On Tuesday

In 1979, the Khmer Rouge are sent running. In 2011, the UN cannot decide if it must proceed with the trial of two former Khmer Rouge ex-commanders:

The United Nations on Tuesday strongly denied that it had ordered Cambodia war crimes judges to reject a new case involving the Khmer Rouge.

With the country gearing up for a major Khmer Rouge era trial this month, Cambodian media reports said five UN staff have resigned in protest at a decision to close the new case without properly investigating the charges.

The UN-backed war crimes court has threatened legal action in a bid to prevent publication of leaked details of the case.

"The United Nations categorically rejects media speculation that we have instructed the co-investigating judges to dismiss Case Three," said UN spokesman Martin Nesirky of the new Khmer Rouge inquiry.

The names of the suspects in the case have not been made public, but they are thought to be two ex-commanders from the brutal 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime blamed for up to two million deaths....

The Cambodia war crimes court's second trial starts on June 27. Among the four defendants are Khieu Samphan, the former Khmer Rouge head of state, and Nuon Chea, the deputy to notorious regime leader Pol Pot.

Prime Minister Hun Sen has repeatedly voiced his objection to further trials, however, saying they could plunge the country into civil war.

The international court's investigating judges have been under fire ever since they announced in April they had concluded their investigations into case three, without questioning the suspects.

International co-prosecutor Andrew Cayley -- without the backing of his Cambodian colleague -- demanded the suspects be interviewed and more crime scenes examined but the judges rejected his request last week on technicalities.

Nesirky said the UN will "not comment on issues which remain the subject of judicial consideration, nor speculate on actions that should or should not be taken by the judges or prosecutors in any case."

Why not investigate these butchers? This has been going on long enough.


Thank you:

It is wise to navigate through the news and elite wisdom through two landmarks: anything that Barack Obama says will be airbrushed, improved, or modified to fit facts post facto; anything Sarah Palin says or does will be contextualized in Neanderthal terms. Teams of Post and Times volunteers now sort through Sarah Palin’s email; not a reporter in the world is curious about what Barack Obama once said about Rashid Khalidi or the Columbia University GPA that won him entrance to Harvard Law School. Accept that asymmetry and almost everything not only makes sense about these two cultural guideposts, but can, by extension, explain the 1860-like division in American itself.

Truth to power.  Truth to power.


Why Celebrity Apartheid Week matters:

Tina Fey has spoken out regarding Tracy Morgan's homophobic remarks (made during the actor's comedy show in Nashville last week), calling her "30 Rock" co-star's comments "disturbing."

"Stand-up comics may have the right to 'work out' their material in its ugliest and rawest form in front of an audience, but the violent imagery of Tracy's rant was disturbing to me," Fey said in a statement released to Access Hollywood ....

"It also doesn't line up with the Tracy Morgan I know, who is not a hateful man and is generally much too sleepy and self-centered to ever hurt another person," the statement continued. "I hope for his sake that Tracy's apology will be accepted as sincere by his gay and lesbian coworkers at '30 Rock,' without whom Tracy would not have lines to say, clothes to wear, sets to stand on, scene partners to act with, or a printed-out paycheck from accounting to put in his pocket."

Thanks for standing by your friend, third-rate Sarah Palin impressionist Tina Fey. Jodie Foster looks positively angelic next to you.


I'm not defending Tracy Morgan or Mel Gibson, two grown men who threw themselves off the cliff of poor decision-making, but I certainly won't applaud Tracy Morgan's forced march to a re-education camp, either.


My particular beef now is how someone who is presumably his friend took so long to give a milquetoast statement saying how dreadful he is to have crossed a line in an arena where there presumably is no line, which is really just a stab in the back. Had Tracy Morgan joked about stabbing white Alaskan politicians, I'm sure it would have sent the leftist room into a roar. But now that he has offended the gilded sexual minority, he has gone so far that not even Tina Fey has the courage to save him.


This is why celebrities, not Israel, should be boycotted. Why should mediocre talents and people who are clearly not willing to be principled, or stand by principles, be the moral and social focus of an entire civilisation? It's one thing to find Mr. Morgan jokes utterly unfunny and/or tasteless. It's quite another to throw him under the bus because you don't want the stink of not being "one of the gang" on you.



And now, beautiful art- LOTR style.