Video from Srebrenica massacre surfaces
Incredibly, a video has surfaced showing Serbian police torturing and killing six Bosnian Muslim prisoners during the course of the infamous Srebrenica massacre of 1995.

It's estimated* that about 7,500 Bosnian men from that town were killed following its surrender during the war in Bosnia. The town was supposedly a United Nations "safe haven," but a 600 man Dutch peacekeeping garrison stationed there for that purpose was taken hostage by Bosnian Serb forces under Ratko Mladic. Their failure eventually led to the resignation of then Dutch prime minister Wim Kok's cabinet.

It's almost as incredible as the discovery that excerpts from the video have been broadcast on Serbian television networks, following its display on Wednesday at the supposedly collapsed trial of war criminal-in-chief Slobodan Milosevic. (Ratko Mladic has eluded capture so far.)

Reporting for the New York Times, Nicholas Wood writes that the footage is a devastating refutation of both a common specific denial and a broader lazy denial that anything happened at all:

While the number of those killed represents a tiny proportion of those who died in July 1995, the video is being seen as irrefutable evidence that Serbia's police forces, and not just Bosnian Serb forces, took part in the massacre, evidence that challenges the commonly held view among Serbs that the atrocity never took place.

Wood writes that a phone survey of 1200 Serbs in April "showed that more than 50 percent of respondents either did not know about war crimes in Bosnia, or did not believe they had taken place."

Some of the perpetrators in the film have been arrested, but I wonder if there's enough evidence and political will to get one particular co-conspirator:

The video shows a group of paramilitary police, called the Scorpions, being blessed by a Serbian Orthodox priest before they start their mission. (emphasis added)

=====
* According to the Wikipedia entry, the exhumed body count has risen to 6,000.
UPDATE, 6/6/05: Additional details from Austrian newspaper reports posted yesterday.
NOTE, 6/10/05: The video footage begins at around 2 hours 35 minutes into the June 1 trial footage, with film of a military unit being reviewed; it's interrupted by prosecution commentary. Things start to get bad at around 2:38:23.
UPDATE, 2/27/07: To its discredit the International Court of Justice has acquitted Serbia of genocide or even complicity in genocide at Srebrenica and elsewhere. Legal proceedings by the ICTY (Intl. Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) against individuals like Mladic remain active. For this and other followups, click on the "trackback" link.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:05:00 AM -- |  

 
Unlike my noble sources

Felt's motivation might not have been so noble

-- Robert Novak, 6/2/2005

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report.

-- Robert Novak, 7/14/2003 posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:55:00 AM -- |  

 
"Visionary enchantment" endangered
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has listed the National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS) -- including the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument region described by Meriwether Lewis as a "land of visionary enchantment" -- as one of the eleven most endangered historic places in 2005:

Managed by the Federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the system was established to conserve, protect, and restore natural and cultural landscapes that offer visitors a chance to see the West through the eyes of the first Americans, as well as the explorers and homesteaders. However, BLM’s ability to provide this protection is seriously hampered by chronic understaffing and underfunding. As a result, fragile resources are being threatened or destroyed, often before they can be studied or even inventoried.

The Friends of the Missouri Breaks note that

Because of its isolation, the area remains wild and unspoiled--one of the few places left on the river that Captains Lewis and Clark would still recognize 200 years after their epic journey.

Last year they worked to try to prevent twelve gas leases in 10,000 acres of the "Bullwhacker" region of the Monument from being issued or renewed; that BLM decision is still pending, as far as I can tell. They are also working to prevent floatplane use of the Missouri within the confines of the Monument.

As I mentioned a week ago, I've been watching the Ken Burns documentary about the Lewis and Clark expedition. Give yourself a break some evening soon and watch it. If you don't come away determined to save the country you see there, I don't know what can be done for you.

The NLCS is much more than "merely" the Missouri Breaks, though. It encompasses 15 National Monuments, 14 National Conservation Areas, 11 National Scenic and Historic Trails, (including the Lewis and Clark, Oregon, and Nez Perce Trails), and 9 Wild and Scenic Rivers (map). From a Wilderness Society statement today:

The NLCS is a major breakthrough in the way we protect our most valuable landscapes. But under Interior Secretary Gale Norton's watch, the Bureau of Land Management has poured countless resources into opening our public lands to oil and gas development, threatening these unique places directly while also leaving the NLCS under staffed, under funded, and under protected.

The Wilderness Society has also provided a site for you to write a note to Secretary of the Interior Gail Norton and BLM officials urging them to increase their support for NLCS and its goals of historic and environmental preservation. Take a minute and send the BLM a message. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:10:00 PM -- |  

 
I am not making this stuff up
Readers of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer were angered late last month by this cartoon. The Editor and Publisher got cartoonist David Horsey's response:

'I am not making this stuff up. The mainstream press is not making this stuff up. It is real and is of great concern to our military. I should think it would be of concern to anyone who cares about the image of America in the world. It is unfathomable to me that folks who claim to believe in American values get upset about a poorly sourced item in Newsweek or a cartoon that is almost a literal interpretation of the facts, yet seem to be unconcerned about torture being perpetrated in their name.'

The cartoonist added that 'a true patriot is one who loves his country enough to call to account those who shame the flag by despicable actions that in no way reflect the guiding principles of this republic. This is not a liberal idea, a radical idea, or a treasonous idea. It is, in fact, a rather traditional, all-American idea. Making excuses for torture is common practice in banana republics and authoritarian regimes, but it is alien and antithetical to our constitutional democracy.

Via the estimable Avedon Carol. Meanwhile, over at Slate, Emilia Bazelon, Phillip Carter, and Dahlia Lithwick are not making this stuff up, either. (Hat-tip: stygius) posted by Thomas Nephew at 7:15:00 PM -- |  

 
Subject: Suppression of protest at Ehrlich veto ceremony
To: Chief Russell M. Pecoraro
Princess Anne Police Department
Princess Anne, Maryland

Dear Chief Pecoraro,

As you know, Governor Ehrlich recently chose to stage his veto of the Fair Share Health Care Bill in Princess Anne. While I was disappointed with that veto, I'm now reading with increasing disbelief in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Salisbury Daily Times, and in a press release by the Maryland Democratic Party that your police department -- and you personally -- prevented protesters from displaying signs, booing or making other vocal protests, and generally from exercising their full First Amendment rights to protest that veto. A WBAL-TV broadcast makes a similar report, and also seems to show your personal involvement in this intimidation.

I hope there is some misunderstanding, since I hope no competent American police officer would make such a poor, unconstitutional, and frankly un-American decision. I've neither read of nor seen in TV footage any hint or threat of violence from any of the protesters that would be the only remotely conceivable justification for such serious infringements of a fundamental right. One remaining reason for American troops fighting and dying in Iraq is that they are hopefully extending freedom to those who did not have it. It would waste their sacrifices if you were meanwhile denying the most basic freedom of all to their own fellow citizens.

But if these reports are true, by what or whose authority did you believe you could override the Bill of Rights of the United States of America? I hope it wasn't merely on the suggestion of some Wal-Mart representative or governor's aide! Was this decision the result of a direct order from someone, perhaps Governor Ehrlich himself or your town manager, who you felt you could not refuse? Even if it was, it was your duty to refuse such an order; no federal, state or local government has any business whatsoever telling people they cannot protest vocally and with signs, however unwelcome their opinions may be for that government, their police, or their community.

Or was this simply a poor decision that was completely your own responsibility? If so, a prompt apology to the protesters involved and to the people of Maryland might be the wisest course of action. That alone might convince Marylanders that they need not fear censorship or the power of the state as they freely and rightfully voice their opinions. If that is your goal, of course, it would be even more convincing and honorable to resign your post as well. If you did it under orders, those who gave them should also be held responsible.

I look forward to any responses, which I will share with others interested in this issue.

Sincerely,

Thomas Nephew
Takoma Park, Maryland

CC: Winslow Parker (Town Manager, Princess Anne, MD )
James Fisher (reporter, Salisbury Daily Times)
Governor Robert Ehrlich


=====
NOTES: For a post on the imminent veto that leads to others about the Fair Share Health Care bill itself, go to "Ehrlich expected to veto Fair Share Health Care today." (The protest suppression is noted there in an update.) The relevant excerpt from the 5/20 Salisbury Daily News article by James Fisher (article must be purchased):

Before the ceremony began, police officers told the group not to shout, chant or wave banners, instructions that frustrated some of them."There's no signs, either for or against the governor," a police officer said to Glenn Schneider, executive director of Maryland Citizens' Health Initiative."They're saying we can't boo, we can't yell, we can't show our banners," Schneider complained a moment later. "We can't do anything."

UPDATE, 6/14: So far, no replies. I found this quote at a WMDT-TV (Delmarva ABC station) report: "They just want to push how far they can go before they get locked up, and I said, 'look, we have laws here like anywhere else,'" says Pecoraro. A protester's apt comment: "This kind of climate works in China, but it shouldn't work on the Eastern Shore of Maryland," says [Tom] Hucker. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:08:00 PM -- |  

 
Four movie questions
Hey, now I get to do one of these things, too -- thanks, Stygius! It's a kind of chain-mail-by-blog of four questions:

Total number of films I own: About (ahem) 80 or so. I was in one of those DVD clubs once, and couldn't resist once in a while. Now I'm either tempted by the $10 bin at Borders, or, very occasionally, by one of the Criterion items I'll see at Politics and Prose.

The last film I bought: The Big Chill.

The last film I watched: Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (movies; pleasantly surprised, two thumbs up), Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery (home, see earlier post)

Five favorite films I either watch frequently or that mean a lot to me (in no particular order):
The Hunt for Red October, The Last of the Mohicans, The Bourne Identity, Mary Poppins, Chinatown (I share Stygius' appreciation for this one).

These are mainly popcorn "watch a lot" movies, since in all honesty I tend to view movies for their escapist value, not their existential deep thoughts index. That said, I really think highly of all of them as extremely well executed movies. I've written about the Bourne series before. Hunt has a tremendous cast, and a number of sequences I think are very memorable -- among them the initial shot of the Red October, Alec Baldwin's helicopter heading out to a rendezvous at sea, an undersea cat-and-mouse game overlaid on Sean Connery's captain delivering a fine epitaph to the submarine Cold War. If you believed, as I did (and still do), that we lived on or near a razor's edge in the 1980s, to have this be a popcorn movie is a kind of sweet relief every time I watch it.

Mohicans is movie making the way J. F. Cooper may have meant his writing to be: epic, gorgeous, thrilling. The landscapes (many scenes were shot in the North Carolina Appalachians) are stupendous, I'm a sucker for that. There's also a skirling, earworm of a melody that is used to good effect in the climactic scene, one of my favorite action sequences in any movie. I'm always a bit surprised this movie has fallen by the wayside. Chinatown aims for a different, noir target; I like that, its historicity (read Cadillac Desert sometime), and of course Nicholson's work with a script he seemed born for.

It may mean something or other that the first three movies -- make that the first four, actually -- are also examples of movies that are distinctly better, in my opinion, than the books they're based on. I don't have a critic's vocabulary (or eye, perhaps) but all of them have a "crispness" to them that I like as well. Obviously, one of these films is not like the others: the explanation is that we watched Mary Poppins a lot -- I mean a whole lot -- when Maddie was younger, and I appreciated how it pleasantly surprised me at first and remained enjoyable for all of us each time thereafter. The books, by contrast, reveal a surprisingly acidulous Poppins who we never took to.

This is "cheating," I suppose, but it's my blog: five more movies that "mean a lot to me" are Traffic, Breaking the Waves, Cast Away, You Can Count On Me, and American Beauty.

Traffic and American Beauty are probably well known to most readers. Breaking the Waves may not be; it's a kind of modern day Easter story that left me pretty shaken, but impressed. It's also one of my personal examples of a phenomenon I think either Chad Orzel or Tim Burke has written about -- experiencing extreme discomfort from watching a person behave reprehensibly.

Cast Away, for its part, didn't seem to leave much of an impression even though it was briefly a big box office movie. It stuck with me, though, even (and in fact over time especially) the oft-panned "aftermath" part. You Can Count On Me is a nice "little" movie, but it resonated with me as well; sometimes I see myself in Terry (Mark Ruffalo). And don't tell anyone, but I've got a bit of a crush on Laura Linney.

Since this is generally a news-related blog, I'll highly recommend two other movies: The Battle of Algiers, and The Fog of War. Both will reward repeated viewings, I'm pretty sure.

As required under paragraph 29(c)5 of the movie meme rules, I hereby forward the questions to five more bloggers: Brett Marston, Paul ("digitalwarfighter"), Jens Scholz, Iris ("Interfaith Nunnery"), and eRobin ("fact-esque"). Others should please feel free to share your own lists in the comments!

Finally, it's time for a contest -- name someone appearing in two of the works listed above; I know of two people who fit the bill. The first and second people to answer correctly in the comments win a microbrewed draft beer (or other comparable beverage of their choice) when we're both in the same town sometime.


=====
UPDATE: Iris, Brett, Jens (in English, too), Paul, eRobin respond. Among the favorites: Notorious, Wings of Desire, It's a Wonderful Life, The Fisher King, Star Wars (Original Trilogy). posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:40:00 PM -- |  

 
Rent Way time shaving lawsuit update
A little over a year ago I mentioned a corporate practice of docking employee minutes and hours from their work ("Time shaving: a shameful pattern of corporate theft"). The practice gained widespread attention with a Steven Greenhouse article in the New York Times; subsequently, one of the people mentioned in that article, Mr. Drew Pooters, contacted me about a class action lawsuit he and others are pursuing against Rent Way for damages due to this practice.

Last week, a reader asked what the latest developments were in the case; I e-mailed Mr. Pooters, who replied,

Yes, indeed, depositions have been taken as of this time, and of course, the usual delaying tactics have followed as well; the case is still proceeding (I was finding it kind of funny that they tried to buy me off, which, I was told, a violation of Michigan Law) at this time - to what end, no one knows, but others have stepped forward because it was the right thing to do. [...]

We will see this through to the end - [thanks to] the witnesses, the lawyers representing all of us, the New York Times (and many thanks to Steve Greenhouse for showing it's more widespread than even we thought), and all the individuals who want to make sure they get their rightful pay so they can take care of their families. I am all for international coporations who outsource jobs pay extra to educate the next generation of workers so they can compete internationally - something we are falling behind in month by month. After all, how can you make sure "no child gets left behind" if their parents can't afford the basics for them because their paychecks are being ripped off?

Pooters also mentioned a separate Rent Way development, in which they filed a so-called "SLAPP" ("strategic lawsuit against public participation") complaint seeking the identity of a Rentway message board participant ("goodbyerentway"). A January 2004 article in RTO Online, a publication focusing on the 'rent to own' business, reports:

Ron DeMoss, Rent Way VP and General Counsel told RTO Online "The objective of this suit is to learn who is posting these malicious lies." The "malicious lies" he refers to are various postings over an extended period alleging the involvement of Rent Way CEO Bill Morgenstern in the accounting scandal that has plagued Rent Way for over two years. Three former executives were convicted in the scandal. CEO Morgenstern was cleared of any wrongdoing. Once the true identity of "goodbyerentway" is known, the company hopes to seek monetary damages for the alleged defamation.

The article goes on to note that a recent New Jersey decision -- Dendrite v. Does -- established "strict procedural and evidentiary standards" before such information can be released by an Internet service provider (ISP). Chillingeffects.org (which furnishes the "SLAPP" information above) recommends that you know your own ISP's policy in this regard -- they may not feel obligated to notify you of a SLAPP subpoena.

Best wishes to Mr. Pooters and his co-plaintiffs -- and to "goodbyerentway"-- as these cases proceed. posted by Thomas Nephew at 7:00:00 PM -- |  

 
Catapult the propaganda -- they love it
Apparently Bush actually said this, at a Greece, New York "Bamboozlepalooza" event trying to sell Bush's destruction of Social Security:

See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.

I come to this via several posts by eRobin ("fact-esque") over the past few days -- I'm late to the party as usual. There's a video cut of the statement at the "Crooks and Liars" site (via agitprop).

It's hard to decide which is more of a jaw-dropper -- Bush's statement, or the applause he got for it. Even allowing for the hand-picked crowds he treats himself to, this is pitifully servile stupidity.

It's happened before, too. Back in February, Bush got himself tied up in knots trying to explain his thinking on Social Security, to the point where you suspected he'd not been taking some important medication or other. He asked "Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled," gave it another muddled shot, and concluded, "Okay, better? I'll keep working on it."

The audience response? According to the White House transcript, it was

(Laughter.)

Judging by these episodes, there seems to be a kind of sick, ironic thing going on in these little shows Bush puts on where nearly everybody knows the whole thing is a deceptive crock. You might expect this in a crowd of lobbyists at a keynote address by one of their CEOs, but it's disconcerting to see it in "heartland America" too. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:15:00 AM -- |  

 
House Republicans to servicewomen: scr*w you
Just in time for Memorial Day, a National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) e-mailing reports on the latest outrage from the House:

House Republican leaders refused to allow debate or votes on two amendments that would have provided compassionate health care to military women who’ve been raped. The first would have ensured that the morning-after pill, ordinary birth control pills that can prevent pregnancy after sex or assault, is made available to servicewomen at every military base. The second amendment would have allowed women to use their military health insurance for abortion care in cases of rape or incest.

NARAL comments that rapes of servicewomen rose 25% in 2004. The House didn't leave it at that, either:

Military women were also yet again denied the right to access abortion care at military facilities overseas when the House defeated an amendment to repeal a ban that forbids servicewomen and female military dependents from using their own money to pay for an abortion at overseas military hospitals.
(emphasis added)

Is that even constitutional? (I mean right now. I'm sure it will be in a few years.)

For more on the amendments that were voted down, here's are NARAL press releases about the denial of self-funded abortions, and the denial of morning-after pills. If you want to get more of this kind of news -- and after all, who doesn't -- here's a NARAL Pro-Choice signup form. NARAL also maintains a blog called Bush v. Choice.


=====
UPDATE, 5/29: Sunday New York Times editorial: "Disrespecting Women Soldiers." posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:30:00 AM -- |