along behind them, spouting the same nonsense in sheer ignorance.

According to western perceptions Milosevic was an arch nationalist and therefore a villain. (Of course, when Americans kow-tow to their flag and proclaim their nationalist loyalties, that is to be welcomed.) But in fact Milosevic came to power by defeating the nationalist party in Serbia - at the same time as the openly nationalistic Izetbegovic and Tudjman were coming to power in Bosnia and Croatia.

Izetbegovic was a Muslim zealot, committed to Islam as the one world religion under a single worldwide caliphate. But he was loved in the west, probably because he wore a suit. And Tudjman never lost US backing even when he revived the insignia and currency etc of the catholic-fascist ustashe movement. The ustashe had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Serbs during WW2 in a genocidal onslaught that predated the Holocaust.

It is forgotten now that Milosevic was initially welcomed by the west as a banker who seemed likely to sort out the Yugoslav economy. One of his measures was to revoke a veto that had been given to the overwhelmingly Albanian-Muslim region of Kosovo. (That veto was established by Tito, incidentally, and as recently as 1974.) Revoking the veto was seen by the IMF as a positive step towards decisive governance. Very few governments could be effective if they allowed vetos to individual regions within their territories.

Milosevic had plenty of faults, but history might well decide that the biggest responsibility for the disintegration of Yugoslavia rests with the German leadership. Germany it was that bounced the EU into recognising Bosnia-Herzegovina as a sovereign state, notwithstanding its inherent instability (predominently Muslim, with Serbian and Croatian minorities of 31 and 17 per cent respectively).

The whole principle of prosecuting unstatisfactory heads of state needs to be rethought. Mandela managed without any such recourse in South Africa, notwithstanding the monstrous crimes committed there by the leaders of that country who preceded him. And at a time when the US incarcerates and tortures innocent people beyond the reach of any law, one is entitled to ask "who polices the police?"

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Mar 06 - 10:04 PM

Your low opinion of the US isn't a benchmark on how to judge others behavior.

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 12 Mar 06 - 09:44 AM

Whatever my opinion of it, US and UK behaviour (or the behaviour of their governments, since I make the distinction) should not be the benchmark for judging other regimes. And anyone who doubts that the ICTY is a US initiative should recall the words of presiding judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald: "We often refer to Madeleine Albright as the mother of the tribunal."

The ICTY, and to some extent the tribunal in Tanzania dealing with the Rwandan genocide, have both failed. In particular neither forged any meaningful relationship with the home countries. Thus Rwandans, Serbs, Croats, Bosnians all resent the tribunals as remote and unrelated to their sufferings and experiences. Yet those experiences are cynically exploited. Neither US nor British courts are victims-led in the way that the ICTY is. The first chief prosecutor, Richard Goldstone, said the court existed because "the victims of the Yugoslav war want legal vengeance." Bu having had their name taken in vain, the victims are then cut out of the process altogether.

More so than in Tanzania, prosecutors at the ICTY - who must be unique in being able to amend the tribunal's rules to suit themselves - have made staggering blunders. Not the least of these was to bring all the charges against Milosevic to a single trial.

In 2001 the tribunal itself ruled that Kosovo at least was so far removed from the Croatian and Bosnian crimes in time and circumstance as to warrant a separate trial. But the prosecution objected, and of course won the day. Then Carla Del Ponte insisted on inluding "genocide" into the indictments. German foreign mnister Klaus Kinkel was accusing Milosevic of genocide way back in 1992. But there was never any evidence for that, so Carla had to rely on Srebrenica. By then (July 1995) Milosevic was in open dispute with the Bosnian Serb general Mladic and the Bosnian Serb president, Karadzic - both of whom have been separately indicted for the same crime.

Calling Srebrenica "genocide" devalues the term anyway, not least because women and children were excluded from the slaughter. According to the New York times, some 3,000 of the 7,000-plus people allegedly murdered actually made it back through Serb lines to Bosnia. But the Bosnian leadership refused to co-operate with the Red Cross on that point as it did on all others.

The same leadership had withdrew its military command from Srebrenica shortly before the enclave was over-run, knowing the enclave was vulnerable to cruel reprisals. The Muslim officer commanding at Srebrenica is himself on trial at the Hague for destroying some 170 Serb villages around the enclave, killing nearly 2,000 people in the process. The so-called "safe haven" of Srebrenica had been the base for those operations, and the Serbs wre thirsting for revenge. The way they took it was a monstrous crime, but it was not genocide.

One result of the tribunal's incompetence is that many cases are never decided. Milosevic was not the first indictee to die in custody in the Hague. Several others preceded him. He was not even the first this month.

There is good reason to want to make individuals as well as states responsible for war crimes, but until and unless the US is willing to act in concert with the world community and support an international court, then neither victims nor the rest of us will see any form of justice worthy of respect. Incidentally, although the tribunal is at the Hague, it should not be confused with the International Court of Justice, also at the Hague and hitherto often referred to simply as "the Hague." The latter exists under the aegis of the UN with a remit and track record well respected around the world.

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: autolycus
Date: 12 Mar 06 - 11:24 AM

Characteristics do run in families whether because of genetics or because our earliest adult connections (parents,stepparents etc. are crucial models of the way to live. (I'm including committing suicide under 'live' as it is done by someone when alive.)

Ivor

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: GUEST,DB
Date: 12 Mar 06 - 06:01 PM

Sorry, Peter K (Fionn) - I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. The fact is that during the Yugoslav civil wars, in the 90s, many innocent men, women and children were ruthlessly slaughtered and many more displaced from their homes. Some other Yugoslav leaders, besides Milosevic, must bear some responsibility for these crimes but it was surely Milosevic who worked hardest to precipitate the bloodiest chaos?

It was the Serbian led JNA that smashed Osijek and Vukovar in Croatia.
It was the Serbian led JNA that bombarded Dubrovnik.
It was the Bosnian Serbs who besieged Sarajevo.
It was the Bosnian Serbs who committed the massacre at Srebrenica (arguing whether this was 'genocide' or not is a red herring - it was certainly mass murder and a war crime).
It was the Serbian Army who committed war crimes in Kossovo.

I would find it very surprising to find that Milosevic was not implicated, in some way, with all of these crimes. He seemed to have far too many apologists at the height of his powers - are more flocking to rehabilitate him after his death?

Wars in the Balkans always seem to lead to a situation in which agressors are excused and victims blamed. I thought that with the arrest and trial of Milosevic there might finally be a different outcome - apparently not!

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: Pied Piper
Date: 13 Mar 06 - 05:38 AM

Milosovic dead?

Oh dear.
How sad.
What a pitty.

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 13 Mar 06 - 08:15 AM

DB, you seem to have understood my point pretty well. But in case you didn't, I would say simply that there is a way of looking at the Balkans that does not start out from the premise that Milosevic caused all the trouble and that the Serbs, en masse, are always the bad guys.

Your own points have some validity, but again they are somewhat one-dimensional. For instance it was certainly Bosnian Serbs who besieged Sarajevo. But not without reason. They were resisting, by any means available to them, the prospect of a BiH secession from Yugoslavia which would have left them stranded as a Serb orthodox minority in a fundamentalist Islamic state. Milosevic was not a Bosnian Serb and any extent to which he was responsible for the siege has never been established.

The first atrocities against civilians began at Gospic in the Lika Valley, before any of the Serb actions you mention (Vukovar etc). Croatian paramilitaries - led by a prominent member of Tudjman's party, and flaunting ustashe regalia - seized the JNA base there and then set about murdering Serbs. These "Croatian knights" were then given the task of exterminating Serbs in the Pakrac Valley. You may not be aware of this, because it passed unreported at the time. It was brought to light nine years later by the Association of Independent Media, and corroborated by Croatian officers who took part in the campaign. But by then no-one was interested.

To understand how those atrocities played with Serbs, it might help if you keep in mind that it was in that same town of Gospic in 1941 that an ustashe minister announced his regime's programme of genocide: "We shall kill one part of the Serb population, expel another, and the rest will be converted to catholicism. All that will be left of them will be an evil memory." Which would be so much hot air, except that the programme was duly implemented. (Let’s keep in mind, incidentally, that the Serbs fought with the Allies throughout WW2 while the ustashe ran a puppet state for the Nazis.)

For sure Milosevic had blood on his hands, as did thousands of war leaders down the years who were never indicted as criminals. But I’m not aware of any evidence for your suggestion that "it was surely Milosevic who worked hardest to precipitate the bloodiest chaos." And your phrase "I would find it very surprising to find that Milosevic was not implicated" is really no better than saying "let him remain guilty until proved innocent."

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Mar 06 - 08:20 AM

Ok pete he's a thoroughly decent chap. Excuse the thousands who will piss on his grave.

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: Wolfgang
Date: 13 Mar 06 - 09:06 AM

The left German daily newspaper TAGESZEITUNG had a nice headline with an untranslatable play of words:

Schlächter Abgang

'Schlächter ' is a homophone to 'Schlechter' so you can read the headline as

'bad end' 'bad exit' or 'the slaughterer's exitus'.

My God, Peter, you have a way with words which without any explicit lie gives rise to some misconceptions in the naive reader.
(1) Incidentally, although the tribunal is at the Hague, it should not be confused with the International Court of Justice, also at the Hague and hitherto often referred to simply as "the Hague." The latter exists under the aegis of the UN
The naive reader may think you want to imply that the ICTY had nothing to do with the UN, whereas it was fouded based on UNSC resolution 827 in 1993.
(2) Milosevic was not the first indictee to die in custody in the Hague. Several others preceded him. He was not even the first this month.
a naive reader may assume that something strange is at work here. Each month a death or two. To the best of my knowledge, 48 cases have been decided (40 people declared guilty and in prison), 47 cases are pending with the accused in custody, further 24 are pending with the accused in liberty at least until the sentence. That makes close to 100 mostly elderly men having been in custody in Den Haag (or else) in relation with the ICTY tribunal. Four of them have died since 1998, two of them undisputed suicides. You really can make these simple data looking sinister.


Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: Paul Burke
Date: 13 Mar 06 - 09:42 AM

PK(F) conveniently skips the prelude to the break up of Yugoslavia- the Serbs waited until the presidency rotated to their turn, then simply refused to let go.Installing their nominees in the army and other points of power, they left the remaining states the choice of living under Serbian natianalist domination or declaring independence. Slovenia got away peacefully, Croatia (with its own baggage that the constitution was designed to reign in, and had more-or-less done so) far less so. The last state available for domination was the split state (not a pun) of Bosnia-Herzogovina. Which is when Milosevic got really nasty, to save his own face at home.

The completely daft thing is that they are all queuing up to join the EC now, which involves opening the borders anyway. And the whole episode should be a stark reminder to our own racists, that even if they succeed in their aspirations, they will only serve to destroy their own country.

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: GUEST,Mrr at work
Date: 13 Mar 06 - 10:12 AM

See, he *told* us he was sick!

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 13 Mar 06 - 10:31 AM

Oh dear... Mea culpa, Wolfgang. Apologies.

On the question of ICTY v ICJ there is a distinct difference but I expessed it misleadingly. The ICJ was established by the UN, acting as a community of nations, to resolve disputes between states. All states accepted its authority and on the whole the court has been respected - notwithstanding a tendency among more powerful states (notably the US) to ignore its findings.

The ICTY is an ad hoc tribunal and a poor second-best to the principle of a treaty-based permanent international penal tribunal that many UN member states had worked towards in the 1950s and onwards. The idea floundered because the great powers would not agree to surrnender any sovereignty to such an institution.

When the present tribunal was first mooted, not by the community of nations but the UN Security Council, specialists in international law could see no legal basis. By the time the UNSC came forward with Resolution 827, cited by Wolfgang, they had found their legal basis in a broad interpretation of the UN Charter (chapter VII).

This and adoption of a process that avoided any need for treaty-ratification etc was widely seen as opportunistic. But no-one minded much because the powerful players were happy. However one consequence of confining the tribunal's jurisdiction to specified issues was that strong countries could impose their ideas of justice on small nations while holding themselves aloof from answerability to any institution beyond their own borders.

On the question of deaths in custody, I remembered the figure as eight, but I might be wrong. In any case I should correct another error on that point. The earlier death this month was not of an indictee but someone already convicted. He had been returned to ICTY custody from prison to give evidence as a witness.

I should have made clear that my point about deaths in custody was not to imply foul play but to question the interminable processes involved both at the Hague and Arusha (the Rwanda tribunal). Surely no-one in his right mind could feel comfortable with the present instituions and processes.

(I may say by the way, Wolfgang, that I an deeply uneasy about victors' justice in all its manifestations. Who could say that Jodl's execution after WW2 made the world a safer place? And the Tokio tribunal, of course, was worse than Nuremburg.)

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: GUEST,DB
Date: 14 Mar 06 - 05:10 AM

PK(F),

According to an extensive obituary in yesterday's Independent newspaper (13th March 2006) Milosevic first came to power, in Yugoslavia, in 1987. To quote the obituary, by Marcus Tanner, Milosevic "[based] his appeal on narrow Serbian chauvinism, rather than broader Yugoslav nationalism".
Now, I'm sure that there were plenty of other nationalists and chauvinists, in Yugoslavia, in the years after Tito's death but it would appear to be Milosevic who first used such dubious sentiments to consolidate a political power base. And I would have thought that there was little doubt that it was Milosevic who primed and detonated the (potential) bomb (that was Yugoslavia), hoping to benefit from the resulting devastation, rather than working to defuse it.
What concerns me is that the Serbs always seem to have had apologists from R.D.G. Laffan after the First World War, through Rebecca West between the Wars, to the British Left in the 90s who seemed to suggest that because Milosevic called himself a Socialist, and was broadly anti-American, we could forgive him anything. Another view might be that there is a powerful streak of romantic nationalism, coupled with a profound persecution complex, in the Serbian psyche and this has often had devastating consequences for the Serb's neighbours.
Having said all that I don't doubt that the Serbs and Serbian Nation suffered terribly, during the Second World War, at the hands of the Nazis and the Croation Ustashe. Such real persecution undoubtedly leaves scars that persist for generations, but a responsible leader should work to heal such wounds - not break them open and seek to re-infect them.

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: Once Famous
Date: 14 Mar 06 - 07:58 AM

Good. He's dead. How about Bin Laden next?

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 14 Mar 06 - 12:19 PM

Yes, I saw that Independent obit, DB, but equally it's worth taking on board Tim Judah's fairly measured assessment for the BBC: Milosevic's legacy of discord. He said there: "Milosevic was not, contrary to what many believe, a nationalist. He was a political opportunist."

Your wider comments about the Serbs reveals an inclination to regard a whole nation of people as bad guys, and may explain your determination to find fault in only one quarter. I can never accept such generalisations about any nation of people.

Why after WW1 would Serbians need "apologists"? They had just fought with distinction in a war that brought four rotten empires down and a fifth (the British) to its knees - sustaining, along the way, proportionately greater losses than the UK's. It was the "Yugoslav Committee," overwhelmingly Croatian, that pushed for creating the country that became Yugoslavia - mostly because they saw strength in numbers as the best way to keep Italy at bay. Take off those blinkers and you will see that many complex factors were at play in the Balkans. Between the wars Croatian ministers were murdered in parliament, a Royal dictatorship was imposed and the king assassinated. Tito worked a miracle in keeping a lid on the simmering tensions for 30 years (unheard of stability for a region that had endured centuries of war), but sometimes by recourse to cruelly harsh measures.

It was almost inevitable that once that strong hand on the tiller was gone, the region would self-destruct. With the IMF imposing austerity measures, the richest republic, Slovenia, bailed out undermining the economy further. Germany (and the Vatican) pushed for Croatian secession, and encouraged Bosnia - a hopeless basket-case quite incapable of holding together - to go the same way. Each splintering off upset the balance in a whole chain of interlocked nationalities, states and religions - each defined within different boundaries.

You, DB, rail against the Left and perhaps embrace me in that, but I have no trouble recognising that the last envoy to the region to realise the disastrous consequences of Germany's policy was the Tory Lord Carrington.

I have pointed out that the earliest atrocities came not from Serbs but from Croatians. Yet you persist in the simplistic idea that all the trouble was started by one wicked Serb. I suspect you may have been influenced towards that conclusion by the generally anti-Serb perspective revealed in your last post.

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: GUEST,DB
Date: 14 Mar 06 - 02:33 PM

PK(F),

Of course I don't condemn the entire Serbian Nation! I'm sure that there were many Serbs, both inside and outside Serbia, who were appalled by Milosevic and his bloody machinations. And for the record I think that Tim Judah was quite right - Milosevic was an opportunist - and a cynical one at that. What could be more cynical and opportunist than to play the nationalist card, in post-Tito Yugoslavia, without actually sharing nationalist sympathies? In many ways that interpretation of his actions is even more damning!
I also think that, however complex the situation in the Balkans, unleashing heavily armed paramilitary thugs on civilian populations was an act of extreme wickedness. Someone was responsible for such actions and Milosevic must remain a prime suspect!

I also don't buy the condemnation of Germany. I have to confess that I don't actually understand Germany's motivation in recognising Croatia's independence but I should remind you that, in the 1990s, Germany didn't murder civilians or rape and torture them or drive them from their homes or bombard cities for months on end.
I remember at the time that Germany seemed to being blamed for the chaos in the Balkans,I couldn't help thinking how ridiculous such condemnation seemed. Imagine if Scotland decided to break away from the UK and join the Scandinavian nations, and was recognised by at least one of them. Would that give the English the right to bombard Edinburgh and Glasgow, murder and rape Scottish people and drive them from their homes? I suppose that there is a possibility that something like that might happen but the hypothetical Scandinavian nation's intervention wouldn't justify or excuse it!

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 14 Mar 06 - 04:17 PM

Sorry if I wrongly inferred an anti-Serb agenda DB, but how else can one take this comment: "What concerns me is that the Serbs always seem to have had apologists..."? The fact that you can see any kind of analogy between post-Tito Yugoslavia and a hypothetical Scottish secession from the UK suggests that, as I suspected, you have no concept of the tensions and indeed hatreds that had built up in the western Balkans over many generations.

The truth and reconciliation process in South Africa has had many flaws and many critics, but I've seen no convincing arguments in this thread that the ICTY comes close as an effective response to the crimes of entire regimes.

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: GUEST,DB
Date: 14 Mar 06 - 05:57 PM

I think I do have some "concept of the tensions and indeed hatreds that had built up in the Western Balkans over many generations" - I can read the history books as well as you can. Nevertheless, no ethnic group has been entirely innocent, in this respect, and for every atrocity committed, at any one time, one can usually find an earlier atrocity committed by the current 'victims'against the current 'aggressors'. I think that the problem is that many Balkan ethnic groups appear to have a sort of toxic relationship with their own histories. I well remember, on a visit to a non-Yugoslav Balkan country, a young man telling me how much he hated the Turks because they had abducted young Christian men, of his nation, to train them as soldiers ('Janissaries') - the so-called 'Devshirme' or tax on Christian sons. I wanted to shout at him, "for God's sake that was centuries ago!" But I didn't, of course, being English and far too polite. To my mind deliberately stirring up ethnic hatreds, against this background, is tantamount to a criminal act in itself! To do so for opportunistic reasons when one has no strong nationalist feelings oneself is positively psychopathic!

Subject: RE: BS: Milosevic found dead in cell
From: Peace
Date: 15 Mar 06 - 04:07 PM

He hit me back first. Ain't it always the way.