The Null Device

The big news today was that Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb warlord wanted for organising massacres of Croatian and Muslim civilians, has been arrested, and is likely to be shipped to The Hague post-haste. Rather than hiding in a hole or an impregnable fortress manned by fierce hordesmen, Karadzic spent the past 14 years being a celebrated New Age therapist in Belgrade. He grew an ecclesiastical-looking white beard, called himself Dragan Dabic and went around teaching meditation, yoga and tai chi and offering "bio-energy healing", amassing a considerable following.

Those who knew Dr Dabic on the New Age circuit have told The Times that he was regarded as an expert in silence and meditation. One of his lectures was called 'The relationship between calmness and meditation,' and another one was titled 'How to nurture your own energies.'

Mr Ljajic said that Dr Karadzic's disguise had rendered him so unrecognisable that even the landlord from whom he rented a flat had no idea who he really was.

¶ atrocities deception radovan karadzic serbia war crimes 2

It's official: according the the UN, American nationals cannot, by definition, be war criminals, and crimes against humanity can only be committed by non-US nationals. At least for the next 12 months, renewable annually. And so, justice comes from the barrel of the biggest gun.

(What happens when China comes into its own as a world superpower, and demands that Chinese nationals be exempted from prosecution, threatening to sabotage the UN process if it's unfairly denied this privilege that the US has (as would be the rational thing for China to do faced with such a snub); or when Israel pushes for exemption for its operations in the Palestinian territories, with US backing? Or when Indonesia (the world's third most populous nation, and a potential economic and military powerhouse) starts doing so, and pushing its weight around? Or when a dozen other countries do the same? The criterion for exemption from prosecution doesn't seem to be anything other than "might makes right" (unless you believe in the doctrine of America's God-given Manifest Destiny or some other system of teleological mumbo-jumbo, of course). So we'll end up with a club of powerful nations who are above the law, and a puppet kangaroo court existing solely to try their defeated enemies and keep the small fry from rising above their station in world affairs.)

¶ geopolitics hobbesianism un usa war crimes 11