Law and Order: CI

Just watched an episode of Law and Order: CI, yesterday in which the ultimate bad guy was your typical "Serb": member of a paramilitary group who raped women for fun. The irony: one of the headline articles in the file that they used to condemn him said "Rape of Serbian Women"--now, why would so-called "bad Serbs" be raping their own?

I am getting tired of this.

This little story almost got past me--thank God for Yahoo! news alerts:

From the NYT--30 August, 2005
When two Serbs were killed last weekend in a shooting in Kosovo, Kostunica and Boris Tadic, the Serbian president, rushed to issue statements of outrage. In essence, their message was that the incident demonstrated how far Kosovo remains from the basic standards Europe and the United States demand of any community with ambitions to self-governance. They had a point.
The problem, however, is that Serbia, ever quick to denounce ethnic Albanian "terrorism" in Kosovo, has scarcely begun to confront the crimes it committed on a vast scale in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s.
A video of Serbs killing Muslims at Srebrenica, shown in June at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague, provoked a shock here. That was salutary. It was also a terrible indictment of the degree of Serbian ignorance a decade after the Bosnian war. Six Bosnian Muslims being shot in 1995 were shown in the video. Six! In the early months of the Bosnian war in 1992, tens of thousands of Muslims were driven from their homes, herded into camps and selectively killed. Over that murderous campaign silence reigns. From Kostunica down, obfuscation of the "They-killed-us-we-killed-them" variety is still encouraged....
Within the army, younger officers, with an eye on potential NATO membership, favor Mladic's handover. But older officers cannot accept his capture. "They say they will never accept the arrest of a man with whom they fought in Bosnia," said the army member.
That's interesting. One of Serbia's, and Milosevic's, many fictions is that the Yugoslav Army never fought in Bosnia and the campaign there had nothing to do with Belgrade. Nonsense, of course, but Serbia remains ambivalent about reality. Maybe the real question is just whose reality they are supposedly ambivalent about. There are several so-called "realities" in my own country which don't exactly thrill me to the marrow of my bones--am I supposed to embrace them as gospel because someone in power tells me to?
http://www.nytimes.com/iht/2005/08/31/international/IHT-31globalist.html?pagewanted=print

Sorry--been a busy couple of weeks. However, nothing has changed much, news-wise....

A US war crimes envoy yesterday again urged Serbia to arrest the two top Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitives sought by a UN tribunal. US ambassador-at-large for war crimes, Pierre Richard Prosper, said that Serbia-Montenegro cannot move forward into the European Union and NATO without the capture of wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and military commander General Ratko Mladic.
http://www.seeurope.net/en/Story.php?StoryID=56387&LangID=1
Blah, blah, blah...Mladic...blah...blah...Karazdic+
Well, there was that whole bit with Marko Milosevic getting pardoned. THAT really pissed some people off.

Leskovac, 24 August: Archaeologist teams have discovered three massive objects made of iron, which date back to the end of the 14th century BC, at the Hisar hill near Leskovac.
http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=219485
Wonder how long it will be until they link those "objects" to something bad?

Why don't I like the sound of this?

US seeks military base in Serbia 11:13 August 12 B92
BELGRADE -- Friday – The US is seeking an agreement to base troops in Serbia-Montenegro. The draft agreement was presented yesterday by US Ambassador Michael Polt under the guise of “an agreement on security cooperation”. The draft deal sets out details of the rights of US troops who would be stationed in Serbia-Montenegro. In return the US is dangling the carrot of membership in NATO Lite, the Alliance’s Partnership for Peace program. The other condition for membership of the program is the extradition of Hague Tribunal defendant Ratko Mladic.
http://www.b92.net/english/news/index.php

Another un-Wanted representation

Last night, on the new TNT series Wanted, the plot centered around three Bosnian Serbs who were sent to execute a man living in the US who was going to testify against one of Milosevic's generals at the Hague. A logical, contemporary plot, right? So, what was so troubling? These three guys, as part of their actions, shot up a bank, killed a woman passerby and her baby (in its stroller), emptied an entire clip from a modified automatic M-6 into the face of the guy they were there to kill, then went to the house of the dead guy's daughter (who had no other relationship to the plot--she came in out of the blue) and killed her, her husband, and her 14-year old daughter. Basically, everyone these guys came in contact with, they killed.

Now, Wanted's entire premise centers around extremely violent criminals, and they play the "kids getting hurt" card because the lead has kids and it gives motivation for character-building scenes. However, I find this type of representation of "the Serb" to be more of the same-old, same-old in terms of stereotypes. The "Muslim terrorists" on 24 in season three killed as many people in the entire season as these three guys did in an hour. That seems to me to be a bit excessive.

Operation Storm--Ten Years Later
Hague Tribunal Representative Aleksandra Milenov, speaking at a Serb refugee camp outside Belgrade, on the indictment of Croats responsible for war crimes during Operation Storm (whose anniversary is today):
“The Tribunal, unfortunately, cannot issue indictment for all war criminals. The Tribunal focuses on those that it feels are most responsible.” Milenov said.
?????
Seventy percent of the refugees living in these camps in Serbia are from Croatia.

Croatian President Stjepan Mesic said that Croatia had every right, according to UN resolutions, to implement the Storm operation. “This action was exceptionally prepared, under all guidelines of war, and was implemented to quickly break the resistance of the aggressor and was carried out while following all international conventions. Unfortunately, after the operation, there were excesses, war crimes and robberies. This was already taken care of in court, but was not completed and now is the time to do so.” Mesic said.
Ten years after the Storm 15:16 -> 20:50 August 04 B92
http://www.b92.net/english/news/index.php

They seem so sure....

Ilic awaits Karadzic’s surrender 14:42 August 01 B92

BELGRADE, LONDON -- Monday – Serbian Capital Investments Minister Velimir Ilic expects that Hague fugitive Radovan Karadzic will soon turn himself in to The Hague Tribunal.

Ilic also reiterated the Serbian government’s stance that it truly does not know where Ratko Mladic is hiding, and therefore, is not negotiating a surrender with him.

The Republic of Srpska’s Internal Affairs Ministry official Radovan Pejic could not confirm if any new advances have been made in the search for Karadzic since his wife Ljiljana Zelen Karadzic made a plea last week for Radovan to surrender himself to the authorities for the sake of their family. Pejic did however restate that full cooperation with The Hague Tribunal is of utmost importance.

The British daily Independent writes that Radovan Karadzic’s days of freedom are numbered.

A well-informed source claims that his wife’s call on him to surrender could end his eight years of hiding and have him in the custody of the Tribunal by as soon as the end of this week.

Political analysts and officials say that there is more than one reason behind Ljiljana Zelen’s statement made last week, who has until now, always shown full support for her husband and his fugitive status. Some believe that the family’s poor financial situation is most responsible for her move, since the many years of hiding Karadzic definitely cost the family a lot of money, said the source of the daily, adding that the web of people which has been helping Karadzic hide is beginning to collapse.

An anniversary to remember:

On July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. World War I began as declarations of war by other European nations quickly followed.
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0728.html#article

When all else fails, call in the family....
Karadzic’s wife calls for surrender 22:17 Beta
PALE -- Thursday – Radovan Karadzic’s wife Ljiljana has called on her husband to surrender himself to The Hague Tribunal “for their family’s sake.”

Ljiljana Zelen Karadzic, who has been helping hide her husband for the last ten years, gave an exclusive interview to the Associated Press from her home in Pale.

“Our family is under constant pressure from all sides. Our lives and existence are in constant danger.” she said.

We are living in a state of worry, pain and suffering. This is why I had to choose between loyalty towards you and the family. It is very hard for me to ask you, but I am asking you with all my heart and soul to turn yourself in.” Ljiljana told the AP.

“This will be a sacrifice for us and our family. In hopes that you are alive and can decide on your own, I beg you to make a decision and do it for our sake. In all my helplessness, all I can say to you is: I beg you.” she said.

Karadzic’s brother Luka said that he does not agree with Ljiljana Zelen Karadzic’s call for Radovan to surrender and believes that it is a result of pressure being put on the family to do so.
http://www.b92.net/english/news/index.php?order=priority

The Germans report on Karazdic's wife's plea: "Es ist schmerzhaft und schwierig, dich dazu aufzufordern, aber ich bitte dich dennoch von ganzem Herzen, dich dem Tribunal zu stellen", sagte Karadzics Frau, die ganz in Schwarz gekleidet war. Ihr Mann solle dieses "Opfer" für seine Familie bringen. Ohne Einzelheiten zu nennen, sagte Ljiljana Karadzic, die Familie sei in Gefahr, sie lebe in einer "Atmosphäre ständiger Beunruhigung". http://de.news.yahoo.com/050728/286/4mpq4.html

In case you weren't aware....

In 1997, Osama bin Laden visited Albania to help establish the Kosovo Liberation Army. He provided between $500 million to $700 million and – according to an upcoming book by Paul L. Williams, "The Al Qaeda Connection" – 500 seasoned Arab Afghan troops to train KLA recruits at the al-Qaida headquarters in Albania and at another camp in Macedonia.

Understand the KLA was, from its creation by bin Laden, a jihadist terrorist group.

Here's how Williams tells the story from here:

At this point in the twisted history of Kosovo, the CIA and the Clinton administration began to view the KLA as an army of 'freedom fighters' and offered aid in the form of military training and field advice. The United States, unbeknown to the American people, was now in league with a group that contained enemies who were intent upon its destruction. They were generally not the innocent people who had been targeted and attacked by the Serbs.

A year later, with help from both al-Qaida and the United States, the KLA had an army of 30,000 with sophisticated weaponry, including anti-tank rocket launchers, mortars, recoilless rifles and anti-aircraft machine guns. Naturally, they began to use them – conducting hit-and-run attacks on Serbian special-forces police units.

Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Serbia, responded by burning homes and killing dozens of ethnic Albanians. Soon, there was a little war raging – "culminating," Williams writes, "in the infamous 'Racak Massacre' of Jan. 15, 1999, when the bodies of 45 Albanians were discovered in a gully within the village of Racak."

Milosevic insisted the bodies had been placed there by the KLA to implicate the Serbs and justify Western intervention. In fact, European papers found his claim was supported by the unnatural position of the bodies, the absence of cartridge shells and the inability of Racak villagers to identify the bodies.

But, this time, Clinton wasn't going to sit on the sidelines and watch a genocide take place as he had done in Rwanda. On the basis of this "evidence" and amid international outcries of ethnic cleansing, the United States and its European allies became militarily involved – not as "peacemakers," mind you, but as partisans in an ethnic and religious conflict initiated by al-Qaida.

At a cost exceeding $4 billion, NATO forces soon reduced Kosovo to rubble, flying 37,465 missions, destroying 400 Serbian artillery positions, 270 armored personnel carriers, 150 tanks, 100 planes, killing 10,000 Serbian soldiers and causing 1.4 million Kosovars to flee for their lives. Williams calls it "the greatest mass migration since World War II."

For the full article, go to

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45446

This is an interesting little story:


Serbia’a Image in the World


EXIT festival gathers young people from all over the world The image of Serbia in the European countries and the US is chiefly related to war, poverty and instability, and there is a stereotyping of Serbs as aggressive and war-mongering nation, show the results of a poll conducted by “Exit Team” and “TraNSfer” Club od Psychology Students during the EXIT 05 Music Festival. The poll was conducted on a sample of 900 Serbian and foreign citizens that visited “EXIT”. Among the foreign nationals, the majority came from the former Yugoslavia republics. The image of Serbia in Croatia is very negative and is related to the consequences of war and the “Chetnik” movement, which is an opinion of 70% of the polled Croatians. The opinions of the B&H citizens are divided, with 25% holding Serbia in positive regard. In Macedonia and Slovenia, the perception of Serbia is very positive, and the polled Macedonians and Slovenians believe that the Serbs, in general, are very friendly people. Positive view of Serbia is held by the other Eastern countries (Greece, Bulgaria and Romania) and their citizens cite the similar behaviour and worldview as the most positive feature. The “Exit” release for the media says that the visitors from Western Europe and the US often think that the war has never stopped in the region, although there are those who think that Serbia’s image in the world follows a positive trend and is improving. Almost one half of “EXIT” visitors are from the city of Novi Sad, and one in ten is a foreign national. One half of the foreigners are citizens of the states of former Yugoslavia. Over 80 percent of the visitors are young people between 20 and 30 years of age; 13 percent are younger than 20, shows the poll.
http://see.oneworld.net/article/view/115964/1/

Is they is or is they ain't negotiating with Mladic? First, we have this story:
“Negotiations under way” with Mladic 11:42 July 22 B92
BELGRADE -- Friday – Negotiations are between conducted for the surrender of Hague Tribunal fugitive Ratko Mladic, the director of the Humanitarian Law Centre said today. Natasa Kandic, speaking on TV B92, said that the negotiations were either being conducted directly or by someone authorised by the Cabinet to negotiate with Mladic’s associates. The open question, she said, was whether the decision would for Mladic to completely disappear or to receive money in return for his surrender. She claims that Mladic’s people “are counting on the five million dollar reward which the US Government has pledged for information on Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, and one condition sought is the place where Mladic’s prison sentence will be served”. Kandic says that she does not believe anyone from the present government who says they don’t know where the former Bosnian Serb military commander is. “I think that the situation is such that the authorities could repeat from morning to night that they have no information on the whereabouts of Mladic and Karadzic, but the question is who will believe it. It’s so obvious, that know they’re claiming they don’t know, he was here somewhere nearby, it’s easy to see where he was,” she said. During Boris Tadic’s period as defence minister he knew where Mladic was, Kandic believes: “I think that Tadic was in some situations where he could not talk about what he knew. I believe that even he knew where Mladic was and under whose protection. I don’t believe that the late prime minister Zoran Djindjic didn’t know. Everyone had at least some information about where Mladic was located,” she added. Meanwhile, the press representative of the Hague Tribunal Prosecution says that Mladic is in Serbia and that because of this is it is unacceptable that he has not been arrested. Florence Hartman told Belgrade daily Danas that Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte had told the UN Security Council that the political will in Serbia for voluntary surrenders was limited. “It’s now the case that there are no more voluntary surrenders,” she added.
http://www.b92.net/english/news/index.php?dd=22&mm=7&yyyy=2005

Then, we get this story:
“We know nothing” 13:29 July 25 Beta
BELGRADE -- Monday – Serbian Human Rights Minister Rasim Ljajic said that the government is not negotiating with Hague fugitive Ratko Mladic and that it has no information regarding his whereabouts. Ljajic, who is also president of the National Hague cooperation council, said that the government has never worked more intensively on trying to locate Mladic. “Among the locations we will be checking in looking for Mladic will be several security structures of the international community.” Ljajic said. “It is not true that Prime Minister Kostunica is the only one responsible for the fact that Mladic is still at large, the entire Democratic Opposition of Serbia knew where he was at one point. It is possible that there are individuals who are still helping to protect Mladic, but there is no organized structure within the military that is helping him hide.” Ljajic told daily Blic.
http://www.b92.net/english/news/index.php?dd=25&mm=7&yyyy=2005

Wonder who started THAT little rumor?

???? Now we are going to start THIS?
List of Serbs wanted in Croatia published 16:59 July 19 B92 PODGORICA, BELGRADE -- Tuesday – Podgorica daily Dan has published a list of Serbia-Montenegro citizens sought by Croatia on suspicion of being responsible for war crimes. There are 1,993 names on the list, which Dan quotes Belgrade’s ambassador to Zagreb as saying fall into three categories – people under investigation, people charged and convicted people. Meanwhile the political advisor to the Croatian ambassador to Belgrade, Romana Vlahutin, has denied the authenticity of the list saying that in f act there are less than a thousand people involved. http://www.b92.net/english/news/index.php?&nav_category=&nav_id=32478&order=priority&style=headlines

Well, well--here's something you don't see every day:
Tue Jul 19, 2:12 PM ET
A former Bosnian Croat special forces soldier pleaded guilty Tuesday to war crimes at the Yugoslav tribunal as part of a deal with prosecutors.
"I'm guilty, and I honestly regret it," Miroslav Bralo told the court as eight separate counts were read aloud by the judge. Prosecutors agreed to reduce the number of counts in his indictment from an initial 21, but added additional charges of persecution and unlawful confinement of prisoners.
Bralo, 37, confessed to rape, torture, murder and using prisoners as human shields to protect Bosnian Croat soldiers from sniper fire...The arrangement enables the court to skip the usually lengthy trial stage and go directly to sentencing. Bralo could face a maximum life sentence under the court's guidelines but is unlikely to do so because he confessed guilt and expressed remorse.
How lucky for him....
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050719/ap_on_re_eu/bosnia_war_crimes_2

Then again,
After a yearlong trial, a special court in Belgrade on Monday found Milorad Lukovic, one of Milosevic's senior paramilitary commanders, and Rade Markovic, a former head of Serbia's secret service, guilty of planning and carrying out the August 2000 assassination, along with five others...Human rights activists and former opponents of Milosevic's autocratic rule said that the trial had exposed to the Serbian public, in unparalleled detail, the ruthlessness with which the former Yugoslav strongman had sought to remain in power.
Somehow, I wonder if they didn't already know that....
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/07/19/news/serbs.php

Wait! What's it really all about, though? MONEY.
2005-07-19 16:29:09
Authorities in Kosovo put a winery, a road construction company and more than a dozen other enterprises up for sale , hoping to boost productivity and create jobs in this economically depressed province, Forbes reported.
http://www.seeurope.net/en/Story.php?StoryID=56062&LangID=1

Great, just what we needed, more NATO:

B92
News by priority, July 18, 2005 - page 1
Scheffer and Draskovic today signed an agreement for NATO forces to lay communication lines across the territory of Serbia-Montenegro. “This agreement makes it possible for NATO forces, including KFOR, to respond wherever needed in the region if human rights and peace are endangered. If there is new violence in Kosovo, this agreement makes it easier for NATO forces to react,” said the foreign minister. Scheffer described the agreement as being of the greatest significant for NATO which, as already announced will stay in Kosovo, because the province will be a long-term responsibility of NATO. A further agreement is to be signed in the near future between NATO and Serbia-Montenegro on the exchange of confidential and security information.
http://www.b92.net/english/news/index.php?version=print&

And it isn't even a Serb who says it, this time--I bet somebody out there is VERY unhappy....
No genocide in Srebrenica? 19:15 July 15 Beta, Blic
BELGRADE -- Friday – Former commander of the international peace forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lewis MacKenzie, said that “not even close” to 8,000 Muslims were killed in Srebrenica. According to daily Blic, the Canadian general claims that the armed forces of Naser Oric killed several thousands of Serbian civilians. MacKenzie said that Oric “is responsible for the deaths of as many Serb civilians in the Srebrenica region as the Bosnian Serbs are responsible for killing Muslims in Srebrenica.” MacKenzie said that the actual events in Srebrenica in July 1995 are far from what the media has been claiming to have happened. “I was there, I know what was happening and I wanted to show that it’s not all black and white, that the ‘bad people’ did not show up all of a sudden and kill the ‘good people.’ The situation was a lot more complex than that.” MacKenzie said. He added that he has no problem with accusing Ratko Mladic for war crimes against Muslim civilians but believes that those who committed crimes against Serbian civilians must be prosecuted as well.
http://www.b92.net/english/news/index.php

July 15 - War makes the winners right and the losers wrong. That's especially true in a civil war, where the winners will get to write the history books, and the losers will have to send their kids to schools that teach from them. But what happens when such a war ends without a victory, as happened in Bosnia and Herzegovina 10 years ago? There each of the three sides, Muslim, Croat and Serb, have created their own versions of history and their own monuments to competing heroes. That makes for a pretty ugly bronze landscape under the postwar pigeon-droppings. In Bosnia today, one side's indicted war criminal is likely to be another side's war hero.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8586621/site/newsweek/

More reflections on Srebrenica from the Christian Science Monitor:
Now 10 years later, many witnesses and survivors are eager to remind the world that Srebrenica was not, as it is sometimes presented, an isolated horror conducted by a clutch of crazy hillbillies - nor simply the worst slaughter in Europe in 50 years.
Rather, they see it as an extension of a racial superiority campaign, and sparked by sophisticated Serb hate propaganda in Belgrade that acted like a blowtorch on a bale of hay in the Balkans.
*************************
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established by the UN Security Council in 1993. Former president Slobodan Milosevic's trial is ongoing, but 10 key suspects remain at large.
The ICTY has successfully handled dozens of cases. The maximum sentence that can be imposed is life imprisonment.
Tribunal Indictments to date: 162
Judgments rendered: 55
Sentenced: 37
Acquitted: 2
Not Guilty: 3
Appealing: 13
Recused: 2
Source: ICTY
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/csm/20050714/wl_csm/ojusticex_1

Because, in the end, it's all about one bankrupt nation extracting money from another bankrupt nation while nations with money watch:
Bosnia-Herzegovina does not have enough money to lead a case against Serbia-Montenegro in front of the International Court of Law in The Hague.
http://www.seeurope.net/en/Story.php?StoryID=56031&LangID=1

Serbs only recently began to recognize this orchestrated massacre, one that triggered the US-led end to the 1992-95 Bosnia war. It's taken a long time for Serbs to break through their nationalist fervor built up by deposed strongman Slobodan Milosevic. While many Serbs were also victims in the war, the slaughter at the Bosnian town of Srebrenica was in a league by itself as a war crime.
from the July 12, 2005 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0712/p08s03-comv.html

Not much else in the papers today...what did I tell you?

After yesterday’s ten-year commemoration for the Muslim victims of Srebrenica, tribute will be paid today to Serbian civilians who lost their lives in Bratunac. The ceremony took place at a military cemetery and a church service was given for Serbs who lost their lives in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the regions of Srebrenica, Bratunac and Milic. The service was attended by political leaders from the Republic of Srpska, Serbian officials from the Bosnia-Herzegovina government, a delegation from Serbia, and several thousands onlookers. There were no international officials present even though invitations were sent out to all embassies in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Serbian victims commemorated 12:58 July 12 B92, Beta
http://www.b92.net/english/news/index.php

The irony of the date is not lost on me--and could perhaps have been intentional? Could the lawyers not have known what he was going to say? What better way to fan the flames?
A defence witness at the war crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic denied on Monday that Bosnian Serb forces slaughtered 8,000 Muslim men in Srebrenica 10 years ago.
Bozidar Delic, a retired Yugoslav army general..."That's your observation. I do not accept that," Delic told the court. "I accept that two to three thousand Serbs were killed in the Srebrenica area and several thousand Muslims, but most of them were killed in fighting."
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L11306288.htm

Glad to see that the Brits can remain objective and non-inflammatory in their language:
"What's all the fuss about?" shrugged the young Srebrenica Serb yesterday as the town swelled with Bosnian mourners...
"This is all just a publicity stunt," snorted Mando, 28. "Sure, people were killed, but why make all this noise? There were 3,600 Serbs killed here. Some say 8,000 Muslims were killed, that it was genocide. But the figures are exaggerated. No one knows the truth. That's a game for kids. All this fuss just gives me a sore head."
Like many of the Serbs of Srebrenica, Mando still cannot face the truth about his small home town a decade after the Serbs murdered up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim males within a week in what many see as the gravest political massacre in Europe in the second half of the 20th century...
In what western diplomats in the Serbian capital described as a disgrace, the Serbian parliament was unable to agree on a statement condemning the crime.
Last week the government of prime minister Vojislav Kostunica finally released a statement deploring war crimes and equating the Srebrenica massacre with the killings of Serbs in the region during the Bosnian war.
The aim was not to excuse or justify Srebrenica, but to relativise and belittle a crime which judges in The Hague have classified as genocide, the sole such event in the Yugoslav wars of the 90s to warrant that category.
"Ach, genocide," snorts Mando. "Who knows?"
At the weekend in Belgrade thousands of Serbs gathered in a conference hall to watch a film called The Truth with a Wagner soundtrack and to claim that the Serbs were the real victims. A Belgrade newspaper recently published a 16-page supplement entitled The Book of the Dead, listing 3,287 Serbs from the Srebrenica region who died during the Bosnian war.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/yugo/article/0,2763,1525853,00.html?gusrc=rss

Various articles about the commemoration:
Today marks the tenth anniversary of the massacre as many as 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in the town of Srebrenica — Europe's worst atrocity since World War II. And although the anniversary finds most of Serbia, in whose name it was committed, still avoiding a true accounting of was perpetrated at Srebrenica and by whom, there are encouraging signs that the façade of denial may have suffered irreparable cracks.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1081303,00.html?promoid=rss_top

"When condemning crimes, it is of decisive importance not to distinguish between innocent victims according to their nationality or faith. The Serbian government strongly condemns all war crimes committed during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia."

In this recent statement, Belgrade did not single out the Srebrenica massacre as the worst war crime committed on European soil since the end of World War II as many had hoped. Instead, it called it a "serious crime" along with atrocities against ethnic Serbs during the war.

It's a sign that the Balkan country is still struggling to come to terms with its past despite recent signs that the war's worst criminals might finally be brought to justice.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1644313,00.html

Interesting, isn't it, that on a day meant to commemorate the victims of Srebrenica, all the press seemed able to do was talk about the perpetrators...

The NYT published a pitifully short article--the event wasn't even worthy of a major headline. The possibility of getting North Korea to the bargaining table and yet more information about the Israeli wall were apparently more important stories than the 10-year anniversary. Funny, isn't it? Srebrenica is big news whenever the West wants to put it to the Serbs, but invisible when it comes time for someone else to pay the piper....here's the link
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/12/international/europe/12bosnia.html?

That's enough for today--let's see who cares about Srebrenica, or Bosnia, or Serbia, for that matter, tomorrow. No fancy anniversaries to celebrate.

Srebrenica picture from Washington Post

Here's a link to an article (in Serbian) that claims the Srebrenica video is a hoax. It's published on the ICDSM Irish branch's site. The ICDSM as an organization is devoted to covering Milosevic's trial and defending him (and has made some good points about Western aggression and propoganda during the 1999 bombing). They tend to cast Milosevic as a hero, standing tall against Western imperialism, which is a bit much for me, but the article is interesting in itself. Lots of video analysis and discussion of filmaking techniques....

http://www.icdsmireland.org/resources/background/2005/srebrenica-video.htm

Also, here's a link to a Washington Post story which explains how the video came to light:

Human rights sleuth Natasa Kandic, a wisp of a woman with a boyish haircut, spent hours in the cafes of Sid, a town in northern Serbia, listening to whispered tales of Balkan war killings. Then one day, she heard about the videotape.
It showed the summary executions in 1995 of six Muslim men and boys from the Bosnian city of Srebrenica. It had been passed around as a war souvenir among members of a shadowy Serb military unit called the Scorpions. Its commander had ordered copies destroyed, but one, she was told, still existed, held by a dissident member of the unit.
Since that day in 2003, she searched until she found the video. She gave it to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, where former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic is on trial, and to television stations in Serbia, where it triggered a sudden self-examination in a society that viewed itself as the prime victim of the Balkan war atrocities of the 1990s.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/24/AR2005062401501.html

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/srebrenica-10-years-on-a-wound-still-bleeds/2005/07/10/1120934123817.html?oneclick=true#
Today the world marks the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre - the event commonly viewed as the single largest act of genocide in Europe since the Holocaust.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2005/07/10/pf-1125508.html
A tear rolls down Sabaheta Fejzic's cheek as she twists open the blue tin of hand cream and gazes at the fingertip tracks left by her son. The 17-year-old and his father haven't been seen since they were taken away to the factory where Europe's worst massacre since the Second World War was being perpetrated.

Tomorrow's the day--10-year anniversary of Srebrenica--see what the NYT has to say:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/10/international/europe/10bosnia.html?

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro (AFP) - Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was presented with a 'Golden Medal of Liberty' during a ceremony in the Kosovo capital Pristina.
President Ibrahim Rugova presented the medal in honour of Albright's efforts to end a Serbian crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists in the breakaway Serbian province in 1998-1999.
The war ended after a NATO bombing campaign forced Serbian forces under then Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw. Kosovo is now a UN protectorate but its ethnic Albanian majority still demands independence.
"She will always be respected and loved," Rugova told reporters Tuesday, after the decoration ceremony.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/050705/19/uzeh.html

What the F**K?

Bosnian Serb police have discovered explosives at the site of a memorial to the up to 8,000 victims of the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica. The explosives were uncovered early Tuesday as preparations were underway for commemoration services to mark the 10th anniversary of the killings.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-07-05voa109.cfm

Why I do this to myself I will never know.

Don't bother to read this article; it is almost word-for-word the article that the NYT published on Friday. Guess they aren't instrested enough to find anything new to say....
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/international/europe/03serbia.html

http://www.variant.randomstate.org/22texts/b92.html
“Don’t trust anyone, not even us.”Much lauded by the west’s liberal-left, Radio B92 was the former Yugoslavia’s premier underground radio station in Belgrade under the rule of Slobodan Milosevic and the wars in the Balkans. Treated as traitors and subversives during this period, they were repeatedly forced off the airwaves by the government, but managed to keep broadcasting until Milosevic was overthrown. Matthew Collin’s book ‘This is Serbia Calling’ and Doug Aubrey’s film ‘See You in the Next War’ both conscientiously document this period of struggle from the perspective of those immediately involved in the scene in Belgrade.Following a screening of Aubrey’s film and a launch of Collin’s 2nd edition of the book, both in the back room of the CCA bar in Glasgow, a discussion was held with Gordan Paunovic of B92 on Radio B92’s impact and legacy. This is an edited transcript:Matthew Colin: My connection to all this started eight years ago (1996) when I went to Belgrade to report on what I thought was a small story about student demonstrations. By the time I got there, ten days after it all kicked off, there was about half a million people in the streets demonstrating against the theft of election results by the government of Slobodan Milosevic. But there was another element to it; it wasn’t just a political demonstration, students marching on the streets, just civic unrest, it had another ‘cultural’ element to it—music, film, art were all important to this. There were a lot of ways that messages were being transmitted, not just through your classic placard that you see on every demonstration, but in a really creative way, and this is what inspired me to get involved. Those demonstrations failed, as we all know, and some people argue that just being out on the streets in numbers and just creating a cultural alternative is not enough, that you actually need more power than that to get your message across. It took another four years for the ultimate goal of this protest movement to be realised, which was the overthrow of Milosevic, but it was a beginning.Audience: Gordan, what do you think of Doug’s representation of this time in Serbia, is it true to the feelings of people like you who were living in Serbia at the time?Gordan Paunovic: The film definitely caught that moment in Belgrade; the time of the bombing (1999), the time after the bombing which was six, seven months when B92 was pretty much off air but still alive through different activities. It also caught the spirit of people who refused to surrender [to Milosevic and to the bombing]—for most people dealing with radio the transmitters being off would mean death to the whole thing, but B92 has never just been radio, maybe not even in ‘89—‘90 at the very beginning. It was always more like a social movement, many things were based around the radio station. It was a focal point.Audience: How did B92 start?MC: It was set up as a temporary broadcaster to celebrate the birthday of Marshall Tito, the former ruler of Yugoslavia.GP: He was already nine years dead!MC: He was already dead, but Tito loved the youth... So this bunch of reprobates and wasters was given the chance to have two weeks airtime.GP: We were making a youth programme which was broadcast daily on community radio in Belgrade for one hour everyday called “Rhythm of the Heart”—the official founder behind the whole programme was The Socialist Youth Organisation, which one was of the bodies you had in every communist country which was supposed to make sure that youth didn’t do stupid things, and they wanted to be modern because already in ‘89 things were starting to change in Eastern Europe, so they thought that we should be given media to play with a little. We got a kind of temporary license for two weeks, which was the official time frame, but after two weeks somehow we fooled them.Audience: So when did they get wise to you?GP: Never, I think! After two weeks we just refused to stop. B92 was very lucky because at the same time they gave a chance to a group of other kids who set up a youth television, so when the two weeks expired they had to make a decision, whom are they going to shut down? And of course their common logic was that television was much more dangerous than radio so they shut down the TV and let us go on to give the impression that they weren’t such bad guys all-in-all, and we survived. Youth Radio B92 was the official name at the beginning, and then after a couple of months we threw this ‘youth’ out.Audience: Why was it called B92? Because of the American bombers?GP: That’s one of the theories, but there’s no big mystery behind it, actually. The frequency of the station was 92.5 and “B” stands for Belgrade. So it’s very boring! Some people thought it was something to do with B-52, and we’ve been criticised many times over the years as being seen as promoting pro-western views, promoting this B-52 thing, but that was not the case.Audience: Going back to B92’s history and what it may have broadcast during the Bosnian conflict that could have upset the Serbian authorities, did B92 do anything like that?GP: I wouldn’t go into such a particular case as the Bosnian war, but generally we had problems all the time with the authorities because we were constantly expressing different political views from what they were promoting in their official statements, which constituted the basis of all national media broadcasts, so this was not just the case with the Bosnia conflict.Audience: So did you never stand up for Sarajevo for example? Because what was happening in Sarajevo was very wrong.GP: We stood up for Sarajevo before the war started, when the first barricades were put in Sarajevo, before the street fighting started we put the first barricade in Belgrade—which was more like an art performance—to bring to the attention of Belgraders what was happening in Sarajevo. In April ‘89 we had a concert in the main square of Belgrade with 50,000 people as a protest against what was just about to happen in Sarajevo. Again, I’m talking about the kind of things we did which were wider than just being a radio station. Throughout the war we had our main reporters reporting from Sarajevo from inside the city.DA: I think a good parallel is when ‘Warchild’ did that album for Bosnia, there was a track on it called “Serbia Calling”, by ‘K Foundation’ which became the anthem of B92 in a lot of ways.Audience: I spent two years in Sarajevo just after the war and there’s a general conception, of even young people from Serbia and B92, that there was a lot of promotion given to injustice in Serbia—to a lot of people in Sarajevo it was Serbian bombs bombing them for four years on a roll continually and surrounding that city.DA: That wasn’t just Serbs though.Audience: It was Serbs, Croats and Muslims in Sarajevo surrounded by Serbian warfare and a lot of Serbs actually saying: “Look, no, we will stand here and defend Sarajevo, a city that will be what Yugoslavia was. Everyone I knew in Sarajevo at that point had nothing from Belgrade. I just hope that B92 was also one of those beacons during that time. The NATO bombing of Belgrade was terrible, but for four years in Sarajevo a lot of Serbs, Croats and Muslims who wanted to live together as one nation looked out to hear something from Belgrade which was just down the road technically when you think about it (and they could drink coffee) and for four years Sarajevo was shelled with four thousand shells a day from Serbian artillery. I’m sorry I missed the film and I hope the film brought something up about it as that’s a major issue about what happened.MC: I think this is obviously a salient point, but when you’re under a government which is suffocating you, to even get a voice which goes beyond your country is very difficult.Audience: I would say that I don’t have all the facts, but that this film was about the B92 radio station and it surviving, and it talked more about a culture of people trying to exist at that time.MC: And also trying to change the culture of their own government that was doing these things.GP: At least 70% of Belgrade, about two million people, knew who Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic were and what they were doing, and obviously there are limits to what one radio station can do. And some limits are there because of the power of your transmitter, how far you can reach with what you are doing. And the other thing is that as news media the maximum you can do in such a situation is report the truth about what is happening and I think we did that 101%. We did reports from everywhere, we had people who were inside [Sarajevo] and they were reporting all the time. There would be a huge propaganda campaign on Serbian national television that Muslims are launching a big offensive on Pale and actually it was the other way around, and we would report what was really happening with the shelling of Sarajevo. Our reporters were seriously risking their lives.Audience: B92, it’s an excellent idea, but it should extend beyond Serbia into Bosnia, Croatia and finding out about and accepting what happened in the whole region. If it’s one of these major forces which we’re claiming tonight it should really have covered the whole of the region.Audience: Let’s look at the reality rather the fiction. There was a clampdown, how then did B92 manage to broadcast. You’re claiming things here that quite frankly weren’t capable. How did B92 actually come to be able to broadcast and who were they capable of broadcasting to?GP: Our reach was the wider area of Belgrade in some parts. Belgrade is quite hilly so if you were on the hill you could get it—if you were in a valley you could not. We were using an old Italian transmitter from 1956 which wasn’t the best you can get, and those were real limitations. The real improvement came in 1997 when, thanks to the success of the protest that Matthew described, more than 70% of local municipalities in Serbia were held by democratic parties. According to our law, local media was controlled by local authorities which meant that suddenly in 70% of Serbia the main radio stations in these places were free. We immediately set up a network where we were supplying these stations that didn’t have enough funding for their own news programmes—we supplied them with a couple of hours of news everyday.Audience: I was confused about B92 being just news or music or...GP: It was a mixture of programmes. B92 has never been a strictly formatted station in the meaning that you have here in the west, with stations that just play the top 40, or just do news—it was a mixture. Of course we had music throughout the day but also different political shows, news around the clock, and whenever there was a crisis or when big issues came up our programme scheme was turned upside-down to adjust to the situation.Audience: How free is the media now in Belgrade? What is the attitude of the people towards the Hague and Milosevic, and how do you feel still working there?GP: I don’t work on the radio but within the company. It’s a really different time from the one you saw in the film and from the ‘90s. At the moment we have a much more subtle enemy than the one we had before. Now it’s free market capitalism which is shaping the media in a totally different way. Right now every media in order to survive in Serbia is forced to make lots of compromises on a commercial basis.DA: Do you have a playlist now?GP: We do. We try to resist somehow not to but unfortunately these days we are relying on advertising sales and stuff like that. We haven’t lost our political edge but generally it feels more commercial than it was.Audience: I come from the Sarajevo region, and the prevailing opinion in Bosnia at the time of the war was the crime for the war was the ignorance of the people in Serbia. We didn’t actually believe there was free media in Belgrade. I thought there wasn’t really a force in Serbia that could actually stop the war, because they couldn’t see what was happening in Bosnia. But we are all ignorant now, we have Iraq now and what are we to do? Ok, we acknowledge what is happening but we don’t really do anything. And actually there was very little B92 could do. I think at the time Belgrade was probably the centre of free media, there was very little free media in Zagreb, in Sarajevo. I think Belgrade was the only one that actually had some free media, had some free opinion about what was going on in other parts of the country, but they could do nothing, absolutely nothing.MC: Is there a sense here that you were allowed to have your free media as long as you were reaching the hilly parts of Belgrade, and as long as you’re not reaching the entire population of the country then your President can say: “We have free media here: I am allowing this radio station, I’m allowing this newspaper that sells five thousand copies.”?Audience: As long as it exists, it’s ok. Even if I can’t access community radio because I don’t have the resources, I’m glad it exists.Audience: But you’re talking about different things, different situations. In the Serbian countryside there’s nothing, there’s two channels telling you what to think, what to wear and how to vote, and ok, B92 reached some of Belgrade, but you’ve got to aspire to more than that.Audience: If B92 wasn’t only a radio, you had a publishing house as well as DJs, so what else did B92 do? For example, just after the war did you organise parties, send aid, send books?GP: We didn’t wait until the end of the war. When Sarajevo library was shut in 1992, immediately at the beginning of the war and burned down, B92 started its own publishing house—which now has over one hundred books published since it began. We published a number of small pocket books but didn’t sell them, we called our listeners to come to B92 with books from their home to exchange them for what we published. So we collected tons of books, organised a convoy and sent the books to Sarajevo in 1993. You can say it didn’t help people, but it was a gesture. During the war we were constantly collecting food, clothes and stuff, and every two or three months sending them. You can also say it didn’t stop the war—it didn’t—but I mean, what can you do? We could all have gone to Pale and stood in front of cannons and got shot—maybe that would be something, but it wouldn’t have stopped the war.Audience: I think you’re being a bit unfair here. We’ve just watched a fantastic film that captured a moment, a reality, and you’re trying to have a political discussion about who was right and who was wrong. Why don’t we try and understand what we’ve seen. I thought it was amazing seeing the film, Gordan doesn’t need to sit there defending himself. What was really special was that we’ve got a committed film-maker who goes there and meets the people and tries to get some voices out, then we’ve got some fantastic editor that’s put something like that together. Speaking personally I don’t understand the whole politics of the thing, but at the same time we’ve had the privilege of meeting people there who are in a very deep sophisticated way trying to understand what’s happened to them.Audience: I understand that B92 was completely closed down during the war, can you tell me what happened then?Gordon: B92 was shut down several times during the war, and the longest time was when it was physically thrown out of its premises, when even the name was taken by other people. The organisation that founded B92 in 1989, the youth organisation I mentioned before, was suddenly reactivated in 1999 for the purpose of throwing out the original B92 people—to throw them out of the premises, off the equipment, and to put pro-government guys in. B92 was always a part of the scene in Belgrade that was not just radio or the media, there were a couple of small local NGOs who were anti-war activists, there were feminist groups, minority groups, different kinds of things, it was like a big umbrella for all of them. But it was very difficult to work during the time of the bombing, and at the end of the day B92 was just a radio station, no matter how important it was—it was very important, of course—but we had a bigger problem.Audience: So who listened to it?GP: Well, at that time no-one, it was shut down!Audience: Doug, how did you find out about B92? Did you take your camera, go there and discover them, or did you have knowledge of it before you went?DA: The whole Balkan conflict was like a whirlpool, you got on a train somewhere and ended up getting sucked into it, and that’s how I got involved with B92. Some friends of mine knew about other things that had gone on, and it grew from there. You identify things that are important and relevant and cross all borders, and I think that’s what B92 did actually, it managed to cross all borders, whether you happened to be a Croat, Serb, Muslim, Hindu, whatever—an American even. But my question is, we’ve seen the reality, we’ve lived the reality, so what do you guys make of the B92 Hollywood movie?MC: It’s a farce, obviously!Audience: How does Yugoslavia and specifically Serbia look at themselves in the sense of Europeanism, in the sense that it was their own European neighbours that fought against them and bombed them. How do they see themselves becoming part of this united Europe, and where does B92 figure in this?GP: I can tell you honestly that very few people in Serbia really believe that their country’s going to become a part of Europe, ever. It’s not some kind of widely-spread anti-Europe attitude, but rather that the majority of the people are aware that there are far too many troubles still going on within society for it to happen.Audience: Is it about that Serbian cynicism you spoke about in the film, about how you were the good guys for a short period of time and then you were back to being the bad guys. How much does that affect the Serbian attitude to Europe?GP: Europe isn’t that happy with Serbia these days, there are still lots of problems which are perhaps typical of countries with a troubled past, that are now deeply into some kind of a transition, but even in comparison with countries that are now part of the EU—like Slovenia, Hungary, the Czech Republic—I think there are much more unusual things happening in Serbia. There is no general consensus in society about our direction and I think that’s the main problem, and all the other problems we’re having are because of this. We can watch on B92 television the Hague tribunal live, how Milosevic is still fighting against the whole world and I have to say for many people this kind of thing produces a counter-effect because for many people he’s again being seen as someone who is fighting against injustice. It has something to do with the Balkan mentality that says you have to go against everyone.Audience: You mentioned Milosevic fighting against the world. Don’t you think it would be better if he was in the hands of Serbian justice instead of in the Hague?GP: That’s a common opinion, many people see the main injustice being that he’s being tried by people that are also some sort of criminals, maybe bigger or smaller than him.MC: The question is, is it ‘victors’ justice’?GP: It’s a big question whether Serbs would really be able to conduct a fair trial, because when it comes to hardcore national issues, unfortunately despite all the changes, there still are so many people who believe he was a real defender of Serbia—who believe that he was the one who for the first time in history of the Serbian nation gave the Serbs a state in Bosnia which they had never had before, and this is seen as a major achievement. So I’m not sure that putting him on trial in Belgrade would be better. I think much better would be a serious trial against him with much better funded evidence.Audience: My point is his crime was against Serbs and Bosnians and all the peoples in the region generally.GP: Exactly, given the nature of his crime the question could be: “Who has the right to put him on trial first?”MC: This is a question we’re not going to be able to answer tonight.Audience: It’s probably the perfect question with which to end the night, what does the future hold for B92?GP: That’s not the perfect question! I think B92 as it was portrayed in the film is pretty much finished, because ever since the end of the war B92 has existed in different conditions, in a media market that doesn’t have censorship like there used to be, they can broadcast the news they like without any interference from the top. Generally today there are three or four television stations that are broadcasting relatively correct news. Ok, they are all somehow under different political influences, but this is pretty much what you have in any society nowadays. Basically, we are just trying to stay normal.AfterthoughtsBased on an e-mail exchange between Variant and Doug Aubrey, ‘See You in the Next War.’Variant: What of B92’s internet and satellite broadcasts that you documented?DA: These really came down to the super-human efforts of Gordan P and assorted global supporters of what B92 represented, that ranged from web-visionaries such as Radio Qualia and the Amsterdam Xs4All mob, and other assorted anarchists/autonomists to the dodgy involvement of alleged MI6 agents.It was a strange temporary marriage between extremes really, that took place in Vienna, Amsterdam and finally back in Belgrade—that proved that voices from the margins perhaps really are the mainstream when it comes to dealing with the realities of war.V: How did this relate to other media at the time, nationally and internationally?DA: The mainstream media simply became a vehicle for western propaganda—as we all know.In many ways what Net-aid/B92 were trying to do pre-empted much of what has come since on the www.It also added to the romance/myth/legend and spirit of B92 as pirate broadcasters—which they never were—at least in the sense that we here regard pirates.V: How did B92 function in terms of support/funding, infrastructure, technical ability and reach; and in terms of its content? I’m thinking of Help B92 / Free B92 (Amsterdam’s XS4All)...?DA: A pan-European love-in? The autonomous spirit at its best? I don’t know…Despite the idealism and super-human efforts of Gordon P and the webheads of free-Europe, I think the editorial and real strings were being pulled by both those in Belgrade being bombed (rightly so, they were on the frontline) and, without getting into conspiracy theories, by some dodgy western outsiders, ‘trainers’ and financial managers, who were ‘minding things’.V: ...and the transition to B2-B92 (said to be financed by Soros / US) and the charges of allegedly propagandising liberal-democratic free-market values during this period?DA: Matt deals with this well in his book, but as B92s Editor-in-Chief Veran Matic says in the film: “You cannot fool all of the people all of the time...”During the war, there was also an element of the likes of MTV, CNN and even the BBC to some extent washing their own conscience by supporting B92, i.e. winning the free your mind award from MTV and REM on the one hand, and on the other receiving ‘training from the BBC’.Now do talented people like many at B92 really need training in how to play good music?! and if so, for what, to learn to play what they’re told and introduce playlists etc.?Another aspect is that critics of B92 said they didn’t think twice about cosying up to dodgy Serbian politicians/establishment figures to get back on air as B292. It’s something that’s not really been dealt with in depth—even by Matt—as far as I can tell...In the end I guess B92 got what they wanted—recognition and mainstream status, which perhaps has alienated a new generation who were growing up and also a lot of their original supporters.V: What of the eventual shift to IMF enforced free-market values, which includes not just private but foreign ownership of media? Where does this leave independent media (once said to be ‘the basis for any democratic change and reform’) today?DA: You should really ask them this, all I can talk about is my film—which has generally been ignored, or accused of pandering to Serbian nationalist sentiments.But just look at what’s happened here to anything half decent—in any media—dissenting and different voices are marginalized or censored for being in some way ‘political’ for daring to combine content and style.Just look at where we ended up showing the film—was the audience marginal or mainstream—I ask you that!?As an outsider looking in now, who has by choice not been back to the Balkan region since 2001, I think you just have to look at what’s happened since the ‘peace’ came to ex-Yu in general: There’s no future, a shit past and a state of stagnating limbo-land for many who didn’t have the mafia connections to jump on the free-market gravy train, something that’s mirrored in the underclass here.B92 really was true to the spirit of the rock ‘n’ roll dream and represented all that’s positive about art, music, youth and rebellion too—they caught a moment and moved on.Now with ‘democracy’ and the free market, it’s perhaps ironic that their mainstream image is more suited to euro-trashing (C4’s Passengers for instance made a totally exploitative piece about the station) and the forthcoming Hollywood musical based I guess extremely loosely on Matt’s book.I guess both the voices and truth I was chasing in ‘See You in the Next War’ will be largely written out of the mainstream-take on history now—which is why the CCA gig was important because it at least raised some critical debate in a place and culture increasingly devoid of such things.To sum up, good art and rock ‘n’ roll at its best helps people survive and escape...but in the free (global) market it’s also, as we discovered with what happened to punk, a bit of a swindle. That’s Capitalism. As the B92 slogan used to say:“Trust no one—not even us—but keep the faith...”

The VIDEO

Well, now there's proof, everyone says.
My favorite quotes:

From the NYT--"While the number of those killed represents a tiny proportion of those who died in July 1995, the video is being seen as irrefutable evidence that Serbia's police forces, and not just Bosnian Serb forces, took part in the massacre, evidence that challenges the commonly held view among Serbs that the atrocity never took place." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/international/europe/03serbia.html?ei=5070&en=454127ea6604a22e&ex=1118462400&emc=eta1&pagewanted=print

Did anyone really doubt that there were bodies buried? Nobody I know did--but I don't know everyone. Maybe the problem was the way in which only certain bodies rated attention.

From China Daily--"It's difficult to say what is more defeating — the horrific images of the killings or this country's 10-year refusal to face the bloody quagmire of past crimes," said Belgrade professor and women's rights activist Vesna Rakic-Vodinelic.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-06/04/content_448605.htm

From B-92 news:

Carla del Ponte, in Belgrade, sounding off her horn again:

“I hope that my next visit here will be a courtesy visit, and that cooperation with the Tribunal will be completed.” Del Ponte said. She continued, saying that she is “thankful” for the efforts Belgrade has made in the last year in cooperating with the international court and the great number of surrenders that have been achieved, but said that she still expects full cooperation, which means the arrest and extradition of all indictees. She added that there “exists no doubt” that the transfer of all Hague fugitives is the sole responsibility of the Serbian government.

What is this woman's deal? Every time progress is made, all she does is set the bar higher. Nothing is ever enough for her. I believe that those guilty of war crimes should be tried and punished, but her constant hammering on the topic does not help the cause of democracy; quite the contrary, it just inflames the nationalists. Just my opinion....

Has anyone thought about Kosovo, lately? According to the news sources I read, the "Kosovo question" will be settled by next year. That's a pretty tall order, given that the Kosovar Albanians want independence, Serbia wants Kosovo to remain an autonomous province, and the Kosovo Serbs have barricaded themselves in their homes and refuse to work with anyone.