... My speculation is that the American judge acted upon the State Department instructions and swayed opinions of the other two judges. Judge Meron is probably the most influential ICTY judge having served two terms as the president. He joined the Tribunal in 2003 after serving in the US State Department. His anti-Serb bias has been well known. There are numerous examples when he violated human and process rights of the Serbian inductees' and those of Vojislav Seselj's in particular. He banned even his telephone communications and visits. He was a member of the Appeals Chamber, which freed thuggish Naser Oric, who as a Muslim commander of Srebrenica, was responsible for the murder of 1,300 Serbs and who boasted for his crimes in an interview with the Toronto Star in 1995. ... [ Excellent 'speculation'. Read in entirety. ] [Open link to read in entirety.] http://moderntokyotimes.com/2012/11/23/nato-court-delivers-yet-another-miscarriage-of-justice-serbs-suffer-another-biased-judgement/ Another fantastic article by Dr. Vojin Joksimovich - whereby another barbaric decision was recently made which merely confirms that killing Serbs was fine because it met the US/NATO agenda. Also, now over 11,350 members on twitter at https://twitter.com/mtt_news MODERN TOKYO TIMES |
November 23, 2012
CRO generals found "found not guilty" -Dr. Vojin Joksimovich, Modern Tokyo Times: Fantastic
November 16, 2012
Serbia blasts UN war tribunal after court clears Croatia generals of crimes against Serbians
Serbia blasts UN war tribunal after court clears Croatia generals of crimes against Serbians
- Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac showed no emotion at the decision
- Sentenced to 25 and 18 years in 2011 for crimes, including murder
- Deputy PM Rasim Ljajic condemned ruling saying tribunal had 'lost all its credibility'
- Decision is one of the most significant reversals in court's 18-year history
PUBLISHED: 19:28 GMT, 16 November 2012 | UPDATED: 19:29 GMT, 16 November 2012
Judges at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal have controversially overturned the convictions of two Croat generals for crimes committed against Serbian civilians,.
The decision has sparked an outcry in Serbia where politicans accused the court of 'selective justice'.
Deputy Prime Minister Rasim Ljajic condemned the ruling, saying the tribunal had 'lost all its credibility' amid warnings the ruling raised questions about the handling of cases in The Hague and could bring into the open the thinly concealed animosity between the two Balkan neighbours.
Controversial: Judges have overturned the convictions of Ante Gotovina (left) and Mladen Markac (right) for crimes committed against Serbian civilians. The decision has been met with anger in Serbia
'What happened (in the court) is a testimony to the selective justice which is worse than any injustice,' he declared.
The decision, by a 3-2 majority in the five judge appeals chamber, is one of the most significant reversals in the court's 18-year history and overturns a verdict that dealt a blow to Croatia's self-image as a victim of atrocities, rather than a perpetrator, during the Balkan wars in the 1990s.
Neither Ante Gotovina nor Mladen Markac showed any emotion at the decision, but their supporters in the court's packed public gallery cheered and clapped as Presiding Judge Theodor Meron ordered both men freed immediately.
Gotovina and Markac were sentenced to 24 and 18 years respectively in 2011 for crimes, including murder and deportation. Judges ruled both men were part of a criminal conspiracy led by former Croat President Franjo Tudjman to expel Serbs.
No credibility: Deputy Prime Minister Rasim Ljajic condemned the ruling
But the appeals judges said prosecutors failed to prove the existence of such as conspiracy, effectively clearing Croatia's entire wartime leadership of war crimes in the operation known as Operation Storm.
Some 600 Serbs were killed and more than 200,000 were driven from their homes during the operation when Croat forces retook the Krajina region.
Gotovina's and Markac's convictions were one of the few at the tribunal set up in 1994 to punish perpetrators of atrocities against Serb civilians.
Gotovina is especially popular among Croatian nationalists. The charismatic former soldier fought in the French Foreign Legion in the 1980s and spent four years on the run from justice before being captured in the Canary Islands in December 2005.
The verdicts against the two generals had triggered anti-Western sentiments among nationalist Croatians ahead of the country's planned European Union entry in July 2013.
After the convictions last year, thousands of Croatian war veterans massed in Zagreb and ripped EU flags and denounced Croatia's leaders who have made EU membership their goal.
Yesterday there was jubilation in the Croat capital Zagreb where thousands of people - many dressed as war veterans - burst into applause after the verdict was announced.
'Our generals are heroes because they risked their lives to save our country and liberate the people,' student Andjela Anic, 26, said.
But in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, the acquittals enraged hard line opponents of the U.N. court in who accuse its judges of anti-Serb bias - a kanagaroo court, they say, whose main aim was to vilify and convict Serbs.
Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic said : 'It is now quite clear the tribunal has made a political decision and not a legal ruling. The ruling will not contribute to the stabilisation of the situation in the region and will open old wounds.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2234136/Serbia-blasts-UN-war-tribunal-court-clears-Croatia-generals-crimes-Serbians.html#ixzz2CQ3XfHvo
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November 02, 2012
U.S.'s Clinton, EU's Ashton To Finish Off The Balkans
http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_11_01/EU-US-officials-attend-to-unfinished-business-in-the-Balkans/
Voice of Russia
November 1, 2012
EU,US officials attend to 'unfinished business' in the Balkans
Andrey Fedyashin and Vitaly Radnayev
====
During the bombardments of Serbia, NATO resorted to the so-called "method of humanitarian intervention" which received a widespread use in Libya later on. But for Russia's and China's veto in the UN Security Council, the US and NATO would be happy to repeat the "Serbian scenario" in Syria.
Neither NATO nor the EU want to recall what this unilateral support cost the Serbs and what ethnic cleansing took place in all former republics of Yugoslavia. 300,000 Serbs were driven out of Croatia, 350,000 out of Kosovo. Thousands of Serbian homes, churches and monasteries were burned.
====
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the EU's High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy Catherine Ashton have visited Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo since the beginning of the week and are currently winding up a tour of Montenegro and Macedonia in what a US State Department spokesman has described as an attempt to put the finishing touches to "the unfinished business in the Balkans".
For Hillary Clinton, this so-called "unfinished business" is akin to "family business". During the presidency of her husband, Bill Clinton, NATO and the EU conducted military operations on the territory of former Yugoslavia. NATO took the side of one of the parties to the civil war in Yugoslavia which broke out in the 1990s. During the bombardments of Serbia, NATO resorted to the so-called "method of humanitarian intervention" which received a widespread use in Libya later on. But for Russia's and China's veto in the UN Security Council, the US and NATO would be happy to repeat the "Serbian scenario" in Syria.
The current tour of the Balkans has been triggered by Brussels' and NATO's fears over Russia's progressive cooperation with Serbia, Alexander Karasev of the Institute of Slavic Studies says.
"Serbia's current leadership and President Tomislav Nikolic in particular, are looking to Russia for further economic and political cooperation. Even though certain circles within the EU are far from happy about it, it's a reality to be reckoned with".
Belgrade will be coming under more and more pressure as US and EU leaders try to force their own variant of a Kosovo settlement on it. This opinion belongs to Slavonic scholar Yelena Guskova.
"The current influx of US and EU officials into the Balkans means that Serbia is going to come under more pressure. Belgrade is invited to join the EU. Membership in NATO is not on the agenda because about 60% of Serbia's population is against it".
The most common misjudgment of the bloody time of the 1990s is a belief that NATO planes launched the bombardments of Serbia in 1999, because of Kosovo. Nothing of the sort. NATO began to drop bombs on Serb positions in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995, with the participation of German Air Force planes.
Neither NATO nor the EU want to recall what this unilateral support cost the Serbs and what ethnic cleansing took place in all former republics of Yugoslavia. 300,000 Serbs were driven out of Croatia, 350,000 out of Kosovo. Thousands of Serbian homes, churches and monasteries were burned.
According to US newspaper reports, Mrs.Clinton's visit to the Balkans will become the last of her tenure as Secretary of State as she will leave the post at the beginning of 2013. Experts don't rule out that she might run for president in the 2016 elections.
Clinton headed for Algeria and Balkans next week
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will travel to Algeria to discuss the Mali crisis and to the Balkan states to express support, the Department of State has released today.
The released statement also says that Clinton will meet Algeria's president Abdelaziz Bouteflika to discuss in detail the recently adopted UN Security Council resolution authorizing West African States to perform a military intervention to oust Islamist rebels from the north of Mali.
Afterwards the Secretary of State will make her way to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo "to demonstrate the enduring US interest, commitment and support for (the Balkans') future in the European and Euro-Atlantic community."
The top US diplomat will be joined there by Catherine Ashton, the European Union's foreign policy chief.
In Belgrade and Pristina, Clinton and Ashton will "reiterate US-EU resolve for Serbia and Kosovo to build on previous agreements and advance their dialogue, as well as to encourage concrete steps that will allow those countries to progress on their respective paths to EU membership," the State Department said.
Clinton will end her tour in Croatia and Albania.
October 22, 2012
Serbia and Russia "to promote defense cooperation"
... During the discussion today, described as "exceptionally open", the two sides "confirmed the harmonization of planned activities related to the preservation of Serbia's sovereignty and territorial integrity in Kosovo and Metohija", the statement also said.
"Serbia will under no circumstances give up on its military neutrality proscribed by the Declaration of the Serbian parliament, and in line with this stance it would like to build partnership relations on equal footing with all friendly states in the world," the statement concluded.
Serbia and Russia "to promote defense cooperation"
Source: Tanjug
BELGRADE -- Serbian Assistant Defense Minister Miroslav Jovanović met on Thursday with members of the Russian Defense Attache Office headed by Valery Volkov.
They discussed "promotion of defense cooperation", the Serbian MoD website said.
The officials agreed that the defense cooperation "should be taken to the level of general relations in all other areas of cooperation between Serbia and Russia".
They highlighted the need for considerable promotion of military, military-economic, and military-medical cooperation through better planning and realization of annual plans of the military cooperation.
The participants of the meeting said that it was necessary to continue military cooperation in the field of education, with greater presence of Russian officers in Serbia's military educational institutions.
The meeting also addressed other aspects of cooperation in the defense sector, stressing the interest in organizing joint activities at the highest level, the Defense Ministry said.
During the discussion today, described as "exceptionally open", the two sides "confirmed the harmonization of planned activities related to the preservation of Serbia's sovereignty and territorial integrity in Kosovo and Metohija", the statement also said.
"Serbia will under no circumstances give up on its military neutrality proscribed by the Declaration of the Serbian parliament, and in line with this stance it would like to build partnership relations on equal footing with all friendly states in the world," the statement concluded.
October 15, 2012
NOT Everyone Is Happy About The EU Winning A Nobel Peace Prize
NOT Everyone Is Happy About The EU Winning A Nobel Peace Prize
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfvK2wqaf7E&feature=youtube_gdata_player
well done Nigel:-)
September 18, 2012
Germany-wor compensation for Serbs, Gypsies and Jewish
REPUBLIC OF SERBIAN KRAJINA
GOVERNMENT IN EXILE
11.080 Zemun, Magistratski trg Str. No.3, Serbia
Теl: 3077-028, vladarsk@gmail.com -
No. 1499/12 - 17. September 2012.
Letter addressed to Serbia's president, Tomislav Nikolic, chairman of Serbia's government, Ivica Dacic, and chairman of Serbia's parliament, Nebojsa Stefanovic.
Subject: War compensation from Germany and its allies from WW2
Respected sirs,
The Government of Republic of Serbian Krajina, which in exile, assumed that after the forming of the contemporary government of Serbia, the reversing of the consequences resulting from Croatia's crimes of genocide against Krajina Serbs, from 1990 to 1995, will be classified as a matter of high priority on Republic of Serbia's agenda. With this approach the mistakes made by Serbia's government between 2000 and 2012 will be restored. However, nobody from the contemporary Serbia's governmental organs has answered our notes and letters. The fact of the matter is that addressing the issues concerning Croatia's occupation of the Republic of Serbian Krajina and the expulsion of the Serbian population is to be typified as one of the historic obligations of the Serbian state and its institutions. The last seven years, facts on genocidal crimes against Serbs have been documented and sent to Serbia's politicians, SC, UN, EU and other international organizations. However, no actions have been taken. With this letter we want to point out the fact that Germany and Austria (successors of Nazi-Germany) along with their allies from WW2 did not pay war compensation to the Serbian nation and Serb states. Given that crimes of genocidal cannot age, to demand war compensation from these former fascist countries is a historic obligation of Serbia. The fulfillment of this task depends to a high degree on you. If this task will not be fulfilled, it will be to the detriment of the Serbian violated moral and material interests. The representatives of the Gypsies and the president of the international Gypsy organization, also member of Serbia's parliament, sir Jovan Damjanivic have been aware of such obligations. Therefore they decided at the international Gypsy conference (which was hold in Belgrade between the 20th and 22th April 2012) to demand war compensation from Germany because of the Nazi genocide against the Gypsy nation throughout WW2. Such decision is in accordance to the interests of the Gypsy nation. According to the Belgrade newspaper "Politka" (18th May 2012) the resolutions made during this international congress of Gypsies have been supported by diplomats from US, Israel, Norway and the union of Jewish communities Heindrich Böll, etc.
Given the fact that US, Israel and Norway have supported the decisions of the international Gypsy organization concerning the war compensation, Serbia would be supported in an alike manner if it would also demand war compensation from Germany for the Nazi genocidal crimes against the Serbian nation committed in WW2. The Government of the Republic of Serbian Krajina which is in exile could play an important role in collecting data for such lawsuit.
Given that Serbia's state organs have not been cooperating with the Government and Parliament of the Republic of Serbian Krajina from 2000 until today, this letter has a character of an open discussion.
Government of the Republic of Serbian Krajina
Milorad Buha RSK's president of the Government and Rajko Lezajic chairman of RSK's parliament.
September 11, 2012
Former Kosovo rebel describes removing prisoner's heart for black market sale
Former Kosovo rebel describes removing prisoner's heart for black market sale
A former Kosovo rebel witness described in an interview how he removed a prisoner's heart for the black market in organs during the 1990s Kosovo conflict, Serbian RTS state television reported.
7:23AM BST 11 Sep 2012
The interview was broadcast on Monday a day after Serbia's war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told AFP his office had a witness who "testified about a medical procedure, done in northern Albania, that consisted of harvesting organs from Serbs kidnapped during the 1998-99 conflict in Kosovo".
"They gave me a scalpel. I put my left hand on his chest and began cutting. When I got near the bottom (of the ribs), the blood started pouring," the witness, whose face was not shown and whose voice was distorted, told RTS.
"As soon as I started cutting, he began screaming not to kill him and then he lost consciousness. I don't know if he fainted or died," he said, apparently speaking in Albanian with his words subtitled in Serbian.
Claims of organ harvesting by the former rebel Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during and after the conflict are being investigated by the EU-named US prosecutor John Clint Williamson and Belgrade said he was informed about this witness.
Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty alleged in a hard-hitting 2010 report that senior KLA commanders – including current Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci – were involved in illegal organ trafficking.
The report said that organs were taken from the bodies of prisoners, many of them Serbs, held by the KLA in Albania at the time.
Thaci as well as Albania have denied the accusations and condemned Marty's report, as well as Sunday's revealing of the witness and his claims.
The witness, with only his hands and torso visible, explained in detail how he had been trained by "doctors" to harvest a heart from a prisoner at an undisclosed location.
"He (a doctor) told me what should I do on the body ... to make a cut from a throat to the end of ribs," the witness described the impromptu training organised several days before the surgery.
The ethnicity of the patient was not revealed in the interview, but Vukcevic told AFP the victim was a Serb prisoner, while the operation had been carried out near the northern Albanian town of Kukes.
The victim, a man in his twenties, was tied to tables in a school classroom by four rebels.
"When I came closer he was trying to get away but they tied him more. He began crying, begging,'God, do not slaughter me, do not kill me!'" the witness said.
Dressed in a black long-sleeve T-shirt, the man explained the procedure in details, saying that the two doctors had also been present at the scene, with a cooling box prepared for transport of organs.
"When I finished the first cut, I was told to make another one, a cross section ... The third line did the doctor himself seeing that my hand was shaking. He told me not to worry," the witness said.
As another doctor had forgotten the scissors, the witness proposed to make them from a "bayonet" of a Kalashnikov and was told "where to cut the ribs" with a warning "not to damage something, meaning, the heart."
A doctor "put both his hands into the body, pulled and opened it" while another man had brought the cooling box. As they had no "pegs for vessels to prevent bleeding ... we had to take a nylon, like a fishing one, to tie twice on each cut."
"We cut veins and when I took the heart, it was still beating ... I put it in the box" for transport, he said.
It was then taken to the airport in Albania's capital Tirana, where the rebels, including the witness, were met by several Albanian army officials.
The box was given to a "foreigner" coming out from a "small private plane" with a Turkish flag, the witness said.
The wartime organ harvesting case is believed to be linked to the so-called Medicos affair, another case of organ trafficking at a hospital in Kosovo's main city Pristina.
Seven people, mostly doctors, are on trial before an EU-run court there on charges of illegally transplanting organs at the Medicus Clinic.
The case came to light in 2008 after police opened an investigation into the collapse of a Young Turk at the Pristina airport following a kidney donation to an Israeli man.
Source: agencies
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/kosovo/9534691/Former-Kosovo-rebel-describes-removing-prisoners-heart-for-black-market-sale.html
August 31, 2012
In defense of the Serbs
Posted By Michael Dobbs
Wednesday, August 22, 2012 - 12:25 PM 
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The off-and-on war crimes trial of Ratko Mladic got underway again this week in The Hague after a month-long summer break. As the prosecution outlines its case, I am planning a series of posts that will attempt to explain the mindset of the former Bosnian Serb military commander. By way of introduction, I want to look at the terrible war in the former Yugoslavia from the viewpoint of the Serbs, widely viewed in the West as the aggressors.
My focus in this blog has been the crimes of a single individual, and in particular Mladic's decision to kill or deport the Muslim population of Srebrenica in July 1995, which has become the centerpiece of the genocide charge against him. While I have inevitably talked a lot about Mladic's crimes against Bosnian Muslims, I do not mean to imply that Serbs were the only people committing war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, or that Serbian leaders were exclusively responsible for the war.
In fact, Serbs had some perfectly legitimate concerns both prior to and during the war that are often overlooked by western commentators who have painted an excessively black-and-white picture of the conflict. Foremost among these concerns was the security and rights of some two million Serbs living in the breakaway republics of Croatia and Bosnia. The terrible atrocities committed against Serbs in both Croatia and Bosnia during World War II by Croatian Ustashe remained fresh in the minds of many Serbs, stirred up by the poisonous propaganda of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.
Looking back at the start of the Yugoslav wars two decades later, I am struck by a contradiction in western policy to the former Yugoslavia. Europe, supported by the U.S., recognized the independence of the breakaway republics. In other words, the borders of the multi-ethnic state that resulted from the Versailles conference decisions of 1919 (see photograph above) were not inviolate. On the other hand, the international community (in the form of the Badinter commission set up by the European Union) also decreed that the borders of Croatia, Bosnia, and the other republics could not be changed simply because a minority wished to secede.
The practical effect of these decisions was that Croats and Muslims were given the right to secede from Yugoslavia, but Serbs did not have the right to secede from Croatia or Bosnia. The delicate ethnic balance sanctioned by the Great Powers after World War I and enforced by Marshal Tito (a Croat) in the four decades after World War II was upset.
For what it is worth, my own personal view is that the breakup of Yugoslavia was inevitable, just as the breakup of the Soviet Union was inevitable. On the other hand, the United States and Europe (the nations that created Yugoslavia in the first place) should have been much more vigorous about establishing and enforcing rules for the breakup that guaranteed minority rights.
To use a phrase attributed to the French statesman Talleyrand, leaving two million well-armed Serbs in other people's republics was "worse than a crime." It was a gross error of political judgment.
Up next: Serbs were also victims
http://dobbs.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/08/22/in_defense_of_the_serbs
August 13, 2012
My response to Mr. Sanders who wrote, "Kosovo: Our forgotten conflict. (Stella)
To all,
This is my response to Mr. Sander's Kosovo: Our forgotten conflict.
"Slobodan Milosovic and his Christian Serbian cohorts instigated most of this ethnic cleansing – hardly what Jesus had in mind while hanging on a cross."
I do not expect to hear anything from The El Paso Southwest Senior nor from Mr. Sanders.
Stella
(Message to the editor(s). I copied the email address for Mr. Sanders that was at the end of his commentary, acsanders@acsandersiii.com. but I received it back as not being a valid address. Please advise. I would like a copy of my letter/opinion to go to Mr. Sanders.
Thank you.
Stella Jatras
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The El Paso Southwest Senior
Letter/Opinion to the Editor(s)
12 August 2012
The following Letter/Opinion is addressed to Mr. Sanders and your readers,
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Mr.. Sanders,
I just read your "Kosovo: Our forgotten conflict," of 30 July. As the wife of a career military officer, I can appreciate your attempt to tell of the complex problems faced my our military in carrying out our nation's policies. No, Mr. Sanders, Kosovo is not a foregotten conflict for those of us who agonize every day at the injustice perpetrated against the Serbian people. Although I am not Serbian, I have followed and written about the tragic events in Kosovo in one of the most disgraceful periods in American history brought on by a president, William Jefferson Clinton, who embarrassed our country with his immoral peccadilloes. Clinton needed to take America's mind off his affair with a woman young enough to be his daughter. What better way than to foment a nasty civil war and at the same time appease the Muslim world by siding with the Bosnian/Kosovo Muslims against the Christian Serbs?
If Slobo and his "Christian" Serbian cohorts (written as though "Christian" is a dirty word,) were responsible for instigating most of the ethnic cleansing, then please answer the question: "If the Serbs ethnically cleansed Kosovo Albanians, as has been claimed, then why are the Kosovo Albanians over 90 percent of the population and the Serbs, who were once the majority in Kosovo, their Jerusalem, fewer than 10 percent?"
Furthermore, you left a little bit of history out of your Kosovo commentary.
You wrote: "Muslims in Kosovo are not radical Islamists, though radical terrorist do make sojourns into the area to recruit and rev up support for the movement. " Nowhere in your article do you identify the "radical terrorist" as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an army that was described by Special Envoy Robert Gelbard as "I know a terrorist when I see one and these men are terrorists," an army that was trained in bin Laden's terrorist camps, but then perhaps you don't consider the KLA as an army that is dealing in sex slavery, prostitution, murder, kidnapping and drugs as not being terrorists..
You also wrote: "The mission seems to be threefold. The peacekeeping forces try to prevent "Christian" Serbs crossing south of the Ibar River and harassing the Muslims in Kosovo. Harassing the Muslims? Were they to do nothing when Serbian priests were beaten and murdered and Serbian nuns raped, when little old Serbian ladies were especially targeted by being drowned (in bathtubs) by Albanian mobs or when Albanian mobs broke down a gate before shooting the elderly Serbian grandmother twice through the chest? "They then threw her body on to a dung heap and covered it with hay."
At one time there were 80,000 Serbs who lived in Pristina. Today, according to NATO Major General William Nash, there are fewer than 200 Serbs living in Pristina, mostly elderly living in two building complexes too terrified to go out to look for food without being escorted by NATO troops for fear of being beaten or killed by the "Muslim" Albanian mob.
You mention Kosovo as meaning "black birds." Are you even familiar with the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 when 72,000 "Christian" Serbs donned their finest, after being blessed, to face their traditional Islamic enemy, the Turks, to protect their "Christian" Kosovo? Should this not tell you that the Serbs were in Kosovo long before the Albanians crossed over illegally into Kosovo and that American foreign policy ceded Serbia's Kosovo to a bunch of Albanians thieves who had stolen their land?
Oddly enough, nowhere do you mention the fact that the PM of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci has been implicated (by former Chief Prosecutor of ICTY Carla del Ponte - hardly a friend of the Serbs) of harvesting the body parts of young Serbian soldiers. As del Ponte writes in her book, "The Hunt: Me and War Criminals," that "The victims, deprived of a kidney, were then locked up again, inside the barracks, until the moment they were killed for other vital organs. In this way, the other prisoners were aware of the fate that awaited them, and according to the source, pleaded, terrified, to be killed immediately," Is this not horrific enough for you or did the horror just slip your mind because it wasn't important enough.
If "troops are also responsible for protecting Christian holy sites in the Muslim territory," they haven't done such a good job considering over 200 churches, some going back to the14th century have been destroyed, and as journalist Robert Fisk wrote in 1999, 'Nato turns a blind eye as scores of ancient Christian churches are reduced to rubble." Many of those churches had survived a 500 years of Ottoman Turkish occupation
I could give you example after example regarding the lies that have been told by the pro-Bosnia/Kosovo media to make sure that the Serbs were the bad guys and the Kosovo Albanians mobs were the good guys, such as the Trepca mine massacre, accusing the Serbs of killing 700 Kosovo Albanians in 1999, cutting their bodies up and grinding them into little pieces and then throwing them down the mine shaft - and guess what! Daniel Pearl (who gave his life for the truth) exposed the report in The Wall Street Journal as being a hoax! Imagine that! But frankly, I doubt it would make any difference because you, as so many others lifke you, have made up your minds that it was Slobo who was the instigator of the whole bloody mess in Kosovo - This charge reminds me of when columnist Don Feder wrote in his "West Haunted by Balkan Blunder," that "Slobodan Milosevic has been charged with complicity to commit genocide and crimes against humanity. Before the travesty is over, he will doubtless be convicted of running the rail line to Auschwitz."
You wrote: "Slobodan Milosovic [sic] and his Christian Serbian cohorts instigated most of this ethnic cleansing – hardly what Jesus had in mind while hanging on a cross." A disgraceful and ugly reference to Jesus hanging on a cross and to the "Christian" Serbs.
Furthermore, Mr. Sanders, for someone who thinks he knows so much about Slobodan, you could have at least spelled his name correctly.
Finally, Sir, you refer to "radical Islamists." What is a "non-radical" Islamist? I urge you to learn more about the Koran, Mohammed and the true nature of Islam. Robert Spencer's book, "The Truth About Mohammed: Founder of the Worlds Most Intolerant Religion." is a good place to start.
Stella L. Jatras
To the editors(s). If you would like a brief bio of me, I would be happy to furnish it for you.
August 10, 2012
NATO War Against Yugoslavia Based On Lies
http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_08_10/NATO-war-against-Yugoslavia-based-on-lies/
Voice of Russia
August 10, 2012
NATO war against Yugoslavia based on lies
Timur Blokhin and Iovanna Vukotic
Germany joined the war against Yugoslavia under the pretense of fabricated facts. The sensational confession of German policeman Henning Hentz, who served in the OSCE in Kosovo in the 1990s, confirmed that.
The reason here is that photographs taken by Hentz in late January 1999 were used by then-German Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping to justify the immediate interference of NATO in the Kosovo conflict. He presented the photographs of militants killed in Rugovo as photos of innocent Albanian victims.
What did really happen in Kosovo in late January of 1999, several months before NATO launched its operation against Yugoslavia?
According to Serbian sources, more than two dozen Kosovo Liberation Army terrorists were killed in Rugovo, while the Western mass media insisted that at least nine of them were civilians. Particularly, the daily New York Times wrote with the reference to a local field commander that there were only four KLA militants in the village and he knew nothing about other people. On January 29 OSCE mission representative Henning Hentz was in Rugovo. He shared his impression of the visit with Voice of Russia correspondent Iovanna Vukotic, which gives a real picture of what happened. He said that this had nothing to do with the killing of Albanian civilians.
"We discovered 25 bodies, including 11 in a bus and some others near the vehicle. Several other bodies were laying in a barn which was used as a garage. The territory around the barn was covered with snow but there were no tracks. I thought that the bodies were brought there from another location and, most likely, a day before the clash between Serb police and KLA militants," Henning Hentz said.
At the time, German Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping showed only some of the photos taken by Henning Hentz and for some reason said those were taken by a German officer. He deliberately ignored the photos that clearly showed the dead bodies of KLA militants. So, Scharping managed to convince the public that "bad guys" or Serbs were again killing innocent Albanians and provoked a wave of refugees, says Hentz.
"For Germans, this meant that they would be involved in a military operation for the first time after the Second World War. My impression is that the situation in Kosovo at the time was exaggerated. When I visited Kosovo, there was no necessity for Albanians to leave their homes en masse. A real exodus started with the beginning of the bombing. A major part of the report on the Kosovo situation was exaggerated and was always against Serbs," Henning Hentz added.
Ethnic cleansing in Kosovo was used as a pretext for bombing Yugoslavia. And the incident in the village of Rugovo shows once again that the PR campaign against Belgrade was organized using obvious forgeries.
Reportedly, NATO started thinking about an invasion after the killing of 40 civilian Albanians in Racak. However, experts who studied the forensic reports concluded that there was no evidence proving that the killed were civilians, and that they were killed by Serbian servicemen.
This technology is being used even now. For example, photos taken in Iraq in 2003 are used in news broadcasts to show the deaths of Syrian civilians. The dramatic effect is achieved by using photo editing programmes. For example, a Syrian family walking in the streets of an ordinary city is shown in a photo against a background of ruined buildings. Ultimately, they achieve the necessary effect. In the 19th century, the prominent Russian gnomic (pseudonymous) poet Kozma Prutkov said: If you read the world buffalo on a cell of an elephant, please, do not believe it.
Truly, in the 19th century, there was no high-tech to make a fly from an elephant as well as genocide from contract killing.
July 29, 2012
Serbian president Nikolic warns of Kosovo genocide
Serbian president Nikolic warns of Kosovo genocide
Tomislav Nikolic says Serbs in Kosovo face threat of genocide and refuses to rule out partition along ethnic lines
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- Julian Borger
- guardian.co.uk, Sunday 29 July 2012 15.26 BST
Serbian president Tomislav Nikolic says any attempt to impose Pristina's rule could lead to a Serb exodus. Photograph: Koca Sulejmanovic/AFP/Getty Images
The Serbian president has claimed Serbs in Kosovo are living under the threat of genocide and would not rule out a partition between ethnic Serb and Albanian regions of the former province.
Tomislav Nikolic, a former ultra-nationalist, was elected in May on a more moderate platform. But in a Guardian interview he criticised Kosovo, whose independence Serbia and its allies refuse to recognise.
He signalled his intention to take a tougher stance than his predecessor in EU-brokered negotiations, arguing that until now only Serbia had been asked to make concessions in efforts to defuse the dispute and it would now demand more concessions from Pristina.
"What compromise has been done by Pristina up to now? None. All the talks have been on things Serbia will accept. Serbia hasn't set any conditions," he said. "It's not a compromise if Serbia is always backtracking step by step. It's not a compromise if Pristina says its independence is recognised and that it will realise its independence on our territory."
A Serb enclave around the northern half of the divided city of Mitrovica refuses to accept rule from the ethnic Albanian government in Pristina, the focus of tension since Kosovo declared its independence in 2008.
Its independence has been recognised by the UK, the US and most western states, but not by Russia, China and a majority of the UN general assembly.
Kosovo's leadership has repeatedly called for the international community to help it extend its authority into the Mitrovica enclave and has been increasingly assertive in its efforts to force the issue.
Nikolic said any attempt to impose Pristina's rule could lead to a Serb exodus. "What if the Serbs move out. Who will accept the results of such genocide? That is one of the definitions of genocide: when you expel 40,000 people, regardless of whether they are women, men, [civilians or] soldiers, and when you change the ethnic composition of the territory. That is genocide.
"There is a danger that Pristina would be prepared to go that far. The only armed force there, apart from the international community, is Albanian. I am convinced they wouldn't mind doing that immediately." He added that the only thing preventing such action was the presence of Nato troops.
Nikolic underlined an earlier declaration that he would never exercise power in Pristina, and called on his Kosovan counterpart, Atifete Jahjaga, to admit she would never govern in northern Mitrovica. Asked whether that implied the partition of Kosovo, he replied: "I don't know, because if you told me 20 years ago there would be no Yugoslavia, I wouldn't have believed you. If you told me Serbia and Montenegro would split, I would have also told you that was impossible. I would also have said that Germany would never reunite, but life brings us surprises. I can't run policy by imagining things."
During the wars that split Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Nikolic was a senior member of the Serbian Radical party. Its leader, Vojislav Seselj, is currently on trial at The Hague facing charges of crimes against humanity for atrocities carried out by the White Eagles paramilitary group under his command. According to Serbian political observers, Nikolic took no direct part in the paramilitary wing; however, he staunchly defended it in the Guardian interview.
"I have committed no crime. And I am not ashamed of anything I have done since 1990 to today … These so-called paramilitary units were in line with the then constitution of Yugoslavia," he said. "In that time, I was aware that everybody must do everything he can to defend his people and country … All peoples from the former Yugoslav took part in the war. Some of them to gain states; the Serbs to save a state. But the Serbs did not manage to accomplish their task."
Nikolic claimed the fact that the Serbs lost the war explained why there were more Serbs than other ethnicities facing charges at the war crimes tribunal, and not that it was Serbs under Slobodan Milosevic who committed the majority of atrocities.
"There are fewer members of other nations and their sentences are somewhat milder. So the Serb people tend to believe that justice is not equal for everyone. But we have accepted the jurisdiction of the Hague tribunal and we therefore accept its judgments," Nikolic said, adding that the perception of bias left a "bitter taste".
He refused to confirm whether he would have handed over senior Serb war crimes suspects such as Radovan Karadzic or Ratko Mladic to The Hague as his predecessor in the presidency, Boris Tadic, had done.
Nikolic also repeated his denial that the mass killings of Muslims from the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in July 1995 constituted genocide: "I cannot go further than the Serbian parliament," he said. In March 2010, the parliament issued an apology for the massacre that did not explicitly use the word genocide but recognised declaration by the the international court of justice which defined it as such.
Last week the Serbian parliament approved the appointment as prime minister of Ivica Dacic, a former spokesman for the Milosevic regime. The ascent of Nikolic and Dacic has raised fears in the west and in Kosovo of a resurgence of militant Serb nationalism.
Hashim Thaci, Kosovo's prime minister told the Guardian on Sunday: "The legacy that the current Serbia's leadership has, is the one that really does not promise much. However, this came as a result of a democratic process that took place in Serbia and the will of people out there should be respected. I have no intention to judge the current leadership of Serbia based on the deeds they did on the past, I will judge them based on the deeds they will do now and on and particular in relationship to Kosovo."
Thaci rejected Nikolic's claims the Serbs of Mitrovica would be endangered by Pristina's rule. "One should not forget this fact because two-thirds of the Serbs live in the southern part of Kosovo and are fully integrated and in charge of the self governance on the local level and participate in all institutions on the central level," he said.
Nikolic said his greatest challenge was to fill the estimated $3bn (£2bn) hole in the budget. He asked for international assistance and claimed his country's needs were small in comparison with the scale of the eurozone crisis, but warned creditors against making their help conditional on Serbia making concessions over Kosovo.
"Maybe someone thought we were ready to make various concessions if we were poor. But we expect the international community and our friends to help us to recover the economy in line with their duties and obligations," he said. "We don't want be treated like country cousins."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/29/serbian-president-nikolic-kosovo-genocide?INTCMP=SRCH
July 17, 2012
Clinton 'use Srebrenica to crack down on Serbs' - witnesses. -Guskova
... In an interview with Dani magazine, Meholich recited the words of Izetbegovic addressed to the delegation from Srebrenica: "You should know that Clinton suggested to me in April 1993 that the 'četnici' forces should enter Srebrenica, slaughter five thousand Muslims, and then a military intervention will occur." But were there any victims? ... ... Under pressure of the European Union, the Serbs acknowledged their guilt, and in March 2010, the Serbian Assembly expressed apology for the committed crimes. However, they should not have done it until all the circumstances of the events in Srebrenica were clarified and made public. Otherwise it will be a heavy load to bear for all the Serbian people, because it will confirm NATO's version of the Serbs' guilt for everything that happened in the Balkans in the nineties and serve as justification for the bombings in 1999. [ The Hill-Bill Clintons are directing all of us to the abyss. Who let those two out of Arkansas? ] From: dw Sent: Friday, July 13, 2012 2:56 PM http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_07_11/Clinton-suggested-extermination-of-5000-Muslims-in-Srebrenica/Bill Clinton 'suggested using Srebrenica to crack down on Serbs' - witnesses
The Hague Tribunal has resumed legal proceedings in the case of Serbian General Ratko Mladic, who is accused of committing genocide against Muslims in the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina in July 1995.The Director of the Center for the Study of the Contemporary Balkan Crisis of the RAS Institute of Slavic Studies Elena Guskova stated once again that genocide did not take place: "Today, the case of Srebrenica has become a subject of political speculation, in which the Serbs are being involved, although more and more data appears that Srebrenica was a premeditated and well-executed operation of the Muslim intelligence services. The lie about Srebrenica spreads around the world, and it becomes more and more difficult to fight against it. Srebrenica has become a synonym for the genocide of the Muslim population, allegedly committed by the Serbian troops in July 1995. Back then, manipulations with the numbers of victims had already started, and in 2009, the European Parliament announced July 11 the 'Day of memory of the Genocide in Srebrenica, where the Bosnian Serb forces killed 8000 civilians in 1995.' However, the number of victims is not confirmed by the facts." Of late, documents and materials appearing confirm a different version of the events in Srebrenica and correct the number of victims. Participants of the events have begun to speak out, documents from some countries' intelligence services are being published, journalists and scientists – including western colleagues – are carrying out serious research. The UN Secretary General's Report on the downfall of Srebrenica (1999) notes that some Bosnians from Srebrenica claimed that "President Izetbegovic... told them that, as he had learned, NATO's intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina was possible, but only in the event if Serbs invaded Srebrenica and killed at least 5000 of its inhabitants." Hakiye Meholich, a former head of Srebrenica police, confirmed this. In an interview with Dani magazine, Meholich recited the words of Izetbegovic addressed to the delegation from Srebrenica: "You should know that Clinton suggested to me in April 1993 that the 'četnici' forces should enter Srebrenica, slaughter five thousand Muslims, and then a military intervention will occur." But were there any victims? From among 2442 bodies found in mass graves in 2003-2006, which had been allegedly executed in July 1995, 914 of them participated in the elections in September 1996. The analysis of the forensic investigation carried out by experts of the Hague Tribunal based on processing remains from mass graves shows that in 92.4% of cases, the cause of death was not formally established. A thorough demographical analysis of Srebrenica's population before and after the July of 1995 provides very interesting results. The men registered as being alive after a month following the July events in the total number of registered refugees and servicemen of the 28th division of Bosnia and Herzegovina's Army is a little bigger than in July 1995. There is not a single witness either among the UN peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, or among the numerous journalists who saw the alleged genocide in Srebrenica back in July 1995 with their own eyes. Under pressure of the European Union, the Serbs acknowledged their guilt, and in March 2010, the Serbian Assembly expressed apology for the committed crimes. However, they should not have done it until all the circumstances of the events in Srebrenica were clarified and made public. Otherwise it will be a heavy load to bear for all the Serbian people, because it will confirm NATO's version of the Serbs' guilt for everything that happened in the Balkans in the nineties and serve as justification for the bombings in 1999. |
