Karadzic Arrested

And it's about time, too.

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, accused architect of massacres making him one of the world's top war crimes fugitives, was arrested Monday evening in a raid that ended a near 13-year manhunt, the country's president and the U.N. tribunal said.

Karadzic is the suspected mastermind of mass killings that the U.N. war crimes tribunal described as "scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history." They include the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, Europe's worst slaughter since World War II.

"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 because it clearly demonstrates that nobody is beyond the reach of the law," said Serge Brammertz, the tribunal's head prosecutor.

President Boris Tadic's office said Karadzic has been taken before the investigative judge of Serbia's war crimes court _ a legal procedure that indicates he could soon be extradited to the U.N. court at The Hague, Netherlands.

If Karadzic is transferred to there, he would be the 44th Serb suspect extradited to the tribunal. The others include former President Slobodan Milosevic, who was ousted in 2000 and died in 2006 while on trial on war crimes charges.

Something about capturing, trying, and carrying out sentence on war criminals makes me smile. Don't know why...

UPDATE: Let's not forget that Ratko Mladic is still out there:

Prosecutors in The Hague and officials of the European Union have long suspected that he was, in fact, hiding in Serbia, and in recent years have pressed officials in Belgrade to hand him over. The failure to arrest Mr. Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the still fugitive Bosnian Serb general also indicted on war crimes, has stood as a block to greater Serbian ties to the European Union after the wars in Bosnia and later Kosovo.

“This is a historic event,” said Richard Holbrooke, who brokered the agreements in Dayton, Ohio, to end the war in Bosnia in 1995. “Of the three most evil men of the Balkans, Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic, I thought Karadzic was the worst. The reason was that Karadzic was a real racist believer. Karadzic really enjoyed ordering the killing of Muslims, whereas Milosevic was an opportunist.”

--WS

Now Go and Get Him

Will the international community allow Sudan to continue to be ruled by a genocidal thug? Let's hope not. The next step is to go and get Omar al-Bashir.

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court filed genocide charges Monday against Sudan's president, accusing him of masterminding attempts to wipe out African tribes in Darfur with a campaign of murder, rape and deportation.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo asked a three-judge panel at the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for President Omar al-Bashir to prevent the slow deaths of some 2.5 million people forced from their homes in Darfur and still under attack from government-backed janjaweed militia.

"Genocide is a crime of intention - we don't need to wait until these 2.5 million die," he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"The genocide is ongoing," he added, saying systematic rape was a key element of the campaign. "Seventy-year-old women, 6-year-old girls are raped," he said.

The lack of action on the part of the US and the rest of the world with regards to Darfur is one of the great failures of this decade. Arresting and trying al-Bashir starts a process of rectifying this failure. What should come next is a unified attempt to redress the horrors of Darfur and stabilize the region.

Moreno-Ocampo was undeterred by concern that his indictment against Al-Bashir might ignite a storm of vengeance against Darfur refugees and lead to the closing of Sudan's doors to relief agencies and possibly peacekeeping troops.

"I am a prosecutor doing a judicial case," he said.

Al-Bashir "wants to end the history of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa people. I don't have the luxury to look away. I have evidence," the prosecutor said in a statement.

Strong stuff. Where the hell is our State Department, by the way? I read this story from CNN.com and there's no mention of the US State Department. There's a casual mention that we have "characterized" what is going on as genocide. Well, what the fuck are we doing about it? That's my question.

One more down, three still to go

Thirteen years after the end of the war in Bosnia, one of the top four Bosnian Serb officers wanted for war crimes and genocide has been arrested in Belgrade and will be extradited to The Hague to stand trial on charges of crimes against humanity.

Stojan Zupljanin was the police commander in Banja Luca, and in that capacity he had operational control over the detention camps where Bosnian Muslims were held in horrific conditions, and thousands upon thousands of people were murdered because of their ethnicity. He is also accused of wiping out entire communities of Bosnian Muslims and Croats in the Krajina area.

"Stojan Zupljanin was arrested today near Belgrade ... police and security agents took part in the operation. He should be extradited to the Hague in the next 72 hours," said Bruno Vekaric, spokesman for Serbia's special war crimes prosecutor's office.

He said Zupljanin, 56, was found at an apartment about 8 km (5 miles) from the centre of Belgrade and would be taken before an investigative judge at the war crimes court in Belgrade before being extradited.

"There was no resistance during his arrest," said Vladimir Vukcevic, Serbia's chief war crimes prosecutor, who coordinated the operation.

"This arrest shows clearly that we are seriously cooperating (with the Hague) and there is the political will for full cooperation."

He said a previous attempt to arrest Zupljanin in the southern Serbian city of Nis, had failed and the suspect escaped. He did not say when this took place.

A spokeswoman for the prosecution at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague also confirmed his arrest.

Zupljanin, a commander in the city of Banja Luka during the 1992-95 Bosnia war, is charged with killing Muslim and Croat civilians.

The arrest of Zupljanin is welcome news indeed - but still at large are Ratco Mladic, Goran Hadzic, and Radovan Karadzic. The arrest of these three men remains a huge stumbling block between Serbia and an invitation to join the European Union.

"Cooperating with The Hague is a precondition for Serbia to begin its EU integration," said political analyst Marko Blagojevic of the independent Centre for Free Election and Democracy. "This is a step forward for Serbia."

Rudy! Campaign Official Proposes a "Final Solution" for Muslims

And fruit flies, well, I never met a fruit fly that I was ashamed to share genes with,
and I certainly can’t say that about human beings.' - geneticist James Gorman

[UPDATED BELOW - Deady has resigned]

Case in point (Via Greg Sargent):

John Deady, the co-chair of New Hampshire Veterans for Rudy, is standing by the comments he made in the controversial interview with The Guardian we posted on below, in which he said that "the Muslims" need to be chased "back to their caves."

In an interview with me, Deady confirmed that when he made the comments, he was referring to all Muslims. (emphasis mine)

"I don't subscribe to the principle that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims," Deady told me by phone from his home in New Hampshire. "They're all Muslims." (emphasis mine)

So what he is saying is that there is no difference between Osama bin Laden and my naturalized-American citizen health care co-workers Nazifa, Rema and Fatima. To such an assertion, I can only say "what a dangerous idiot."

Asked if he stood by his comments in the earlier Guardian interview, Deady said:

"I most assuredly do. I've been very concerned about this Muslim thing for quite awhile. The average American does not know beans about what the Muslims are about. I am talking about the Muslims in general. I don't subscribe to the principle that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims. They're all Muslims."

In the earlier interview with The Guardian, Deady said of Muslims: "We need to keep the feet to the fire and keep pressing these people until we defeat or chase them back to their caves or in other words get rid of them."

When I asked Deady to elaborate on his suggestion that we need to "get rid" of Muslims, Deady said:

"When I say get rid of them, I wasn't necessarily referring to genocide. What I was referring to is, stand up to them every time they stick up their heads and attack us. We can't afford to say, `We'll try diplomacy.' They don't respond to it. If you look into Islamic tradition, a treaty is only good for five years. We're not dealing with a rational mindset here. We're dealing with madmen." (emphasis mine)

When I asked Deady if this was also a reference to all Muslims, he said: "I am talking about Muslims in general."

Giuiliani said that if the remarks were true Deady would be dismissed. (I would refer the campaign to video of Deady making the comments on camera that can be seen here) but so far...crickets.

Now - if anyone made a comment like that, but replaced Muslims with Jews the entire country would be up in arms and demanding the man be committed for psychiatric evaluation. But since apparently it's okay to hate Muslims and advocate for their demise, no one seems to care.

Good grief the GOP has gone collectively insane. What started as a pushback against (the utterly stupid) political correctness movement has devolved into a race to the bottom in who can be the most outrageous and hateful abuser of their American free-speech rights.

Deady can say shit like this - but I can also call him a genocidal maniac and a threat to the American way of life. I am embarrassed that this batshit insane, bloodthirsty, barbaric jackass ever wore the uniform of this country. In fact, I hang my head in shame at any association with this subhuman piece of shit at all.

Like us life science types say - I never met a fruitfly I was embarrassed to have a genetic link to - humans, though, are a different story entirely.

UPDATE: Saturday afternoon, MSNBC reported that John Deady has resigned as the New Hampshire co-chair of Veterans for Rudy.

Reached at his Bedford, N.H. home Saturday, Deady would not say whether he was pressured to resign. “This is not going to go any further with me,” he said. “I’m way beyond my depth with you people,” before suggesting reporters contact the campaign’s press office.

State Chairman Wayne Semprini said in a campaign statement Saturday that Deady resigned from his volunteer position.

The comments come at an interesting time for Giuliani, who has been actively courting support from veterans in recent days. He held three events for veterans in earlier this week in Florida before traveling to Iowa Friday.

Mr. Deady would have been well served if, in high school, he had read and taken to heart the wisdom of Finley Peter Dunne's Irish pub owner Mr. Dooley, who, in several books, dispensed wisdoms and hard truth from behind the bar of his southside Chicago tavern. The one that springs immediately to mind in this case is "Politics ain't beanbag: 'tis a man's game, and women, children 'n' pro-hy-bitionists had best stay out of it." (Add outclassed, un-thinking ideologues to that list, Mr. Dooley.)

I could almost feel sorry for the poor old fool if not for the fact that I know this about him: If he had three wishes, one of them would be to extinct a billion people. And I have no empathy for anyone with such evil in their soul. May all of the hate-filled assholes like him publicly expose themselves for the bigoted, jingoistic fascists they are, that we may mock them and drive them back into their caves.