Please forgive me for judging people. I know you would never do that.

Nick,

NATO is not bombing Yugoslavia, it's all in your head, it's not real, this message board is not real either.

Legality of Use of Force
(Yugoslavia v. Belgium) (Yugoslavia v. Canada) (Yugoslavia v. France)(Yugoslavia v. Germany) (Yugoslavia v. Italy) (Yugoslavia v. Netherlands) (Yugoslavia v. Portugal) (Yugoslavia v. Spain) (Yugoslavia v. United Kingdom)(Yugoslavia v. United States of America)

The Court rejects the requests for the indication of provisional measures submitted by Yugoslavia

THE HAGUE, 2 June 1999. Today, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) gave its decisions on the requests for the indication of provisional measures submitted by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in the above-mentioned cases.

In its requests, Yugoslavia had asked the Court to order the States involved to "cease immediately [their] acts of use of force" and to "refrain from any act of threat or use of force" against the FRY.

In two of the ten cases (Yugoslavia v. Spain and Yugoslavia v. United States of America), the Court held that it manifestly lacked jurisdiction and ordered that the cases be removed from its List.

In eight of the ten cases (Yugoslavia v. Belgium; Yugoslavia v. Canada; Yugoslavia v. France; Yugoslavia v. Germany; Yugoslavia v. Italy; Yugoslavia v. Netherlands; Yugoslavia v. Portugal; Yugoslavia v. United Kingdom), the Court found that it lacked prima facie jurisdiction, which is a prerequisite for the issue of provisional measures, and that it therefore could not
indicate such measures. A fuller consideration of the question of jurisdiction will take place later. The Court accordingly remains seized of those cases and has reserved the subsequent procedure for further decision.

In its reasoning, the Court expresses its deep concern "with the human tragedy, the loss of life, and the enormous suffering in Kosovo which form the background" of the dispute and "with the continuing loss of life and human suffering in all parts of Yugoslavia". It sets out its profound concern with the use of force in Yugoslavia, which "under the present circumstances . . . raises very serious issues of international law", and emphasizes that "all parties before it must act in conformity with their obligations under the United Nations Charter and other rules of international law, including humanitarian law".

The Court explains that its jurisdiction depends upon consent, for there must be acceptance by a State of the Court's jurisdiction before the Court can determine whether particular acts are compatible with international law. "The latter question can only be reached when the Court deals with the merits having established its jurisdiction and having heard full legal arguments by both parties". The Court stresses however that, "whether or not States accept the jurisdiction of the Court, they remain in any event responsible for acts attributable to them that violate international law, including humanitarian law", and that "any disputes relating to the legality of such acts are required to be resolved by peaceful means, the choice of which, pursuant to Article 33 of the Charter, is left to the parties". In this context, "the parties should take care not to aggravate or extend the dispute". The Court reaffirms that "when such a dispute gives rise to a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression, the Security Council has special responsibilities under Chapter VII of the Charter".

Corporations That Own Our Media

By Ben Bagdikian

Experimenters have discovered that you can turn a cat into an alcoholic.
The normal cat doesn't expect it, but keep adding vodka to the
dish and the cat will soon demand spiked milk as an absolute necessity.

The fat cats of the American mass media have lost their taste for the
mother's milk of normal free enterprise: real competition for a
reasonable profit. Thanks to addictive doses of sympathetic governmental
policies and two decades of a drive for power, a shrinking
number of large media corporations now regard monopoly, oligopoly and
historic levels of profit as not only normal, but as their earned
right.

In the process, the usual democratic expectation for the media --
diversity of ownership and ideas -- has disappeared as the goal of
official policy and, worse, as a daily experience of a generation of
American readers and viewers.

In 1982, when I completed research for my book, The Media Monopoly, 50
corporations controlled half or more of the media business.
By December 1986, when I finished a revision for a second edition, the 50
had shrunk to 29. The last time I counted, it was down to 26.
[When the latest edition of The Media Monopoly was published in 1993, the
number was down to 20. -ed.] A number of serious Wall
Street media analysts are predicting that by the 1990s, a half-dozen giant
firms will control most of our media.

Of the 1,700 daily papers, 98 percent are local monopolies and fewer than
15 corporations control most of the country's daily
circulation. A handful of firms have most of the magazine business, with
Time, Inc. alone accounting for about 40 percent of that
industry's revenues.

The three networks, Capital Cities/ABC, CBS and GE/NBC, still have
majority access to the television audience, and most of the book
business is controlled by fewer than a dozen companies, with major
categories like paperback and trade books dominated by still fewer
firms.

The safest way to ensure diversity of opinion is diverse ownership. But
this ideal has been sacrificed by government devotion to the
mythical doctrine of free market economics. The myth rests on the bizarre
assumption that the modern American corporate scene is
actually like Adam Smith's rural country market, in which all the farmers
came to town to compete for the business of sharp-eyed
customers.

If there's any truly free market in modern corporate affairs, there is
none in through-the-air broadcasting. According to the Federal
Communications Act, the airwaves belong to the public (something the
Reaganites have ignored). The airwaves are a limited resource,
and there are a small number of available channels. The Federal
Communications Commission, by law, is supposed to resist monopoly
and concentrated ownership, and to grant licenses on the basis of "public
interest, convenience and necessity."

During the 1980s, the FCC, under Mark Fowler, has used the country's
broadcasting system as an experiment in so-called free market
economics. The FCC has expanded the number of stations one corporation may
own and suspended the demand that stations do any
public service, like news and community issues programming. It has let big
operators (Murdoch, Capital Cities, Cox, etc.) buy
competitors. And it has made it almost impossible to challenge a license
if the public doesn't like what it sees.

The FCC is not bailing out a sick industry. The three networks, even with
their takeover debts, are still making money. Affiliated
television stations are earning annual pre-tax profits of 40 percent or
more. As a result, stations that used to sell for tens of millions now
sell for prices in the half-billion-dollar range. Where else can you get a
business based on a license issued and protected by the U.S.
government, make 40 percent profit or more a year, and not be expected to
be held to some standard of public service?

The printed media are not licensed, since anyone who has the cash can buy
paper, ink and press time. But newspapers are mainly local
monopolies. And the government has permitted a dozen outfits to dominate
the business by letting them buy an unlimited number of
papers. (At last count Gannett had 92, Thomson 99.)

Whole magazine "divisions" of corporations are now bought and sold, as are
book companies, by the same giant firms that dominate
other media. Rupert Murdoch, already a major owner in newspapers,
magazines, broadcasting and movie production, recently became a
big player in books by purchasing the last of the large independent
publishers, Harper & Row. (Like some other dominant owners in the
U.S. media -- Thomson, a Canadian, and Bertelsmann, a German -- Murdoch is
also a major owner in other countries, such as Australia
and England.)

All of this has proceeded without serious question by government; under
the Reagan administration, the Justice Department's antitrust
division has been under heavy sedation.

By now, the corporations that dominate our media, like the alcoholic cats,
treat this situation as theirs by right. For them, economic
competition means dividing the major markets among the giants, while
pretending that the field is still a fair one because the
one-book-a-year publisher is free to battle it out with Gulf & Western
(owner of Simon & Schuster and Paramount Pictures). Their
concept of a diversity of views is the full range of politics and social
values from center to far right. The American audience, having been
exposed to a narrowing range of ideas over the decades, often assumes that
what it sees and hears in the major media is all there is.

It is no way to maintain a lively marketplace of ideas, which is to say
that it is no way to maintain a democracy.

-U.N. Estimates on Kosovo Refugees=20

By The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 1, 1999; 4:02 p.m. EDT

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that more than
850,000 people, the vast majority of them ethnic Albanians, have left
Kosovo since NATO began its air assault March 24.

Many of Kosovo's 1.8 million ethnic Albanians were already displaced
before the current exodus. This includes 100,000 who sought asylum in
European countries before the airstrikes on Yugoslavia.=20

-- The whereabouts and numbers of the refugees, according to UNHCR:

Albania -- 442,400

Macedonia -- 249,300

Montenegro -- 67,600

Bosnia Herzegovina -- 21,700

-- Refugees who have been evacuated from Macedonia, according to
UNHCR:=20

Germany -- 13,250

Turkey -- 7,475

Norway -- 5,951

Italy -- 5,829

Canada -- 5,154

United States -- 4,984

France -- 4,543

Austria -- 4,383

Netherlands -- 3,568

Sweden -- 2,606

Britain -- 2,094

Australia -- 2,054

Denmark -- 1,997

Belgium -- 1,223

Switzerland -- 1,184

Spain -- 1,124

Poland -- 1,049

Finland -- 958

Portugal -- 952

Czech Republic -- 824

Ireland -- 603

Slovenia -- 483

Israel -- 206

Croatia -- 188

Malta -- 105

Slovakia -- 90

Iceland -- 70

Romania -- 41

-- Countries that have offered to take in refugees on a temporary basis,
according to governments:=

Turkey -- 20,000

United States -- 20,000

Germany -- 15,000

Finland -- 10,000=

Italy -- 10,000

Norway -- 6,000

Sweden -- 5,000

Austria -- 5,000

Canada -- 5,000

Croatia -- 5,000

Australia -- 4,000

Britain -- up to 1,000 per week

Switzerland -- 2,500

Netherlands -- 2,000

Denmark -- 1,500

Romania -- 1,500

Poland -- 1,000

Portugal -- 500

Iceland -- 100

Malta -- 100



Copyright 1999 The Associated Press