Leprosy treatment

Wild as any freedom loving racist
I applaud the actions of the chief - Leonard Cohen

The latest spin on the poisoning of Slobodan Milosovic is that it was likely self-administered. Well, we're getting there.

Initial reports that Milosovic had recently expressed fear for his life and that his blood contained traces of Rifampicin, a drug used to treat leprosy and tuberculosis, were greeted with skepticism and even hostility on the part of the stubbornly incurious, who are inclined to type "Not everything is a conspiracy" when in fact they admit to none.

Rifampicin would have inhibited the effectiveness of Milosovic's blood pressure medication, possibly precipitating his fatal heart attack. Hague toxicologist Donald Uges says he is "sure he took the medicine himself because he wanted a one-way ticket to Moscow" for treatment. Earlier the UN's chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said it could have been a suicide, just as Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic's death in the same prison was said to be only a week before. Milosovic had been under constant suicide watch, so perhaps now his passing will be rulled "death by misadventure."

Some people kill themselves, and some others die natural deaths. Others still are murdered. This is something which those who twitch at every suggestion of conspiracy tend to forget. That assassins carry the whole black bag of statecraft means justice is almost never done, except for the victor's justice of a belligerant state that daubs itself in the innocents' blood.

Milosovic sought the testimony of Bill Clinton, and he would have seized the moment to expose the deep politics that saw al Qaeda operate as an overt strategic ally of American interests in the Balkans war. Bin Laden himself visited Albania in 1994 and sent units to fight in Kosovo alongside the KLA. The convergence of interest in the Balkans for al Qaeda and the United States was only superficially religious and poltical. It was narco-criminal. Frank Ciluffo, Deputy Director of the Globalized Organized Crime Program, alluded to this in his testimony before the Congressional Judicial Committee on December 13, 2000 (as quoted in Michel Chossudovsky's War and Globalization):

What was largely hidden from public view was the fact that the KLA raise part of their funds from the sale of narcotics. Albania and Kosovo lie at the heart of the "Balkan Route" that links the "Golden Crescent" of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the drug markets of Europe. This route is worth an estimated $400 billion a year and handles 80 percent of heroin destined for Europe.

In the opening statement of his trial, Milosovic said

In 1998 when Holbrooke visited us in Belgrade, we told him the information we had at our disposal, that in Northern Albania the KLA is being aided by Osama bin Laden, that he was arming, training, and preparing the members of this terrorist organization in Albania. However, they decided to cooperate with the KLA and indirectly, therefore, with bin Laden, although before that he had bombed the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania [and] had already declared war.

He concluded "one day all this will have to come to light, these links." Jeremy Scahill notes today, "That, however, is unlikely, and more so now that Milosevic is dead."

"The man dubbed the Butcher of the Balkans [was] responsible for the deaths of at least 250,000 people," says Britain's Sun tabloid in memorium. That's a lot of death. Coincidently last week, the Lancet Medical Journal now estimates that the US invasion and three-year occupation of Iraq has killed more than 250,000 Iraqi civilians. That's a full one percent of the country's pre-war population: the equivalent of three million Americans, to convert the blood to a currency the West better appreciates.

But then the United States doesn't recognize the Hague, except for others. And it doesn't do body counts, unless the bodies can be laid at the feet of its enemies. At whose feet will Milosovic lie? Those of another butcher, still plying his trade.


By the way, have you seen this: "The Pakistan foreign office had paid tens of thousands of dollars to lobbyists in the US to get anti-Pakistan references dropped from the 9/11 inquiry commission report, The Friday Times has claimed. The Pakistani weekly said its story is based on disclosures made by foreign service officials to the Public Accounts Committee at a secret meeting in Islamabad on Tuesday."