How exactly was it solely I who was going round in circles raggedyman? I responded to posts you made, so next time I would appreciate it if you cut out the personal insults.

The court did prosecute Bosnian and Croatians too, such as Hazim Delic who is currently in jail on a 20 year sentence. The majority of those prosecuted were Serbs as in my opinion it was a nationalist offensive from Serb militia groups (basically the JNA in proxy) to carve up Bosnia, and as such was an act of self-defence for the Bosnians, and the first commitment of civilians into the war was by Serb forces when attacking eastern Bosnia.

Like I said, I am not excusing attrocities on either side, but do believe the Serbs (and Croats to a large extent) face the bulk of responsibility for the war, and not a NATO conspiracy to undermine the current Serbian state. Justice has not been as universal as liked, but you offer no alternative. The arrest of Karadzic is of fundamental importance, and as a leading figure in the war, is largely responsible for the conduct of Serb forces in the campaign, and hopefully will offer some relief to the victims.

That is a fair point about forgetting the past. Although travelling through serbia there is a prevailing wind of lets forget the past and move on. Also there is a nasty neo right movement in Croatia.
Perhaps this a frivilous point but it amazes me for all their hatred and fighting they always vote for each other in the Eurovision song contest.

Off hand I can't think of a war that hasn't been characterised by barbarism and wide-spread abuse of human rights and the commital of atrocities. War as I have said before is the chief evil. In the light of which it is our imperative to avoid war at all costs.

The Lisbon Agreement may or may not have succeeded in its central idea of a swiss-style cantonisation of the then integral Yugoslavia - the point is it was rendered irrelevant by the premature recognition of the independence of Croatia.

The Croatians did not act without US and German backing and approval.

Question: do those that seek to bring about and then foment a war deserve our special condemnation?

The people responsible for war crimes are invariably its participants but those responsible for the crime of war tend to be well-paid bureaucrats often acting in the pursuit of something nebulously known as the advancement of the national interest.

Compare the treatment of the Muslim commander of Sebrenica, Naser Oric. Oric carried out raids on surrounding Serb villages and towns where he had a policy of taking no prisoners. Oric killed hundreds of innocent men, women and children. He treated western journalists to trophy videos showing decapitated bodies of Serbs he had slaughtered.

The ICTY charged Oric with the mildest charges possible, prosecuted him incompetently, convicted him of only a few charges and sentenced him to time served. He walked out of court a free man. They then acquitted him on appeal.

Oric abandoned Sebrenica to the Serbs, leaving his men to flee or be killed in an act of revenge which was predicted by the UN.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3481619.stm

General Philippe Morillon 'told the tribunal that he feared that attacks by Muslim forces in which Serbian civilians had been targeted, had enraged the Bosnian Serbs and would result in fierce retaliation in the city. '

I'm of coarse excusing any of the war criminals on any side of the conflict, and Oric should of been suitably punished for his crimes. The point I was trying to make is that Serbia still harbours a lot more resentment, racism and extremism that Bosnians and Croatians do, who tend to go for the live and let live attitude. Quite remarkable really. I saw a documentary last night on Al Jazeera interviewing the victims of the siege of Sarajevo, who mostly came to the conclusion that they will live with them (serbs) and wait for God to punish them. Seems the cosmic policeman has some uses after all.

I'm always bewilldered by that too, just like the Irish voting for us.

knave,

I must disagree with your comment that in the US, the proper sheepskin means less than social background and cash, though all three come in handy.

The Trumans, Nixons, Fords, Reagans, Doles, Clintons and Obamas were originally hardly part of America's social or financial elite.

And your trip to Virginia notwithstanding (hope you visited Williamsburg), America is a country of vast diversity, and newcomers' impressions frequently rely unduly upon the opinions of those with an axe to grind or simply upon the anecdotal.

Incidentally, the parents of my beautiful, blonde, longtime girlfriend (a terrifying combination of Goldie Hawn and Lucrezia Borgia) lived in a magnificent estate overlooking the James River and owned entire blocks of downtown Richmond, yet their brainy only daughter "only" attended the University of Cincinnati.

Well for me left/right is a spectrum with say anarcho-capitalists with clenched buttocks at one end and tree-hugging beardies with a penchant for communal living at the other.

The very right read self-help manuals and Martin Amis while the lefties read 'how to grow magic mushrooms in a bedsit' and Flann 'o' Brien.

Does that clarify matters.

Morgan097:

I haven't been to the US but as I cherish my iPod I doubt I shall be risking it any time soon.
The last great descriptive work on America I read was Henry Miller's 'The Air-conditioned Nightmare'.

I assume things have improved a bit since then.

I think a good potrait of America could be the scenes of the WTO meeting (Battle of Seatle), with crusty anarchists rioting and riot police brutal suppression. Both project the left and right of America.

And if you have a flick through your iPod, I'm sure the aggressive, radical, lyrical content of Rage Against the Machine or even the populist defiance of Green Day (none of which are on mine it has to be said) testifies to the lively political views of young people in the States.

Which reminds me, I really must find some good new music.

L'il nazis Serosch & Afrasiab:

During the war, certain members of Morgie's family (don't ask knave) had a way of dealing with your kind:

Two to the thorax; one to the facial triangle.

niceguy,

Ya gotta think bigger than Chateauneuf!

When I first moved to Cambridge, Mass. in the mid-'60s, Harvard Square liquor stores were selling Lafite, Latour, Margaux, Haut-Brion and Mouton (then, not yet promoted to first growth status) for between $12.50 and $14.00 a bottle. No one had yet even heard of Petrus because it wasn't listed in the 1855 classifications.

At the time, I had a wonderful, elderly Irish housekeeper named Katherine (who'd frequently met a young JFK when, as an undergraduate, he'd come to call for his dates at the Radcliffe Quad, where she'd then worked.

Every Christmas, I'd give her a bottle of Margaux or Latour. Though invariably appreciative, she almost certainly had no idea of their lofty history.

The moral? Hoard your M&S ginger beer!

As they used to say below the Mason-Dixon Line:

"Save your Confederate money, boys; the South shall rise again!"

Morgy - forget it.

And knave, my friend,

Before you again admonish me for being less than diplomatic toward the two little scumbags, I concede to being no Nevile Henderson.

But to paraphrase George Will, Europe is famous for two powerful tendencies: appeasement and anti-Semitism.

Unlike the Eurabians, I simply no longer have the patience or tolerance for either.

You know, the Serbs could have lifted him at any time. They always knew where he was. Mladic too but he is more difficult because of the army. What interests me is whether anyone tries to stop the continuing development of a fully functioning Serbian autonomous region in the newly independent state of Kosovo. I strongly suspect that a deal has been done.

Niceguy@ "The importance I would say in arresting Karadzic is that he is still a huge source of inspiration for the many remaining ultra-nationalist Serbs. The Croats and Bosnian Muslims have largely managed to forget the past, and there is no violent reactionary backlash to the crimes against them. Unfortunetely, that is not the case in Serbia, and the ever threat of extremism still remains prominent."

I really can't speak for Bosnia although Sarajevo, from what I've been told, has a very small number of Serbs now, but having lived on and off in Croatia for the past three years I can tell you that there are many Croats who certainly don't practice a tolerant attitude towards the Serbs and other minorities. I know of Serbs in Croatia who have chosen to have their children baptised as Catholics so that they will have a better life and people are still being driven out of their jobs and homes owing to their non-Croat (i.e. Serb) ethnic origins. The fact that Croatia celebrates the anniversary of the Krajina offensive as a national holiday of liberation; the massive protests against the extradition of Ante Gotovina, even from supposedly moderate polticians and organisations; and the continued attempts to rewrite the gruesome history of the Croatian Ustasha Movement during the Second World War hardly suggest a society which has come to terms with the past, unless by "managing to forget the past" you mean denying it and rewriting it. I met one girl in the National Archives whose M.A. is being funded by the EU. The topic? Arguing that the Holocaust and the mass murder of Serbs never happened in the Independent State of Croatia. Clearly, some tenured professor thought this research would be a good idea. Academic journals are full of such appalling ultra-nationalist and revisionist themes. If only David Irving read Croatian, he would think he had died and gone to heaven.

Also, let's also not forget the anti-Serbian riots in Kosovo in March 2004, the cafes named in honour of Adolf Hitler, the expulsion of the minuscule Jewish community and the continued harassment of Serbs and non-nationalist Albanians in Kosovo. Just this week, the editor of a national newspaper in Kosovo, Bota sot, was convicted of contempt of court at the ICTY in the Hague for allegedly publishing the name of a protected prosecution witness in the case against Ramush Haradinaj, former KLA commander, now successful politician who was ultimately found not guilty through lack of evidence. The fact that two other prominent Albanians (including another newspaper editor) are awaiting trial for attempting to pressurise another prosecution witness in the same trial to not give evidence, might provide some indication of why the trial collapsed. Yes, ultra-nationalism in Serbia is poisonous as it is elsewhere. But please don't pretend that it doesn't still exist elsewhere: it does and it is as equally poisonous.

Oliver Kamm has written an article critical of Peter Hitchen's question.
"What about Croatia ?"
http://oliverkamm.typepad.comblog/2008/07/selective-memory.html
Kamms points about Serbia are spot on and few would disagree with him but he still misses the central point that Croatia got away with many war crimes and certainly were not demonised like the Serbs.
Why ?
If he reads the posts from roryeo and raggy man on another thread. Maybe he can answer the question.

I know this hardly needs saying but I would much rather be stuck in a lift with a tree-hugger than a buttock-clencher.

Was all this bloodshed and deceit - from Columbus to Cortes, Pizarro the Puritans - a necessity for the human race to progress from savagery to civilization? Was Morison right in burying the story of genocide inside a more important story of human progress? Perhaps a persuasive argument can be made - as it was made by Stalin when he killed pesants for industrial progress in the Soviet Union, as it was made by Churchill explaining the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg, and Truman explaining Hiroshima. But how can the judgement be made if the benefits and losses cannot be balanced because the losses are either unmentioned or mentioned quickly?
Howard Zinn
Will human progress will always accompany its crimes.

Niceguy
I also find both US and UK society “unhappy” and ill at ease with themselves. There is a lack of cohesion or communal spirit. I have worked and lived in France, Germany, Finland and now Holland. They seem more happy and society is more cohesive.
It is nothing to do with right or left. The Dutch have a reputation of being “liberal” but that is not true, the are conservative with a small c, but pragmatic.
What I have noticed is that the class system, which is certainly not as bad in Europe as the UK or the states is because the difference in income is not as great and the public school systems are so good there is no private education as such

On my ipod have
The clash give them enough rope
The best of the waterboys and the Jam
Scouting for Girls
The ghost of Tom Joad by the boss
Led Zepellin 1
Wish you were here by the Floyd.
Christ knows what that says about me.
By the way anybody recommend any good books I am going on holiday, sorry morg vacation, in 3 weeks.
I'm reading John Farrels Historical comedal tome. It is a hoot

knave,

Have a great vacation.

Since you seem to take an interest in Lindbergh, I wonder if you've gotten around to Philip Roth's alternatve history novel, "The Plot Against America"?

But to paraphrase George Will, Europe is famous for two powerful tendencies: appeasement and anti-Semitism.
Morgan
Lets not go down those two avenues again but I will say every country can have those general accusations thrown at then including the US and stop the threats.
To me violence is the last refuge of the incompetent and shows a lack of reason.
Also who is george will ?

"Was all this bloodshed and deceit - from Columbus to Cortes, Pizarro the Puritans - a necessity for the human race to progress from savagery to civilization?"

of course not, savagery and its organised component warfare are diametrically opposite to civilisation, imagine how different the world would be if when the European Nations went out to explore and settle the world, they behaved in the manner of British Nationals settling in Spain? If they had treated the indigenous population with humanity and the respect they demanded for themselves?

hell, imagine how different the world would look if the immigrant European Jews had treated the Palestinians this way?

no, savagery breeds savagery, and violence begets violence, and they have *nothing* to do with civilisation.

"In this way, the tribunal has missed a golden opportunity. Far from contributing to a lessening of bitterness and hatred, it has exacerbated it."

considering the ongoing attempt to destabilise and demonise Serbia, one may legitimately wonder if this was an intended effect.

Ah scrumpy
Do they still put dead rats in it ?

knave:
try bellowhead - putting trad English folk back on the map

I find Davis' 'Late Victorian Holocausts' is good for the beach; for the airport try Davies' 'Flat Earth News' - will give you a whole new insight on how the ed vulliamy, martin bright tribe churn out their stuff these days.

Kauffman the paleocon on 'the plot against america':

"a repellent novel, bigoted and libelous of the dead, dripping with hatred of rural America, of Catholics, of any Middle American who has ever dared stand against the war machine"

Probably a more relevant and thought-provoking jewish writer would be Hannah Arendt - since this thread concerns the alleged committal of genocide her 'Responsibility and Judgment' would repay close study.

Not that I agree entirely with Arendt's views especially as expressed in 'Auschwitz on Trial' but it is a provocative read.

Yes, I was going to make the point of the importance of private and public education on the class mentality too.

Enjoy your holiday, going anywhere nice? I've found David Sedaris great for reading on hols, with his lighthearted, cynical humour. The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century is a very interesting read too.

Well, may I just recommend one Lebanese band, who have just signed to EMI (better them playing round with Yamaha synths than Katyusha rockets, ay Morg) called Lumi. www.myspace.com/lumisounds

And for needless plugging, my old band, www.myspace.com/commissaruk