The Karadzic "conviction"

The more astute readers of this blog will remember that I have written and spoken against the so-called Hague Tribunal for years. It is a pretend-court that simply has zero legitimacy to begin with - regardless of its actions - since the UN Security Council cannot delegate (judicial) powers it does not possess. So, it is not meritorious to pass judgment on anyone.

Officials of the Atlantic Empire have outright bragged about creating the Tribunal for their own ends, writing its laws and procedures to ensure the desired outcome. "Sentence first - verdict afterwards," as Lewis Carroll so memorably put it.

The sham court was created to delegitimize the Serbs' right to exist, while legitimizing the aggression of the Empire and its clients. Pure and simple. Even if it were not founded on lies, even if its practices weren't sketchy and sleazy, its own presiding "judge" betrayed the truth behind the curtain when he treated the Big Lie as fact in pursuit of his mission.

Today, that "court" declared Radovan Karadžić guilty of "genocide" they had to rape reality to define as such - and on the anniversary of the NATO attack on Serbia, no less. It is no accident; the sham court has shown before that it chooses its timing with great precision.

Regardless of what he did, or did not do, they had to convict him. That was their mission from the Empire, their entire raison d'etre. But if you really want to know why, read Julia Gorin's excellent breakdown here.

All I have to say is that, if they think their dominion over this world is eternal and unquestionable... they clearly haven't been paying attention. 

A death and a reminder

Zdravko Tolimir (1948-2016) died in The Hague today, of causes unknown.

Reports of his passing will without exception note he was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity. None will say the verdict was passed in a kangaroo court, established by the Atlantic Empire to conjure a fig leaf of legitimacy for its conquest of Yugoslavia.

Everyone will quote the pious proclamations of presiding "judge" Theodor Meron, who said Tolimir "was aware of the genocidal intent of the Bosnian Serb leadership and was responsible for genocide.”

Likewise, everyone will bring up Srebrenica, and the supposed Serb massacre of Muslim "men and boys" (always that phrase), not missing to call it the worst atrocity in Europe since World War Two.

Just about no one - in the West, anyway - will mention Prisca Matimba Nyambe, a Zambian judge appalled by her colleagues' abominable standards of evidence. Buried behind 534 pages of farcical "fact" findings, Nyambe's brave dissent calls out the other "judges" for failing to prove even a single charge in the indictment.

“Without a single piece of evidence adduced during this trial of a written plan of a JCE to Murder, or any evidence of direct statements showing such an intent, the Majority relies upon circumstantial evidence to draw conclusions of a culpable mens rea,” Nyambe wrote. 

By JCE she meant the notorious doctrine of "Joint Criminal Enterprise," concocted by an American lawyer for the specific purpose of securing convictions of people the Tribunal sought to convict on the basis of who they were, rather than what they may or may not have done.

The entirety of the Tribunal's evidence against Tolimir, Nyambe wrote, was circumstantial and based on presumptions and suppositions of the other judges.

"On the totality of the evidence on the record, I am wholly unpersuaded that the Accused is
guilty of any of the charges alleged in the Indictment," she concluded.

Not only was Tolimir not guilty, but the prosecutors - and the judges that sided with them - failed to prove that many of the things in the indictment actually happened, Nyambe argued. For heaven's sake, this is the court that decided the killing of three people represented "genocide."

Not seven months after convicting Tolimir, Meron cited as credible third-hand hearsay "evidence" accusing the Bosnian Serbs of a plot that was actually a WW2 Nazi Croatia plan targeting the Serbs themselves. So much about his credibility, or that of the actual joint criminal enterprise that is the ICTY.

I have little doubt the kangaroo court will sink to even lower depths before its fell purpose is served. Until then, however, Zdravko Tolimir will remain a prime example of what Empire's "truth" and "justice" really look like.

Purported Proof

Regular reader jack brought to my attention this bit of news:

NATO tied to Muslim Slaughter at Srebrenica

BELGRADE – A French major, serving with their intelligence services, fled to Belarus with the evidence that war crimes committed in Srebrenica in 1995.

The documents he presented shows that the "genocide" blamed on Serbians was organized by the American, British and French secret intelligence service, and carried out by a paramilitary group known as the "Scorpions" in order for the alleged genocide to be blamed on the military and civilian officials of the Republic of Serbian (RS) – learned Pravda.

According to our source, the major French military intelligence DRM has evidence that the wartime commander of the VRS Main [sic] Staff, Ratko Mladic was not aware of these activities. From these documents, which are in the possession of Belarus, the French officer requested and received political asylum on the June 29, 2012 in Minsk.

The documents clearly show that Naser Oric and all the commanders of the Army of Bosnia/Herzegovina (Muslim) in this part of eastern Bosnia were under constant control of the western intelligence services.

Oric was the Bosnian Muslim commander in Srebrenica and was convicted by the ICC of war crimes against Serbs but found "not guilty" of broader crimes of ethnic cleansing.

What do I make of this? I take it with a chunk of salt. For one thing, there seems to be a bit of confusion about the militia that is supposed to have been operating on foreign orders: this report has it as the “Scorpions”, but where does the 10th Sabotage Detachment (which includes "star witness" Erdemovic) fit in, then? The Milosevic assassination plot that men from the 10th were previously associated with ("Operation Spider") has somehow morphed into a plot to kill Mladic. In other words, I'd like to see some of the purported evidence before I come to any sort of conclusion.

I understand why some Serbs might jump on to this as proof of Serb innocence in the Srebrenica case. But it's worth remembering what they say about things too good to be true. For all I know, this could be a "Hitler diaries" type plot, aiming to discredit the legitimate criticism of the official Srebrenica narrative - based on cold, hard facts and forensic criticism of "evidence" produced by the ICTY - through association with crackpot theories.

That said, there is still a mystery of why Oric was put through a show trial - first convicted and sentenced to two years for the laughable charge of "knowing that prisoners were mistreated", then acquitted altogether. Unlike other warlords who served Izetbegovic, only to learn that one of his few principles was that "dead men tell no tales", Oric is still alive - and a prosperous "businessman" at that. I'm honestly curious as to how. But I can't riddle whether him being an Imperial asset, and not just Izetbegovic's, would have made his survival more or less likely. After all, Empire's Serbian assets have been given lengthy sentences (Perisic, Plavsic) or may die before their verdict (Stanisic).

We'll have to wait and see.

A Beam In Their Eye

Last Thursday evening, February 24, Canadian authorities denied entry to Dr. Srdja Trifkovic and prevented him from giving a scheduled lecture at UBC.

Claiming credit was the ecstatic Emir Ramic, of the aptly named "Institute for [the Research of] Genocide" (read their URL to understand the irony). Ramic's Institute doesn't actually research genocide as such; it is only interested in one specific "genocide" - the one alleged to have taken place in Srebrenica, in July 1995. The Institute denounces as "genocide deniers" anyone who dares discuss the facts of Srebrenica, rather than blindly accepting the myth they are pushing.

By insisting on qualifying those events as genocide, they are stretching the definition of the term to the point of absurdity, and effectively engaging in denial of the actual genocides, from the Turkish mass murder of Armenians in WW1 (which inspired Hitler to believe he could act with impunity) to the Croat butchery of Serbs in WW2, and the Nazi genocide of Jews, Slavs and Roma in the death camps of eastern Europe. In fact, the most aggressively outspoken proponent of the "Srebrenica genocide" thesis is also the outspoken denier of Croat Ustasha atrocities.

People in glass houses really oughtn't throw stones for a living. It turns out that Ramic is on the editorial board of a Bosnian Muslim war veterans' magazine, Korak - and the magazine's editor-in-chief is on the board of Ramic's Institute - which routinely publishes militant jihad propaganda. And in his spare time, Ramic also engages in libelous attacks on honorable Canadian soldiers. This, then, is the sort of person the Canadian government takes its cues from, when it comes to deciding who may and who may not enter the country?

Earlier today, the Edmonton Journal published a particularly facetious attack on Dr. Trifkovic by one Srdja Pavlovic, lecturer at the University of Alberta. Asserting that "denying genocide" should not be called freedom of speech, Pavlovic claims that "One should, of course, have the right to one's own opinion but not the right to one's own facts."

That's a brave thing to say for one whose sole claim to historical scholarship is a vile pamphlet equating the Serbs with Nazis.

Pavlovic also has the gall to claim that:

"Trifkovic and his supporters do not want to have a dialogue. As any nationalist would do, they see their version of the past as true and valid, and demand that others believe it, too. While calling for a dialogue they shout at their critics, rather than talk to them and then have the audacity to call such shouting the expression of the freedom of speech."

The hypocrisy is simply stunning. This is precisely what a legion of professional Srebrenica advocates, and Pavlovic himself, are doing - yet he accuses Trifkovic of it!

Proponents of the claim that Srebrenica was a genocide have engaged in much more than "shouting" : character assassination, libel, defamation, lawfare and now outright repression. They never even bother to present any actual facts in support of their claim, preferring instead to cite ICTY verdicts - a situation anyone acquainted with logic ought to recognize as the fallacy of Appeal to Authority.

That certain parties in Bosnia have by this point resorted to bringing up Srebrenica for the purpose of jockeying for political power indicates that they really don't give a damn about the people who lived and died there.

If they truly believed their claim was the objective truth, as they so shrilly insist, they would not be so afraid to debate it, or subject it to cross-examination. How dare those who have repeatedly shown they don't accept anything but unconditional obedience talk about discussion and debate?

All of this suggests that Srebrenica was declared a "genocide" for that very reason - to silence any discussion of the Bosnian War with the charge of "genocide denial."

Any society that allows them to do this cannot truly call itself free.

Pushing the Myth

A little while ago, several Liberal MPs in the Canadian Parliament proposed a resolution declaring July 11 "Srebrenica Remembrance Day." Fortunately, Prime Minister Harper would have none of it, so the proposal was taken off the table - for now.

The resolution was not a product of altruism and sheer goodness of the Liberals' hearts, but rather an initiative mounted by the Congress of North American Bosniaks, and something called the "Institute for the Research of Genocide" (whose URL identifies them as the "Institute for Genocide").

After Mr. Harper put the kibosh on the resolution, the CNAB and the Institute raised a ruckus. Their initial protest, on June 23, included a long list of people identified as an "international team of experts" and claiming illustrious academic titles. The post with the list, however, has since been taken down from the Institute website.

Here are just some of the names from the list:

• M. Cherif Bassiouni (former UN rapporteur on the events in Bosnia, who endorsed the ridiculously inflated casualty figures and the "mass rape" hoax)
• Francis A. Boyle (international ambulance-chaser and author of the "genocide" lawsuit by the Izetbegovic government against Serbia, rejected before an actual court)
• Florence Hartmann (once spokesperson for Carla Del Ponte at the ICTY)
• Marko Attila Hoare (a world-renowned Serbophobe-cum-historian)
  
• Daniel Toljaga (listed as member of the Board of Directors at the Congress of North American Bosniaks, but better known as proprietor of the Srebrenica Genocide Blog)
• Dzemaludin Latic and Fatmir Alispahic, champions of militant Islam and Serbophobia considered even in Bosnia to be the lunatic fringe.

Suffice to say that the list was a veritable who's who of professional victims, genocide entrepreneurs, and people who have built their careers on the myth of Bosnia. So, these folks have taken upon themselves to have the Canadian Parliament endorse their version of history by government fiat - i.e. by force, since they can't actually prove it in court. It is as if they don't believe their argument good enough to just persuade people, even though it has enjoyed almost uncontested dominance in the media for the past 15 years!

The much less organized Canadian Serbs have protested this proposal with letters. The response they got was pretty much a set of talking points reminiscent of the content found on the SGB, Hoare's blog, or the CNAB site.

The letter says that the "the genocidal nature of the particular incident at Srebrenica in the summer of 1995 has been internationally recognized." It specifically mentions the ICTY and ICJ verdicts, claiming they were "thoughtful results of fair and independent investigation and testimony."

Yet the ICJ verdict specifically said it had not considered the Srebrenica events itself, but simply accepted the ICTY rulings at face value. To call the ICTY's verdicts "thoughtful", their investigations "independent" and the testimonies of serial perjurers "fair" - that's just rich. Let's see: their crown witness, on which the entire case hangs, is a liar. They have conducted sloppy forensic work and later destroyed much of the evidence. They refuse to show the DNA evidence, then claim it proves something that is physically impossible for DNA evidence to prove (i.e. manner of death). And that's just the tip of the iceberg! The ICTY verdicts have more holes in them than a kitchen sieve.

Another argument in the response is that others have done this - the European Parliament, the US House and Senate, and hey, even the (quisling) government of Boris Tadic in Serbia! - so why not the Canadian legislature? Well, since when did "everyone is doing it" become a valid argument? Just because some lawmakers in Europe and the US have voted with their hearts for a well-prepared piece of propaganda does not have the magical power to transform that propaganda into fact. Truth is not a matter of majority vote - or even consensus.

From the first days of the Bosnian War, the Izetbegovic regime's weapon of choice was propaganda. They aimed to win the war by getting outside forces to do the fighting for them, based on heart-rending stories of massacres, mass rape, concentration camps and genocide. One after another, those stories have been exposed as fabrications and deliberate distortions of the already horrifying reality, while the full horrors of the war were never reported, so as not to interfere with the mythical narrative. The Srebrenica "genocide" is the last lie that remains, the one myth that was built up and reinforced more than any of the others. By now, Srebrenica has become a post facto justification for everything: the ethnic cleansing of Serbs, the foreign mujahedin, the rise of Wahhabism and terrorism, the re-Islamization of Bosnia's Muslims (a goal Izetbegovic set for himself in the 1970s, mind you), the ongoing refusal of Muslim politicians to abide by the country's Constitution, and the equally ongoing attempts to fulfill their wartime objectives politically, by overturning the Dayton Accords.

All of this rests on the foundation of a myth that what happened in July 1995 in Srebrenica was "genocide". Even though the women and children were safely evacuated. Even though the column that refused to surrender and set off across the mountains and minefields to Tuzla was a military formation. Even though the actual number of people who died on that march was never established (the "8,000" figure is equally arbitrary as the "300,000" we'd heard for a decade, before facts became impossible to ignore), and the actual evidence suggests that the number of people actually murdered (as in executed, which indeed is a war crime) is several hundred. Even though nothing was ever produced to demonstrate intent on part of the Bosnian Serbs to actually exterminate the Muslims as a people - apart from the very strong belief by the Muslims that this was the case.

Yet in a proper court of law, it doesn't matter what one believes - only what one can prove. Fully aware that the ICTY judgments are based on belief and conjecture rather than actual facts, the believers in the Srebrenica Genocide Myth are now trying to impose it by force, by getting governments to pass resolutions. Next up will probably be demands that anyone questioning their myth be prosecuted as a "holocaust denier." So, not only are they disparaging the actual Holocaust by declaring Srebrenica a "genocide," they are also exploiting and abusing the mechanisms established so no one could strive to rehabilitate the Nazis and deny the suffering of the Jews. When you consider the fact that the ancestors of many of those Muslims actually helped the Nazis in their ghastly "Endloesung", it becomes obvious that Srebrenica is not just about the present and the future, but also about whitewashing the past.

I understand why it is in the interest of the Bosnian Muslims' religious, political and propaganda leadership (and their associates, fellow-travelers and useful idiots in the West and elsewhere) to promote the Srebrenica Genocide Myth. How that would serve Canada's interests, however, is beyond me. Stephen Harper appears to have reached a similar conclusion - and for that he deserves thanks, not just of the Serbs living in Canada, but all Canadians who care about their own country.

Enemies of Truth and Justice

Last Thursday (June 10), seven men were convicted by the Hague Inquisition (a.k.a. the ICTY) for "genocide" in Srebrenica. Naturally, the news made headlines all over the world, as yet another allegedly incontrovertible proof that Srebrenica was "the worst atrocity since WW2" in Europe, where the evil Serbs deliberately murdered 8,000 innocent civilians.

Fortunately for the cause of truth, there are people in this world who don't take ICTY press releases at face value, and actually bother to read what their verdicts contain: a bunch of nonsense, fabrications, unfounded assumptions and "logic" that would be expected of failed law school applicants, not these supposed paragons of international justice.

As the folks at Srebrenica Historical Project explain, the Tribunal once again based the entire process on the testimony of "crown witness" Drazen Erdemović, who claimed (among other things) to have seen a Lt. Colonel at the site where he claims to have executed 1200 people. Since anything Erdemović says must and shall be treated as gospel truth, the "judges" reasoned thus:

“There is no evidence before the Trial Chamber of any other Lieutenant Colonel in Pilica at this time. In light of this, the Trial Chamber is satisfied that there is no other reasonable conclusion available on the evidence but that the Lieutenant Colonel whom Erdemović saw at Branjevo Military Farm and in Pilica town on 16 July was Popović. (paragraph 1134)

Being as there had to have been a Lt. Colonel in the area (otherwise Erdemović would be lying, and we can't have that, right?), then there shall be one. See how easy it is to establish "facts" when you can just make them up? Of course, there was a tiny little problem of Erdemović actually not recognizing Col. Popović in a line-up, but worry not - the ICTY had that covered as well:

“The Trial Chamber has carefully considered the fact that Erdemović was unable to identify Popović in a photo line up … However, the Trial Chamber considers that given the traumatic circumstances in which Erdemović met Popović and the significant passage of time since then, Erdemović’s failure to identify Popović in a photo line up does not raise a reasonable doubt as to the Trial Chamber’s conclusion that the man whom Erdemović saw at Pilica on 16 July was, in fact, Popović”. (paragraph 1135)

Never mind the evidence, then, or the burden of proof, or reasonable doubt - the "judges" simply know what happened, because, well, they just do. Better than Erdemović himself, even!

There are other, no less significant, incongruities in the June 10 verdict, which you can read at the SHP site. What I want to address here, once again, is the ICTY itself.

The media often refer to the ICTY as the "UN War Crimes Tribunal." In the Balkans, the shorthand for it is "The Hague." This was done deliberately, as The Hague is actually home to the International Court of Justice, a legitimate UN court adjudicating disputes between states. The ICTY, however, was established by a body (the Security Council) that has no authority to establish courts - because it lacks judicial powers. It's elementary logic that one cannot delegate the powers one does not have in the first place. Of course, we live in a world where laws are creatively interpreted to serve the needs of the political class, so it's not surprising that the ICTY is considered legitimate simply because the people who established it say it is.

The ICTY's role isn't to punish the guilty, effect reconciliation or serve the course of justice. It is to write the history of the Yugoslav Succession Wars as one of "greater Serbian aggression", by accusing the entire political and military leadership of the Serbs (be it in Serbia or the territories of present-day Croatia and Bosnia) of a preposterous grand conspiracy. By doing so, it seeks to label the Serbs as perpetrators of "genocide" (which has been redefined to mean just about anything). This is also meant to absolve not only the other parties to the conflict, but also the European powers, the U.S. and NATO, of any wrongdoing. At the same time, imposing the genocidal label on the Serbs is meant to neutralize any investigation of the actual genocide committed between 1941 and 1945 by the Croatian Ustasha (whose primary victims were Serbs, Jews and Roma, in that order). It also helps whitewash the atrocities of Nazi Germany, e.g. the Holocaust.

To truly counter the Tribunal's lies, one must expose them for what they are. One has to have the courage to say the Emperor is wearing no clothes. For years now, the ICTY and its sponsors have been deceiving the world, claiming that this was an independent, legitimate court of law. It is not hard to expose this as the proverbial Big Lie - as you've seen above, it can be done simply by quoting the Tribunal's own verdicts and the idiocy contained therein. There is a limit to how many people they can lie to, and for how long.

This fight has only just begun.

Premature Jubilation

I don't actually check the "Srebrenica Genocide Blog"; they are obsessed with me, not vice versa. But while doing some research on the attempted slaughter of General Krstic from the other day, I found this interesting result on Google:

(screen capture of a search done May 14, 2010; click to enlarge)

Up top is the new post, now merely supporting the attack and eagerly repeating the official line that it was "revenge" for the (alleged) genocide in Srebrenica. In fact, it is uncanny how the SGB post resembles the official reports in the British media on the Krstic near-slaying. Or is that the other way around?

Either way, the original, since-deleted post actually celebrated the murder of Gen. Krstic. It was deleted, and replaced by the new post so quickly, Google didn't even have time to cache it. But the old title remained. Just goes to show one can't hide anything on the Internet. Also, I suppose, the true extent of SGB's actual commitment to justice, human rights and whatnot.

I mean, you have to admit that, "When They kill Us, that is genocide and horrible, but when We kill Them it's a fantastic thing!" is simply a piss-poor excuse for morality.

Lies Liars Tell

Some time last year, the professional victim and proprietor of the "Srebrenica Genocide Blog" (no, I'm not going to link it) seems to have made me an object of his personal little jihad. Time and again, he's been Google-bombing me with claims I'm a "discredited genocide denier" and so on.

Following my latest post, he went on a comment spree (guess what I did with those), and then finally put up a piece denouncing me on the SGB. Normally I wouldn't pay this much heed, but the way he did it amused me to no end, and I thought I'd share it here. Namely, he said that I had sent in a comment to the SGB - which he deleted - and then offered a response allegedly proving me wrong (by quoting the ICTY, the old fallacy of appeal to false authority again).

Except I did no such thing. My alleged "comment" was copy-pasted from the actual essay, "Bleiburg in Potocari." It wasn't deleted. It didn't violate his comments policy. It did not exist. But SGB spun a whole yarn about it nonetheless. Kind of like the whole "Srebrenica genocide," actually.

Here's a pro tip: if you are trying to paint someone as a liar, it helps to not be one.

The Bleiburg in Potocari

(The Bleiburg memorial, with the Ustasha and Muslim symbols, dedicated "In memory of the innocent victims of the Bleiburg tragedy, May 1945")

At the end of February, Al-Jazeera showed an interview with Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić, currently on trial before the ICTY in The Hague. It was done as part of a 40-minute report with Rageh Omaar. The report opened with the rows of green funeral shrouds, wailing Muslim women, and the rows of names on the Potočari monument, near Srebrenica. The images that follow suggest that the Serbs rounded up some eight thousand civilians, and shot them in broad daylight. This is what the Arab world thinks happened. It doesn't matter that it isn't true. This imaginary Srebrenica has become a symbol for the entire Bosnian War: evil Serbs, unprovoked and driven by hatred, killing innocent, unarmed, peaceful Muslims while the West watches the "genocide" and does nothing.

For years, the Western media took for granted the death toll of 250,000 people, mostly Muslims. A report by ICTY-commissioned demographers (Tabeau/Bijak) from 2003, indicating a death toll of 102,000, remained hidden for a year. Its accidental revelation in late 2004 caused a firestorm of denial and declarations that the final, official report, compiled by Mirsad Tokača, would establish the real number, closer to 150,000. That, however, did not happen. Tokača's report, completed in late 2005, put the final number of war dead at 97,000. And yet despite these constant revisions, even it maintained that the number of dead in Srebrenica was 8,000!

ICTY's own investigations suggest otherwise. Of the 7,661 persons listed as missing after Srebrenica was taken by the Bosnian Serbs in July 1995, some 5,371 are members of the Bosnian Army (ARBiH). Remains of 3,837 have been identified. Of those, 3,602 were men age 15-65, 201 were men aged 65 and over, 9 were boys under 14, 11 were women, and 14 of age and sex unknown. Tribunal investigators also found 448 blindfolds and 423 ligatures, indicating executions. They determined that "1,785 individuals died of gunshot wounds, 169 died of probable or possible gunshot wounds, 67 died of Shrapnel wounds or blast injuries, 11 died of gunshot and blast injuries, 6 died of other causes (trauma, suffocation, etc.), and 1441 died of undetermined causes."

So, the "eight thousand civilians" turn first into 5,300 military men, 3,800 identified bodies, 1800 gunshot victims, and 450 executed. Keep in mind that the women and children abandoned by the "brave fighters" of the 28th Bosnian Army Division (from the "demilitarized safe area" no less) at the UN base in Potočari were safely evacuated by Bosnian Serb troops, using trucks and buses hastily requisitioned from Serb civilians. What kind of "genocide" leaves the women and children alive?

There are more problems with the mainstream narrative. Some 3,000 names from the list of the missing are shown as having voted in the 1996 elections. Either they were alive, or there was massive electoral fraud. Either way, someone lied. Serb researched Milivoje Ivanišević(”Srebrenica ID Card”) accuses the Sarajevo government of burying people who died long before the war, as well as soldiers who died prior to July 1995, at the Potočari memorial cemetery. Bulgarian researcher Germinal Civikov questions the testimony of Dražen Erdemović, the "crown witness" of the ICTY prosecution whose accounts were used in every Srebrenica-related case. In his book, Civikov shows that Erdemović and his confederates could not have possibly killed 1,200 people in one night, as he claimed. Sure enough, only 127 bodies were found at the location.

Gen. Krstić, the first Serb officer convicted as "accessory to genocide" was nowhere near Srebrenica, having taken command on July 20, 1995 (five days after the town was taken). Momir Nikolić, another valuable witness for the prosecution, admitted to perjury - but his testimonies were kept! And the ICTY itself admitted that the actual facts of the case remain unknown, but the judges nonetheless believe some 8,000 men were killed. In a true court of law, it doesn't matter what one believes - only what one can prove. And there is simply no proof for the "genocide" in Srebrenica, because it did not happen.

In the summer of 1992, British reporters took a photo of an emaciated Muslim man and arranged it so it appeared behind barbed wire, like an inmate of Nazi death camps. Western media howled about "Belsen '92" and spoke of the Serbs as the new Nazis. A magazine that ran an analysis of the deception in Trnopolje was forced into bankruptcy by British libel laws, yet the truth of the analysis was never actually disputed. Deemed libelous was only the insinuation that the crew shot the photo with malicious intent. Because fabricating genocide photos is proof positive of humanitarianism, what? Anyway, the truth was out and the story of "Serb death camps" has mostly disappeared since. It was replaced by the constant invocation of Srebrenica as the "greatest atrocity in Europe since Hitler."

A massive memorial complex was built in Potočari, at the former UN peacekeeper compound where those women and children sought - and found! - refuge. Bill Clinton, that paragon of honesty and virtue, attended the grand opening. While the Bosnian Muslims are broke and without jobs, their government spent lavishly on the Potočari shrine. So that "vengeance could become justice", as the dedication in Arabic says. So that a lie could become true.

At the end of WW2, during the withdrawal from Yugoslavia before the advancing Communist troops, a number of Croat fascists (Ustasha) were captured in northern Slovenia and southern Austria. The British also turned over several thousand POWs to the Communists. The Communists shot a number of them at the town of Bleiburg, the same way they executed tens of thousands of "class enemies" in Serbia and elsewhere, since 1944. However, after the war, Bleiburg was turned into a shrine by the surviving Ustasha and the Catholic Church. Modern Croatian history claims that 60,000 people were killed in Bleiburg (!). British historian D.B. MacDonald explains:

Inflating the numbers of dead at Bleiburg had several layers of significance. Firstly, it gave the Croats their own massacre at the hands of Serbs and/or Communists, which allowed them to counter the Serbs' Jasenovac genocide with one of their own. Secondly, it allowed Croats to distance themselves from the Serbs and the Communist regime that had carried out the massacres. They could portray Croatia as an unwilling participant in the SFRY, more a prisoner than a constituent nation. Thirdly, by suffering such a massacre, the Croats underwent their own 'way of Cross', as it was frequently dubbed in Croatian writings.

(Balkan holocausts?: Serbian and Croatian victim-centered propaganda and the war in Yugoslavia, David Bruce MacDonald, Manchester University Press, April 19, 2003)

While inflating the number of dead in Bleiburg, the new Croatian government reduced the number of victims of Jasenovac, to establish the moral equivalence of the Ustasha and the "Serbo-Communists" (led by Tito, a Croat...), going so far as to declare the Ustasha the real victims, claiming that Jasenovac was a work camp in which the Jews killed each other and there were hardly any Serbs there anyway...

Even President Mesić, hardly a Serbophile, called Bleiburg an Ustasha festival at government expense. He also added that those buried at Jasenovac were innocents, while many of those buried at Bleiburg were their executioners. It didn't change a thing.

Just as the Ustasha created a shrine in Bleiburg to cast themselves as victims (committing a horrific blasphemy by comparing themselves to Jesus), the shrine to the false genocide in Potočari serves to mask an aggressive ideology - whose insistence on a Muslim-dominated, centralized Bosnian state led to the war in the first place - with a halo of victimhood. Mustafa Cerić, the Bosnian Muslim religious leader, even put this "genocide" on the same level as the Holocaust at an interfaith conference last year.

The Bleiburg in Potočari is a symbol of the Bosnian War, though not in the way its creators intended. It is a fitting representation of a war steeped in manipulation and lies - an insult not only to the victims of Hitler's "final solution," but to reason and decency as well.

Character Assassination

I'm a firm believer in freedom of speech. But there's freedom of speech, and then there is calumny. A debate, however heated, is one thing - an anonymous, ad hominem screed, quite another.

Back in April I wrote a couple pieces about a surprise spike in propaganda appearing on an otherwise innocuous-looking website named Palluxo. For all its claims to be a news portal, it turned out that every single article in Palluxo's "International" and "Special Reports" sections was unrestrained Serbophobic propaganda. From pronouncements by Bosnia's top Islamic cleric about the "joint experience" of genocide with the Jews (even though it was Muslims who helped the Croat Ustasha exterminate the Bosnian Jewry in WW2) to the latest article titled "Albanian Kosovo Marks Another Victory Over Serbia". Well, at least they are straightforward, right?

Having eventually tracked down these uncredited pieces to the "Srebrenica Genocide Blog," the "Congress of North American Bosniaks" and professional Serbophobe Marko Attilla Hoare, I dismissed Palluxo as an attempt to smuggle crass propaganda as news, and paid them no mind since. That is, until someone sent me a link today to an article calling me a "disgraced Srebrenica genocide denier."

The entire piece is an ad hominem attack on yours truly. But it gets better. Apparently, I'm not to be trusted not only because I'm a Serb, but because I do "not have any PhD qualification in history, [have] never held an academic post, published his work in an academic journal, or even visited an archive."

This here leads me to believe the author of the invective in question is Hoare, since he routinely boasts about his academic background and links to respectable government institutions.

So I don't have a PhD. Many people who do have embraced the worst kind of lies about the Balkans, and some - like Hoare, for example - are peddling them enthusiastically. I happen to have a Bachelor's in history, an analytical mind, and a lot of experience in the region (and the Empire) that various hacks championing Official Truth could only dream of. I have even visited archives - but they must not count, because Hoare wasn't there to check?

The mystery author claims his "sources in Sarajevo" could not confirm my diplomatic and media connections. He should find better sources. Should I list the ambassadors, charges d'affaires, political officers and other officials I've met during the Bosnian War? Or the journalists who hired me to translate for them? I could, but I won't. Because unlike certain people, who draw their legitimacy and credibility from their names and people they know, I let my arguments speak for themselves. It's much easier to ignore the arguments and focus on the person making them, dismissing him or her because they don't belong to the ranks of those allowed to have an opinion.

The Palluxo piece doesn't attack just me. It goes after John Laughland, Germinal Civikov, and pretty much anyone who dares challenge the Official Truth as handed down by the Hague Inquisition and its willing executioners. Anonymous appeals to the authority of ICTY verdicts, and dismisses those who challenge them on purely ad hominem grounds. Oh, this guy is a Milosevic supporter. This one's "obscure." That one's a Marxist, did you know? And this Nebojsa character, why he's a Serb!

Ultimately, the worst Anonymous could come up with was that a "long time Jewish friend of ours described Nebojsa Malic as 'insensitive pig'."

Oh wow. Anonymous has a Jewish friend. And he called me insensitive! I am crushed! My life is over!

Or not. Honestly, I couldn't care less. Whoever wrote this garbage - and given the source of Palluxo's features, I've got a couple of decent guesses - deserves pity and contempt. Maybe not in that order. After all, they don't even dare sign their words with a fake name. By contrast, everything I've written over the past decade has my actual name on it. I don't even hide it on this blog, though I don't throw it into my readers' faces either.

In today's world, information is cheap. It's credibility that's expensive. And it takes a lot more to impugn my credibility than the anonymous rant of a character assassin.

Nice try, dirtbag.

Nazis then, Nazis now

I wrote about the "Srebrenica Genocide Blog" just yesterday, as a bastion of Muslim propaganda. Looking more closely at the site, however, I've realized it is also the nexus of the most recent propaganda surge, coinciding with the Holocaust Remembrance Day.

As it turns out, the SGB was the source of articles appearing at Palluxo.com, a news portal otherwise dedicated to "all things Apple." It wasn't a case of "iJihad", after all.

The outrageous statement of Mustafa Ceric I blogged about last weekend, claiming that Bosnian Muslims and Jews had a "joint experience of persecution," was posted on the SGB on March 28. Another article that appeared on Palluxo, about the "victims of Serb terror" is on SGB as well, with pictures.

Why would the SGB try and feed its propaganda through a third-party portal? Well, Palluxo promises: "Your press release will appear in Google News immediately" (emphasis added). And so they do! Yet Palluxo's contact page explicitly states that "All submissions will be manually reviewed. Submissions without contact details will not be published." Granted, though they say anything "Apple-centric" will be published for free, they don't explicitly exclude other topics - yet there is nothing else on that site that is not actually related Apple products, except for the "Srebrenica genocide" propaganda. Interesting.

But the hows and whys of Muslim propaganda getting published on an Apple-related news portal are less interesting than the content of that propaganda. Not only is it seeking to equate the Serbs with Nazis by imagining parallels between the Bosnian War and the Holocaust, it also claims that the Serbs were the real thing - actual allies of the Nazis in WW2, who persecuted Jews with enthusiasm.

To someone wholly ignorant of the Balkans, such as the bulk of the Western public, this twisted argument might make sense. People don't just turn into Nazis overnight, there has to be a background to it, right? And if one proceeds from a premise that the Serbs committed genocide in recent years, then the claim they had committed genocide before seems all the more plausible. Except the premise is completely wrong - and the very people advancing this propaganda are doing it to hide their own Nazi connections!

In the early 1990s, the Croatian government and the Izetbegovic regime in Bosnia sought help from American PR agencies in order to not just demonize their Serb adversaries, but cover up their own links to the events of WW2. Croatian president Franjo Tudjman was a Holocaust revisionist and an apologist for the Ustasha regime, which began the mass slaughter of Serbs and Jews in April 1941 and whose brutality horrified even Hitler's envoys in the Balkans (Neubacher, von Horstenau). Alija Izetbegovic, the supposedly "multiethnic democrat," was an active member of Muslim Youth, an organization that during WW2 supported the Ustasha regime. (At the time, Muslims were considered "Croatian brothers.")

With all this in mind, the PR companies proceeded to actively target the Jewish public opinion:

"...the Croatian and Bosnian past was marked by a real and cruel anti-semitism. Tens of thousands of Jews perished in Croatian camps. So there was every reason for intellectuals and Jewish organizations to be hostile towards the Croats and Bosnians. Our challenge was to reverse this attitude. And we succeded masterfully." (James Harff or Ruder Finn, 1993 interview)

A transference took place: the real Nazi connections of Muslims and Croats (and later Albanians) became the fabricated Nazi connections of the Serbs. It was the Jews and Serbs who found themselves targeted by the Nazis and the Ustasha, while Muslims and Croats (and Albanians) did the persecuting. But the mass murder of Serbs in WW2 was kept under wraps by Yugoslav authorities after 1945, as it would have unraveled the fictitious history of "brotherhood and unity" which they used to run the country. As a result, the mass extermination, displacement and forced conversion of Serbs under the Ustasha regime remains virtually unknown in the West.

On May 1, the SGB published an excerpt from "Serbia's Secret War," a 1997 propaganda pamphlet allegedly written by "Dr. Philip J. Cohen," accusing the Serbs of being Nazi allies in WW2, persecuting the Jews, and then covering all of it up with a massive propaganda effort. One doesn't have to be a psychologist to recognize projection here.

Advertised as relying on sources "previously unknown in the West," the book received a lot of attention. There is just one small problem (in addition to it being completely false, that is): Cohen, a dermatologist, is not a historian, and speaks not a shred of Serbian, Croatian, or "Bosnian." How could he have written this book?

The obvious answer is, he couldn't. Serbian-American historian Carl Savich argues that the real author of "Serbia's Secret War" was Croatian propagandist Ljubica Stefan, and that Cohen (as well as David Riesman, who wrote the prologue) were recruited to give the Croatian propaganda a Jewish face. Not only was this supposed to be more effective in targeting the Jewish public opinion, but any criticism of the book could be dismissed as anti-Semitism.

Savich's argument is compelling. Compare, for example, the claims made here (site run by a Croatian propagandist), crediting Ms. Stefan, with those made on the SGB and quoted from "Cohen's" book. Identical!

It is revolting enough that propaganda has distorted the reality of recent Balkans events to suit today's political agendas. But the fact that propagandists, PR specialists and hack "historians" have twisted Balkans history from WW2 to portray the actual victims of genocide (the Serbs) as perpetrators thereof... now that's just plain horrifying.

Update (May 6, 2009): As if on cue, Marko Attila Hoare appears on (the new, redesigned) Palluxo to defend Official Truth (as established by him and his family). All of the things he cavalierly dismisses as fabrications are either true, or he's phrased them as to be straw men. But hey, don't listen to me: read his defense of Franjo Tudjman! I won't waste my breath debating this lowlife, except to point out that his academic credentials tell more about the pathetic state of higher education in the West than about his "expertise" as a historian or anything else.

Update 2 (May 7, 2009): And here's another "Hot Topic" feature promoting "Serbia's Secret War" by Ljubica Stefan - erm, Philip Cohen. I think it can be safely assumed that Palluxo is fully in service of propaganda interests represented by Hoare and the SGB.

A Foundation of Lies

For years, the "Srebrenica Genocide Blog" has been dedicated to the shrill repetition of the official line about what happened in July of 1995: a "genocide" of innocent Muslim civilians, brutally slaughtered by evil Serbs, to hear them tell it.

Just below the main title, in bold block letters, the SGB proclaims:

SREBRENICA GENOCIDE IS NOT A MATTER OF ANYBODY'S OPINION; IT'S A JUDICIAL FACT RECOGNIZED FIRST BY THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA AND SUBSEQUENTLY BY THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE.

Oh, is it now?

The Bosnian Muslims have claimed "genocide" since 1993, when the Izetbegovic regime filed a suit before the International Court of Justice (urged by judicial activist Francis Boyle) against Serbia (FR Yugoslavia). None of the "evidence" they offered stood up to ICJ's scrutiny, except for Srebrenica - and even that was never examined by the ICJ, merely assumed as true based on ICTY's ruling.

John Laughland asked the obvious question, just the other day:

But what is the evidence for the finding that genocide was committed at Srebrenica? I am not asking this question in the useful sense in which it has been asked (and answered) by investigators such as Jonathan Rooper. I am asking what evidence was submitted in court at the ICTY in support of this uniquely successful claim.

Turns out that Germinal Civikov, a Bulgarian who lives in The Hague and Cologne, has written a book about the whole case. Laughland describes the findings of “Srebrenica: Der Kronzeuge” (Wien: Promedia, 2009, in German) as "devastating":

Civikov explains that the ICTY ruling that genocide was committed at Srebrenica on the orders of the Bosnian Serb leadership is based on the testimony of a single witness, a self-confessed perpetrator of one of the massacres called Drazen Erdemovic.

Erdemovic claimed he was part of a unit that executed some 1200 Muslim civilians in the course of one night. They were taken off the buses in groups of ten, and shot in a nearby field. Civikov did the math, and came to the obvious conclusion: even if it took 10 minutes to kill each group, the executions would have taken twenty hours, not five. They would have had to shoot a group every 2.5 minutes to maintain the pace, and that left no time for "arguments... between the executioners and the victims" or for the executioners to "drink and quarrel," as Erdemovic described. Yet he kept telling this story over and over to the ICTY, despite the fact that it was physically impossible.

Not letting facts get in the way of a good story has been a feature of the Bosnian War from the very beginning. Remember the story of Borislav Herak, who claimed (coached by his Muslim captors) that he saw the Canadian General Lewis McKenzie at an alleged "rape camp" near Sarajevo? McKenzie was not even in Bosnia at that time, and the claim has been demonstrated over and over to be complete and utter rubbish - but every so often the Muslims dig it up and serve it anew, and the press just gobbles it up.

Then there is the story of Momir Nikolic, a Serb officer who collaborated with the ICTY and - caught in perjury - admitted making things up in his testimonies. A reporter for a pro-Tribunal propaganda outfit (which, incidentally, is linked prominently on the SGB) dared challenge the ICTY's plea-bargaining system over the incident, and got fired. Nikolic's false testimony was not only not overturned on account of perjury, but used to convict several other Serb officials!

Erdemovic, described by Civikov as a "pathological liar," served ICTY's purpose perfectly. He spun a story, pointed fingers, got a symbolic conviction and was given a new life in the West. Meanwhile, based on his testimony, a bloody episode of the Bosnian War was branded "genocide," an entire nation was demonized because of it, and even the ICJ was duped into believing the ICTY verdict was legitimate.

Turns out the "judicial fact" is very much a "matter of opinion," after all.

Long Way From Over

At Monday's commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the fall of Srebrenica, a column of Bosnian Muslims marched in wearing T-shirts with the photo of warlord Naser Oric and the slogan "Is self-defense a crime?" This presumably refers to Oric's wartime actions, which resulted in thousands of Serb civilians brutally murdered and dozens of villages destroyed.

Others bore the wartime sigil of the Bosnian Muslim government, the cynically appropriated shield of medieval Christian kings. They chanted "Long live the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina" - the name under which the Muslim-dominated government declared independence in 1992 - and "Death to the Serb Republic!"

Think the Bosnian War ended in 1995? Think again...

(photo: Zoran Šaponjić, Glas Javnosti, 12. July 2005)

Newton's Third Law

On Wednesday, June 29, there was a commentary in the Belgrade daily Glas Javnosti that captured the ire of the Serbian public over the relentless media campaign concerning the "genocide" in Srebrenica. Titled "Srebrenica and Reaction," it can be read in a BBC translation here.

However, considering the BBC translation somewhat lacking, I'm offering my own. You be the judge of how they compare, but do note the point the author is making, for when you hear the next round of Srebrenica hysteria.

Action causes reaction. There is no principle more simple and more true. If you beat your wife, your daughter will certainly fall for some local thug. If you write something about Dinkić, he will sic his BIA (Badgering Inspectors' Armada) on you. If you mess with Brankica "Insider" Stanković, you will have to extradite Radovan Karadžić to avoid arrest...

This natural law applies to Serbs as well. If you tell us a story about Srebrenica every night at bedtime, we will wish to never hear it again. If every session of the parliament turns into an argument over Srebrenica, we will elect other MPs, who will argue about something different. If you continue to invite Nataša Kandić to your shows, we'll change the channel...

Since the Scorpions' atrocity video was shown, we have been watching a sort of Olympics for NGO-profiteers. Nataša Kandić & Co. can hardly manage to run from B92 studios to an exhibit on Srebrenica, then take their seats at a round table on Srebrenica, then dash to a conference on Srebrenica, from which they would race to a debate on Srebrenica, after which they would saunter to a forum about Srebrenica, finishing it off with a rally about Srebrenica. All along telling the foreign media, who paint them as local pillars of democracy and free speech, about their "martyrdom" in uncovering the "truth" about Srebrenica.

Meanwhile, Bojan Pajtić of the Vojvodina Executive Council proposes that Serbia declares a day of mourning for Srebrenica (yes, the same Bojan Pajtić who told Serbia that there is no need for Bodrum Day - imagine that, he's still a free man!), and Exit organizers decide that the entire festival will fall silent in the night of July 10-11, to commemorate Srebrenica... If it didn't smell like Nenad Čanak, it would downright Kandić-like. Speaking of Exit, what is Maja Gojković doing? What's the use of having a Radical as the mayor of Novi Sad, if Exit organizers can fall silent at will?

The hysterical campaign of "All Serbs are guilty of Srebrenica" will make us all eventually say, "Enough with the 'truth' about Srebrenica". Action and reaction.

You know, Americans never adopted a resolution on Hiroshima or Nagasaki, not to mention Iraq, Milica Rakić, the Indians... The English will never declare a day of mourning over the Falklands Islands. Croats will never so much as think of silencing the Split festival over Jasenovac, or the bombings of refugee columns in "Flash" and "Storm". It's a good bet the Bosniaks [sic] will never apologize for the suffering of Serbs in Sarajevo, or around Srebrenica, or because Izetbegović rejected the Cutilheiro peace plan.

Instead of learning from Americans, the English, Croats and Bosniaks, we Serbs constantly holler about "crimes in our name". So it makes sense that the United States Senate declares us - and only us - the culprits for a crime that took place 10 years ago, with a special resolution. There could be a connection: clamor about "crimes in our name" and the Senate slaps you down. Action, and reaction.

Miodrag Zarković

Atrocity Porn Failure Frustrates Peddlers

Since the video of Serb militiamen executing six Bosnian Muslim captives first appeared two weeks ago, there has been a relentless barrage of propaganda in the Western press about how this was the "irrefutable" proof that the "genocide" in Srebrenica really happened, and that units and authorities from Serbia itself were involved. But despite the initial confusion, born of understandable nausea at the shocking images, many people in Serbia still refuse to swallow the pail of garbage the Imperial propaganda is so insistently shoving down their throats.

I've got a whole column dedicated to this coming out tomorrow on Antiwar.com, so I won't rehash the points I've made therein. But another article came across my desk this morning, by one Beth Kampschror of the Christian Science Monitor - a champion of Balkans intervention if there ever was one, and a paper with vested interest in the Official Truth about Srebrenica, as it was one of their reporters, David Rohde, who helped craft the original story.

Kampschror's piece is simply awful, wallowing in double-talk, deceptive phrasing and outright lies. One is tempted to take it apart sentence by sentence - but it would actually take more time and space than it takes to write such trash. I'll try to hit just the salient points.

The "images are gripping and seem irrefutable," she says. They are indeed; no one can refute that six Muslims were killed on that slope, just as shown in the video. No one has tried. It's the implication that this somehow proves that 8000 Muslims were killed, or that the killers were Serbian police, that is rightly doubted. So Kampschror complains the video "has not yet busted the myth that Serb officers did not commit Europe’s worst massacre since the Holocaust." That is because the real "myth" here is precisely what she asserts to be the truth. And where is the Anti-Defamation League when you need it, to put a stop to these incessant and fraudulent comparisons to the Holocaust?

While maintaining that somehow the executioners of the six men were "Serbian officers," Kampschror actually calls the Scorpions - a militia unit formed in 1992 by Serbs who rebelled against Croatian rule - "Serbian-funded." Well, what is it? Were they Serbians, or funded by Serbia? Were they under orders from Belgrade, as Kampschror's colleagues far and wide keep repeating, or was Belgrade paying for their lunch? The question itself is absurd when considering who is CSM's source on this: yes, none other than Natasa Kandic. She claims no one could have gone to Bosnia without government approval and support - an assertion as false as it is idiotic.

"Public opinion in Serbia has long held that the Srebrenica massacre never happened, or that the Muslims were equally guilty if it did," goes Kampschror's straw-man argument. Certainly, Serbians did not believe the official story of the "genocide" in Srebrenica, partly out of instinctive refusal to believe one's own people can commit such atrocities, but also because the same media that authored the Official Truth on Srebrenica have lied shamelessly about other things - e.g. never mentioning the documented atrocities against Serbs. Crimes of the Muslim militias against the Serbs in and around Srebrenica are even more horrifying than the Kandic video (see here).

Eventually, Kampschror gets to the real gripe, and its source: the Hague Inquisition and its collaborators, who were frustrated that their conference on Srebrenica this past weekend was ignored by the Serbian government. The ICTY representative in Belgrade, Alexandra Milenov, tells Kampschror that despite the "overwhelming quantity of evidence," the Krstic conviction, and the Republika Srpska report that "confirmed what the tribunal had already ruled on, you still have voices of denial." Yet the ICTY's "evidence" is hardly overwhelming in quality, consisting mostly of allegations repeated ad nauseam, assumed to be true. General Krstic was convicted of "aiding and abetting" genocide, but the genocide itself was simply asserted as a fact. The RS report from last year was extorted by viceroy Ashdown, and is as valid as the confessions of Stalin's purge victims.

Finally, Kampschror objects that the "nationalist majority" in the Serbian parliament refused to pass a resolution written by Kandic and her fellow ICTY partisans, because they insisted "that crimes were committed individually, rather than blaming the Serbian institutions that made those crimes possible."

What institutions? Kampschror names them earlier in the article as "traditional voices of denial" and "Milosevic-era leftovers": the military, the police, the Serbian Orthodox Church. Tie this back in with the distasteful but deliberate Holocaust comparison from the opening paragraph, and you realize that CSM's correspondent is arguing that the Serbian people and its government were the modern incarnation of the Third Reich. She's not the only one, either.

There is much more legerdemain in the article, but it all follows the same pattern: how dare these Nazis still deny what the Official Truth has proven through endless repetition?

It's because they aren't Nazis, Beth, and the "truth" and "proof" you claim they should accept is nothing but a rotting pile of lies.

Executions

I am not shocked.

Hey, I was in Bosnia during the war - spent the entire siege in Sarajevo, matter of fact - and have seen plenty of death, onscreen and off. I almost want to say I can't be shocked by any atrocity porn anymore, though I probably shouldn't; there seem to be no limits on human depravity, and someone, somewhere might just surprise me.

But the couple of minutes of "shocking" video that have been playing over the weekend as "proof" of Serbian involvement in the July 1995 events in Srebrenica - courtesy of the notorious Natasa Kandic and the crew from IWPR - while horrifying, are nothing that hasn't happened in dozens of places around Bosnia between April 1992 and November 1995. The cast of characters and locations differ - sometimes it is Serbs shooting Muslims or Croats, other times it is Croats shooting Serbs or Muslims, or Muslims shooting Croats or Serbs (and often other Muslims) - but the script remains the same. It proves absolutely nothing but the depravity of war and of people who make a spectacle of it, be they the executioners who film their own handiwork (e.g. "Naser Oric's Greatest Hits") or those who use such recordings to further their political agendas.

There is much to be written about this, and not enough time in the world to do so, but I shall give it a try over the next couple of weeks. The issue of how many people died in the aftermath of Srebrenica's fall - and how - is too serious to be addressed in an off-handed, hysterical or propaganda manner, which is what the general tone of reporting about it has been for nearly a decade. Indeed, the very vehemence with which the champions of the Official Truth push their story - which brims with righteous rage but often lacks sense - suggests there is more to it than meets the eye, the paper, or the screen.