Please, answer this simple question - was this photo a hoax? Yes or no?
Posted on 10/09/2004 5:21:08 PM PDT by Jane_N
Fresh controversy has hit the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic with a claim from a senior intelligence analyst that the Yugoslav leader is innocent of genocide. Dr Cees Wiebes, a professor at Amsterdam University, now says there is no evidence linking Milosevic to the worst atrocity of the Bosnian war, the massacre of 7,000 Muslims at the town of Srebrenica.
Srebrenica, which was overrun by Serb forces in July 1995, forms the basis of the genocide charge against Milosevic, but Wiebes, a member of a Dutch government inquiry into the atrocity, said there is nothing to link Milosevic to the crime.
'In our report, which is about 7,000 pages long, we come to the conclusion that Milosevic had no foreknowledge of the subsequent massacres,' he says in a radio programme, The Real Slobodan Milosevic, to be broadcast by BBC Five Live tonight. 'What we did find, however, was evidence to the contrary. Milosevic was very upset when he learnt about the massacres.'
The prospect of the former Balkan strongman being cleared of the most serious charge he faces is a fresh blow to an already troubled case, which begins hearing defence evidence this week after several months of delays.
Any failure to prove genocide will cast a shadow not only over this case but over the whole practicality of holding tyrants to account in war crimes trials, most obviously in the case against Saddam Hussein.
Wiebes headed a team of intelligence specialists commissioned by the Dutch government to look into the massacre because its own forces were present in the town under the UN flag.
He had access to secret files, key diplomats and hundreds of witnesses to a massacre in which Muslim men and boys as young as 12 were butchered by Bosnian Serb forces. But while clearly implicating senior Serb field commanders, including General Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian army chief still on the run, Wiebes says Milosevic played no part.
He said it was understandable that Milosevic was upset 'because in this phase of the war he was looking for a political settlement and this was not very good for him'.
Wiebes also says his team offered their evidence to the Hague tribunal chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte, but were brushed off. 'What I heard from good sources in The Hague is that Miss del Ponte thinks that we're too nuanced and not seeing things in black and white,' he said.
Hague prosecutors insist this is not so, saying that the report was not relevant. Prosecution spokeswoman Florence Hartmann said: 'The purpose of the report was not to deal with criminal cases relating to Srebrenica, and was commissioned... for other purposes.'
Wiebes is the first senior figure to say publicly what many Hague sources have been saying privately for some time - that there is simply no evidence to back the genocide charge.
Prosecutors have spent months trying to prove otherwise, but have drawn a series of blanks, despite the appearance of high-profile witnesses. These have included former Nato commander Wesley Clark, whose evidence in The Hague last December was that Milosevic told him he knew about the crime and tried to stop it.
Milosevic undoubtedly facilitated the killing by providing Bosnian Serb forces with guns, fuel and cash. But for a genocide conviction to stick, prosecutors must prove that he gave the order.
No tribunal tried to prove legally the guilt of Hitler since he never stood a trial. But the material evidence was there - the camps and more!
Where are all those amazing disapearing death/rape camps in Bosnia or Kosovo, which were visible from satelites, in the midst of hordes of journalists and observers?
It's the same with your claims as to Bosnia's camps - Living Marxism was taken to trial and got their asses handed to them, having to in effect eat their words on the record. Not that the Living Marxism case is necessary to prove the existence of camps - the ICTY has tried numerous Serb defendants in connection with camps in Bosnia, so the only ones able to deny their existence with any conviction are the terminally confused or willfully lying - I leave it up to you to determine whichever one you are.
Ha, ha! I got you on that!!!
Living Marxism "got their asses handed to them" because of the WEIRD British libel law which PUNISHES "malicious intent" even if the claim is TRUE.
Nobody really questioned the well documented claim by L.M. was false. They lost because they were leftists and as such they were likely to have hostile attitude toward big corporate mass media. They were punished for this presumable attitude.
In British law if you besmirch someone reputation with the TRUE statements you are GUILTY of libel if your intention is to damage the reputation.
More on this Living Marxism outrage:
Now, Mr. Hoplite, you seem to know more than you pretend to.
The fact is that Fikret Alic and his fellow Bosnian Muslims were not imprisoned behind a barbed-wire fence. There was no barbed-wire fence surrounding Trnopolje camp. It was not a prison, and certainly not a "concentration camp," but a collection center for refugees, many of whom went there seeking safety and could leave again if they wished.
to the testimony of Deichmann and LM editor Hume at the libel trial:
There has never been any question in my opinion or in the article that I published that this camp was anything other than a grim place at which there were beatings, there were killings and there were rapes. There has never been any question of that. We have never argued contrary to that. - Michael Hume
I do not say that they at the time were able to leave and there - you know, there were fences, there were guards, which we have seen here, armed guards. - Thomas Deichmann
Do you see the difference there A. Pole?
Yeah, you got me alright - the only outrage over the LM verdict is from those interested in propagating the Serbian disinformation campaign waged over events in Bosnia.
We can parse the various (correct or incorrect) statements for ever. The fact is that the photo in question was indeed presented in a misleading way by the media and the peculiarity of British libel law was apllied.
Also your use use of Hitler analogy is disingenuous - you could "prove" any accusation of genocide that way.
The idiots ate their words.
And don't you worry your little head about anybody proving something - as soon as a burden of proof is met, you can just move the goalposts and act like you don't understand the first thing about anything.
I was busy the last few days and did not have the time to do a search related to your quotes. But I think that your spin should not be left without the reply, so I am doing it now.
The ITN, the British news station, responsible for the anti-Serbian photo hoax, tried to prejudice and divert the attention of the jury by claiming that atrocities were committed in this location. They brought a Muslim physician to make needed accusations and it worked also on the defendants who did not have the nerve to denounce the ruse.
So one of the defendants - Deichmann, stated :
""ITN lawyer Tom Shields stressed, during the trial, that the miserable condition of Trnopolje was noteworthy. The plaintiffs brought also as a witness, a Muslim Physician whom the guards forced to care for the camp's inhabitants in the Summer of 1992.
[...]
The Physician described on the witness stand the rape and assault of defenseless civilians. I never disputed these facts. His testimony was without question the most moving of the entire trial. Despite this, my impression was that this only influenced the Jury enough to score a few moral points for ITN. [...]"
He should have said instead - "even if these allegations are true (they well can be as biased and untrue as many others) they are a ruse intended to prejudice and distract the jury - they are not related to the hoax in question", but he wanted to appear impartial and not contrary. And now you replicate the same ruse.
The information and good analysis can be read at
Tragic error - Did LM sink the ship at their libel trial? .
Do you have any clue as to what the Trnopolje case was actually about? Living Marxism was taking issue with the comparison between Trnopolje and German run concentration camps, and based their attack on the ITN story upon the theory that the inmates at Trnopolje were actually there of their own accord, and were free to leave at any time they wished, and that ITN had knowingly misrepresented the camp.
When it came time to back up those assertions in a court of law, they, how would we put this today - "flip-flopped", and made the statements I quoted for the record, and supported ITN's position on the matter of who was behind the wire and whether they were free to leave or not.
So take your stupid marxist loving Jared Israel website and shove it, Pole - a broken watch may be good enough for you to tell the time with, but you damned well better not go around advertising the fact that your information is coming from such a morally and intellectually bankrupt source.
Whoops, too late for that.
Give it a rest already - the verdict has come in on the Bosnian Serbs' actions during their war to create their part of Greater Serbia, and they have been found wanting in humanity, decency, and not to say the least, honesty, which leaves you here fighting a war that's already been lost.
I judge the materials on the base of their value and not authorship. I read it first and if I think the material is good I use it.
But I understand you - you must use such tricks for obvious reasons.
The fact that the authors of both Living Marxism and tenc.net espouse wholly discredited philosophies, and have extended their idiocy out of the realm of Marxist thought into Serbian war crimes denial is simply not your concern.
If they said 1 + 1 = 3*, you'd be quoting them as subject matter experts, were that your thesis of the day.
*Unfortunately for the Living Marxism half of the equation, when placed under oath, they were forced to recant their new math, as explained, in more than one post, to no avail.
Some folks just don't learn.
Please, answer this simple question - was this photo a hoax? Yes or no?
It was no more a hoax than this one was.
Happily, you'll find fools who dispute the accuracy of this photo too, so you're in good company with your revisionist idiocy.
Are you planning on repeating discredited BS ad nauseum here, or do you at some point think you'll actually engage your brain and desist in this course of stupidity you've chosen?
Please defer from posting anything more until you have thought it out a bit - I grow weary of repeating myself. Get it through your thick head already that the authors of your chosen canard recanted - the information presented in their work has a numerically expressed value of zero. Ergo, anything you draw from their work has zero value, and any material based upon their work also has a value of zero.
In short, your argument is zero, and you're just taking up FR's server space with a whole lot of nothing.
Your use of pseudo reasoning by analogy is a sign of desperation: "the event A took place but some people deny it, so if some people deny that event B took place it means that B really happened".
You insult the intelligence of your audience.
Yes or no?
The Serbian police (and I mean Serbian as in Serbia, not Serbian as in "composed solely of Serbs") never, ever, leaves the territory of the Republic -- under any circumstances.
The same can be said of the Armed Forces, who haven't been in Bosnia since the Spring of '92, when the old federation finally ceased to exist.
Who, then, stayed in Bosnia after the Spring of 1992? Well, all those Serbs whose hometowns were within the borders of the then Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Hertsegovina did. They formed the nucleus of the future VRS/BSA.
Serbia did not participate in the war(s) of Yugoslav Succession with its own weaponry and/or troops in any way, shape or form.
As for supporting and aiding ITS OWN PEOPLE, Serbia stands guilty as charged. What's so wrong about Serbia supporting Serbs is beyond me. I don't see you complaining about Iran and Saudi Arabia supporting the Bosnian Muslims, or Al-Qaeda supporting the Kosovo Albanian terrorists.
Nikola Pashich (Prime Minister of Serbia in the early XX century) was right -- we should've never agreed to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) after our victory in WWI. We should've taken what was being offered to us by our Allies -- England, France and the US -- and left Slovenia and half of Croatia to whomever wanted to take them in.
I's not really up to the defendent to absolve himself, or had you forgotten that?
Perhaps you're unaware of the connection between Arkan and the MUP, or any of the other myriad of ties between Serbia and the personnel active in Croatia or Bosnia during the wars in those places? If so, how do you manage to keep yourself in the dark so completely?
In short, either get a clue, or shut up.
As to Serbia participating in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia through means other than the MUP, the Serbian armed forces in Croatia and Bosnia received their logistics and pay from Belgrade, and Serbia even went so far as to put a press gang out in Serbia to help man military formations in Croata and Bosnia.
Milosevic ran the wars in Croatia and Bosnia from Belgrade. To argue to the contrary is simply foolish.
Slobo's just as innocent until proven guilty as Saddam is for the murder that occurred under his watch.
If, however, you're trying to forward the opinion that he wasn't actually responsible, outside of the strict legal 'innocent until proven guilty' sense, then you haven't been paying attention. Slobo's about as innocent as OJ. He just won't be looking for the actual murderer on any golf courses after his trial.
I doube if Saddam can be proven guilty of genocide, unless a lot of his subordinates turn on him. But there are so many charges that can be brought, not just one or two instances.
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