Slobodan Milosevic is DEAD: liveonearth

For those of you who understand that human suffering creates human monsters who are indifferent to suffering, this man is a prime example. He has been on trial for four years at the Hague. He stood accused of more than 60 war crimes and crimes against humanity. He is known as "the Butcher of the Balkans" and is responsible for four wars. By acting as his own lawyer he used this trial as an opportunity to speak on his political beliefs. He delayed the procedings at every opportunity, refused to enter a plea, and constantly denounced the court. In spite of his lack of cooperation, the trial proved that he was responsible for the genocide committed during the 1992-1995 Bosnia war, which the US government largely ignored while more than 200,000 people were killed. The trial was not completed when he was found dead in his cell this morning. There was no sign of suicide, and cause of death is not known. He did have dangerously high blood pressure and a heart condition based on the BP, and could have keeled over any minute from that. His lawyers say he was poisoned and want to take the body to Russia for an autopsy.

For the list of charges against him, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1402790.stm.

Milosevic was not a typical dictator. There are no statues of him scattered around Jugoslavia, no libraries named for him. "A good biography requires a personality with some distinguishing features, and of such characteristics Milosevic has none. In the gallery of 20thcentury monsters, he is by far the blandest. He lacks the diabolical fury of Hitler, the conspiratorial malice of Stalin, the heartless utopianism of Mao, the ruthless vanity of Saddam Hussein or Fidel Castro." -Stephen Schwartz

Milosevic was a Serb. His destructive military and political efforts were largely directed at the Albanians: Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats, whom he was happy to rape and kill.

He was born in 1941, close to Belgrade. His father was a priest who deserted his family shortly after the war, and committed suicide 1962. His mother was a communist and straight-laced school teacher. She killed herself in 1972, as did his favorite uncle. I do not know what was going on in that family, but it had to be awful to cause so many suicides. A childhood that must have been horrific created a man who lacked moral scruples.

Milosevic met his wife while in school. She is known as Mira, short for Mirjana Markovic. She was a professor at the U of Belgrade, and has been likened to Lady MacBeth more than once. She is currently wanted on corruption charges in Serbia, and living in Russia. I read somewhere that Milosevic was more in love with her madness than with her. She bragged on Milosevic and predicted that he would be president. They had two children, a son and a daugher. Milosevic devoted himself to Mira's dream of him. He graduated in law in 1974, and initiated his career as a banker. He lived on and off in New York as a bank representative.

Milosevic became head of the Serbian communist party by 1986 and became president of Serbia in 1989, and of Yugoslavia in 1997. He founded and was president of the Socialist party of Serbia. He sparked a violent nationalism that fed ethnic cleansing. The Serbs are mostly Christian and they killed many Muslims in their concentration camps. The wars that ensued are well documented and I will not go into them here. NATO's bombing was the beginning of the end. He was voted out of office in 2000. His trial at the Hague began in 2002.

This article reveals slightly more of him as a person than most: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13220

Slobodan Milosevic is DEAD

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