Progress in Kosovo 'Slow-Going,' Security Council Told

palestinechronicle.com ^ | Thursday, November 07 2002 @ 04:05 PM GMT | United Nations News Center

[Hoplite]

C'mon FireWall,

If we're going to take bigoted idiots to task, we can find much better candidates then myself, can't we?

[vooch]

Nice try at dissembling (again)...........root of the question is why the KLA gangpress a few dozen old men that day ?

[inquest]

Diphyenylamine is only "discredited" to the extent that there is a capacity for it to give false positives. This capacity can be measured. If it gives false positives in say, 30% of cases before it, then yes, it would be useless in a criminal trial of a particular person (as it was being used prior to the 1960's). But it would not be useless in a case where over 90% of a group of people test positive. I mean, roll a die 40 times and see if 37 of the rolls are a 1 or a 2. If they are, then somethings seriously wrong with your die. If you're still having trouble with what I'm saying, then buy a good book on statistics to help you out.

And if anyone here deserves to be writing in bigger letters, it's me, since I've answered every point you've brought up, whereas you've picked and chosen which ones of mine you think you're able to answer. And if at any point you should decide to go back and answer any of those points, here's another one to ponder:

What would you make of a poster who a) is virtually the only one on an entire forum who's pushing a particular interpretation of events, and b) throws an insult in every post, no matter who he's talking to?

[Torie]

What really happened is that the Kosovars were inspired by the Buddhists in Vietnam (despite what you hear, these folks are rather casual Muslims, and have been polluted by other influences), and thus as a protest all shot each other, and the last one alive, then shot himself in the head. I think that is consistent with the evidence, don't you?

[vooch]

cute Torie, but way too blase about the needless deaths of a few thousand Albanian civilians murdered by Clinton's reckless policies.

As you well know since Clinton's UN pals unleashed the KLA upon the civilian population ( ie June 1999) over 1,000 Albanian civilians have been murdered. The US Military and GWB agree for they have arested virtually the entire KLA leadership cadre.

Your premise seems to be that prior to June 1999, the KLA never hurt a Albanian, but somehow mysteriously after June 1999 the KLA suddenly started murdering Albanians.........

[FireWall]

Not really, you have conered the market quite decisively Hoplite, congratulations.

[inquest]

The US Military and GWB agree for they have arested virtually the entire KLA leadership cadre.

When was this?

[vooch]

arrests started last December...........a few of the KLA killers arrested are:

MajorGeneral (sic) Remi
MajorGeneral Ramush
Daut Haradanji (sp)
Head of KLA Pristina death squads Commander Gashi
and a host of others

[smokegenerator]

what's the status of the perps aforementioned? Free on bail til their hearing?

[vooch]

no, they are getting to know firsthand the true standard of "westerm justice", in other words some of them were held w/o being charged for a few months and then charged, wait another couple of months, and then trial begins....all hidden from the public of course.

[Hoplite]

inquest,

Why the hell am I going to waste my time executing this same fruitless exercise on any other of the points you raise when you refuse to admit the obvious on this matter?

All the proof is on the table, so quit looking down at the floor and mumbling about new and improved ways of misapplying the principles of statistics to turn bad data into good.

And the reason I'm so popular around here is because of people like you who refuse to smell this crap for what it is when I shove your nose in it.

So your options are to either to face the obvious on this matter so we can pursue other relevant points, or join the ranks of the fools and liars who mindlessly spout counterfactual and illogical arguments in favor of Milosevic's war against the Kosovar Albanians civilians in Kosovo.

[Hoplite]

Torie,

Please - according to the autopsy, after shooting his neighbors, the last man nibbled his own head off.

It could have happened - really!

[inquest]

No, it's actually a perfectly valid application of statistics. And you're the one who's refusing to see the obvious. Normally, if a team such as Dr. Dobricanin's were to announce findings as provocative as theirs, it would tend to generate that thing called Controversy? Instead, it's been met with a very embarrassed silence that's obvious to everyone but the most willfully deaf. About the only people who've taken issue with the results on their own initiative are a few advocacy groups that I've never heard of with names like "Society for the Protection of Oppressed Peoples"... and certain irredentist posters on internet fora. Everyone else - governments, major newspapers, other professionals in the field - have yet to issue any significant criticisms of their methods and logic. Not even Dr. Helena "Crime Against Humanity" Ranta could actually bring herself to criticize the actual methodology that the Serbian and Belarussian teams used. So tell me, exactly how much credibility am I supposed to give you and your amateur forensic peer review in light of all this?

By the way, don't let any of this stop you from seeing if you can come up with a more interesting insult. It does seem to be your only strong suit.

[Hoplite]

Actually inquest, this whole line of discussion has already been beaten to death in regards to the GSR tests done on Oswald in regards to the Kennedy assassination, and, as here, the facts and expert opinion there are damning to your position.

1. Read

2. Weep, or do whatever.

3. Good bye, and good luck with finding those KLA on the grassy knoll.

As a consolation gift, realize that I cannot insult you in any appreciable way - only you are capable of making yourself look a fool here and then only through your posts.

Try to use this knowledge in future, ok?

[inquest]

It really comes down to one point: In order for there to be even a smidgen of a chance that 37 out of 40 bodies tested false-positive, there would have to be at least an 80% chance that a single body would test false-positive. You can do the math yourself, or if you like, you can continue to pretend that you don't understand what I'm talking about, but either way there's simply no way around that fact. So, is there an 80% chance that a diphenylamine test would result in a false postive? Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any hard numbers, but I think circumstantial evidence might be able to help us out a bit.

First of all, it's highly doubtful that the test would have survived for well over two decades, in a period when smoking was widespread, if the error rate was that high, if it even would have made it out of the testing phase at all. I also doubt that it would still be used in a country as modern and developed as Italy, where again, smoking is nearly universal, if the chances of a false positive were that high.

The only further anecdote I've found was from an (alleged) incident in Kosovo on July 19, 1998. Serbian forces, so the allegation went, swept into a the town of Rahovec and surrounding areas wreaking havoc on the local population. "In the suburb Bellacerke/Bela Crkva all houses were destroyed. Survivors told a correspondent from the Neue Zuercher Zeitung about a paraffin test which the men were subjected to, that was done to establish the existence of traces of gunpowder in order to find out who had fired a gun and who not. The Serbs threatened one group that men with a positive test would be shot on the spot; all test results were negative." Source (see page 18).

All test results were negative. Pretty amazing for an 80% false-positive rate, I'd say. So, either the story told by the Albanian witnesses was just a little bit... refined for consumption - which would cast doubt on other tales from Albanian "witnesses" - or, the incident provides good evidence that the capacity for false-positives from diphenylamine testing doesn't quite reach the 80% mark.

[philosofy123]

Be thankful to the Christian hating Clinton, and his goons. Now we helped build up a fanatic Moslem countries in the heart of Europe; Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia. Now the Saudis and the Iranians fanatics are having a field day implanting venom in these populations. Chechnya, and Bosnia are reported to have Al Qaeida terrorists roaming freely!

I blame President Bush for not pulling the plug on this nonsense. He should apologize to Slobo, pay reparation to Serbia, and stop supporting these Moslem terrorists and drug dealers.

[inquest]

I agree, except that I think apologies are due more properly to the Serbian people, to President Kostunica, and to the Macedonians for being betrayed over and over by us. As well as to the many innocent Albanians who've received their share of the KLA's terror.

[bob808]

I've been away from FR for a few weeks now and am trying to catch up on recent developments. Let me just quickly thank you, inquest, for the hearty chuckles you've given me by the verbal spanking you've just dished out to Hoplite.

Don't know if you've followed the Balkans threads much, but many of us have had runs in with him and endured his smear campaign, laced with his smug little smart a$$ put downs.

You've haven't let him get away with it, and basically you've beaten the little troll at his own game. Hats off to you.

[Wraith]

They are being prosecuted under Serbian law which is being administered by International judges. It is a similar system of investigating judges that is used in France. The Albanian judges were controlled by the UCK very quickly in the program and if an Albanian was connected it was a revolving door at the Pristina Jail. For a Serb suspect it was a different story, a very different story. It was inevitable that international judges had to play a part in administrating justice in Kosovo and I am very happy that the likes of Latif Gashi are behind bars.

[Hoplite]

I haven't been able to find any hard numbers

Really? I provided them to you in the last post.

What's your major malfunction?

Diphenylamine tests, on a group of 17 individuals, gave true results 47% of the time and false results 53% of the time, and have been recognized (how many times am I going to have to repeat this, Inquest?) as being nonspecific and scientifically useless.

The paraffin test is used for psychological reasons - i.e., to fool individuals not familiar with it's limitations, as Milosevic's minions are doing to you, the willing, hell, eager even, dupe.

The sad thing, inquest, is not that you cannot prove your point, but that you lack the simple logical skills that anyone interested in intellectual pursuits is required to cultivate. This particular point was decided a couple of days ago when diphenylamine was shown to be non-specific, i.e., shows positive results for things other than gunpowder.

Yours is now an exercise in folly.