-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- There are some embed links to reports. If ya haven't read them, HIGHLY reccomended. At Mr. Grabbe's page. Om K ----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Impeached POTUS Clinton May Miss State of the Union Speech Jury Tampering PRESIDENT CLINTON may be forced to shelve his State of the Union Address, the showpiece in the American political calendar, because of his impeachment trial. Democrats and Republicans agree that he cannot stand at the podium in Congress on Jan 19 if he is still, figuratively, in the dock of the Senate facing perjury and witness-tampering charges being prosecuted by the House of Representatives. Senators of both parties say it would be improper for the President to deliver an oration to his accusers and, in the Senate's case more importantly, to his jurors. Mr Clinton desperately wants to go ahead with the speech, which offers an unparalleled set-piece opportunity for a president to present himself as in charge and purposeful. Last year he seized the chance to repair his credibility eight days after the Monica Lewinsky sex-and-cover-up scandal erupted. It would not be a constitutional problem were the President to fail to deliver the speech in person. Although the constitution requires presidents to give Congress an annual report, before the advent of television many sent it in writing rather than turning up on Capitol Hill to bask in applause. Mr Clinton's trial is due to open next Monday. If a censure compromise cannot be agreed, and a full trial goes ahead, it would take weeks, perhaps months, some Senators fear. The London Telegraph, Jan. 5, 1999 Information SuperSpyWay Reno Appointed Web Hubbell to Oversee Clipper Chip by Charles R. Smith See the FBI documents here: http://www.software.net/fbi.html A newly de-classified document from the FBI confirms that Attorney General Reno appointed Webster Hubbell to a secret computer chip project intended to bug America. The document, a 1993 letter from FBI Director William Sessions to Janet Reno, was obtained from the Department of Justice using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The FBI letter to Reno states "During the June 30, 1993 meeting with the National Security Council staff to discuss the status of the Presidential Decision and Review Directives concerning key-escrow encryption technology and telecommunications trends, which was attended by Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell, the issue of a recommended solution to the law enforcement access problem, or the digital telephony issue, was discussed." The Department of Justice withheld many of the documents seen by Hubbell, including a SECRET report from the FBI on "Requirements For the Surveillance of Electronic Communications." The June 30, 1993 letter from Sessions to Reno states that the Whitewater figure attended a secret White House briefing on U.S. computer chip policy. In 1993, President Clinton considered mandatory legislation for a special computer chip called CLIPPER to be manufactured into all U.S. computers. According to a SECRET FBI report from 1992, the CLIPPER chip contained a "exploitable feature" which allowed the Federal Government to intercept and decode computer communications. The letter proves Ms. Reno appointed her trusted Assistant Attorney General Webster Hubbell to over-see the secret National Security Agency (NSA) encryption chip project in 1993. According to documents obtained using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Hubbell attended at least one other meeting at the National Security Agency (NSA) Headquarters in May 1993, along with White House lawyers Vince Foster and Bernard Nussbaum. Ms. Reno has been heavily involved in the making of computer security policy of interest to China since 1993. She has also supported a view to monopolize the computer security industry under the Federal government. One 1996 CIA report noted that Ms. Reno wanted to monitor all American domestic computer communications such as e-mail, using a technique to secretly intercept and decode any messages. According to CIA Director John Deutch, the government would mandate all computers be equipped with a special "back-door" system called "key recovery". Federal agents would use a secret "key" to secretly enter a back door and read any computer communication. According to the 1996 report to V.P. Gore by CIA Director Deutch, Ms. Reno proposed an all out Federal take-over of the computer industry. The Justice Department, proposed "legislation that would ... ban the import and domestic manufacture, sale or distribution of encryption that does not have key recovery." Prime targets for monitoring would be foreign governments, banks, corporations, and individuals opposing the Clinton administration. The keys were to be held by "key recovery agents" licensed by the Commerce Department. According to Congressional investigators, documents from Hubbell's personal schedule for 1993 show that the Whitewater figure met multiple times at the White House on a top secret computer chip project called CLIPPER. Hubbell met with the then National Security Council (NSC) advisor George Tenet. Tenet is currently the Director of the CIA. According to George Tenet's SECRET White House email, Ron Brown insisted that the Commerce Department be one of the key holders or be in charge of licensing key holders. Hubbell resigned from the Justice Department in April of 1994. In late June 1994, Lippo boss James Riady met with John Huang and Bill Clinton during five days of White House visits. Early the next week, a Lippo unit paid Hubbell about $100,000. In December 1994, Hubbell pled guilty to several felony charges relating to illegal billing in the Whitewater affair. Webster Hubbell also cited his Fifth Amendment rights to not testify before the Senate Congressional hearings. Two weeks after the Lippo money was given to Mr. Hubbell, John Huang got his job at the Commerce Department as Assistant Secretary. Huang's position determined technology transfers that went to places such as Indonesia and Communist China. Mr. Huang has taken the Fifth Amendment. His wife, Jane Huang, has taken the Fifth Amendment. Commerce/Lippo/DNC fundraiser and secret cleared John Huang was briefed 37 times on encryption communications by the CIA while working at the Brown controlled Commerce Department. Immediately after each briefing, Huang would walk across the street to the Lippo/Stephens Group offices and make long distance phone calls and send faxes to points unknown. Key recovery or key escrow is a government back door system designed to secretly monitor computers. Key recovery has a big downside, according to a former top Clinton official. Key Recovery can be abused by foreign powers to perform economic espionage against the U.S. or worse, to monitor political opponents around the world. "Can Key Recovery be used against dissidents and political opponents?" questioned Admiral William McConnell, the former National Security Administration Director under President's Bush and Clinton. "In a word, YES." Admiral McConnell is considered the father of the CLIPPER chip. McConnell ran the NSA under Clinton. The role of Webster Hubbell in CLIPPER raises the specter of economic and military espionage at the highest level. Orwellian computer chip technology abused by oppressive foreign governments, targeting their citizens and Americans around the globe. In fact, it was the "exploitable" feature of CLIPPER that worried U.S. government officials. The FBI Director wrote two major papers to Clinton NSC advisor George Tenet early in February of 1993. The FBI documents reveal that CLIPPER had flaws which could compromise all the computers so equipped. The FBI Director wrote "This design means that the list of chip keys associated with the chip ID number provides access to all CLIPPER secured devices, and thus the list must be carefully generated and protected. Loss of the list would preclude legitimate access to the encrypted information and compromise of the list could allow unauthorized access." The CLIPPER flaw worried other U.S. government officials. NASA decided to decline to use any CLIPPER device. In 1993 NASA Associate Administrator for Management Systems and Facilities, Benita A. Cooper, wrote "There is no way to prevent the NSA from routinely monitoring all encrypted traffic. Moreover, compromise of the NSA keys, such as in the Walker case, could compromise the entire system." Please note, Ms. Cooper referred to Soviet spy John "Walker" who is serving life in prison for disclosing U.S. Navy secret codes. In 1993 Ms. Cooper did not know of Lippo, Huang, nor Hubbell but her prophetic prediction was not so remarkable in retrospect. The role of Webster Hubbell and the First Lady at the Rose office law firm goes much deeper than Whitewater land fraud. During the 1980s, Mrs. Clinton and Webster Hubbell worked on a secret NSA project for a Rose office law firm client. This too is also clearly documented by FOIA request. Mrs. Clinton, Hubbell and Vince Foster worked on a NSA contract for Systematics of Arkansas, a firm then owned by Riady partner Jackson Stephens. Nor is the involvement of the Riadys, Huang, Hubbell, Foster, and Mrs. Clinton in a White House scandal a conspiracy theory. In 1993, the Arkansas travel firm Wide World Travel was selected by Hillary Clinton to replace the illegally fired Presidential Travel Office staff. Wide World Travel was then owned by the Lippo Group. The new FBI letter is clear evidence that Ms. Reno is in conflict of interest. She is NOT investigating the penetration of Chinese military agents inside the Clinton White House. A real investigation of the Chinese intelligence operations involving advanced U.S. secure communications should involve Webster Hubbell, General Reno, Bill Clinton and the First Lady. However, no FBI agent wishing to keep his job will show up at Janet Reno's door to ask questions - much less try to interview Mrs. Clinton. General Reno can only avoid charges of direct conflict by immediately appointing an independent Special Counsel to investigate possible treason by the President of the United States. SOFTWAR, Jan. 4, 1999 [The privacy story is covered in End of Ordinary Money, Part I] [The political story is continued at Vince Foster, Part I. The Chinese connection emerges later in the series in connection with the Lippo Group.] The Crystal Ball Fearless Forecasts for 1999 by Peter Martin Many of 1998's best-performing internet stocks will end the year worthless. This is likely to happen even if the overall stock market has a healthy year. It's built into the way these market valuations are achieved. Putting money into businesses which seek to create and dominate new areas of economic activity is not like conventional investment. Either the company will be astonishingly successful - a low but not negligible probability - or it will be largely worthless. It is almost impossible to tell in advance which of these outcomes will apply. For any individual internet stock, an astronomical valuation is not absurd if you are prepared to make the leap of faith. For internet stocks as a group, however, the collective valuation is clearly nonsense, since only one competitor in each market segment can achieve the dominance on which all are being valued. This is the year that reasoning will sink in. At least one of 1998's big mergers will succumb to management crisis. The most obvious threat is cultural differences where the merging companies come from widely different national backgrounds. DaimlerChrysler, Hoechst/ Rhône Poulenc, Astra/ Zeneca, and the coming European Aerospace and Defence company all fall into this category. Expect at least one of them to have some bumpy patches in 1999. But cultural differences are sometimes just as acute within national boundaries, especially where they overlap with struggles for power. Just because the former chief executives have agreed to share roles does not mean they have really adjusted to sharing power. The struggle is most acute where the roles have not been precisely defined in advance. Notoriously, the Citigroup merger leaves this giant financial institution with a co-chairmen and chief executives. It will be surprising if that cosy agreement lasts its full term. This is the year Microsoft will look vulnerable for the first time. Not because of the justice department's antitrust lawsuit, which will leave the company's image battered but its business largely unaffected. Nor because of short-term operating issues - the next release of the Microsoft Office suite of programs, due out in the spring, will yield the company another huge surge of revenue. But because the computer landscape is changing in ways that Microsoft cannot control. As corporate computer departments emerge from their Year 2000 planning blight, the future they are thinking about will include new types of information appliance, big and small, and new rivals to Microsoft omnipresence. These include the Palm operating system from 3Com, the Symbian joint venture from Psion, Ericsson, Nokia and Motorola, the Linux "freeware" version of Unix, Oracle and Sun's alliance in database server systems, America Online's tightening grasp on the consumer internet market and so on. Each of these is a narrow threat, and some are obscure. But together, they chisel away at the assumption that the future is Microsoft's to shape. The lawsuit - by showing Bill Gates in an unflattering light - underscores this shift in attitudes, and thus paradoxically makes the legal outcome less important. The typical manufacturing company will end the year with lower unit revenues than it began. It will be the first year of across-the-board deflation for the developed world's manufacturers in living memory. The drop in prices will only be a small one, but the change in psychology will be acute, particularly in continental Europe where it will be widely - and erroneously - blamed on the coming of the euro. The most immediate consequences will be a fresh interest in cost-saving and downsizing, often in companies that have only just finished the last round of cuts, and a host of trade complaints. Suddenly, appealing to government alleging unfair foreign competition won't be a badge of shame, it will be a routine action. There will be a lot of three-way fights between the US, Europe and east Asia. But the more far-sighted companies will emulate General Electric, and seek to wrap a cosy blanket of services around manufactured goods to protect them against the market chill. Expect the GE buzzword "product services", which describes these engineering-related activities, to enter common use. Korea's big companies will make an astonishing recovery. That is, they will achieve remarkable results at the operating level, intensifying the pricing pressure mentioned earlier. At the financial, political and family level, however, they will still be struggling at year-end, unable to reconcile the interests of their stakeholders. It will eventually become clear that Korean stocks were, at some point, one of the world's great buying opportunities. But by the time that moment arrives, it will already be too late to participate. The iron law of hindsight will apply with its customary merciless efficiency. Whatever else it may bring by way of excitement, 1999 will in this respect be no different from any previous year. Contact Peter Martin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Financial Times, Jan. 5, 1999 Single Currency Euro-phoria Sweeps European Stock, Bond Markets Portfolio shifts LONDON - Europe's single currency made a powerful debut on world financial markets Monday as the euro rose against the dollar and the yen, and prices of European stocks and bonds surged in anticipation of a boost from monetary union. The rare rally of virtually all European assets represented a bullish reception for the biggest change in international finance since the introduction of floating exchange rates 26 years ago. The strength of European markets signaled a high level of confidence among international investors in the euro and the European Central Bank, analysts said, a feat of no small significance after the years of political and market turbulence that led to the currency's birth. ''It's a head start for the euro on all fronts,'' said Joachim Fels, senior economist for the 11 euro countries at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in London. ''This is a very strong endorsement of the benefits of EMU,'' he added, referring to Economic and Monetary Union. Norbert Walter, chief economist at Deutsche Bank AG in Frankfurt, attributed the market reaction to exuberance about the euro's long-term effect on the European economy and a bandwagon effect among previously skeptical investors, particularly in Asia and North America. ''They see that this market is moving and they don't want to be the last ones to join,'' Mr. Walter said. But while the euro's strength may stoke European pride, it also could pose a challenge by threatening to make the bloc's exports less competitive and by further slowing an already weakening economy. That risk was underscored by a German purchasing managers' survey that indicated the euro zone's biggest economy slowed dramatically in December. ''Euro strength is likely to continue,'' said Jim O'Neill, currency strategist at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in London. ''The key dilemma is at what pace. I can see that the European Central Bank wouldn't want to see it strengthen so much.'' Alison Cottrell, senior European economist at PaineWebber in London, said: ''If the euro were to appreciate strongly, that would be one of the worst things for business confidence in these countries.'' The euro rose to $1.1830 late Monday from $1.1747 at the start of trading in Asia and well above the reference rate of $1.16675 given by the European Central Bank on Thursday, when it fixed exchange rates among the 11 euro countries. Stock prices soared, with market indexes rising by nearly 4 percent in Amsterdam, more than 5 percent in Paris and Frankfurt and more than 6 percent in Madrid and Milan. In stark contrast to the Continental enthusiasm, London's FT-SE 100 index was virtually unchanged. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 2.84 points to close at 9,184.27. The euro's gains reflected a continued move by pension funds, insurance companies and other institutional investors to focus their money on the big pan-European blue-chip companies, which stand to benefit most from the creation of a euro-zone economy of 290 million consumers, said J. Paul Horne, European equity analyst at Salomon Smith Barney. ''You have to get into the largest capitalization, top-quality stocks,'' he said. Bond prices also soared, pushing yields down to record lows. The yield on Germany's benchmark 10-year bond fell 0.10 percentage point to a record low of 3.77 percent. Some dealers were surprised that the euro did not post greater gains, given the rally in bond and equity markets, and there was talk in the market of central bank intervention, but ECB officials played down the talk as ''rumors.'' The euro did weaken to 132.10 yen after trading above 133 yen in Tokyo earlier, a move that helped trigger a 3 percent drop in Japanese stocks. Concerned about the euro's impact on Japan, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi was expected to endorse French and German calls for a tripolar monetary system when he visits Europe this week, Japanese media reported on Monday. Mr. Obuchi was expected to suggest a loose exchange-rate grid that minimizes volatility among the yen, the euro and the dollar. The United States, supported by many European central bankers, has rejected such proposals. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin declined to comment on the euro's gains on Monday, saying only that the United States should focus on maintaining solid policies at home. At the moment, many economic fundamentals appear to favor a stronger euro, in particular trade flows. The world is awash in dollars because of a burgeoning U.S. current account deficit, which many analysts expect to exceed $250 billion, or 3 percent of gross domestic product, this year. In contrast, economists at J.P. Morgan & Co. predict that the 11 euro countries will run a current account surplus of 1.5 percent of GDP in 1999. Mr. O'Neill of Goldman, Sachs predicted that those flows would help boost the euro to $1.29 by the end of this year But other analysts said the European Central Bank would seek to prevent any surge in the euro by cutting interest rates, particularly if evidence of economic weakness continues to mount. Mr. Walter of Deutsche Bank predicted that the bank would cut its key short-term rate by a quarter point, to 2.75 percent, during the first quarter. Despite the magnitude of Monday's market movements, the actual level of trading activity was subdued, particularly in the $1.5-trillion-a-day foreign exchange market. Guy Whittaker, head of foreign exchange trading in the London dealing room of Citigroup, the world's largest currency trader, said that most participants were making sure their computer and settlement systems had been properly overhauled for the euro during the weekend, while traders were adjusting to the dollar's worth against the euro rather than the Deutsche mark. ''There's a degree of unfamiliarity with the numbers,'' he said. ''You could sort of wake up and recite the old numbers off the top of your head.'' International Herald Tribune, Jan. 5, 1998 Single Currency Can the Euro Survive Socialist Governments? Finance Ministers vs. the ECB PARIS - As much as the markets seem to like the euro, its potential problems and contradictions have not vanished in what has been largely a rush of admiration for the common currency's smooth start. Against the background of Europe's changed political dynamic, its regional differences, its difficulties in creating jobs and growth, and the European Central Bank's own narrow definitions of its tasks, the euro's first day out in the cold marked a good beginning, but an inconclusive one. If it signaled that the euro was a promising market instrument, it gave nothing away about how it would function as an economic force with real-life effect on Europe's nations and people. Analyzing the difficulty of the undertaking, the International Monetary Fund, the Bundesbank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development all found tones last year well short of this week's balloons and champagne, or its talk of new world roles and burgeoning prosperity. ''Unfortunately,'' the IMF said, ''there are risks that sufficient progress will not be made in implementing the desirable policy strategy for the euro area.'' Among the many possible conflicts conditioning the success of Economic and Monetary Union - less its exchange rate against the dollar than its capacity to generate new jobs and the expectations of change - is a central political hitch without a ready solution. The hitch lies in the contradiction between the interventionist and statist reflexes of the leftist governments of Germany, France and Italy, the currency group's three leading economies, and the tight rules of the EMU's Stability and Growth Pact rules on debt, deficits and inflation. With little growth projected and job creation held to a minimum, the new independent central bank, required to defend an inflation target of 2 percent per year, could quickly come under pressure, creating an open political struggle about interest rates, or broken promises by fiscally promiscuous countries. The contradiction extends further, to the EMU's concept of growth, based on making job markets more supple and removing the kinds of labor market protections that Europe's left-of-center has always held as creed. The OECD has pointed out the problem, saying that if these market rigidities remain - neither the IMF or the OECD report adequate indications of change - the new bank could quickly become a focus for pressure to compensate for missing growth through monetary policy. It urged governments to act to avoid the possibility. But the potential for these problems is intensified because Germany under its Social Democratic chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, and Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine no longer seeks to play ideological defender of the EMU rules that were virtually created by the Christian Democratic predecessor government. During the development of the EMU, Germany took the role of key advocate of the tight-money policies characterizing the Maastricht treaty and the stability pact. When France, shortly after the Socialist Lionel Jospin became prime minister, sought to insert the idea of an ''economic government'' of finance ministers into the pact as a counterweight to the European Central Bank and its strict watchword of price stability, it was brushed aside by Chancellor Helmut Kohl's associates. Now, that dynamic has changed. If anything, their first months in office showed Mr. Lafontaine as interventionist in relation to the Bundesbank and Mr. Schroeder as short on initiatives that would deregulate the German job market or substantially lower its taxes. In France, after its absence for months from the political debate, the phrase ''economic government'' cropped up again last week, attributed to Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Whatever its practical effect, it was part a developing left-wing emphasis sought by the government as it prepares for elections in June for the European Parliament. More than elsewhere in Europe, the elections will be significant in France because they will be regarded as a run-up for what is expected to be Mr. Jospin's presidential candidacy. The Socialist Party will be strongly challenged from its left and would be unlikely to make any new concessions in economic policy that would suggest it is abandoning its traditional constituents to more flexible labor market policies. In the view of the IMF, these more flexible labor markets are particularly significant because they would not only spur job creation but, in tougher times, help individual governments adapt to shocks, particularly those called asymmetrical, or confined to a single country or region. Yet the organization hardly offered a positive evaluation of how far the euro governments were willing to go in pushing their constituencies toward more flexibility, saying, ''Policies in place are inadequate and political opposition to reform is still strong.'' The issue, for the IMF, was of such magnitude that it said, ''Many may question whether EMU was worth the effort'' if it isn't the vehicle for new jobs. No one can foresee or guarantee them, just as there is no certainty the global economic environment for the euro's start stays relatively tranquil. The reality remains that, with Europe's present political lineup, there could be great tensions involving pressures to alter or scrap the stability pact if growth within the zone declines markedly at a point in the future. Since a euro-zone member country can no longer cut its own interest rates or devalue its currency, it is left with limited borrowing possibilities in line with the stability pact's debt and deficit strictures. Whether the problem is a localized recession or seriously diminished growth overall, member countries willing to hold to the euro's rules would have to compensate for their rising deficits with reduced public spending or new taxes. In these circumstances, the villain for Europe's governments of the left would be the stability pact itself - directly linked to Mr. Kohl's finance minister, Theo Waigel, and widely associated with unemployment in Europe and attacked by Mr. Jospin during his election campaign in 1997 as a German hegemonic device. If the stability pact goes, the Euro would remain a unified but politicized currency, and, for its holders, hopefully one devalued only in esteem. International Herald Tribune, Jan. 5, 1998 Russian Follies A Year in the Life of Zhirinovsky His friend Bill It started well, Vladimir Zhirinovsky's year. The Russian politician, whose name rarely appears unless coupled to the phrase "ultra-nationalist" like a freight car to a caboose, put aside his personal concerns long enough to spare a thought for the beleaguered president of the United States. In doing so, he gave Bill Clinton yet another reason to pray to the gods of congressional inquiries he's not impeached. Said Zhirinovsky: "If there is an impeachment, Bill will have more freedom and I will be able to meet him more often, we will play golf together, I also like dogs. We will together recall our sexual experiences -- he will not be alone." Mere months later, Zhirinovsky had changed his tune entirely. Staking out the moral high ground on the eve of a Yeltsin-Clinton summit, Zhirinovsky expressed the opinion that Clinton should postpone his September visit to Moscow. "A visit by President Clinton today is untimely, especially considering his recent moral scandal," Zhirinovsky told the Duma, "We, as individuals with high moral character, would prefer not to meet a person who still can't sort out his relationship with his secretary." Zhirinovsky had by this point come to the conclusion that Clinton should stay home and marry his "secretary" – Monica Lewinsky. Zhirinovsky's interest in the affair was apparently noticed by a former KGB psychiatrist turned filmmaker who plans to make "Bill i Monika," the story of the Bill Clinton sex scandal (which sounds like a film treatment in itself). As he was casting the film, his eye fell on Zhirinovsky – although according to the trades, he's not being considered for either of the title roles. While closely monitoring the American scandal and proffering advice to the man at its center, Zhirinovsky also managed to keep up a hectic schedule internationally and domestically. At home, he found time to douse his fellow Duma deputies with water in response to demands that he shut up. On the world scene, he held a veritable pariah's tea party -- visiting both Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein. The Hussein visit was part of an aid airlift to Iraq that put Zhirinovsky in the spotlight for days – first as his plane was grounded in Armenia awaiting U.N. clearance for the mission, later when he actually reached Iraq. Armed with a mobile phone and his own way with words Zhirinovsky managed to keep things hopping even while remaining squarely on the ground in Yerevan. Once in Baghdad, things got downright surreal as video footage showed the Russian politician sitting on a broken toilet in a bombed out building announcing he'd found the chemical weapons the whole world was looking for. His activities earned him a rebuke from then Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov for the damage he was single-handedly inflicting on Russia's reputation abroad. Zhirinovsky found time to fly to Taiwan to meet with Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui. Defending his visit afterwards in the Duma he said (with logic we cannot begin to follow and therefore must allow to stand) "Millions voted for us, and we act in their name. When we visit Beijing, I will go to the embassy with my thugs and blockade it!" At this point, Duma speaker Gennady Seleznyov cut off Zhirinovsky's microphone, which did not, oddly enough, earn him a glass of water over the head. Perhaps the criminal proceedings instigated by the Prosecutor General's Office for his last bout of water tossing stilled the ultra-nationalist's hand. It's hard to say what may lie ahead in '99 for Zhirinovsky – predictability has never been his distinguishing characteristic. The year 2000, on the other hand, could see him enjoying a relatively high profile as a presidential candidate. Unlike coy Yury Luzhkov, who has yet to come out and declare his candidacy, or Krasnoyarsk Governor Aleksander Lebed, who says it depends on the economic state of his region, Zhirinovsky has been clear about his presidential ambitions. Vladimir Zhirinovsky – a man for the millennium? Russia Today, Dec. 30, 1998 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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