The re-trial of military journalist and whistleblower Grigory Pasko began July 11 in Vladivostok, and is once again in recess. It is set to resume November 29, just over four years since Pasko was arrested on charges of supplying secret information to Japanese journalists.

The absurdities of contemporary Russian justice remain on display: the current recess was granted for expert examination of a recorded telephone call to verify that the voice is Pasko's - a fact the defendant has readily conceded while noting that none of the recorded conversation has bearing on the charges against him.

The prosecutor has scoffed at the suggestion that the European Convention on Human Rights, ratified by Moscow in 1998, had any bearing on this case from Russia's far east. On cross examination, experts called in by the court to examine the evidence against Pasko contradicted their written submissions, one even referring to one of their written conclusions as "nonsense."

Another of the experts told how the FSB (secret police) turned up at his home with a ready-made document for him to sign. In a related decision announced in September, the Russian Supreme Court, acting on a case filed by another Russian nuclear whistleblower, Alexander Nikitin, voided those ten (of 700) articles of the secret military decree under which Nikitin had been charged and acquitted.

Pasko and a handful of other academic and journalistic dissidents have been charged under various other articles of the same 1996 decree. The court's reasoning, if applied to the entire military decree, would void it entirely, and, it is hoped, end the other prosecutions that are taking place under significantly more secrecy than Pasko's.

Nikitin, recently in Vladivostok to support Pasko, told the press that despite new laws and a new constitution, "in Russia, any thinking individual who deals with science, journalism or collecting some material and analyzing it" risks prosecution under the secret military decree.

Pasko says the court has received over 24,000 letters from around the world supporting him, for which he is grateful...

MONSANTO: Maureen Doyle came to court August 15 to face a charge of trespass last June at the St. Louis headquarters of the pesticide corporation that is profiting from the U.S. inspired drug war in Colombia. Following a pre-trial conversation with an attentive judge, Doyle amended her plea to guilty and was sentenced to one year probation...

IOWA NATIONAL GUARD: Jerry Ebner pleaded guilty and received a sentence of community service following his arrest last April, protesting the Iowa National Guard's imminent deployment to Iraq...

RAYTHEON/ANDOVER: Tom Lewis-Borbely appeared in Lawrence, Massachusetts, district court July 9 for sentencing on his violation of a stay-away order from the war industry corporation's headquarters.

The prosecutor said Lewis-Borbely showed contempt for the law last Holy Week when he vigiled inside the 500-yard zone he'd been excluded from as a condition of probation for a Holy Week trespass action at Raytheon during Holy Week the previous year.

Co-defendant Scott Schaeffer-Duffy pointed out that even at abortion clinics after two murders, stay-away orders were limited to 25', and that the 500 yard limit kept his peace message unseen by workers.

In his own defense, Lewis-Borbely noted that he did not have contempt for the court, and had otherwise complied with the earlier sentence, performing 103 hours of community service and, at other weekly Raytheon vigils, remaining outside the 500 yard zone.

When Lewis-Borbely began speaking of Raytheon's EKV, a Star Wars missile interceptor, the judge cut him off, and promptly announced that Lewis-Borbely's original jail sentence would remain suspended, and the one year of probation would continue through October 31.

Lewis-Borbely returned home and to his work as an art teacher at the Worcester Museum of Art...