Radovan Karadzic

Radovan Karadzic. Captured. Riding a city bus. In Belgrade. July 21, 2008. He had been practicing alternative medicine there under the name Dragan Dabic. He gave a lecture, “How to nurture your own internal energy” and contributed to Healthy Life magazine. Karadzic organized the 43 month long siege of Sarajevo 1992-1195. Karadzic organized Srebrenica, 1995. I heard on the radio this morning, NPR, that, in Belgrade, the indicted war criminal “disguised himself with a beard.” Yes, I suppose he went unnoticed in Belgrade. Just another bearded man with an instinct to kill.

“This is a very important day for the victims who have waited for this arrest for over a decade. It is also an important day for international justice,” Serge Brammertz, head prosecutor at The Hague. I am sure that the victims stopped waiting for the arrest years ago. Karadzic’s arrest took 13 years. It seems only the “international community” has been waiting for the arrest for over a decade. Actually, they have been waiting for the arrest by Serbs for over a decade. It has also been said that it took a pro-EU government to allow this change. So, the arrest could have happened earlier, justice could have happened earlier, but the international community wanted it to happen not in a just manner, but just so. News reports indicate international agencies assisted local forces in organizing the arrest. If the arrest had to come from the Serb government, as international law enforcement officers believe it did, then I must ask, why is this an important day for international justice? It seems to be an important day for international groups that want Serbia to advance. Specifically, advance to the EU. Without fully negotiating its past.

The Serbian police squeezed this in after the European Cup, right before their holidays on the sea coast. Or the international police forces squeezed this in while most of the forces were on their annual holiday, and just a few were left to work with.

Holbrook, who “negotiated” the Dayton Accords of 1995, called Karadzic "a real, true architect of mass murder." Real and true are positive words. We may hear them in an advertisement to describe the taste of a filtered cigarette in the 1950s. Not for Karadzic. Karadzic is evil. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told NPR that Karadzic's arrest is "extremely significant." "He really is the person who was behind the systematic ethnic cleansing — murder — of several hundred thousand Bosnians," she says. "It does show that justice will prevail."

It does not show that justice will prevail. It does show that politicians will say things that mean “let’s forget we allowed him to massacre hundreds of thousands of people, many of them poor Muslims, and then let him go for 13 years. Let’s just concentrate on how this is not a continuation of the war and connecting the war to EU accession, even though we saw we want peace and reconciliation in the region.”

This is what the US press, at least NPR said, "What NATO couldn't do for 10 years, apparently the crack Serbian police did," NPR's Tom Gjelten noted Monday, in an on-air conversation with Robert Siegel. The crack Serbian police. Daj, molim te. I am not listening to NPR anymore. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92762470&ft=1&f=1004

This is a pretty good news article about Karadzic: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24063046-28737,00.html by Jamie Walker.

Yes, I am angry about it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lynn St Sirup Pancake Potluck

Image
Last Sunday, I attended Lynn St Sirup Pancake Potluck. Yes, the correct spelling is Syrup. The invitation reads Sirup Pancake Potluck. You are correct, I just finished writing a dissertation. I have to reproduce the form rather than the correct spelling. Perhaps the misspelling is telling of something, I don't know. I was really stressed out last Sunday, but I attended anyway, with C, A, and Baby C (BC), my cool neighbors (CN), around 10.30 am. We sat at the end of a table. Wait, that's out of order. We arrived with our potluck participation: CN: fresh, organic, sliced strawberries, Me: de-frosted mixed berries from the grocery store. We placed the food on the buffet table (as opposed to the seating tables). I noticed on the buffet the coffee on offer, labeled "Fair Trade Organic." Why the "Fair Trade Organic" on the label... Is this something brought to the buffet by people who want to be known as cool in a specific sub-culture? It is generous of them to b
Read more

Wolfgang Vogel, Spyswapper, 1925-2008 (RIP)

Here is Vogel's quote about his life as a Spyswapper, "I was neither a resistance fighter nor a good Samaritan. My paths were neither white nor black. They had to be grey, otherwise it would not have worked." Does it mean the Cold War? The brilliant thing about Vogel is that he kept the system going, but he did not become a martyr or a victim. Here is the obituary of Wolfgang Vogel from the Financial Times (Aug 30/31, 2008, p. 8). His nickname was "The Devil's Lawyer." Does every political era have its moral order? What is ours? Who (what) is in the middle of the "war on terror," keeping it going by doing its dirty work, work it denounces by day?
Read more

New Year

I think New Year comes around twice a year. We have the conventional one on January 1. Then, there is the one that starts as summer moves into fall, as school starts, as the weather cools, as you face your routines, as your face who you are again. You face your mortality as the leaves fall and the grass dies and the flowers die and one part of yourself asks the other part if you are gonna finish off these last four months any better than the last eight, or is it already over? The thing about the "Back To School" New Year is that it is private, so you don't have to let anyone know what is going on in your head, and you don't have to pretend to take change seriously or, if you do, you don't have to pretend to be "positive" or full of hope about it. You can be exhausted and angry, that is fine. There is no emotional script or role you have to fill. So just keep on going that way for a few months.
Read more