The Butcher of Bosnia

Radovan Karadzic was a former Bosnian Serb politician and convicted war criminal who served as the President of Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War.  Trained as a psychiatrist at Columbia University he co-founded the Serb Democratic Party in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

Following his indictment for war crimes in 1996 he remained on the run for more than a dozen years before he was eventually arrested and indicted in 2008 in Belgrade, Serbia.  In 2016, he was convicted of war crimes and genocide for the Srebrenica massacre in which more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered by Bosnian-Serb forces in July 1995.

Just this past week a United Nations court increased his sentence from 40 years to life imprisonment.  Mr. Karadzic - 70 at the time of the original verdict - was unlikely to live long enough to serve out the original sentence of 40 years in prison.  Nevertheless – this symbolic move - reaffirmed having been found guilty of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.   

You’re probably thinking:  Geez, Swamp, why is any of this horrific old news  of any consequence today? 


It would be as a consequence of this. 

Correspondence I had with the Butcher of Bosnia dating from 1992.     

click on the images for a closer look

 

This was for crimes committed before those he was ultimately convicted-of.   How many of you can say you corresponded with a genuine war criminal.  

Hope you like the accommodations in hell you worthless scum.    

You can learn more about this here…..

Friday Morning Music

Originally titled The Sounds of Silence - this song was composed by Paul Simon over the period of months between 1963 and 1964.  It was recorded by Simon and Art Garfunkel and released as a commercial flop in 1964.  As a consequence the duo broke-up with Simon returning to England and Garfunkel to university.

In the spring of 1965 the song began to attract air play leading song producer Tom Wilson to remix the track and re-release it in the fall of 1965.  By January 1, 1966 the song was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart.

The duo reunited and the rest is history. 

This cover by Disturbed is particularly awesome...