STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/links/joinlb ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [Oh, that sly, wily, clever, cunning Milosevic. So like a Serb. Slav, Arab, Jew, Celt, African, Latin American, Asian, Rom. In short, a human. Always willing to employ his mental capacities to assert the simple truth - that NATO expansion, NATO dominance over Europe and the Near East, and U.S. control over both through NATO, came first and a pretext came after. So like a person - one would think people were endowed with intelligence for no other reason - to refute the lies of his adversaries, to condemn those who launched an illegal, brutal and self-serving war, the first of its kind since the defeat of Hitler and his Axis in 1945, right on the half-century anniversary of the founding of NATO, as the criminals responsible for all its consequences. But NATO, and its loyal servant-in-waiting Human Rights Watch, knows better. No, it's the party that did everything to avoid the war, everything short of complete capitulation and providing an incentive to yet more devastating wars, that's to blame. Don't worry, there were similar perspectives voiced in Europe in the 1930s and early 1940s. Those perspectives ended in a suicide in a Berlin bunker in 1945.] Analysis: Milosevic the cunning fox Tuesday, 3 July 2001 6:21 (ET) Analysis: Milosevic the cunning fox By CHRISTOPHER WHITE THE HAGUE, Netherlands, July 3 (UPI) -- In refusing to cooperate with the court hearing a catalogue of appalling allegations of murder and persecution against him [mind you, the adjective appalling applies to the substantive allegations], Slobodan Milosevic was playing a carefully prepared hand in The Hague Tuesday. [That is, confounding one's persecutors with the truth.] He was clearly playing to the media and to his own people [how gauche to direct one's statements to the people one was elected to represent; as for the media, Western hitlerites play to nothing else] in Serbia who have been demonstrating in increasing numbers [revealing admission - and why might that be?], not out of concern for their disgraced former president but out of national pride and disgust at the handing over of a former president to the United Nations. [The author of this mundane specimen of brothel journalism knows this for a fact; after all, it's not difficult to fathom the primitive, atavistic Slavic mentality. All proponents of The Open Society can do it - in their sleep.] Despite the judge cutting off his microphone several times [thereby proving his commitment to civilized discourse], Milosevic managed to get across his message to the world's media. His first three carefully phrased comments were in English and were broadcast instantaneously around the world. [Rather like answering in Latin during a trial by ordeal?] Milosevic is, as Judge Richard May pointed out before the court, within its jurisdiction and will be tried by it. Speaking precisely and slowly, May painstakingly pointed out that Milosevic might be unwise not to engage counsel for his defense. [The White Man's Burden - or the patronizing cant of the *benign* executioner - asserts itself.] He is the first ever defendant to appear before the International War Crimes Tribunal to opt to defend himself. But, in fact the former Yugoslav president's lawyers were at the court and within call. They can be engaged at a later stage. Right now, Milosevic has ensured that he is given his own personal copy of the prosecution evidence as he is defending himself. [How magnanimous of the Royal Inquisitors, presenting the prosecution's *evidence* to the accused. What a novel concept. Devised by Louise Arbour, Madeleine Albright, Carla del Ponte, George Soros and Time-Warner themselves, no doubt.] Milosevic, who is jailed in comfortable quarters [more comfortable than Richard May's? Carla del Ponte's?], has access to the media and is aware of events in The Former Republic of Yugoslavia, whose government is split over the way he was handed over to the United Nations. [Government? How mincingly polite the Fourth Estate can be at times.] The world has, most certainly, been treated to a spectacle of calculated political theatre [no doubt, but not from the source implied] and Milosevic's message that NATO committed war crimes in Yugoslavia will have resonance back home, as will his truculent demeanor. [Wesley Clark, Michael Short, Jamie Shea, Madeleine Albright, James Rubin are never truculent. They're firm and direct. To the point. Only bombing victims and defendants of rigged Star Chamber hanging judges are *truculent.*] Much more will be heard of his claims that NATO committed war crimes [ imagine, to affirm the absurd claim that planning and executing a war of aggression - quoting from the Nuremberg Tribunal - against the defenseless civilian population of an innocent country could constitute a war crime], as, in the words of May, Milosevic will "in due course have the opportunity to enter motions, including challenges to the jurisdiction of the court." Milosevic has lost nothing from his day in court without legal defense. [Quite the opposite: His dignified stance has exposed his enemies for the imperialist criminals they are.] Unfettered by the constraints of counsel he was able to question the legality of the court and accuse NATO of war crimes. Despite this, he and his legal team can be certain that the court, correctly named The International [inter-national] Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, will be scrupulously fair to the defendant whose co-defendants have yet to be arrested. [As they have up until now: Working hand-in-glove with NATO war criminals even as the cruise missiles, cluster bombs and enriched uranium weapons tore apart the bodies of thousands of Yugoslav civilians.] Milan Milutinovic, the former president of Serbia and member of the FRY's Supreme Defense Council, Nikola Sainovic, the FRY's former Deputy Prime Minister, Dragoljub Ojdanic former Chief of Staff of the country's army and Vlajko Stojiljkovic are officially listed in the court record as "Remains at large." [As do thousands of others who will be kidnapped, blindfolded, handcuffed and whisked away in a Nacht und Nebel terror campaign if Milosevic doesn't win his case.] This fact presents the prosecution team with a major challenge. First, they cannot be questioned about their roles in the events giving rise to the indictments of murder, crimes against humanity, deportations and persecution. [In layman's language, they can't be confronted with the most clear-cut case of conflict of interests, subornation and bribery since the Reichstag Fire trial in Nazi Germany.] Secondly, as Human Rights Watch [we've been waiting for this branch of the State Department to weigh in, haven't we?] International Justice Program Director Richard Dicker said at The Hague Tuesday: "So long as they are at large, witnesses that might otherwise have come forward may not be prepared to do so." [Because? They fear retaliation/retribution from - whom?] Dicker anticipates a strong challenge from Milosevic on the jurisdiction of the court but says: "He is wide of the mark there it is well founded in international law." [Cite precedents, Monsieur Dicker.] What Dicker and other legal observers [hah! who pays their traveling expenses, their hotel, dinner, transportation fees?] see as the greatest challenge facing the prosecution is proving the chain of command from Milosevic to the events in question. "This is the responsibility, beyond reasonable doubt, which is the crux of the prosecution case," he said. What all observers agree is that the trial judges Richard May from Britain, Patrick Robinson from Jamaica and Mohammed El Habib Fassi Fihri from Morocco [strerling human rights records in all three judges' countries of origin] will demand absolute proof of Milosevic's guilt "beyond all reasonable doubt." Milosevic is the first former head of state to appear before the International War Crimes Tribunal. As Human Rights watch said in a statement Tuesday: "The transfer of Slobodan Milosevic to the war crimes court in The Hague is a historic precedent with a sound basis in international law." [It's an historic precedent all right, but not in international law. There is an indisputable precedent, however, for taking NATO leaders to trial for war crimes.] But the statement hints that Yugoslavia, divided over the historic transfer might yet not cooperate with the court. "If Yugoslavia were to invoke domestic legislation as a reason for not fulfilling its obligations under international law it would run against the basic principles of international law," it said. [So-called international law in the current context is not one internationally recognized, but one thrust upon on the world by the internationally prevalent superpowers.] Thereby, may lie the reasoning behind Milosevic's statesmanlike performance in court. [Wouldn't this appear to be a commendation in a better world?] Widely recognized as highly intelligent and politically "cunning as a fox," it is unlikely that he will continue to defend himself. Before the highly complex revue of evidence and progress set for August 27 by May, it is expected that Milosevic will have a highly professional legal team to represent him. [Ah, yes, that inconvenient matter of evidence and progress. Just the sort of thing a vulpine intellect might exploit to outwit his opponents. In the words of a short story of Anatole France, "Above all things do not ask justice to be just, it has no need to be just as it is justice, and I might even say that the idea of just justice can only have arisen in the brains of an anarchist." Let's see how high - or low - the kangaroos can leap...before they break their necks.] __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
