REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS PROTEST LETTER BECAUSE ARREST OF CROATIAN JORUNALISTS AND INDICTMENTS AGAINST OTHER CROATIAN JOURNALISTS

Croatia 7 October 2005 Journalist arrested at home on the order of the international criminal court for ex-Yugoslavia Reporters Without Borders called for the release on bail of journalist Josip Jovic, arrested at his Split home on the order of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on a charge of contempt of court. The 6 October 2005 arrest of Jovic, editor of the daily Slobodna Dalmacija was televised and shown the same evening on Croatian TV since he was in process of giving an interview at his home. Jovic’s arrest followed the issue of a warrant by the ICTY signed by a judge at a court in Split. He was placed in custody in a local prison while awaiting extradition to The Hague, which could take several weeks since he plans to appeal to the Croatian constitutional court and the Supreme Court. “We condemn this sudden arrest of Jovic by the Croatian justice system based on a ICTY arrest warrant, which appears disproportionate to the crime he is accused of and sets a dangerous precedent,” the worldwide press freedom organisation said.Considering the mandate of the tribunal in The Hague, which is supposed to try the most serious of international crimes, it is surprising that one of its decisions led to the arrest of a journalist who, even if he did not respect the law, has not committed a crime of violence.” “The same goes for the four other Croatian journalists also accused of contempt of court. Considering that this journalist represents no danger for Croatia and the ICTY, he should be released on bail.” Jovic failed to appear before the judges in The Hague on 26 September, unlike his colleague Marijan Krizic, editor of the weekly Hrvatsko Slovo, who answered his summons and was allowed to leave the court again freely. The two journalists are accused of contempt of court, along with Ivica Marijacic, editor of Hrvatski List, Stjepan Seselj, editor of Hrvatsko Slovo, and Domagoj Margetic, editor of Novo Hrvatsko Slovo, for revealing the identity of a protected witnesses, the current Croatian President, Stipe Mesic, at the trial of Tihomir Blaskic in 1997. They face up to seven years in prison and a fine of 100,000 euros. The trial of Ivica Marijacic, Stjepan Seselj, and Domagoj Margetic, who revealed the identity of Mesic in their newspapers in November 2004, is to open at the end of October. This confidential information had already been posted on the Documentation and Information Centre Veritas (www.veritas.org.yu) in 1999, and carried by the Bosnian daily Bih Dani, on 1st June 2001. “I will act in solidarity with my colleague and I prefer to go to prison rather than plead guilty before the ICTY”, Domagoj Margetic told Reporters Without Borders. The ICTY chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, said on 4 October that she was in favour of membership talks between Croatia and the EU, since Zagreb was fully cooperating with the ICTY. She had given an unfavourable opinion in March, complaining that the Croatian authorities were dragging their feet in arresting fugitive general, Ante Govina, charged by judges in The Hague in 2001. Domagoj Margetic

US forces' use of depleted uranium weapons is 'illegal' - [Sunday Herald]

US forces' use of depleted uranium weapons is 'illegal' - [Sunday Herald] By Neil Mackay, Investigations Editor BRITISH and American coalition forces are using depleted uranium (DU) shells in the war against Iraq and deliberately flouting a United Nations resolution which classifies the munitions as illegal weapons of mass destruction. DU contaminates land, causes ill-health and cancers among the soldiers using the weapons, the armies they target and civilians, leading to birth defects in children. Professor Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon's depleted uranium project -- a former professor of environmental science at Jacksonville University and onetime US army colonel who was tasked by the US department of defence with the post-first Gulf war depleted uranium desert clean-up -- said use of DU was a 'war crime'." cont......

The Authoritarian Personality' Revisited

An important study, and an idea that should be discussed by anyone concerned about the direction civilization is taking. Mycos~ The Authoritarian Personality' Revisited [excerpt]"The Authoritarian Personality addressed itself to the question of whether the United States might harbor significant numbers of people with a "potentially fascistic" disposition. It did so with methods that claimed to represent the cutting edge in social science -- and that's where the book got in trouble with scholars of its day. But in today's political climate, it might be time to revisit its thesis."

Wal-Mart Turns in Student’s Anti-Bush Photo,

Matthew Rothschild October 4, 2005 Selina Jarvis is the chair of the social studies department at Currituck County High School in North Carolina, and she is not used to having the Secret Service question her or one of her students. But that’s what happened on September 20." Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class “to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights,” she says. One student “had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb’s down sign with his own hand next to the President’s picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster.” According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent. But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this right is evidently suspect. An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service. On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High. cont......

How the world was duped

How the world was duped: the race to invade Iraq. Exclusive extract from Robert Fisk's new book (short version)

Quiz hints at Miers' views on gay rights

Does anyone in their right mind actually believe Bush when he makes statements like this?

"'Not to my recollection have I ever sat down with her [to discuss abortion],' Bush said Tuesday at his first solo press conference since May. 'What I have done is understand the type of person she is and the type of judge she will be.'"

And this about Miers....

She told the group she believed gay men and lesbians should have the same civil rights as straight Americans, but that she opposed repeal of the state's sodomy law criminalizing same-sex sexual conduct.

IOW, she's either completely stupid...how do you think gays should have all the civil rights of others except the right to make love to eah other?....or she's dishonest and was trying to answer the test in a manner that she deemed politicallly acceptable to some other voting profile. In any case, anyone who would go on record as saying she thought bush was smart is not an acceptable person to have authority over the lives of pet hamsters, nevertheless the lives of many people for years to come. In any case, c'mon...take a look.

A New Measure of Well-Being From a Happy Little Kingdom - New York Times

What is happiness? In the United States and in many other industrialized countries, it is often equated with money. Economists measure consumer confidence on the assumption that the resulting figure says something about progress and public welfare. The gross domestic product, or G.D.P., is routinely used as shorthand for the well-being of a nation. But the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has been trying out a different idea. In 1972, concerned about the problems afflicting other developing countries that focused only on economic growth, Bhutan's newly crowned leader, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, decided to make his nation's priority not its G.D.P. but its G.N.H., or gross national happiness. Bhutan, the king said, needed to ensure that prosperity was shared across society and that it was balanced against preserving cultural traditions, protecting the environment and maintaining a responsive government. The king, now 49, has been instituting policies aimed at accomplishing these goals. Now Bhutan's example, while still a work in progress, is serving as a catalyst for far broader discussions of national well-being. Around the world, a growing number of economists, social scientists, corporate leaders and bureaucrats are trying to develop measurements that take into account not just the flow of money but also access to health care, free time with family, conservation of natural resources and other noneconomic factors. The goal, according to many involved in this effort, is in part to return to a richer definition of the word happiness, more like what the signers of the Declaration of Independence had in mind when they included "the pursuit of happiness" as an inalienable right equal to liberty and life itself.

"Rule Of Law" Dead In America

"I am slowly dying in this solitary prison cell," says Omar Deghayes, a British refugee and Guantánamo Bay prisoner. "I have no rights, no hope. So why not take my destiny into my own hands, and die for a principle?" This magazine goes to press on the forty-ninth day of the Guantánamo hunger strike. In 1981 near Belfast, Bobby Sands and nine other members of the IRA starved themselves to death. The prisoners had insisted that they be treated as POWs rather than criminals. They died before the British government accepted that its use of kangaroo courts and its policy of "criminalization" did not just betray democratic principles; these methods functioned as the most persuasive recruiting sergeant the IRA ever had. How soon these lessons are forgotten. Three and a half years of internment without trial in Guantánamo, and any US claim to be the standard-bearer of the rule of law has dissolved. But there are two important distinctions between the experience of Sands and Omar Deghayes: The US military has insisted on secrecy regarding Guantánamo, and the US media have been compliant in their apathy. Despite the traditional British hostility to free speech, every moment of Bobby Sands's decline was broadcast live. In contrast, nothing we lawyers learn from our Guantánamo clients can be revealed until it passes the US government censors. Thus, two weeks went by before the public even knew there was a hunger strike, and the military has been allowed to dissemble on the details since. (continued) http://www.cjrdaily.org/archives/001875.asp

Who is Judy Miller Kidding?

To be fair, wasn't the initial consent form that Libby signed actually a consent form that Bush made his entire staff sign in an effort to defuse some finger pointing back in the day? Yes, it can be said that it was consensual because he didn't have to sign it, but we all know that the alternative was to be fired. Having said that however, I believe there is almost certainly much more to the story. Given that the first consent form wasn't really such, why did it take so long for Miller to get the one she says she was comfortable with as being unforced? Surely, if we are to believe Miller, why did it take so long fvor Libby to get this information? If Libby knew that Miller wasn't happy with the status of the first one, why did it take so long for him to authorize the second one? He surely did. What we don't know is what kind of negotiations have been going on during the time that Miller was just sitting there. No. There is much more to this story that we still know nothing about. We do know that Miller is a little sleazebag who will do and say anything to suck up to power, and we know that this administration values that type of person very highly. As proof, witness the Congressional Medal Of Honor given to Tenet for taking the heat off the White House when it became clear that they were lying about WMD's. That whole thing was straight reciprocity. I believe the key to this lies in the terms that Miller established before she would appear, specifically that their scope be limited to her relationship with Libby. In other words Ms. Huffington, you would do well to ask the questions that Miller established that Fitz and the GJ would not ask.

DEA Watch (The Wallenstein Solution)

If these guys weren't actually being armed by the government, minds like this would be hilarious. As is, they're certainly to be pitied. Imagine all this rage, all this parranoia and militaristic thinking being brought to bear on "making sure no pill fell into the wrong hands". Incredible. A perfect example of how far out of focus decades of propaganda can bring the minds of the more simple leader/follower types. Mycos~ .....(and) because of our country's military humiliations, butt-kickings, toss-outs and embarrassments over the past thirty years, Mr. Rumsfeld and others have decided that taking a CEO approach to dealing with armed opponents, that is, creating private armies, to win where official armies fail. (It is believed that there are approximately 170,000 allied controlled mercenaries operating in Iraq for various corporations and CIA covers... outnumbering the approx 120,000 US military personnel. Our own agency tried creating units of privatized 'soldiers' to serve in South America to deal with the armed insurrectionists protecting the drug cartels who finance their aggression... private 'cops' replaced DEA 1811's in the jungles. All of these private mercenaries have also failed. Now, instead of simply using S/A's who already have all the necessary training to secure pharmacies in troubled areas, HQ is reportedly thinking about providing 1811 training to 1801's... in short, giving guns to bookkeepers and pill counters. The cure for securing pharmacies is not training 1801's to serve as 1811's, the simple cure is acquiring better management personnel in HQ... a sharp Administrator and/or DepyAdministrator would have instantly recognized the need to send teams of agents into the storm areas before or immediately after the bad weather to make sure no pill fell into the wrong hands. Instead of minding the store the females in charge of DEA were making muffins, painting their fingernails, or organizing their tampon drawer."

Christianity and the Demise of America

Christianity and the Demise of America Christianity and the Demise of America By Charles Sullivan Real Christians would not tolerate presidents who make war on defenseless people based upon lies and innuendo. Bush and his imperialist polices should be openly and powerfully denounced from every pulpit in every church in the United States, every day. But they are not. In fact, just the opposite occurs. cont.....

Katrina Reality

http://www.magnuminmotion.com/#