STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Crimes Against Humanity – Another Phony Meme
By Staff News & Analysis - May 27, 2011

As the commander of the Bosnian Serb army, Gen Mladic is accused of masterminding some of the worst atrocities that were committed during the brutal Bosnian civil war in the 1990s. In particular he is said to have ordered the murder of an estimated 7,500 Bosnian Muslims following the capture of Srebrenica in 1995. – UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: These people are Nazis and deserve to be strung up …

Free-Market Analysis: The inimitable Con Coughlin of the Telegraph is out with another article now that the Serbian Ratko Mladic has been arrested. Nato always gets its man, Coughlin writes. And he should know. His bio informs us that he is the Telegraph's executive foreign editor and "a world-renowned expert on the Middle East and Islamic terrorism."

In our view, Coughlin is a good example of the yin and yang one finds in life. The Telegraph provided a pulpit for one of the best mainstream business and finance editors and reporters ever, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who served as the international business editor of the Daily Telegraph. Evans-Pritchard was, shall we say, the "yin," Coughlin … hm-mm …. the yang.

So … anybody who knows the whereabouts of Evans-Pritchard is welcome to write in. Unlike his many of his continental compatriots, he was not afraid to report on the EU's flaws and difficulties. This provided him, in fact, with endless, subject matter. Over and over, he wrote insightful articles bashing the European Union with joyful exactitude.

Ironically, one of his last articles – on Spain, and the likelihood that its economy would survive the EU crisis unscathed – was probably his worst. It was so unlike his previous writing that it seemed almost as if he had come under pressure to write it. And then he stopped writing altogether. And not just for the Telegraph. We haven't seen his byline anywhere since February. Our elves are distressed.

We have searched his name out on Google; only old bylines. Is he dead? He was a fairly young man. There was some speculation that he worked for MI6, so perhaps he has been snatched from the ranks of ink-stained wretches and placed in some obscure corner of the world under deep cover. Or maybe he has given up unwholesome scribbling to pad his nest-egg with something lucrative like pub-keeping.

Alternatively, we imagine he has been kidnapped and spirited off to Europe where he is even now being tortured by EU President Herman Van Rompuy. Held deep in the bowels of Brussels, he has been forced to listen to random recordings of the EU's putative national anthem and old speeches by Von Rompuy in several languages on the EU's positive prospects. We fear for his sanity.

But there is Con Coughlin! Now we have nothing personally against Mr. Coughlin, but to put it bluntly we have never read an article of his we agreed with. We don't believe in Western wars of pre-emption. We don't believe, for the most part, in Western war at all, which is waged primarily to benefit the agenda of Anglo-American elites. But Coughlin is relentlessly truculent (in a jovial way) and never once has he has questioned any Western military strategy that we can think of, except perhaps to complain it would not work.

In this article, (predictably one with which we disagree) Coughlin rejoices over the capture of General Mladic. The wartime atrocities of Mladic, he writes, have "long cast a shadow over Nato's reputation … But even though Gen Mladic and his accomplices were able to escape into hiding in Serbia following the war's end, Nato officials have never given up their quest to bring him to justice. Radovan Karadzic, the charismatic Bosnian Serb political leader, has already been caught and sent to stand trial in the Hague."

What is Coughlin's conclusion? "The trial of one of the world's most wanted war criminals will demonstrate to other rogue dictators that, when it comes to facing international justice, there is no hiding place. Colonel Gaddafi take note." In fact, this a kind of sub dominant social theme. The enemies of the Anglosphere elite are the enemies of all humanity. Nice to be able to demonize personal enemies so generously …

And so we ask, what about Afghanistan and Iraq? What about Libya, where Western (and NATO) flymen even now are killing civilians seemingly on every bombing run. What about the American drone attacks against Pakistan that kill women and children regularly? We have no special sympathy for Mladic, who seems a brutal warrior (is there any other kind?) but institutionally, these prosecutions are a bad idea.

No, for us, the increased activism of the International Criminal Court at the Hague is not inspiring. It is troubling, and we do not expect to see a NATO general in the dock any time soon. As far as Mladic is concerned, we have read (somewhere) that 90 percent of Serbs apparently consider him a hero, which makes his trial incendiary as well as unfortunate.

There is also the issue of "crimes against humanity" generally. This is phony, as is the nation-state itself. While the concept of the nation-state is useful, its personification is not. The state, contrary to popular descriptions, has neither wants nor needs. It is merely a geographical description.

Likewise, "humanity" is a concept, not an individual. One can commit a crime against a person. One cannot commit a crime against "humanity," as it is merely a concept, a description, a place-holder. Western leaders have set up a mechanism based on a misrepresentation.

They do this quite a bit, in fact. There is the concept of the "central bank" that is supposed to aid in keeping economies stable and healthy but does no such thing. There is the concept of regulation, which is supposed to provide guidelines and discipline for the market itself but fails lamentably (as it cannot, in fact, succeed). There is the concept of (regulatory) democracy itself, which regularly gives birth to socialism, fascism and even communism.

The ICC is a bad and biased idea. Birthed by George Soros, its gestation accomplished within the warm womb of his illegitimate wealth, its conclusions continue to be misguided. If Mladic did something wrong, let his own people try him – or let his enemies deal with him. Likely they shall be more generous than the ICC because they will remember how the fortunes of war turn.

After Thoughts

We cannot help but recall the brave, self-flagellating Robert E. Lee. As punishment for his role as the South's leading General, the North built a graveyard on his estate and called it Arlington. Today, Lee would stand in the dock of the ICC to listen to a list of the crimes that he had committed. After which (months or years later) he might be strung up. Maybe, like the apparently fake, bearded Saddam Hussein whom the Iraqis supposedly hung as punishment for his crimes, his head would be severed (reportedly) in the process. Today, it would be cause for celebration.

Posted in STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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