Tuesday, March 14, 2006

MARK BRADY: What Milosevic Knew. "What the corporate media overwhelmingly ignores in Milosevic's death is what they ignored in his life as well--his intimate knowledge of US war crimes in Yugoslavia. While Milosevic was undoubtedly a war criminal who deserved to be tried for his crimes, he was also the only man in the unique position of being able to expose and detail the full extent of the US role in the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s." "It is a sad testimony to the state of international jurisprudence that after many attempts to find justice, the only hope for US victims in the Yugoslavia wars was the trial defense of a man many of those same victims despised. If there was an independent international court that was recognized and respected by the US, those responsible for bombing Yugoslavia would have been alongside Slobodan Milosevic in the docks these past years instead of having their responsibility being buried with him." So writes Jeremy Scahill in his essay "Rest Easy, Bill Clinton: Slobo Can't Talk Any More." Jeremy Scahill is an independent journalist who spent extensive time reporting from Yugoslavia, including covering the 1999 US-led NATO bombing from the ground. The night Milosevic was arrested in Belgrade, Scahill was beaten by the former president's supporters outside Milosevic's residence. See also Amy Goodman’s interview with Andrej Grubacic, Chris Hedges, and Jeremy Scahill. [Liberty & Power: Group Blog] To be sure, there will never be indictments of these U.S. war criminals at The Hague: Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Jamie Rubin, William Cohen, Sandy Berger, Richard Holbrooke, and Wesley Clark. For many of Serbia's victims of U.S. war crimes, Milosevic's trial was a "Hail Mary" pass, as awful an historical irony as that is, aimed at someone recognizing their forgotten suffering. It is a sad testimony to the state of international jurisprudence that after many attempts to find justice, the only hope for U.S. victims in the Yugoslavia wars was the trial defense of a man many of those same victims despised. If there was an independent international court that was recognized and respected by the U.S., those responsible for bombing Yugoslavia would have been alongside Slobodan Milosevic in the docks these past years instead of having their responsibility buried with him. 9:46:55 AM    comment () trackback () Former top judge says US risks edging near to dictatorship. Sandra Day O'Connor, a Republican-appointed judge who retired last month after 24 years on the supreme court, has said the US is in danger of edging towards dictatorship if the party's rightwingers continue to attack the judiciary. In a strongly worded speech at Georgetown University, reported by National Public Radio and the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Ms O'Connor took aim at Republican leaders whose repeated denunciations of the courts for alleged liberal bias could, she said, be contributing to a climate of violence against judges. Ms O'Connor, nominated by Ronald Reagan as the first woman supreme court justice, declared: "We must be ever-vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary." She pointed to autocracies in the developing world and former Communist countries as lessons on where interference with the judiciary might lead. "It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings." (link) A story getting almost no media coverage. Will O'Connor say this in more public forums? [Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs] If she does, I expect that the Busheviks will attack her as a "liberal traitor," despite her having been appointed by their Saint Reagan. 9:28:41 AM    comment () trackback () What Would You Demand From Your IT Department?. ZombieLine asks: "The IT department at my company (approximately some 500 people) is showing signs of incompetence, and has been ignoring knowledgeable user input for about a year. Additionally, they haven't been able to sell needed changes to senior management. Unacceptable server down time, maxed network storage, and no backups systems have hit the bottom line, and those on top are starting to notice. We users are staging a revolt to make IT more responsive to users by creating a group from the company divisions and IT to discuss needs and solutions. What would you put in our charter?" What services and responsibilities would you demand out of your IT department? [Slashdot] Personally, I'd like it if IT departments would recognize that they're supposed to exist to support the other employees of the company, and not vice versa. 9:23:53 AM    comment () trackback ()

© Copyright 2006 Ken Hagler. Last update: 4/3/2006; 11:33:18 AM.