date:20020315

From:
"Jim Yarker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Subject:
'Dear_George'_-_Love_letters_of_Enron's_Ken_Lay

Date:
Thu, 14 Mar 2002 21:10:38 -0500

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/776/1/64/

Dear George Love letters of Enrons Ken Lay

Author: Tim Wheeler

People's Weekly World Newspaper, Mar 16, 2002
AUSTIN, Tx. George, Linda and I are incredibly proud of you and Laura, Enron CEO Ken Lay scrawled at the bottom of a letter he wrote to then-Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, Nov. 11, 1998. Bush had just won reelection with the generous financial backing of Enron, which had poured more than $700,000 into Bushs campaign coffers.We hope that you will again actively support efforts to pass a bill restructuring the electric industry in Texas, Lay continued. Please have your team let me know what Enron can do to be helpful in not only passing electricity restructuring legislation but also in pursuing the rest of your legislative agenda.Just over a year later, Dec. 21, 1999, Lay sent a letter to Bush and his wife thanking them for the autographed Tejano Santa print Bush had sent them as a Christmas gift. Lay added, George and Laura, Linda and I are so proud of both of you and look forward to seeing both of you in the White House.It was one of scores of letters Lay and Bush exchanged during Bushs tenure as Texas governor. To describe this as as a good ole boy or crony friendship does not do justice to the extent of the mutual dependence that comes through in these letters, as if Bush and Enron were extensions of each other. No wonder the Houston-based oil and gas corporations were so determined to put Bush in the White House that they poured $41 million into the Bush-Cheney campaign and then orchestrated the theft of the election in Florida in November and December 2000.The Texas State Archives made the correspondence public last month in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Bush attempted to block their release by hiding them in his fathers presidential library. Texans for Public Justice (TPJ), a watchdog group with offices a few blocks from the state Capitol provided a set of the letters to the World.TPJ Executive Director Craig McDonald said the letters show a very close personal relationship between Lay and George W. Bush. Enron was in the policy loop, sitting around the policy table. The visibility of the corruption is astounding, the degree to which the rich and the powerful were controlling policy.Deregulation of the Texas electricity market went into effect Jan. 1 and it is still too early to tell how consumers will fare, McDonald added. But Enron, together with Dynegy, Duke Power and other energy traders, pushed through deregulation in California and used their control to drive up electricity rates by 400 percent costing ratepayers an estimated $8.9 billion in overcharges. Bush and Vice President Cheney did nothing to stop this colossal swindle and are still trying to exploit the crisis they caused to elect a Republican governor and legislature in Californias November election.In one Dear George letter, dated Oct. 17, 1997, Lay thanks Bush for your call to Governor Tom Ridge a few days ago. I am certain that will have a positive impact on the way he and others in Pennsylvania view our proposal to provide cheaper electricity to consumers in Philadelphia. In fact, Enrons foray ignited a bruising struggle with the Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO). Ratepayers in the City of Brotherly Love are now paying higher, not lower rates just as ratepayers of Portland General Electric (PGE) are paying rates 50 percent higher than in 1997 when Enron bought PGE.Lay, chair of the Governors Business Council (GBC) sent Bush a letter on Enron letterhead, Feb. 28, 1995 with 17 recommendations which he said the Legal Reform Committee feel are essential to providing a level playing field and restoring common sense and fairness to our judicial system. Bush wrote back a month later, As you know, I have declared tort reform an emergency matter for the Legislature. Bushs idea of tort reform was to impose severe limits on public interest lawsuits seeking damage awards for cancer victims and others harmed by oil and gas companies that spew millions of tons of toxic waste into the Texas environment. Bush is still seeking to ramrod tort reform through the U.S. Congress.In a Apr. 3, 1997 Dear George letter, Lay reminded Bush he would be meeting with Uzbekistans Ambassador Sadyq Safaev. Enron has established an office in Tashkent and we are negotiating a $2 billion joint venture with Neftegas of Uzbekistan and Gazprom of Russian to develop Uzbekistans natural gas and transport it to markets in Europe, Kazakhstan and Turkey, Lay wrote. I know you and Ambassador Safaev will have a productive meeting which will result in friendship between Texas and Uzbekistan.The Enron CEO wrote Mar. 31, 1999, enclosing an article by New York Times w

RE: HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW: NO MORE YUGOSLAVIA [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]

2002-03-15 Thread Jacques Protic

Title: Message



HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---


Went 
to the local post - office yesterday to send a parcel to Belgrade - YUGOSLAVIA. 
The lady could not fin the listing to sort out the postage rate, eventually by 
searching through the PO manual she found it - SERBIA! unusual foresight for the postal service, or did they know something we 
did not?!

  -Original Message-From: Miroslav Antic 
  [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]Sent: Thursday March 14 2002 
  23:22To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; 'BALKAN'; 'NATO'; 'Siem-News'; 
  'SNN'; 'SNN-Yahoo'Subject: HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW: NO MORE 
  YUGOSLAVIA [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---
  HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW: NO MORE 
  YUGOSLAVIAAs it was expected, the history of Yugoslavia’s 
  existence has approached its logical conclusion. [Jacques 
  Protic]  
---
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The Hague: Same Old, Same Old [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


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---

http://news.serbianunity.net/bydate/2002/March_14/8.html

The Hague: Same Old, Same Old

Glas Javnosti, March 13 

BELGRADE - When Slobodan Milosevic tried to complain
about the "unseen manipulations" contained in the
testimony given by the prosecution witness Hazbi
Ljoku, the village teacher from the village of Kotlina
near Kacanik, Judge May prevented him from doing so
and "instructed" him that he must stick to
cross-examination. 

"All right, I can prove it by asking questions" - said
Mr. Milosevic and started the cross-examination of the
witness, who had earlier testified about the killings
of 24 Albanians from Kacanik and the surrounding
villages, and had accused the VJ and police of killing
them. The witness also talked of "mass deportations". 

Ljoku admitted that he had heard of KLA's presence in
the village of Yezertse. But to all the other
questions Mr. Milosevic had asked, he answered, "I
don't know", "I have never heard of.", "The names of
these people do not sound familiar", even when Mr.
Milosevic mentioned the names of his relatives and
neighbours. 

The witness claimed the KLA did not use the Kacanik
villages and villagers for frontline defence, even
though Mr. Milosevic cited that this was one of the
findings of the OSCE verification mission. Ljoku then
claimed he knew nothing about the killings of soldiers
and police in the Kacanik area. He also said he knew
nothing about any clashes between the KLA and the
government forces, the attacks on the police stations,
etc. He said, however, that the Albanians were not
afraid of the KLA because "we considered the KLA to be
our army". 

The day before yesterday, Ljoku had "testified" about
many events which took place during NATO's aggression,
but he later said that he actually left Kosovo on
March 24, 1999 - the day the aggression on Yugoslavia
commenced. He also added that he did not know what was
going on, or that Kacanik was bombed or that large
numbers of Albanians died from NATO's cluster bombs.
He knew only that children were among the wounded -
though "he did not know" how they were injured or who
injured them - and that they were sent to hospitals in
Italy. 

Ljoku, apparently, did not know that the Kacanik gorge
was the KLA's HQ and that the KLA's weaponry used to
be smuggled from Macedonia to Kosovo via Kacanik. He
"never heard" that his compatriots worked at the
Municipal Government, local factories, and the local
police; that 12 of them had been killed by the KLA and
that many more had been kidnapped. 

He also "did not know" that the legal residents of
Serbia (of Albanian descent) were given free land by
the government to build and re-build their houses that
the KLA had destroyed, and that these Albanians called
upon Belgrade to "eliminate the KLA terror". Amici
curiae and Mr. Milosevic's aide Branislav Tapuskovic
pointed out the many contradictions in Ljoku's
testimony. Next came another prosecution witness,
Bajram Bucaliu, who worked at the train station in
Urosevac. 

LJ. STALETOVIC, Glas Javnosti 


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Cheney Rallies World's Democracies For Terror War [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


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---

http://frontierpost.com.pk/main.asp?id=7&date1=3/15/2002

Cheney arrives for talks with Sultan of Oman
March 15, 2002

MUSCAT (APP): US Vice President Dick Cheney flew into
the southern Omani city of Salalah on Thursday for
talks with Sultan Qaboos bin Said, the official Oman
News Agency (ONA) reported.Dick Cheney will be
holding consulations with His Majesty Sultan Qaboos in
Salalah, said a US embassy official. 

The vice president, on a Middle East tour to rally
support for the global fight against terror, was
expected to travel on to the capital Muscat Friday,
spending the day sight-seeing before heading to Saudi
Arabia on Saturday. 

ONA said part of the visit would be official and part
private. 

Cheney, who arrived from Yemen, has already visited
Jordan and Egypt. 

He is also to travel on to Bahrain, the United Arab
Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait, as well as Israel and
Turkey. 

Salalah, Omans second largest city more, than 1,000
kilometres (600 miles) from the capital, lies on the
Indian Ocean close to the border with Yemen and is the
sultans birthplace. 



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"a spectacular miscarriage of justice". [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]

2002-03-15 Thread Sandeep Vaidya (LMI)


HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---


BBC News Online
Thursday, 14 March, 2002, 17:25 GMT 
UN monitor decries Lockerbie judgement

The proceedings were flawed, says Prof Köchler 
A United Nations observer has described the dismissal of the Lockerbie bomber's appeal 
as "a spectacular miscarriage of justice". 
Professor Hans Köchler was speaking after five Scottish judges rejected Abdelbaset ali 
Mohmed al-Megrahi's attempt to overturn his conviction for murdering 270 people in the 
1988 atrocity. 
Libya condemned the outcome as a "political decision under pressure from Washington 
and London" but it was welcomed by the US Government. 
Al-Megrahi is now preparing to be flown by helicopter from the special Scottish Court 
in the Netherlands to Scotland's largest prison in Glasgow to serve his life sentence 
of at least 20 years. 
Professor Köchler, 53, who teaches philosophy at the University of Innsbruck in 
Austria, was one of five UN observers who followed the Lockerbie case. 
They were appointed as part of the deal between the UN and Libya which allowed the 
extradition of al-Megrahi and a co-accused, who was found not guilty at the trial last 
year, to face the charges. 
The observers are not bound to report back formally to the UN but Professor Köchler 
said that under the circumstances, he felt compelled to do so. 
He told BBC Radio Scotland's Newsdrive programme: "I am sorry to admit that my 
impression is that justice was not done and that we are dealing here with a rather 
spectacular case of a miscarriage of justice. 
Credence issue 
"I am at a loss to explain how this decision of the appeal court can have been passed 
unanimously in light of some of the questions asked and analysis presented by one or 
the other of the appeal court judges during the appeal. 
"I see a kind of gap between how the sessions of the appeal court went and the 
unanaimity of this decision... which did not give any credence at all to any of the 
grounds of appeal which were presented. 
"I base my observation only on logic and reason. 
"Frankly speaking I am not convinced, I was not convinced when I read the opinion of 
the court after the trial last year and I was not convinced when I went through the 
text presented today. 
"I am not convinced at all that the sequence of events that led to this explosion of 
the plane over Scotland was as described by the court. Everything that is presented is 
only circumstantial evidence." 
Asked if he spoke for the entire UN observation team, he said: "Based on the informal 
conversations we had today - you can imagine that we have spoken to each other after 
the verdict - I have the impression that this concern is shared by the large majority 
of the observers." 
Clare Connelly, a member of the Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit at Glasgow University, 
said Professor Köchler's comments displayed a "profound misunderstanding" of 
Scotland's adversarial legal system. 
Judge's comments 
Al-Megrahi showed no emotion as Scotland's senior judge, Lord Justice General Lord 
Cullen, announced the decision at a three-minute hearing in the Scottish Court. 
He said: "For the reasons given in the judgement, in which we all concur, we have 
concluded that none of the grounds of appeal is well founded. 
"The appeal will accordingly be refused." 
Professor Köchler spoke to al-Megrahi after the hearing and revealed: "He is rather 
composed but of course frustrated and he feels himself to be a victim of international 
politics. 
"He is in an angry mood but composed." 
Scotland's most senior law officer, Lord Advocate Colin Boyd QC, said: "I believe that 
these proceedings have demonstrated what the judicial process can achieve when the 
international community acts together. 
"I hope that this can be the enduring legacy of the Lockerbie trial. It is one that 
cannot and must not be forgotten". 
Legal history 
Al-Megrahi's defence team lodged grounds for his appeal a week after the guilty 
verdict at the end of his trial in January 2001 at the custom-built court in Camp 
Zeist. 
The 14-day appeal hearing made Scottish legal history by being broadcast live on 
television and the internet. 
For the Libyan, Bill Taylor QC argued that new evidence presented to the appeal 
pointed to a miscarriage of justice. 
He said it raised the possibility that the bomb had been placed on board the aircraft 
at Heathrow and not in Malta, as the trial judges had concluded. 
However, Alan Turnbull QC, for the prosecution, said the new evidence was weak and 
flawed, and did not affect the original case. 
Commenting on the decision, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said: "The completion 
of the appeal does not end U.S. sanctions against Libya, but should spur Libya to take 
quick action to fully comply with the requirements of the UN Security Council." 
UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called on Libya to honour its obligations in respect 
of Lockerbie and to co-operate fully with UN Security Council resolut

Chief Of Turkish General Staff In Kyrgyzstan To Strenthen Military Control [WWW.


HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---

http://www.turkishdailynews.com/FrTDN/latest/dom2.htm#d24

[Turkey sends the head of its military to Kyrgyzstan
to offer 'humanitarian aid.']


Turkish Daily News
March 15, 2002

Chief of General Staff meets Kyrgyz president Akaev 



Chief of Turkish General Staff Gen. Huseyin Kivrikoglu
met Kyrgyz president Askar Akaev on Thursday as part
of his visit to Kyrgyzstan. 

Delivering a statement to reporters following his
meeting with Akaev, Kivrikoglu said that Turkey wanted
to give humanitarian aid to the Afghan people. 

According to the Kyrgyz news agency Kabar, Kivrikoglu
thanked Akaev for Kyrgyzstan's support to the
coalition established against international terrorism.
Military cooperation between two countries and
security issues pertaining to Central Asia were
handled at the meeting. 

It was reported that Turkey has granted $3.5 million
to the Kyrgyz Armed Forces since 1999. 



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Romanian, NATO Machinations In Moldova [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


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---

March 15, 2002  
*ROMANIA*MOLDOVA*ATTACHE*EXPULSION*CONFLICT* 

BUCHAREST ACCUSES CHISINAU OF STANDING IN ROMANIA'S
WAY TO NATO 

-In the meantime, Andrei Neguta, chairman of the
foreign policy committee in Moldova's Parliament, told
the media Thursday that Moldovan security services
held video footage evidencing the expelled Romanian
diplomat's links with instigators of recent protest
rallies in Chisinau. 


BUCHAREST, March 14 /from RIA Novosti's Gennady
Abalov/ - Romanian Defense Minister Ioan Mircea Pascu
says he has no evidence proving the guilt of the
military attache to Chisinau that could have been the
reason behind his expulsion by the Moldovan
authorities. 

In an interview with local newspeople, Pascu
highlighted the "strange coincidence" between
Romania's growing chances to gain NATO membership and
the growing tension in its relations with Moldova. He
said Chisinau was fueling the tension. 

Pascu argues that Moldovan authorities are trying to
create an impression as if Bucharest had some unsolved
problems with its eastern neighbors, to thereby
demonstrate to the West that Romania is allegedly
unprepared for integration into Euro-Atlantic
structures. 

In the meantime, Andrei Neguta, chairman of the
foreign policy committee in Moldova's Parliament, told
the media Thursday that Moldovan security services
held video footage evidencing the expelled Romanian
diplomat's links with instigators of recent protest
rallies in Chisinau. 

Commenting on his Moldovan counterpart's statement,
Ghiorghi Prisecaru, chair of a similar Romanian
parliamentary committee, said Chisinau's actions
showed it served as a tool in the hands of some forces
opposed to Romania's admission to NATO. 

MP Corneliu Vadim Tudor, leader of the extreme
nationalist Greater Romania party, says he personally
has no interest in Euro-Atlantic integration if
reunification with Bessarabia is at stake. "If we
accomplish our national ideal by reuniting with our
brethren across the Prut [River], we won't need any
military bloc then," Tudor emphasized. 



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Ukrainian Leader Accuses U.S. Of Preparing 'Yugoslav Scenario' Coup [WWW.STOPNA


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---

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
March 14, 2002

Ukrainian Leader Accuses U.S. Of Preparing 'Yugoslav
Scenario' Coup 

Bohdan Boyko, the head of the Popular Movement of
Ukraine election bloc, has claimed that the opposition
-- Our Ukraine, the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc, and the
Socialist Party -- is planning, with U.S. assistance,
to stage a coup according to the "Yugoslav scenario,"
Inter Television reported on 12 March. Boyko told
journalists that the opposition is going to declare
the official results of the 31 March election
falsified and create a separate parliament based on an
alternative vote calculation. According to Boyko, a
key role in this plan will be played by the Razumkov
Center of Political and Economic Studies, which he
claimed is run by sociologists trained in U.S.
military institutions. "We have not planned a joint
participation in exit polls on the day of the
election," Razumkov Center Director Anatoliy Hrytsenko
commented. Our Ukraine, the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc,
and the Socialist Party have formerly declared their
intention to organize an alternative vote count in the
election (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 27 February 2002).
Yushchenko said Boyko's allegations are "paranoid,"
adding that "there have to be fools in the world,
otherwise the clever will not stand out." JM 

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Milosevic An Innocent Man [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


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---

http://www.nationalpost.com/commentary/story.html?f=/stories/20020314/331299.html


NATIONAL POST, Thursday, March 14, 2002 LETTERS 

Milosevic an 'innocent man' 

Edward Greenspan's article on the Milosevic trial
states the truth about the trial being a lynching
(This is a Lynching, March 13). It is not true Mr. 
Milosevic is a thug, a piece of propaganda many in the
West have absorbed from the constant parroting of the
NATO line by the Western media. 

A man who was freely elected three times in elections
even the United States viewed as fair, who believes in
a multiethnic society of tolerance and real social
democracy and who, as the investigative judge and
deputy minister of justice in Belgrade told me last
June, "is not guilty of a thing in Yugoslavia," is not
a thug, he is a brave man fighting against the 
consequences of globalization and the depredations of
the American Empire. 

That aside, Mr. Greenspan's comments on the conduct of
the defence are well taken. But what Mr. Greenspan and
your readers may not be aware of is that Mr. Milosevic
has been denied the right to counsel since his illegal

transfer to the Hague last June. None of us on the
legal committee seeking to assist him have been
permitted to consult with him confidentially except 
Ramsay Clark, who was permitted one such visit but had
documents for Mr. Milosevic seized by the guards at
the former Gestapo prison in Scheveningen. 

Every conversation has been monitored. Every phone
call. Documents that have been sent to him have on
several occasions disappeared. Arrangements for 
press conferences have been interfered with by the
secret police. Every obstacle to prevent him from
getting the advice he needs, which even a common thief
is entitled to here, has been thrown in his path. 

In such conditions it is impossible for lawyers to
offer him the benefit of their advice on how he might
best conduct his defence. It is a scandal of world
importance yet the western press has completely
refused to tell the public despite our repeating this
information at every opportunity and from every
hilltop. 

Mr. Milosevic for all intents and purposes has been
and is being held incommunicado and it is about time
the Western press which so prides itself on liberal
values demonstrates this by demanding that the Hague
tribunal provide this innocent man the right to
counsel without which all other rights are
meaningless. 

Christopher Black, barrister, chair, legal committee,
International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic,
Toronto. 
  
  



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US-Kazakh Link To Baku-Ceylon Pipeline [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


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---

rbc.ru
March 15, 2002

Kazakhstan may participate in Baku-Ceyhan project 



  RBC, 14.03.2002, Astana 15:59:23.Authorities of
Kazakhstan support the construction of the Baku-Ceyhan
oil pipeline and consider the possibility of
Kazakhstan's participation in this project, Kazakh
President Nursultan Nazarbayev announced at a meeting
with Steven Mann, special advisor of the US Secretary
of State for the Caspian basin energy diplomacy. 

  In his turn, the US official has highly
estimated perspectives of the Caspian oil business in
Kazakhstan and assured the Kazakh President that the
USA is going to promote an increase in foreign
investments in the Kazakh oil and gas industry. He
urged active exploration of Caspian resources before
the final status of the Caspian Sea was agreed upon,
the Trend agency reported. 



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Barcelona [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


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---


AFP. 15 March 2002. Barcelona braces for EU summit protests.

BARCELONA -- Riot police lined Barcelona's famed Rambla avenue on
Friday, and fighter jets prowled the skies, as Spain confronted the
double threat of anarchist riots and terrorist attacks during the EU
economic summit.

More than a dozen protests -- some well-organized, others more ad hoc --
were scheduled in Spain's biggest Mediterranean city, ahead of a major
demonstration Saturday.

In the first reported acts of violence, Barcelona transit authorities
said burning tires were thrown Friday onto the tracks at Can Boixeres
subway station in the south of the city, causing a one-hour delay.

They also said nails were thrown onto bus lanes at various locations.

Some 8,500 police are in the Catalan capital, many of them bused in from
other parts of Spain, where the EU heads of state and government are
meeting at a convention center five kilometers (three miles) from the
city center.

The venue is sealed off with high chain-link fences, and guarded by
police with armored cars and attack dogs.

The Spanish air force has sent F-18 fighters to overfly Barcelona,
backed up by a E-3A AWACS radar plane on loan from NATO and a battery of
anti-aircraft missiles at the city's airport.

On Thursday, some 100,000 workers marched through the city center in a
loud, colorful but disciplined demonstration organized by Europe's
biggest labor group, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).

ETUC chiefs met later Thursday with EU leaders and Europe's main
employers' groups, and urged them not to sacrifice hard-won workers'
rights as the European Union liberalizes its economy.

On the Rambla, the elegant avenue that runs up from Barcelona harbor,
police were seen Friday spot-checking IDs of young people they suspected
might be planning to take part in a demonstration -- while ignoring the
many British and US tourists ambling by.

Items on the protest menu Friday included three separate bicycle
demonstrations, a rally against political lobbying, the painting of a
mural supporting Zapatista rebels in Mexico, and a symbolic "burial" of
the euro.

Many left-wing political activists consider the European Union,
including the single European currency, as a Trojan horse for big
corporate interests.

In the city's Genoa square, demonstrators also planned a memorial for
Carlo Giuliani, an Italian who became the first fatality of the
anti-globalization movement. He was fatally shot by police during the
Group of Eight summit in Genoa, Italy last July.

Many of the demonstrations in Barcelona are being organized by a
coalition of about 150 groups called the Campaign Against Capitalist
Europe, which is led by the Spanish branch of the protest group ATTAC.

Its strategy favors smaller events in various neighborhoods, thus
attracting more support from local citizens -- as well as more concern
among the authorities.

"What bothers us the most is not what's expected, but rather the
unexpected," a Spanish interior ministry spokesman said.


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Barry Stoller
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews

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Re: Solana Destroys Yugoslavia [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---

This is a masterful overview and analysis. I'd
strongly recommend list members circulate it to their
personal contacts and elsewhere.
Rick



--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
> ---
> 
> [Today is a really sad day.  Under the leadership of
> Javier Solana, the same 
> man who as NATO Secretary General led the illegal
> aggression on Yugoslavia in 
> 1999, the European Union has just brokered a deal to
> wipe Yugoslavia off the 
> world map in a top down processes that most
> Yugoslavs reject.  The deal was 
> brokered between Solana, Milo Djukanovic (the
> President of Montenegro), Zoran 
> Djindjic (the Prime Minister of Serbia), and
> Vojislav Kostunica (the 
> President of Yugoslavia).  Djukanovic is the leader
> of the Democratic 
> Socialist Party (DPS) in Montenegro, a far-right
> neoliberal creation that is 
> a regional hub for mafia activity, cigarette
> smuggling and money laundering.  
> Elections in Montenegro have been deeply flawed and
> the DPS as well as its 
> junior partner the Liberal Union have used voter
> intimidation, particularly 
> of state employees to stay in power.  The majority
> of Montenegrins oppose 
> indipendence, yet through manipulation and Western
> support the DPS has 
> managed to maintain a narrow margin over its closest
> rivals the Socialist 
> Peoples Party (SNP) [although the SNPs party base is
> still firmly 
> pro-Yugoslav and opposed to NATO, the leadership has
> in recent months moved 
> away from its grass-roots constituency as it has
> moved with pro-Western 
> forces in Yugoslavia on several key legislative
> items].  Djindjic on the 
> other hand is the un-elected Prime Minister of
> Serbia who was appointed by a 
> DOS dominated Parliament as a key condition of
> Western aid to FRY.  He has 
> never held more than 5% of popular support in the
> country, and his neoliberal 
> views and particular brand of collaborationist
> Serbian nationalism issharply 
> at odds with the majority of the Yugoslav
> population.  Nonetheless he has 
> unconstitutionally arrogated to himself all the
> powers of the elected 
> position of the Serbian Presidency, which is still
> held by the still popular 
> Socialist Party of Serbia.  In any case support for
> the preservation of 
> Yugoslavia is overwhelming, and the current process
> is being imposed from 
> above opening the way for the final destruction of
> the Federal Republic of 
> Yugoslavia's territorial integrity, and thereby
> completing the US and German 
> goal of destroying Yugoslavia once and for all
> through a maximalist 
> anti-Yugoslav program that would serve to sharpen
> divisions between all 
> southern Slavs in order to weaken the most likely
> focus of resistance to NATO 
> occupation of this imensily strategic region.  This
> move was also given the 
> green light by the Federal President Kostunica,
> whose popularity is dropping 
> daily in the polls as a result of mismanagement and
> impotence in the face of 
> daily NATO pressures to alter the whole framework of
> Yugoslav society and 
> impose a narrow-ethnic chauvinist and
> archly-capitalist social framework on 
> the countries peoples.  Most parties have been
> compromised on the issue of 
> coloboration with the occupying powers and Yugoslavs
> will not be given a 
> choice to choose in a referendum between this new
> Western created arrangement 
> and the indigenously created FRY in a plebistice.  A
> new "Union of Serbia and 
> Montenegro" (USM) is to be proclaimed in accordance
> with US policy towards 
> the region, which was the only country not to
> recognize FRY as a sovereign 
> state since it was reconstituted in 1992, refering
> to it instead as "Serbia 
> and Montenegro" (a formulation in which the
> provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo 
> were considered as semi-independent states as well).
>  The official American 
> narrative on Yugoslavia's dissolution, regarding
> seccession issues, is now 
> being imposed in order to further divide and weaken
> any potential resistance 
> to NATO and to destroy the ability of anyone state
> or people in the region to 
> effectively resist the new colonial regime. 
> Thankfully this is still not a 
> fait-accompli, but the new Western funded elites
> have proven adept at passing 
> unpopular laws in the past, such as the new labour
> law which recently 
> dismantled the "social ownership" which was the
> foundation of property 
> relations in Yugoslavia in favor of a completely
> privatized system and 
> retrenched substantial labour rights severely
> despite mass-protests 
> throughout Yugoslavia (ignored in the Western press,
> these demos attracted 
> 50,000+ people in Belgrade at their peak earlier
> this year).  This process is 
> occuring in the context of an election campaign in
> NATO-member Hungary were 
> the ruling neoliberal Fidesz party is continuing
> with "Greater Hungarian" 
>

Reflections on the Gujarat massacre [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]

2002-03-15 Thread Sandeep Vaidya (LMI)


HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---


CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY
Reflections on the Gujarat massacre
 By
 Harsh Mander

Numbed with disgust and horror, I return from Gujarat
ten days after the terror and massacre that convulsed
the state.  My heart is sickened, my soul wearied, my
shoulders aching with the burdens of guilt and shame.

As you walk through the camps of riot survivors in
Ahmadabad, in which an estimated 53,000 women, men,
and children are huddled in 29 temporary settlements,
displays of overt grief are unusual. People clutch
small bundles of relief materials, all that they now
own in the world, with dry and glassy eyes. Some talk
in low voices, others busy themselves with the tasks
of everyday living in these most  basic
of shelters, looking for food and milk for children,
tending the wounds of the injured.

But once you sit anywhere in these camps, people begin
to speak and their words are like masses of pus
released by slitting large festering wounds.  The
horrors that they speak of are so macabre, that my pen
falters in the writing.  The pitiless brutality
against
women and small children by organised bands of armed
young men is more savage than anything witnessed in
the riots that have shamed this nation from time to
time during the past century.

I force myself to write a small fraction of all that I
heard and  saw because it is important that we all
know.  Or maybe also because I need to share my own
burdens.

What can you say about a woman eight months pregnant
who begged to  be spared.  Her assailants instead slit
open her  stomach, pulled out her foetus and
slaughtered it before her eyes.  What can you say
about a family of nineteen being killed by flooding
their house with water and then electrocuting them
with high-tension electricity.
What can you say?
A small boy of six in Juhapara camp described how his
mother and six brothers and sisters were battered to
death before his eyes.  He survived only because he
fell unconscious, and was taken for dead.  
A family escaping from Naroda-Patiya, one of the
worst-hit settlements  in Ahmedabad, spoke of losing a
young woman and her three month old son, because a
police constable directed her to `safety' and she
found herself instead surrounded by a mob which doused
her with kerosene and set her and her baby on fire.

I have never known a riot which has used the sexual
subjugation of women so widely as an instrument of
violence in the recent mass barbarity in Gujarat. 
There are reports every where of gang-rape, 
of young girls and women, often in the presence of
members of their families, followed by their murder by
burning alive, or by bludgeoning with a hammer and in
one case with a screw driver.  
Women in the Aman Chowk shelter told appalling stories
about how armed men disrobed themselves in front of a
group of terrified women to cower them down further.
In Ahmedabad, most people I met - social workers,
journalists, survivors - agree that what Gujarat
witnessed was not a riot, but a terrorist attack
followed by a systematic, planned massacre, a  
pogrom.  Everyone spoke of the pillage and plunder,
being organised like a military operation against an
external armed enemy.  An initial truck would arrive
broadcasting inflammatory slogans, soon followed by
more trucks which disgorged young men, mostly in khaki
shorts and saffron sashes.  They were armed with
sophisticated explosive materials, country weapons,
daggers and trishuls.  They also carried water
bottles, to sustain them in their exertions.  The
leaders were seen communicating on mobile telephones
from the riot venues, receiving instructions from and
reporting back to a co-ordinating centre.  Some were
seen with documents and computer sheets
listing Muslim families and their properties.  They
had detailed precise knowledge about buildings and
businesses held by members of the minority community,
such as who were partners say in a  restaurant
business, or which Muslim homes had Hindu spouses were
married who should be spared in the violence.  This
was not a spontaneous  upsurge of mass anger.  It was
a carefully planned pogrom.

The trucks carried quantities of gas cylinders.  Rich
Muslim homes and business establishments were first
systematically looted, stripped down of all their
valuables, then cooking gas was released
from cylinders into the buildings for several minutes.
 A trained member of the group then lit the flame
which efficiently engulfed the
building.  In some cases, acetylene gas which is used
for welding steel, was employed to explode large
concrete buildings.  Mosques  and dargahs were razed,
and were replaced by statues of Hanuman and
saffron flags.  Some dargahs in Ahmedabad city
crossings have overnight been demolished and their
sites covered with road building material, and
bulldozed so efficiently that these spots are
indistinguishable from the rest of the road.  Traffic
now plies over thes

Barcelona - update [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---



BBC. 15 March 2002. Reform dominates EU summit.

BARCELONA -- European leaders have been discussing economic reform at a
two-day summit in Barcelona, amid the biggest security operation the
city has ever seen.

Police broke up a crowd of several hundred anti-globalisation activists,
beating several with batons, in the historic Ramblas district some way
from the summit venue.

Reports say about a dozen of the protesters were taken into police
custody, along with another four who overturned a car.

Tens of thousands of trade unionists marched through Barcelona on
Thursday to voice their concern at the prospect of US-style economic
liberalism spreading to Europe.

The authorities have sealed off the summit site from the rest of the
city, using cement and steel wire barricades.

There have also been reports that hard-line German and East European
anarchists are heading for the city, leading to fears of violence at the
biggest planned demonstration on Saturday afternoon.



. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Barry Stoller
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews
with photo attachments from the demo

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The Horrors Of The Balkan Wars As Shrewdly Staged Illusions [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK


HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---

NY Times, March 15, 2002 
MOVIE REVIEW | 'YUGOSLAVIA, THE AVOIDABLE WAR' 
The Horrors of the Balkan Wars as Shrewdly Staged
Illusions 
By STEPHEN HOLDEN 


One of the many unsettling contentions of George
Bogdanich's documentary 
film, "Yugoslavia, the Avoidable War," is its
assertion that many of the most horrendous events in
the recent Balkan wars were stage-managed for the news
media. A number of the massacres and atrocities
reported on television with bodies on display, it
maintains, were shrewdly planned illusions concocted
by the Bosnian Muslims to inflame international
opinion against the Serbs. The city of Sarajevo in
particular served more than once as an accessible
location for deceptive television coverage. 
Although it would be inaccurate to label this
documentary pro-Serbian, the film, which opens today
at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater, methodically sets
out to demolish much of the conventional wisdom about
who did what to whom and who was to blame. It insists
that a regional civil war that could have been settled
without prolonged bloodshed was turned into a major
conflagration by outside interference and national
self-interest. 
As the United States government has tacitly
acknowledged by keeping the press at bay in
Afghanistan, public relations and the ability to get
your version of events across is almost as important
as weaponry in modern warfare. The version of a war
that is reported on television becomes the official
version that in turn motivates crucial political
decisions. 
The film asserts that partly because of American
television's need for clear-cut heroes and villains, a
scenario of good guys (the oppressed Bosnian Muslims)
versus bad (the evil, barbaric Serbs) came to dominate
mainstream news coverage of the war. After one
reporter heard a Serbian use the words "ethnic
cleansing," for instance, the term, with its repugnant
genocidal associations, was seized on by the Clinton
administration as a buzzword and used to bash the
Serbs, when in fact all sides were equally intent on
"cleansing" their territories of undesirables. 
This heroes-and-villains mentality, the film contends,
also served American interests by giving the United
States an excuse to preserve and strengthen NATO in
the post-Communist era when its relevance had become
debatable. 
It allowed us to keep our power base in Europe. The
film bluntly calls "an occupying force" the NATO
forces (led by the United States) that remain in
Kosovo, Bosnia and Macedonia without an official date
for withdrawing, and it goes so far as to accuse that
19-nation army of conspiring to commit war crimes. 
Almost anything we thought we knew about the Balkan
wars is thrown into question by the film. Did a highly
publicized civilian massacre of Bosnian Muslims [sic]
by Serbs in Kosovo that prompted NATO to intensify the
bombing of Yugoslavia really take place? Or did
Bosnian Muslims [sic] transport the bodies of dead
soldiers (not civilians) overnight to the site and
then cry massacre? 
And what about the numbers? Subsequent investigations,
the movie claims, have shown that the tally of
casualties at the hands of Serbs, including the
supposed mass rapes of Bosnian women, was outrageously
inflated. 
Whether or not you're convinced by the film's
assertions, many of which are based on information
provided by the Red Cross, Amnesty International,
Human Rights Watch and other organizations that
investigated reported events after the fact,
"Yugoslavia, the Avoidable War" does an impressive job
of relating the complicated history of the war and of
filling in the background. Some of that background has
been overshadowed by the designation of the Serbs as
the villains. The Croatians, it reminds us,
collaborated closely with the Nazis during World War
II in the slaughter of 750,000 Serbs, Jews and Gypsies
in their territory. 
As for the Bosnian Muslims, the film says there is
ample evidence documenting Bosnians' alliance with
Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. 
Mr. bin Laden was a regular visitor to the office of
Bosnia's president Alija Izetbegovic in early 1993, a
time when the United States was lauding his commitment
to moderation and multiethnic cooperation. 
As the meticulously chronological account of the
Balkan wars unfolds event by event, failed peace
initiative by failed peace initiative, "Yugoslavia,
the Avoidable War" leads you to a no man's land of
doubt. 
The truth, of course, was never as black-and-white as
it is has been painted for us. It rarely is. 
YUGOSLAVIA, THE AVOIDABLE WAR 
Directed by George Bogdanich; directors of
photography, Michael Moser, Vladimir Bibic, Dragan
Milinkovic, David Hansen, Joe Friendly and Predrag
Bambic; edited by Mary Patierno; title song, "Road to
Hell," by Chris Rea; produced by Mr. Bogdanich and
Martin Lettmayer; released by Hargrove Entertainmnet.
At the Two Boots Pioneer Theater, 155 East Third
Street, East Village. Running time: 165 minutes. Th

Genocide? [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]

HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---

[The conditions in Bosnia's POW detention centres have been documented as attrocious. In these centres some of the worst cases of violations of the laws of war committed by all three sides were carried out. Yet it is interesting to note that as soon as international pressure was focused on the Serbian "concentration camps" they were dismantled and opened to the Red Cross, while the Muslim and Croat-run "camps" continued to mistreat and degrade victims ceaslesly. It seems that the overall death toll in Serbian camps was in the low hundreds, a number matched by the other equally brutal and inhuman camps run by Croats and Muslims, and not 10s of thousands as claimed in 1990s propaganda. KP-Dom detention centre in Foca was one of the most notorious - routinely during the war claims were made that thousands were being held and slaughtered here in a genocidal campaign. It now emerges that 26 inmates died while in the camp. This is appaling and grotesque, but nowhere near genocide nor even the number of inmates killed by the Americans in Afghanistan, nor has it been ever established that these murders occured as part of any systematic war-time policy on the part of the Bosnian Serb leadership. In fact the directives of the war-time leadership were consistently to improve conditions in the POW detention centres, the fact that some psychologically deranged individuals choose to project their psychosis towards the detainees is a reflection of the criminal nature of war and not of any official Bosnian Serb policy towards Muslim populations in Bosnia.]

Serbian Prison Warden Convicted
By ANTHONY DEUTSCH
.c The Associated Press
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - A U.N. tribunal convicted a former Serbian teacher Friday of crimes against humanity for the beatings and murder of Muslim prisoners at a wartime Bosnian prison camp and sentenced him to 7 1/2 years in prison.

The war crimes court found Milorad Krnojelac, 61, the former commander of the KP-Dom prison complex in Foca, eastern Bosnia, guilty of four counts of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war. He was acquitted on eight counts, including torture.

``The accused has expressed no regret for the part he played in the commission of these crimes, and only insubstantial regret that the offenses had taken place,'' presiding Australian judge David Hunt said, reading a summary of the 236-page ruling.

However, Krnojelac was ``not well experienced and perhaps not well suited'' to run a prison and did not participate directly in the crimes, the ruling said.

``This has been a case in which the accused had chosen to bury his head in the sand, and ignore the responsibilities and power which he had as warden,'' Hunt said.

Krnojelac, asked by the judge to stand for his sentencing, crossed himself when he heard the decision.

He was the 27th defendant to be convicted by the Netherlands-based tribunal since it was created in 1993. Five others were acquitted. It also was the first verdict delivered since the tribunal's highest-profile defendant, former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, went on trial Feb. 12.

During the 1992-94 Bosnian war, about 1,000 civilian men, predominantly Muslims, were detained without charge at the complex in Foca and subjected to daily physical and mental abuse. Krnojelac commanded the prison for 16 months.

Non-Serbs inmates were held from four months to 2 1/2 years, during which they were starved and abused. At least 26 were beaten to death, the court concluded.

``The beatings lasted well into the evening, and the sounds of the beatings and screams were clearly heard by other detainees,'' Hunt said. The accused knew the crimes were taking place, the court found.

Prosecutors had demanded a sentence of at least 25 years. It was not immediately known if they would appeal the judgment.

The panel of three judges said the prosecution's charges that Krnojelac had been part of an anti-Muslim criminal enterprise was been proven nor his personal involvement in dozens of beatings and murders.

Krnojelac, a Yugoslav army reserve captain, taught math at an elementary school for 20 years before becoming KP-Dom warden at the war's outbreak. He has been in custody for three years and nine months, and will be freed in 2005.

AP-NY-03-15-02 0851EST
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Mass-distortions... [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---

[DOS is really stupid.  Apparently becoming a small landlocked country will be a boon to Serbia's economy, also apparently the only Montenegrins against the deal are those who favor indipendence.  The SNP's grass-roots however, in reality, is seething with anger at Predrag Bulatovic who has sold out the principles of the "Zajedno za Jugoslaviju" (Together for Yugoslavia) coalition and is now collaborating with the West to the detriment of the majority of Montenegrins and Yugoslavia as a whole (the SNP could in theory block the creation of the USM through its votes in the Federal Parliament).  My grandmother - WWII era partizan resistance fighter who lives in Montenegro - says that the SNPs grassroots is up in arms about this deal and is vociferously opposed to it. Furthermore, no one in Serbia - either than stupid and myopic Serb nationalists of the DOS variety who are happy that the name "Serbia" will be on the map again even if it is landlocked, federated, reduced in size, occupied, exploited, encircled, governed by the US embassy, and overflowing with refuggees - is happy with the agreement.  Most see it as a betrayal and as something definately not in accordance with their wishes.  Even DOS stallwarts like Vladan Batic - Mr. We need to Cooperate with the Hague Tribunal himself - believe the deal makes no sense and cannot be carried out effectively.  Its fine and nice to say that the USM is one state, when everyone knows it isn't.  The Orwellianism in Balkan-speak now is too much to take!  I hope this is the final straw, this summer will be interesting, I'll be sure to be there.]


Yugoslav Restructuring Criticized
By SLOBODAN LEKIC
.c The Associated Press
  
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Serbia's justice minister criticized as untenable a European Union-sponsored plan to drastically restructure the present Yugoslav federation into a loose union between Serbia and Montenegro. 

``This imitation of a nation cannot survive long,'' Vladan Batic said Friday. ``This kind of loose union does not exist anywhere in practice, or even in political theory.'' 

Still, others praised the agreement, signed Thursday, which foresees Serbia and Montenegro becoming semi-independent and holds open the possibility of full independence three years down the road, should either republic choose to opt out of the arrangement. 

The two republics will share a defense and foreign policy for the next three years. However, the two will run separate economies, currencies and customs services. The name Yugoslavia will be replaced by Serbia and Montenegro. 

The EU, whose foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, mediated the accord, has insisted that Serbia and Montenegro remain united to avoid further political instability in the Balkans. Solana said the accord would pave the way for eventual EU membership, but refrained from predicting when this would occur. 

The EU also has agreed to recognize the two nations as independent states if the union is dissolved after a three-year period. 

Some top Serbian officials praised Thursday's agreement, saying it would enable Serbia's economy to develop more quickly in the coming years. 

``This will be a good arrangement if it is implemented correctly,'' Finance Minister Bozidar Djelic told reporters. ``Serbia will achieve all the economic preconditions to function as a sovereign state - its own customs service, central bank and fiscal policy.'' 

But some independent analysts expressed doubt. 

``The proposed economic arrangements ... will be both inefficient and expensive,'' said Nebojsa Savic, the head of an economic research institute in Belgrade. ``In practice, the union will have overlapping customs, banking and tax systems.'' 

In Montenegro, the republic's president, Milo Djukanovic - who signed the accord - was harshly criticized by his coalition partners for allegedly caving in to intense pressure from the EU. 

``This represents a betrayal without parallel in modern European history,'' said Slavko Perovic, head of the pro-independence Liberal Party. 

If the Liberals go ahead with plans to withdraw their support, the Montenegrin government could collapse. This may lead to early parliamentary elections at a time when many pro-independence voters are furious with Djukanovic. 

Dozens of independence-minded Montenegrins protested against the deal in the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica. In a leaflet distributed to media, protesters demanded ``to exercise their right to vote on Montenegrin independence.'' 

But Montenegro's pro-Serb Socialist National Party celebrated the survival of a joint state, saying it would benefit both entities. 

``Within three years, the new state will stabilize itself and demonstrate its efficiency,'' declared party leader Predrag Bulatovic. ``There will be no need for referendums on independence.'' 

AP-NY-03-15-02 0903EST
---
ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST

==^

Mass-distortions... [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---

[DOS is really stupid.  Apparently becoming a small landlocked country will be a boon to Serbia's economy, also apparently the only Montenegrins against the deal are those who favor indipendence.  The SNP's grass-roots however, in reality, is seething with anger at Predrag Bulatovic who has sold out the principles of the "Zajedno za Jugoslaviju" (Together for Yugoslavia) coalition and is now collaborating with the West to the detriment of the majority of Montenegrins and Yugoslavia as a whole (the SNP could in theory block the creation of the USM through its votes in the Federal Parliament).  My grandmother - WWII era partizan resistance fighter who lives in Montenegro - says that the SNPs grassroots is up in arms about this deal and is vociferously opposed to it. Furthermore, no one in Serbia - either than stupid and myopic Serb nationalists of the DOS variety who are happy that the name "Serbia" will be on the map again even if it is landlocked, federated, reduced in size, occupied, exploited, encircled, governed by the US embassy, and overflowing with refuggees - is happy with the agreement.  Most see it as a betrayal and as something definately not in accordance with their wishes.  Even DOS stallwarts like Vladan Batic - Mr. We need to Cooperate with the Hague Tribunal himself - believe the deal makes no sense and cannot be carried out effectively.  Its fine and nice to say that the USM is one state, when everyone knows it isn't.  The Orwellianism in Balkan-speak now is too much to take!  I hope this is the final straw, this summer will be interesting, I'll be sure to be there.]


Yugoslav Restructuring Criticized
By SLOBODAN LEKIC
.c The Associated Press
  
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Serbia's justice minister criticized as untenable a European Union-sponsored plan to drastically restructure the present Yugoslav federation into a loose union between Serbia and Montenegro. 

``This imitation of a nation cannot survive long,'' Vladan Batic said Friday. ``This kind of loose union does not exist anywhere in practice, or even in political theory.'' 

Still, others praised the agreement, signed Thursday, which foresees Serbia and Montenegro becoming semi-independent and holds open the possibility of full independence three years down the road, should either republic choose to opt out of the arrangement. 

The two republics will share a defense and foreign policy for the next three years. However, the two will run separate economies, currencies and customs services. The name Yugoslavia will be replaced by Serbia and Montenegro. 

The EU, whose foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, mediated the accord, has insisted that Serbia and Montenegro remain united to avoid further political instability in the Balkans. Solana said the accord would pave the way for eventual EU membership, but refrained from predicting when this would occur. 

The EU also has agreed to recognize the two nations as independent states if the union is dissolved after a three-year period. 

Some top Serbian officials praised Thursday's agreement, saying it would enable Serbia's economy to develop more quickly in the coming years. 

``This will be a good arrangement if it is implemented correctly,'' Finance Minister Bozidar Djelic told reporters. ``Serbia will achieve all the economic preconditions to function as a sovereign state - its own customs service, central bank and fiscal policy.'' 

But some independent analysts expressed doubt. 

``The proposed economic arrangements ... will be both inefficient and expensive,'' said Nebojsa Savic, the head of an economic research institute in Belgrade. ``In practice, the union will have overlapping customs, banking and tax systems.'' 

In Montenegro, the republic's president, Milo Djukanovic - who signed the accord - was harshly criticized by his coalition partners for allegedly caving in to intense pressure from the EU. 

``This represents a betrayal without parallel in modern European history,'' said Slavko Perovic, head of the pro-independence Liberal Party. 

If the Liberals go ahead with plans to withdraw their support, the Montenegrin government could collapse. This may lead to early parliamentary elections at a time when many pro-independence voters are furious with Djukanovic. 

Dozens of independence-minded Montenegrins protested against the deal in the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica. In a leaflet distributed to media, protesters demanded ``to exercise their right to vote on Montenegrin independence.'' 

But Montenegro's pro-Serb Socialist National Party celebrated the survival of a joint state, saying it would benefit both entities. 

``Within three years, the new state will stabilize itself and demonstrate its efficiency,'' declared party leader Predrag Bulatovic. ``There will be no need for referendums on independence.'' 

AP-NY-03-15-02 0903EST
---
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==^

Yugoslav Coup Attempt? [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]

HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---

[It seems that Momcilo Perisic, a close military ally of unelected Serbian PM Zoran Djindjic was arrested last night along with an official from the US embassy in Yugoslavia. The two were meeting in a restaurant when the arrests - made by the armed forces - occured. Djindjic and the West are trying to replace the current military leadership, predisposed to alignment with Russia and other anti-hegemonic forces in the Third World (including Zimbabwe, South Africa, Iraq, the Sandinistas, Belorussia, and the PLO among others) with a pliant pro-NATO military structure to preside over a tiny land-locked Serbia and the imposition of an exploitative market economy. Why where the two arrested? Was Perisic being instructed on how to handle the latest phase of US interference in the region?]

Yugoslavia arrests U.S. diplomat and ex-army boss
BELGRADE, March 15 (Reuters) - Yugoslavia arrested a U.S. diplomat who was meeting a Serbian government official in a restaurant on Thursday night and held him for 15 hours, a U.S. embassy spokesman said on Friday.

The army's Milosevic-era chief-of-staff Momcilo Perisic, who is now a Serbian Deputy Prime Minister, was also arrested on Thursday night by military security, his chief of staff said.

It was not immediately clear if Perisic was the Serb official in the restaurant and local media offered no immediate clue as to why the former general was being held.

The military court and Yugoslav government were expected to issue statements later.

"An American embassy official in Belgrade meeting with a Serbian government official in a public restaurant last night was arbitrarily arrested and held incommunicado for 15 hours," embassy spokesman Paul Denig told Reuters.

"He has been released to the embassy and the embassy is protesting the fact that he was arrested and detained," Denig said. He refused to give further details.

Perisic was army chief of staff until November 1998 when Slobodan Milosevic fired him after he criticised the then president's policies in Kosovo. Milosevic is facing war crimes charges in The Hague.

"The army security service arrested General Momcilo Perisic some time last night and he is still detained," Nebojsa Mandic, the head of Perisic's office, told Reuters by telephone.

Perisic told Reuters in 1999 he had warned Milosevic that he should avoid a war with NATO that the army could not win. Milosevic disagreed and fired him shortly before NATO launched its air war.

Perisic later founded his own party, the Movement for Democratic Serbia, joined the DOS coalition that toppled Milosevic in 2000 and in January 2001 became a deputy prime minister in the Serbian government.

Croatia has indicted Perisic for war crimes and tried him in absentia for shelling the Adriatic city of Zadar, where he was a Yugoslav army commander in 1991 at the start of the Croatian war.

He was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 1996. Croatia wants him removed from power and says his continued presence hinders a thawing in relations between the former foes.

The U.N. war crimes court in The Hague has not published any charges against Perisic.

Perisic is an ally of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. The army, which made the arrest, is under the control of Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, who is engaged in a power struggle with Djindjic.

10:43 03-15-02

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Axis Powers to be Compensated???????????? [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


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---

[NATO member Hungary is picking up where Hitler left off, fighting for the "rights" of minorities in the former Czechoslovakia: "Hungarians...see themselves as economically more advanced than their fellow ex-communist neighbours and hanker culturally for the past glories of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Analysts say the long-term UPSHOT of the row may be that Hungary, the most advanced of the membership candidates, gradually leans away from its eastern, SLAV COHORTS and develops closer ties with Austria, Germany and Italy. Both Austria and Germany agreed RELUCTANTLY to uphold the post-war settlement, despite wanting the Benes decrees annulled, by signing cooperation pacts after Czechoslovakia split into two states in 1993. But on Monday AUSTRIA LEAPT INTO THE ROW when Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel said there was a suspicion the old decrees still had a discriminatory effect today..."This is an historic opportunity to join forces with the AGGRIEVED (POST-WAR) PARTIES, AUSTRIA AND GERMANY, and GET THE CZECHS AND SLOVAKS TO LOOK IN THE MIRROR AND SEE IF THEIR LEGACY IS EU-COMPATIBLE"...ORBAN, roundly condemned by his neighbours and by the Socialist opposition at home, already FEELS VINDICATED that the European Parliament has asked a panel to look into the decrees."]    

ANALYSIS-Row over old laws points to E.European realignment
By Ian Geoghegan
  
BUDAPEST, March 15 (Reuters) - Instead of buddying up as they push to join the EU together, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have fallen out over laws passed half a century ago that expelled ethnic Germans and Hungarians from Czechoslovakia. 

The upsurge in nationalist rhetoric reeking of bygone wars and empires coincides with elections across the region -- but could also presage a realignment of allegiances within an expanded European Union. 

Eastern European countries are supposed to be helping, not hindering, each other's EU candidacies. But Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, with a canny eye on an election in April, angered his neighbours last month by saying the post-war Benes decrees in what was then Czechoslovakia violated EU norms. 

The decrees, issued by the exiled president Edvard Benes in 1945, expelled 2.5 million ethnic Germans or "Sudeten Germans" in retaliation for Nazi annexation of Czech territory in 1938. 

Tens of thousands of ethnic Hungarians were also stripped of their Czechoslovak citizenship and property. Many more were forcibly moved from what is now Slovakia -- a separate state since 1993 -- to work on Czech land, a move aimed at weakening the Hungarian minority in Slovakia. 

Not surprisingly, the issue still rankles. 

"We're talking about an awful lot of warm bodies and disrupted lives," said Rudolf Tokes, political analyst at Global Research, a Budapest-based think-tank. 

CULTURAL DIVIDE 

For Orban, the issue can be guaranteed to appeal to many Hungarians who see themselves as economically more advanced than their fellow ex-communist neighbours and hanker culturally for the past glories of the Austro-Hungarian empire. 

Analysts say the long-term upshot of the row may be that Hungary, the most advanced of the membership candidates, gradually leans away from its eastern, Slav cohorts and develops closer ties with Austria, Germany and Italy. 

Both Austria and Germany agreed reluctantly to uphold the post-war settlement, despite wanting the Benes decrees annulled, by signing cooperation pacts after Czechoslovakia split into two states in 1993. 

But on Monday Austria leapt into the row when Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel said there was a suspicion the old decrees still had a discriminatory effect today. 

"The timing could be campaign-related, but Orban has a pretty clear sense of Hungarian national interests," said Tokes. 

"This is an historic opportunity to join forces with the aggrieved (post-war) parties, Austria and Germany, and get the Czechs and Slovaks to look in a mirror and see if their legacy is EU-compatible." 

GERMANY 

Germany, too, may find itself being drawn in. 

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder cancelled a planned trip to Prague that threatened to be dominated by the Benes row. 

His conservative challenger in elections in September is Edmund Stoiber, premier of Bavaria, where many of those expelled from Czechoslovakia settled after the war. 

Meanwhile the Czech and Slovak leaders reacted to Orban's stance by boycotting a regional summit to discuss EU negotiating tactics, denting prospects for cooperation in the tricky entry negotiations. 

Prague insists it will never abolish the expropiations and expulsions, which are still part of the Czech legal code. 

The ruling social democrats, themselves facing elections in June, are aware of concern among Czechs that annulling the Benes decrees might unleash a flood of foreign -- notably German -- demands for compensation or the return of confiscated property. 

And Slovakia was already irked by a ne

Perisic Gave "State Secrets" to USA [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]

HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---

Yugo military pounces on U.S. envoy and ex-army boss
By Will Hardie
BELGRADE, March 15 (Reuters) - Yugoslav military police arrested a U.S. diplomat and Milosevic-era army chief-of-staff Momcilo Perisic as they met in a Belgrade restaurant on Thursday night, U.S. officials said on Friday.

Local media said Perisic, now a Serbian deputy prime minister, was accused of trying to hand over state secrets.

A U.S. State Department official protested that the diplomat was mistreated in the swoop.

"We're mad about it," the official said in Washington. "The military burst in and our guy got roughed up."

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica and a military court were expected to give statements later. Radio B-92 reported Perisic had been brought to the Serbian government building "dressed like a detainee" with the laces removed from his shoes.

U.S. embassy spokesman Paul Denig said the diplomat had been "arbitrarily arrested and held incomunicado for 15 hours."

"He has been released to the embassy and the embassy is protesting the fact that he was arrested and detained," Denig said. He declined to give further details. A strong formal protest from Washington was expected later.

The incident is likely to exacerbate tension between the government of Serbian premier Zoran Djindjic, which reportedly knew little of the arrest, and moderate nationalist Yugoslav President Kostunica, who commands the army.

Relations between the U.S. and Belgrade have been repaired since U.S. warplanes led the airstrikes in 1999 that forced Serb forces out of the majority ethnic Albanian province of Kosovo. But this diplomatic incident will complicate ties.

FORMER MILOSEVIC ALLY

Perisic was army chief of staff until November 1998 when Slobodan Milosevic fired him after he criticised the then president's policies in Kosovo. Slobodan Milosevic is facing war crimes charges in The Hague.

"The army security service arrested General Momcilo Perisic some time last night and he is still detained," Nebojsa Mandic, the head of Perisic's office, told Reuters by telephone. He did not say why Perisic had been taken into custody.

Perisic told Reuters in 1999 he had warned Milosevic that he should avoid a war with NATO that the army could not win. Milosevic disagreed and fired him shortly before NATO launched its air war.

Croatia has indicted Perisic for war crimes and tried him in absentia for shelling the Adriatic city of Zadar, where he was a Yugoslav army commander in 1991 at the start of the Croatian war.

He was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 1996. Croatia wants him removed from power and says his continued presence hinders a thawing in relations between the former foes.

The U.N. war crimes court in The Hague has not published any charges against Perisic.

12:15 03-15-02

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US Embassy Plot In Belgrade? [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


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---

Yugoslavia Arrests U.S. Diplomat and Ex-Army Boss
March 15 
 BELGRADE (Reuters) - Yugoslavia arrested a U.S.
diplomat who was meeting a Serbian government official
in a restaurant on Thursday night and held him for 15
hours, a U.S. embassy spokesman said on Friday.
The army's Milosevic-era chief-of-staff Momcilo
Perisic, who is now a Serbian Deputy Prime Minister,
was also arrested on Thursday night by military
security, his chief of staff said.
It was not immediately clear if Perisic was the Serb
official in the restaurant and local media offered no
immediate clue as to why the former general was being
held.
The military court and Yugoslav government were
expected to issue statements later.
"An American embassy official in Belgrade meeting with
a Serbian government official in a public restaurant
last night was arbitrarily arrested and held
incommunicado for 15 hours," embassy spokesman Paul
Denig told Reuters.
"He has been released to the embassy and the embassy
is protesting the fact that he was arrested and
detained," Denig said. He refused to give further
details.
Perisic was army chief of staff until November 1998
when Slobodan Milosevic fired him after he criticized
the then president's policies in Kosovo. Milosevic is
facing war crimes charges in The Hague.
"The army security service arrested General Momcilo
Perisic some time last night and he is still
detained," Nebojsa Mandic, the head of Perisic's
office, told Reuters by telephone.
Perisic told Reuters in 1999 he had warned Milosevic
that he should avoid a war with NATO that the army
could not win. Milosevic disagreed and fired him
shortly before NATO launched its air war.
Perisic later founded his own party, the Movement for
Democratic Serbia, joined the DOS coalition that
toppled Milosevic in 2000 and in January 2001 became a
deputy prime minister in the Serbian government.
Croatia has indicted Perisic for war crimes and tried
him in absentia for shelling the Adriatic city of
Zadar, where he was a Yugoslav army commander in 1991
at the start of the Croatian war.
He was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years in
prison in 1996. Croatia wants him removed from power
and says his continued presence hinders a thawing in
relations between the former foes.
The U.N. war crimes court in The Hague has not
published any charges against Perisic.
Perisic is an ally of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran
Djindjic. The army, which made the arrest, is under
the control of Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica,
who is engaged in a power struggle with Djindjic.
  

  

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US Supported Al-Qaeda Cells During Balkan Wars [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


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---

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?f=/stories/20020315/344843.html

March 15, 2002
U.S. supported al-Qaeda cells during Balkan Wars
Fought Serbian troops
Isabel Vincent
National Post
Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network has been
active in the Balkans for years, most recently helping
Kosovo rebels battle for independence from Serbia with
the financial and military backing of the United
States and NATO.
The claim that al-Qaeda played a role in the Balkan
wars of the 1990s came from an alleged FBI document
former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic presented in
his defence before the Hague tribunal last week. Mr.
Milosevic faces 66 counts of war crimes and genocide.
Although Hague prosecutors have challenged the
veracity of the document, which Mr. Milosevic
identified as a Congressional statement from the FBI
dated last December, Balkan experts say the presence
of al-Qaeda militants in Kosovo and Bosnia is well
documented.
Today, al-Qaeda members are helping the National
Liberation Army, a rebel group in Macedonia, fight the
Skopje government in a bid for independence, military
analysts say. Last week, Michael Steiner, the United
Nations administrator in Kosovo, warned of "importing
the Afghan danger to Europe" because several cells
trained and financed by al-Qaeda remain in the region.
"Many members of the Kosovo Liberation Army were sent
for training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan," said
James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to
Yugoslavia and an expert on the Balkans. "Milosevic is
right. There is no question of their participation in
conflicts in the Balkans. It is very well documented."
The arrival in the Balkans of the so-called Afghan
Arabs, who are from various Middle Eastern states and
linked to al-Qaeda, began in 1992 soon after the war
in Bosnia. According to Lenard Cohen, professor of
political science at Simon Fraser University,
mujahedeen fighters who travelled to Afghanistan to
resist the Soviet occupation in the 1980s later
"migrated to Bosnia hoping to assist their Islamic
brethren in a struggle against Serbian [and for a
time] Croatian forces."
The Bosnian Muslims welcomed their assistance. After
the Bosnian war, "hundreds of Bosnian passports were
provided to the mujahedeen by the Muslim-controlled
government in Sarajevo," said Prof. Cohen in a recent
article titled Bin Laden and the war in the Balkans.
Many al-Qaeda members decided to stay in the region
after marrying local Muslim women, he said.
They also set up secret terrorist training camps in
Bosnia -- activities financed by the sale of opium
produced in Afghanistan and secretly shipped through
Turkey and Kosovo into central Europe.
In the years immediately before the NATO bombing of
Yugoslavia in 1999, the al-Qaeda militants moved into
Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia, to help
ethnic Albanian extremists of the KLA mount their
terrorist campaign against Serb targets in the region.
The mujahedeen "were financed by Saudi and United Arab
Emirates money," said one Western military official,
asking anonymity. "They were mercenaries who were not
running the show in Kosovo, but were used by the KLA
to do their dirty work."
The United States, which had originally trained the
Afghan Arabs during the war in Afghanistan, supported
them in Bosnia and then in Kosovo. When NATO forces
launched their military campaign against Yugoslavia
three years ago to unseat Mr. Milosevic, they entered
the Kosovo conflict on the side of the KLA, which had
already received "substantial" military and financial
support from bin Laden's network, analysts say.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes on the
United States, NATO began to worry about the presence
in the Balkans of the Islamist terrorist cells it had
supported throughout the 1990s.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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NATO Threatens Slovakia - Again [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


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---

http://www.time.com
Time
March 15, 2002


Another NATO Warning 
NATO's George Robertson issues another thinly veiled
warning to Slovaks that they had better not vote for
Meciar if they want to join the alliance   
BY BARBORA TANCEROVA/Bratislava 
NATO PHOTO
Vladimir Meciar  then Prime Minister of Slovakia 
arrives at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, in
February 1993
Friday, Mar. 15, 2002 
NATO Secretary-General Lord George Robertson once
again suggested to Slovak voters last week that if
they want their country to join the alliance, they
should avoid voting for certain politicians in the
September general elections. 
It was far from the first time a NATO official has
issued such a warning in recent months, and each time,
the Slovak media have understood the warning as a
clear sign that NATO will not accept the country into
its ranks if former Slovak Prime Minister Vladimir
Meciar returns to power in this Central European
country. 
The possibility of such a return to power seems very
real, with Meciar's Movement for a Democratic Slovakia
(HZDS) well ahead of other parties in the opinion
polls. The prospect is not appealing to U.S. and other
Western officials, who often criticized Meciar's
government in the mid-1990s on the grounds that he was
showing a heavy-handed disregard for the rule of law
and democratic norms. 
Meeting with Slovak President Rudolf Schuster on 7
March in Brussels, Robertson said the September
elections could be the "most important elections in
Slovakia's history," the Slovak daily SME reported on
8 March. He added that if Slovaks want to be part of
NATO, they should vote for NATO. 
While Meciar recently launched a pro-NATO public
campaign, his government in the mid-1990s was often
criticized by NATO member states. In addition,
Slovakia was bypassed in the first wave of NATO
enlargement in 1999 on the grounds that the country
did not meet all of the criteria for membership, a
situation that was widely blamed on Meciar's
government. 
One week before Robertson's comments, U.S. Ambassador
to NATO Nicholas Burns was less equivocal in saying
Meciar and the HZDS are unacceptable to the alliance.
Noting that no "undemocratic movement, party, or
government" has a place in NATO, Burns said on 28
February that the previous Slovak government under
Meciar did not respect "democratic values" and the
"rule of law." 
Following the comments from Burns, Meciar was quoted
by the Czech news agency CTK as saying the country has
other alternatives than NATO entry. The comments were
viewed as a major shift in his rhetoric as well as
that of HZDS, which in recent months has emphasized
the importance of NATO membership for Slovakia's
future. 
"If, up until now, we have not allowed for any other
possibility [than that Slovakia will gain NATO
membership], then today it is necessary that even this
is possible. These 5.3 million people have nowhere
else to move and will continue to live here," Meciar
was quoted as saying by CTK. After that, however, HZDS
parliamentarian Olga Keltosova was quick to say that
the party stands by its earlier statements that NATO
membership is a key goal for the country. 
But the party might have trouble taking part in the
formation of the next Slovak government in any case.
After his meeting with Robertson, Schuster suggested
that he might not ask the party that actually wins the
elections to try to form the next government.
"Usually, according to the constitution, the president
appoints the winner of the elections to form a
government. Usually. This means that it need not be
the winner of the elections," he told journalists on 7
March. 
HZDS officials also rejected Schuster's suggestion
that he might bypass the party even if it wins the
largest proportion of the vote in the September
elections. "The HZDS will be in the future government.
I am optimistic about it. The president will have to
think seriously about what he will do. The numbers
will be strict," HZDS deputy leader Jan Gabriel was
quoted as saying in SME on 7 March. 
This article was edited and adapted from Transitions
Online. A longer version is available at:
http://www.tol.cz www.tol.cz 
 
  
   
 
  


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Barcelona - riots [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


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---


BBC (with additional material by Reuters). 15 March 2002. Clashes break
out at EU summit.

BARCELONA -- Riot police have used batons to break up crowds of
protesters staging anti-globalisation protests in the Spanish city of
Barcelona, where European Union leaders are holding a two-day summit.

About 1,000 young protesters gathered in Las Ramblas, the main boulevard
in the city centre, to taunt police and throw stones.

Police responded by hitting protesters with batons, but the BBC's James
Coomarasamy, reporting from Barcelona, says the skirmishes so far have
been localised and relatively small scale.

More than 8,000 police officers, backed by military aircraft and naval
vessels, have been deployed to keep the peace in the city.

Our correspondent says the violence so far has been short-lived and
restricted to cursory charges up and down the street.

But he said some police had fired rubber bullets when the protests
reached their peak, and a number of protesters had been arrested.

"The police started it," said one protester, Ruben Bayona. "I'm not
saying they weren't provoked, but it takes very little to provoke them."

Local shop keepers were taking no chances, with most keeping their
shutters firmly closed.

The protests have been taking place several kilometres away from the
heavily guarded compound at the Palacio de Congresos on the city's
outskirts, where the summit is taking place.

And the security surrounding their meeting is so tight that the
authorities are confident there will no breaches of the protective ring.

Reuters correspondents at the scene saw baton-wielding officers move in
with the considerable force that is a trademark of the Spanish riot
police to break up a crowd of young protesters gathering around the
city's Liceu opera house on the historic Ramblas avenue, near the
harbor.

Local police said they had arrested 10 people for "damaging street
furniture" but gave no further details.

With black police vans lining the street, scuffles began between police
and activists. Bottles and cafe chairs were thrown. As shopkeepers
rapidly closed their shutters, hundreds of people fled down narrow side
streets.

"They don't have the right to do this," one angry young man, who gave
his name only as Jaume, said after the police moved in.

Some of those fleeing shouted "Carlo vive!" (Carlo lives!), in homage to
Carlo Giuliani, a protester shot dead by police during riots at an
international summit in Genoa last July.

Torsten Geuder, a German businessman staying at a hotel on a side
street, said two windows had been broken in the lobby.

"There were many masked people running down the street. We were sitting
here having lunch and then we heard sounds like shots and broken glass.
They were running destroying anything they could find," Geuder said.

Several of the young demonstrators wore black handkerchiefs over their
faces. One hurled a metal drain cover at the window of a local bank,
others threw plant pots and chairs at police.

Some protesters, from groups including some from Britain and France,
were dragged away by police officers as others set fire to garbage cans,
leaving a cloud of smoke hanging over parts of the historic old town.




. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Barry Stoller
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews
with photo attachments of the demo

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Montenegro gov't toppled? [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


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---


AP. 15 March 2002. Independence Backers Threaten to Topple Montenegro's
Government.

PODGORICA -- Independence forces claimed betrayal Friday and threatened
to topple Montenegro's government over a deal that keeps the republic in
a union with Serbia.

There was also loud criticism of the plan in Serbia where opponents said
it effectively wipes Yugoslavia off the map, replacing it with a loose
union of two republics. Many critics said the confederation, adopted
Thursday, would be unworkable.

The agreement foresees Serbia and Montenegro becoming semi-independent
and holds open the possibility of full independence three years down the
road, should either republic choose to leave the confederation.

Serbia and Montenegro will share a defense and foreign policy, but will
run separate economies, currencies and customs services. The name
Yugoslavia will be replaced by Serbia and Montenegro.

The European Union, whose foreign policy chief Javier Solana mediated
the accord, has insisted that Serbia and Montenegro remain united to
avoid further political instability in the Balkans. Solana said the
accord would pave the way for eventual EU membership.

The EU also has agreed to recognize the two nations as independent
states if the union is dissolved.

Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic, who faced sharp criticism in
Montenegro for giving up a planned independence referendum, predicted
the plan would win parliamentary approval. He said he would continue
working for independence but suggested international goodwill was worth
the concessions he made.

But he was criticized Friday by his coalition partners for allegedly
caving in to pressure from the European Union.

"This represents a betrayal without parallel in modern European
history," said Slavko Perovic, head of the pro-independence Liberal
Party.

"The agreement is unacceptable, and our party will pull out of the
coalition if the accord is ratified by parliament," said Ranko
Krivokapic of the Social Democratic Party - another key Djukanovic ally.

If the two coalition partners withdraw their support, the Montenegrin
government could collapse, leading to parliamentary elections at a time
when many pro-independence voters are upset with Djukanovic.

Dozens of independence-minded Montenegrins protested against the deal in
Podgorica, their capital. In a leaflet distributed to the media,
protesters demanded "to exercise their right to vote on Montenegrin
independence."

In Belgrade, the Serbian capital, Serbian Justice Minister Vladan Batic
expressed dissatisfaction with at least part of that republic's
leadership, which had favored maintaining present ties with Montenegro.
With a population of more than 9 million - almost 15 times that of
Montenegro - Serbia has dominated Yugoslav policy-making.

"This imitation of a nation cannot survive long," Batic said. "This kind
of loose union does not exist anywhere in practice, or even in political
theory."

Some independent analysts also expressed doubt that the plan would work.

"The proposed economic arrangements ... will be both inefficient and
expensive," said Nebojsa Savic, head of an economic research institute
in Belgrade. "In practice, the union will have overlapping customs,
banking and tax systems."



. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Barry Stoller
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews

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Milosevic questions Ashdown [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---


AFP. 15 March 2002.  Milosevic cross examines Western diplomat for first
time.

THE HAGUE -- Slobodan Milosevic questioned former British opposition
party leader Paddy Ashdown on Friday, cross examining a Western diplomat
for the first time in his trial for war crimes.

Questioning one of his long-time accusers, Milosevic was sharp to react
when Ashdown told the court he had warned the former Yugoslav president
he would end up in the court one day over Belgrade's repression in
Kosovo.

"I warned you that if you took these steps and went on doing this you
would end up in this court and here you are!" said Ashdown, recalling a
conversation with Milosevic after visiting Kosovo in 1998 to investigate
claims by the ethnic Albanian community of repression at the hands of
Serb forces.

"Could the witness please answer my questions and not make speeches,"
Milosevic replied acidly.

The former Yugoslav leader questioned Ashdown about the 1999 NATO
campaign against Yugoslavia.

The relaxed and eloquent diplomat conceded nothing to the former
Yugoslav president.

Milosevic tried to make the point that Ashdown believed there would only
be peace in Yugoslavia if it was "subjugated" to the great powers, but
Ashdown dismissed it as a "laughable" notion.

During the three-hour cross-examination, Milosevic grilled Ashdown about
activities of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

"I have never denied it was a terrorist organisation, I have never
denied there was KLA activity and innocent Serbs were suffering," said
Ashdown.

Ashdown's testimony wound up Friday and the court adjourned.

The trial chamber is on Monday to hear protected witnesses in a closed
session.



. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Barry Stoller
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Venezuela: Next Chile? [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---

 
Venezuela: Next Chile?
PETROLEUMWORLD
Caracas, Mar.13
VH - He has won two elections, and he has made a start on relieving poverty. So now the US wants to get rid of Venezuela's presidentAlmost 30 years after the violent destruction of the reformist government of Salvador Allende in Chile, a repeat performance is being planned in Venezuela. Little of this has been reported in Britain. Indeed, little is known of the achievements of the government of Hugo Chavez, who won presidential elections in 1998 and again in 2000 by the largest majority in 40 years.Following the principles of a movement called BolIvarism, named after the South American independence hero Simon BolIvar, Chavez has implemented reforms that have begun to shift the great wealth of Venezuela, principally from its oil, towards the 80 per cent of his people who live in poverty. In 49 laws adopted by the Venezuelan Congress last November, Chavez began serious land reform, and
guaranteed indigenous and women's rights and free healthcare and education up to university level.Chavez faces enemies that Allende would recognise. The "oligarchies", which held power since the 1950s during the corrupt bipartisan reign of the Social Christians and Democratic Action, have declared war on the reforming president, backed by the Catholic Church and a trade union hierarchy and the media, both controlled by the right. What has enraged them is a modest agrarian reform that allows the state to expropriate and redistribute idle land; and a law that limits the exploitation of oil reserves, reinforcing a constitutional ban on the privatisation of the state oil company.Allied with Chavez's domestic enemies is the Bush administration. Defying Washington, Chavez has sold oil to Cuba and refused overflying rights to American military aircraft supplying "Plan Colombia", the US campaign in support of the murderous regime in neighbouring Colombia. Worse, although he condemned the attacks of 11 September, he questioned the right of the United States to "fight terrorism with terrorism".For this, he is unforgiven. On 5-7 November, the State Department, Pentagon and National Security Agency held a two-day meeting to discuss "the problem of Venezuela". The State Department has since accused the Chavez government of "supporting terrorism" in Colombia, Bolivia and Ecuador. In fact, Venezuela opposes American-funded terrorism in those three countries.The US says it will "put Venezuela in diplomatic isolation"; Colin Powell has warned Chavez to correct "his understanding of what a democracy is all about". Familiar events are unfolding. The International Monetary Fund has indicated it supports a "transitional government" for Venezuela. The Caracas daily El Nacional says the IMF is willing to bankroll those who remove Chavez from office. James Petras, a professor at New York State University, who was in Chile in the early 1970s and has studied the subversion of the Allende government, says that "the IMF and financial institutions are fabricating a familiar crisis. The tactics used are very similar to those used in Chile. Civilians are used to create a feeling of chaos, and a false picture of Chavez as a dictator is established, then the military is incited to make a coup for the sake of the country."A former paratrooper, Chavez apparently still has the army behind him (as Allende did, until the CIA murdered his loyal military chief, opening the way to Pinochet). However, several senior officers have denounced Chavez as a "tyrant" and have called for his resignation. It is difficult to assess this; in its rumour-mongering, the hostile Caracas press plays a role reminiscent of Chile's right-wing press, with poisonous stories questioning Chavez's sanity.The most worrying threat comes from a reactionary trade union hierarchy, the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV), led by Carlos Ortega, a hack of the anti-Chavez Democratic Action Party. The CTV maintains a black list of "disloyal" and "disruptive" members, which it supplies to employers. According to Dick Nichols, writing from Caracas, Chavez's most serious mistake has been his failure to move against the union old guard, following a national referendum in which a majority gave him a mandate to reform the CTV.The crime of Hugo Chavez is that he has set out to keep his electoral promises, redistributing the wealth of his country and subordinating the principle of private property to that of the common good. Having underestimated the power of his enemies, his current counter-offensive is imaginative but also hints of desperation.He has set up what are called "BolIvarian circles", of which 8,000 are being established in communities and workplaces across the country. Based on the revolutionary heritage of Simon BolIvar's triumph in the war against Spain, their job is to ..."raise the consciousness of citizens and develop all forms of participatory organisations in the community

Don't ask for the evidence, just nuke Baghdad [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]

- Original Message - 
From: vaidyasandeep2000 
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Friday, March 15, 2002 5:26 AM
Subject: [no-sanctions] Don't ask for the evidence, just nuke Baghdad
Don't ask for the evidence, just nuke Baghdad'There will probably be an announcement soon that our steel industry was harbouring al-Qa'ida'Mark Steel Te Independent, 14 March 2002The American military has become like one of these couples that always goes on holiday to the same resort. They're sat in the Pentagon muttering: "We always bomb the same place, every year. This year we looked through the brochures and thought of bombing somewhere new, like Yemen or North Korea, but in the end we thought we'd play safe and stick with Iraq as usual."Because Saddam has acquired "weapons of mass destruction". Just now, at exactly the same time as the American military is on a roll and can justify anything it wants by pointing to Ground Zero. What a coincidence. And we know this is true because "there is evidence". Well that pretty much wraps the case up, then.Some politically correct types might ask what the evidence is, but that's the sort of bureaucracy that snarls up any legal system. The evidence is bound to be as damning as that produced by Nato chief George Robertson when he held up an Iraqi canister and announced it would be lethal if Saddam filled it with deadly anthrax. Just as a bottle of lemonade would be lethal if you filled it with deadly anthrax, which is why the axis of evil should include Iraq, Iran and the Schweppes bottling plant in Sidcup.What slightly confuses me is this. In 1991, following a 10-year war in which Saddam had been allowed, indeed encouraged, by the Americans to build up his military strength, the most destructive weapon he came up with was the Scud. Which is probably safe to let off in your garden as long as you make sure it stays upright and don't light it while it's in your hand. But since then Iraq has been observed day and night, pelted with cruise missiles and subjected to sanctions that prevent almost all imports. Even ping-pong balls are banned, presumably in case they're filled up with deadly anthrax.Yet despite this, the place has got itself a pile of weapons of mass destruction. Saddam doesn't need to rule Iraq, he could play Las Vegas as the greatest magician in history. The climax of his show would be to invite someone on to the stage and say: "We've never met before, have we? Now I'd just like you to tell the audience if there's anything destructive here, anything at all." Then  kazoom  and out of a puff of smoke pops a beautiful assistant astride a silo full of nuclear warheads. Then David Blaine and Uri Geller say: "How the bloody hell has he managed that?"It's also claimed that Iraq may have been connected to the attack on New York. For this is now the excuse for every act of American aggression. There will probably be an announcement soon that the British steel industry was harbouring al-Qa'ida terrorists.Each new stage of the war against terrorism makes it clearer that the real aim has little to do with the twin towers and is a bid for what the American military describes as "full spectrum dominance". Partly, this entails revenge against anyone who's caused the US embarrassment, starting with the most recent and going back, making the named targets so far Iraq, Somalia, Iran and North Korea. Blair ought to be careful. Historically speaking, after that it goes Japan, Spain, the Confederacy, Mexico and then Britain.But still Americans write in to newspapers such as this one, whining about any criticism of their government's warmongering. They're like a superpower version of Harry Enfield's Kevin the Teenager. Someone only has to suggest that maybe they shouldn't threaten to frazzle half the planet and they're screaming: "Oh it's so unfair. We're not allowed to do anything."Almost every week sees a new "post 11/9 film" in which American soldiers blast their way heroically through a sinister land to deliver democracy to ungrateful savages. Mel Gibson's next effort will be to play Henry Kissinger parachuting into Santiago to help General Pinochet to stop the Chilean parliament drowning a litter of kittens.In a typical article in one Sunday paper, an American writer lamented how he had "thought twice" about becoming a father in this "post September 11th world". Funny how it didn't bother him that he was bringing a child into a post-napalming-Cambodia world or a post-Chile-coup world or a post-Contra world. To the inevitable accusation that this makes me "anti-American", I would point out that three of my greatest living heroes are Muhammad Ali, Richard Pryor and Bart Simpson. To suggest that anyone who questions the American military is "anti-American" is like suggesting that someone who voices concerns about the techniques of Harold Shipman holds an "instinctive hatred of doctors".But no matter how barmy they get, there will be Tony Blair, shoulder to shoulder. Some people are suggestin

DEPLETED URANIUM IN BUNKER BOMBS [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]

2002-03-15 Thread Miroslav Antic

Title: Message



HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---


 

http://mondediplo.com/2002/03/03uraniumLe Monde 
diplomatique, March 15, 2002DEPLETED URANIUM IN BUNKER 
BOMBS 
America's big dirty 
secret   
The United States loudly and proudly 
boasted   
this month of its new bomb currently 
being   
used against al-Qaida hold-outs 
in   
Afghanistan; it sucks the air 
from   
underground installations, suffocating 
those   
within. The US has also admitted that it 
has   
used depleted uranium weaponry over the 
last   
decade against bunkers in Iraq, Kosovo, 
and   
now 
Afghanistan.    
by ROBERT JAMES PARSONS 
*   
"The immediate concern for medical professionals 
and   
employees of aid organisations remains the threat of 
extensive   
depleted uranium (DU) contamination in Afghanistan." This 
is   
one of the conclusions of a 130-page report, Mystery 
Metal   
Nightmare in Afghanistan? (1), by Dai Williams, an 
independent   
researcher and occupational psychologist. It is the result of 
more   
than a year of research into DU and its effects on those 
exposed   
to 
it.   
Using internet sites of both NGOs (2) and arms 
manufacturers,   
Williams has come up with information that he 
has   
cross-checked and compared with weapons that the 
Pentagon   
has reported - indeed boasted about - using during the 
war.   
What emerges is a startling and frightening vision of war, both 
in   
Afghanistan and in the 
future.   
Since 1997 the United States has been modifying and 
upgrading   
its missiles and guided (smart) bombs. Prototypes of 
these   
bombs were tested in the Kosovo mountains in 1999, but a 
far   
greater range has been tested in Afghanistan. The 
upgrade   
involves replacing a conventional warhead by a heavy, 
dense   
metal one (3). Calculating the volume and the weight of 
this   
mystery metal leads to two possible conclusions: it is 
either   
tungsten or depleted 
uranium.   
Tungsten poses problems. Its melting point (3,422°C) makes 
it   
very hard to work; it is expensive; it is produced mostly 
by   
China; and it does not burn. DU is pyrophoric, burning 
on   
impact or if it is ignited, with a melting point of 1,132°C; it 
is   
much easier to process; and as nuclear waste, it is available 
free   
to arms manufacturers. Further, using it in a range of 
weapons   
significantly reduces the US nuclear waste storage 
problem.   
This type of weapon can penetrate many metres of 
reinforced   
concrete or rock in seconds. It is equipped with a 
detonator   
controlled by a computer that measures the density of 
the   
material passed through and, when the warhead reaches 
the   
targeted void or a set depth, detonates the warhead, which 
then   
has an explosive and incendiary effect. The DU burns 
fiercely   
and rapidly, carbonising everything in the void, while the 
DU   
itself is transformed into a fine uranium oxide powder. 
Although   
only 30% of the DU of a 30mm penetrator round is oxidised, 
the   
DU charge of a missile oxidises 100%. Most of the dust 
particles   
produced measure less than 1.5 microns, small enough to 
be   
breathed 
in.   
For a few researchers in this area, the controversy over the 
use   
of DU weapons during the Kosovo war got side-tracked. 
Instead   
of asking what weapons might have been used against most 
of   
the targets (underground mountain bunkers) acknowledged 
by

RE: Solana Destroys Yugoslavia [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]

2002-03-15 Thread cube321


HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---


  I have. But, I can't understand why Rugova is portrayed as some 
peace-maker (that is, as "non-violent"). Isn't this the same...[fill in 
the blank] who has regurgitated fantastic stories demonizing Yugoslavia 
(and Serbs, more particularly), ignored the genocide perpetrated against 
the Serbs living in Kovoso since it has come under imperialist 
occupation (apart from his Kofi Annan-like calls for "peace" and an end 
to the  non-violence),  not to mention essentially called for Serbia's 
destruction through his support of the 1999 agression or through his 
repeated calls for Kosovo's "independence". I apologize if this is 
knit-picking on my part. But, this Rugova chump is not high on my 
Christmas card list, and I was/am of the opinion, that most list members 
-- including Kostatine -- thought similarly about him. 

 Kosta? 




Rick Rozoff wrote:
> This is a masterful overview and analysis. I'd
> strongly recommend list members circulate it to their
> personal contacts and elsewhere.
> Rick
> 
> 
> 
> --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
> > ---
> > 
> > [Today is a really sad day.  Under the leadership of
> > Javier Solana, the same 
> > man who as NATO Secretary General led the illegal
> > aggression on Yugoslavia in 
> > 1999, the European Union has just brokered a deal to
> > wipe Yugoslavia off the 
> > world map in a top down processes that most
> > Yugoslavs reject.  The deal was 
> > brokered between Solana, Milo Djukanovic (the
> > President of Montenegro), Zoran 
> > Djindjic (the Prime Minister of Serbia), and
> > Vojislav Kostunica (the 
> > President of Yugoslavia).  Djukanovic is the leader
> > of the Democratic 
> > Socialist Party (DPS) in Montenegro, a far-right
> > neoliberal creation that is 
> > a regional hub for mafia activity, cigarette
> > smuggling and money laundering.  
> > Elections in Montenegro have been deeply flawed and
> > the DPS as well as its 
> > junior partner the Liberal Union have used voter
> > intimidation, particularly 
> > of state employees to stay in power.  The majority
> > of Montenegrins oppose 
> > indipendence, yet through manipulation and Western
> > support the DPS has 
> > managed to maintain a narrow margin over its closest
> > rivals the Socialist 
> > Peoples Party (SNP) [although the SNPs party base is
> > still firmly 
> > pro-Yugoslav and opposed to NATO, the leadership has
> > in recent months moved 
> > away from its grass-roots constituency as it has
> > moved with pro-Western 
> > forces in Yugoslavia on several key legislative
> > items].  Djindjic on the 
> > other hand is the un-elected Prime Minister of
> > Serbia who was appointed by a 
> > DOS dominated Parliament as a key condition of
> > Western aid to FRY.  He has 
> > never held more than 5% of popular support in the
> > country, and his neoliberal 
> > views and particular brand of collaborationist
> > Serbian nationalism issharply 
> > at odds with the majority of the Yugoslav
> > population.  Nonetheless he has 
> > unconstitutionally arrogated to himself all the
> > powers of the elected 
> > position of the Serbian Presidency, which is still
> > held by the still popular 
> > Socialist Party of Serbia.  In any case support for
> > the preservation of 
> > Yugoslavia is overwhelming, and the current process
> > is being imposed from 
> > above opening the way for the final destruction of
> > the Federal Republic of 
> > Yugoslavia's territorial integrity, and thereby
> > completing the US and German 
> > goal of destroying Yugoslavia once and for all
> > through a maximalist 
> > anti-Yugoslav program that would serve to sharpen
> > divisions between all 
> > southern Slavs in order to weaken the most likely
> > focus of resistance to NATO 
> > occupation of this imensily strategic region.  This
> > move was also given the 
> > green light by the Federal President Kostunica,
> > whose popularity is dropping 
> > daily in the polls as a result of mismanagement and
> > impotence in the face of 
> > daily NATO pressures to alter the whole framework of
> > Yugoslav society and 
> > impose a narrow-ethnic chauvinist and
> > archly-capitalist social framework on 
> > the countries peoples.  Most parties have been
> > compromised on the issue of 
> > coloboration with the occupying powers and Yugoslavs
> > will not be given a 
> > choice to choose in a referendum between this new
> > Western created arrangement 
> > and the indigenously created FRY in a plebistice.  A
> > new "Union of Serbia and 
> > Montenegro" (USM) is to be proclaimed in accordance
> > with US policy towards 
> > the region, which was the only country not to
> > recognize FRY as a sovereign 
> > state since it was reconstituted in 1992, refering
> > to it instead as "Serbia 
> > and Montenegro" (a formulation in which the
> > provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo 
> > were considered as semi-independent states a

FW: Francis Boyle: Bush's Warmed Over Nuclear Policy: Strike First [WWW.STOPNA

2002-03-15 Thread Boyle, Francis


HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---



Francis A. Boyle
Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign, IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954(voice)
217-244-1478(fax)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  
 


-Original Message-
From: Preston J Truman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, March 15, 2002 10:18 AM
To: dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe; Denise Nelson;
[EMAIL PROTECTED]; Preston Truman; Sam Husseini; Tim Canale; Boyle,
Francis; Tom Milton; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED];
[EMAIL PROTECTED]; Douglas W Fuller; Bill Foster; Winston Weeks
Subject: Francis Boyle: Bush's Warmed Over Nuclear Policy: Strike First



http://www.counterpunch.org/boylenukes.html

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Title: Francis Boyle: Bush's Warmed Over Nuclear Policy: Strike First
  




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Post Sept. 11 Detainees Deprived of Basic Rights [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]

Imagine if this was going on in Cuba, which it is *not* 
( Unless you count the U.S Military Base / Outdoor 
Prison at Guantanamo!! ) how the U.S would scream 
about "human rights violations"!!!
mart
- Original Message - 
From: Islamic News and Information Network 
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2002 5:21 PM
Subject: [inin] Amnesty International - USA : Post 11 September detainees deprived of basic rights

USA : Post 11 September detainees deprived of basic rightsPublish date: 14/03/2002http://web.amnesty.org/web/news.nsf/WebAll/021956D799890D4C80256B7A0053AF80?OpenDocument"I have now been in solitary confinement for 3 and a half months and bythe time of the next hearing I will have been here for four months. [...]Why am I imprisoned? Why in solitary confinement? And why under maximumsecurity measures? I have many questions and no answers. What are theyaccusing me of? Nobody knows."(Letter from a detainee held at the Metropolitan Detention Centre,Brooklyn, New York, for an immigration violation)Six months on from the 11 September attacks, a significant number ofpeople detained in the USA in their aftermath continue to be deprived of some basic rights under international law, and many appear to have been detained arbitrarily, Amnesty International said today.The organization released today a report detailing its concerns on thepost-11 September detentions in the USA, based on research includingnumerous interviews with attorneys, detainees, relatives, and visits totwo jails."These detentions have been surrounded by extreme secrecy, which creates the potential for abuse," Amnesty International said. "Our research confirms that basic rights have been violated, including the rights to a humane treatment, to be informed of the reasons for the detention, to have prompt access to a lawyer, to be able to challenge the lawfulness of the detention and to be presumed innocent until proven otherwise.""Reports of cruel treatment include prolonged solitary confinement; heavy shackling of detainees during visits or when they are taken to court; and lack of adequate exercise," the organization added.Rabid Haddad, a Lebanese national, charged with overstaying his touristvisa, has been held in solitary confinement since 14 December in theMetropolitan Correctional Centre, Chicago. According to his letters from prison, his cell windows are whited out so he has no view; he is put in handcuffs while being escorted to secure showers some 10 paces from his cell; and he is allowed only one 15-minute call to his family every 30 days.Amnesty International is also concerned that 11 September detainees areroutinely shackled when taken to court. Detainees in the MetropolitanDetention Centre (MDC) in New York are made to wear full shackles whenappearing before immigration judges (during hearings which take placewithin the facility) - in direct contravention of international standards."The harshly punitive conditions in which these detainees are held appearexcessive considering that many of them have been charged with routinevisa violations for which they would not normally be detained," AmnestyInternational observed.Some Immigration and Naturalization Service detainees have been held for weeks or months pending security "clearance" by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Amnesty International has received disturbing reports of people being held well beyond the dates posted for voluntary departure, deportation to their home countries, or after bail had been set and was ready to be met."Amnesty International recognises the government's obligation to take all necessary measures to protect its citizens from potential securitythreats, however we are concerned that the Immigration Service is beingused to hold people on flimsy evidence, pending broad criminal probes,without due safeguards," the organization added.The organization is urging the authorities to release detailed information on the detentions (including data on those still detained and those released or deported) as requested under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by Amnesty International and other human rights groups; to ensure that everyone arrested or detained is treated humanely and provided with their rights under international law and that no-one is deported to a country where they would be at risk of serious human rights abuses.Amnesty International is also calling for a full inquiry into conditions in the federal Metropolitan Detention Centre in New York, where some 40 detainees (many held for routine visa violations) are reported to be confined to sealed, usually solitary cells for 23 hours or more a day and subjected to other deprivations. AI's request to visit this facility was denied by the federal authorities.BackgroundMore than 1,200 non-US nationals -- mainly men from Muslim or MiddleEastern countries -- were taken into custody in sweeps for possiblesuspects. Of these, some 300 are believed to remain in Immigration and

Build Up For War With Iraq - U.S. military seeks to ship fuel to Mideast Gulf [W

- Original Message - 
From: Marc Azar 
To: CBC Web News 
Sent: Friday, March 15, 2002 8:20 AM
Subject: CANESI: U.S. military seeks to ship fuel to Mideast Gulf
U.S. military seeks to ship fuel to Mideast Gulf. LONDON, March 15 (Reuters) - The U.S. military is seeking more oil tankers to move aviation fuel and diesel supplies to military bases, one of them in the Middle East Gulf, shipbrokers said on Friday.Shipping sources said the chartering of oil tankers to carry different military grades of fuel had intensified over the last month."This pattern of chartering has been well-established post September 11, but it is very active at the moment," a broker said.Tanker brokers were among the first to detect signs of the U.S. preparations for its strikes against Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is touring Europe and the Middle East to drum up support for possible military action against Iraq, which some Western diplomats believe could come as early as September.A Norwegian broker said U.S. Military Sealift Command (MSC) had issued a tender for an oil tanker to move 220,000 barrels (30,000 tonnes) of diesel oil in March from "either Japan or South Korea to discharge in the Gulf".The source said late on Thursday MSC had issued another tender for a tanker to move an equivalent amount of military jet fuel from Yosu in South Korea to Sasebo in Japan.Brokers said time charters were being used for the u.S. purchases, a process by which ships are contracted for a specified period of time, years in some cases, to avoid detection on the spot market."It's a clever way for the United States to hide military purchases and movements of fuel," one saidBrokers have said the U.S. military has already moved 100,000 tonnes of aviation fuel to Diego Garcia, a military base in the Indian Ocean, this month. The U.S. uses Diego Garcia, which belongs to Britain, for flights over Afghanistan.Those ships carried JP-5 fuel, a safe high flashpoint fuel for use on aircraft carriers to power F-14 and F-18 fighters.Shipping brokers said they could not confirm whether the U.S. military had yet fixed the vessels to move an additional 30,000 tonnes of aviation fuel sitting in South Korea to Sasebo in Japan, and 30,000 tonnes of diesel also in South Korea to Diego Garcia."There have been tenders but I don't know if they were fixed in the end," one source said.To Post a message on the CANESI list, send it to:   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To Unsubscribe, send a blank message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Do You Yahoo!?
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Re: Milosevic questions Ashdown [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]

2002-03-15 Thread Richard Roper


HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---

Ashdown has an intelligence background, and although
claiming to be making a "private visit" was in fact in
support of British Foreign Policy, and he has made
many such visits to Jugoslavia. 

It was most foolish to allow him into the country in
the first place.
   
--- Barry Stoller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
> ---
> 
> 
> AFP. 15 March 2002.  Milosevic cross examines
> Western diplomat for first
> time.
> 
> THE HAGUE -- Slobodan Milosevic questioned former
> British opposition
> party leader Paddy Ashdown on Friday, cross
> examining a Western diplomat
> for the first time in his trial for war crimes.
> 
> Questioning one of his long-time accusers, Milosevic
> was sharp to react
> when Ashdown told the court he had warned the former
> Yugoslav president
> he would end up in the court one day over Belgrade's
> repression in
> Kosovo.
> 
> "I warned you that if you took these steps and went
> on doing this you
> would end up in this court and here you are!" said
> Ashdown, recalling a
> conversation with Milosevic after visiting Kosovo in
> 1998 to investigate
> claims by the ethnic Albanian community of
> repression at the hands of
> Serb forces.
> 
> "Could the witness please answer my questions and
> not make speeches,"
> Milosevic replied acidly.
> 
> The former Yugoslav leader questioned Ashdown about
> the 1999 NATO
> campaign against Yugoslavia.
> 
> The relaxed and eloquent diplomat conceded nothing
> to the former
> Yugoslav president.
> 
> Milosevic tried to make the point that Ashdown
> believed there would only
> be peace in Yugoslavia if it was "subjugated" to the
> great powers, but
> Ashdown dismissed it as a "laughable" notion.
> 
> During the three-hour cross-examination, Milosevic
> grilled Ashdown about
> activities of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army
> (KLA).
> 
> "I have never denied it was a terrorist
> organisation, I have never
> denied there was KLA activity and innocent Serbs
> were suffering," said
> Ashdown.
> 
> Ashdown's testimony wound up Friday and the court
> adjourned.
> 
> The trial chamber is on Monday to hear protected
> witnesses in a closed
> session.
> 
> 
> 
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> 
> Barry Stoller
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews
> 
> ---
> ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST
> 
>
> 


__
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Sports - live college hoops coverage
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BARCELONA! COPS!! - Photo! [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]

Forward from mart.PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY. Date:Fri, 15 Mar 2002 13:46:23 -0600From:"Eric Hayes Patkowski" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:barcelona cops... BARCELONA! - COPS!!.Check out photo -- two plainclothes police officers detain a demonstratorin Barcelona's Las Ramblas Street after disturbances during an anti-globalization protest by some 2,000 people Friday March 15 2002. From AP wires.Check out the cop who has the guy by the neck -- he's wearing a scarf over his face, almost as if he'd infiltrated the protestors, posing. Makes one wonder, if the police accuse the protesters of violence, if such violence wasn't orchestrated by agent provocateursDo You Yahoo!?
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U.S. supported al-Qaeda cells during Balkan Wars [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]

2002-03-15 Thread Miroslav Antic

Title: Message



HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---


U.S. supported al-Qaeda cells during 
Balkan Wars
 
Fought serbian troops
Isabel Vincent
National Post

Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network has been active in the Balkans 
for years, most recently helping Kosovo rebels battle for independence from 
Serbia with the financial and military backing of the United States and 
NATO.
The claim that al-Qaeda played a role in the Balkan wars of the 1990s came 
from an alleged FBI document former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic presented 
in his defence before the Hague tribunal last week. Mr. Milosevic faces 66 
counts of war crimes and genocide.
Although Hague prosecutors have challenged the veracity of the document, 
which Mr. Milosevic identified as a Congressional statement from the FBI dated 
last December, Balkan experts say the presence of al-Qaeda militants in Kosovo 
and Bosnia is well documented.
Today, al-Qaeda members are helping the National Liberation Army, a rebel 
group in Macedonia, fight the Skopje government in a bid for independence, 
military analysts say. Last week, Michael Steiner, the United Nations 
administrator in Kosovo, warned of "importing the Afghan danger to Europe" 
because several cells trained and financed by al-Qaeda remain in the region.
"Many members of the Kosovo Liberation Army were sent for training in 
terrorist camps in Afghanistan," said James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador 
to Yugoslavia and an expert on the Balkans. "Milosevic is right. There is no 
question of their participation in conflicts in the Balkans. It is very well 
documented."
The arrival in the Balkans of the so-called Afghan Arabs, who are from 
various Middle Eastern states and linked to al-Qaeda, began in 1992 soon after 
the war in Bosnia. According to Lenard Cohen, professor of political science at 
Simon Fraser University, mujahedeen fighters who travelled to Afghanistan to 
resist the Soviet occupation in the 1980s later "migrated to Bosnia hoping to 
assist their Islamic brethren in a struggle against Serbian [and for a time] 
Croatian forces."
The Bosnian Muslims welcomed their assistance. After the Bosnian war, 
"hundreds of Bosnian passports were provided to the mujahedeen by the 
Muslim-controlled government in Sarajevo," said Prof. Cohen in a recent article 
titled Bin Laden and the war in the Balkans. Many al-Qaeda members decided to 
stay in the region after marrying local Muslim women, he said.
They also set up secret terrorist training camps in Bosnia -- activities 
financed by the sale of opium produced in Afghanistan and secretly shipped 
through Turkey and Kosovo into central Europe.
In the years immediately before the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the 
al-Qaeda militants moved into Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia, to help 
ethnic Albanian extremists of the KLA mount their terrorist campaign against 
Serb targets in the region.
The mujahedeen "were financed by Saudi and United Arab Emirates money," said 
one Western military official, asking anonymity. "They were mercenaries who were 
not running the show in Kosovo, but were used by the KLA to do their dirty 
work."
The United States, which had originally trained the Afghan Arabs during the 
war in Afghanistan, supported them in Bosnia and then in Kosovo. When NATO 
forces launched their military campaign against Yugoslavia three years ago to 
unseat Mr. Milosevic, they entered the Kosovo conflict on the side of the KLA, 
which had already received "substantial" military and financial support from bin 
Laden's network, analysts say.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes on the United States, NATO 
began to worry about the presence in the Balkans of the Islamist terrorist cells 
it had supported throughout the 1990s.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Comments on : Don't ask for the evidence, just nuke Baghdad[WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.U

2002-03-15 Thread Igor Najfeld


HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---


   It is unusual that a journalist of a major British paper would
   describe reality in such a blunt way, using such a spicy language!

   Are we begining to see some change or is Mark Steel an exception,
   soon to be extinguished?  Or is he another diversion by media
   agitprop that allows  some journalist to occasionally, but certainly
   not frequently, describe reality thus further confusing the audience.

   Regards, Igor Najfeld

>
> Mark Steel
> Te Independent, 14 March 2002
>
>
> . But no matter how barmy they get, there will be Tony Blair,
> shoulder  to shoulder. Some people are suggesting that, by remaining
> faithful  to George Bush, our Prime Minister has won some influence over
> him. This is true. Blair licks his arse so thoroughly that George now
> listens to Tony's opinion as to whether he should lick his right
> buttock first or his left
>

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Barcelona Protest Pulls 100,000 on Eve of EU Summit [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]

2002-03-15 Thread Miroslav Antic

Title: Message



HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---



  
  

  Published on Friday, March 15, 2002 by Agence France Presse 
  

  Barcelona Protest Pulls 100,000 
  on Eve of EU Summit 
  

  
  
 
  
Some 100,000 trade unionists filled 
  the streets of Barcelona calling for a "social Europe" in a protest called 
  ahead of this weekend's EU summit in the Catalan capital, police and 
  organizers said. 
  Demonstrators marched behind a banner demanding full employment and 
  social rights in the European Union, in a protest called by the 
  Confederation of European Trade Unions, with representatives from across 
  the 15-member body.
  Several thousand people also joined a demonstration called by the 
  Barcelona Social Forum, which has united around 50 political parties, 
  trade unions and protest groups ahead of the weekend summit.
  The snaking demonstration was dominated by the red flags of Spanish and 
  French left-wing trade unions as it left the city center.
  "Everything has come together to show that European social movements 
  are unified around these social protests," the head of one of the main 
  Spanish trade unions said before the protest set off.
  Italy's conservative prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose government 
  announced plans Thursday to make it easier for employers to lay off 
  workers, dismissed the protesters as "professional globetrotters" in 
  search of a reason to party.
  About 1,000 national police officers based in Catalonia staged a 
  demonstration of their own Thursday, demanding equal pay with their 
  regional and municipal counterparts whose paychecks, police union leaders 
  say, are 20 percent higher.
  Trade unions are planning a series of huge demonstrations in the 
  Catalan capital ahead of the weekend summit in defense of social justice 
  and gender equality in the workplace.
  Authorities are also concerned about possible attacks by Basque 
  separatists.
  Heads of state and government from across the European Union are to 
  meet in the city Friday and Saturday to focus mainly on economic and 
  social reforms.
  Spain currently holds the rotating EU presidency.
  Anti-globalization demonstrators and Spanish police are preparing for a 
  showdown as EU leaders gather at the summit venue, with protesters already 
  firmly pinning the blame on police for any violence that may erupt.
  Members of the Campaign against a Europe of Capitalism and War have 
  described their planned actions as "festive, playful," adding that if any 
  violence kicks off "it will be the fault of the Spanish government."
  The group has planned a huge rally for Saturday while underlining the 
  non-violent nature of the group and its protests.
  Spanish authorities have gone to great lengths to ensure that the 
  summit does not descend into the kind of chaos that characterized a 
  meeting of G8 leaders in Genoa, Italy, last year, when hundreds of 
  demonstrators were injured and one protester shot dead in pitched battles 
  with security forces.
  Some 8,500 police are being deployed in the city to keep a watchful eye 
  on anti-globalization and trade union protests.
  Madrid reinstated passport controls at the border with France and in 
  Spain's airports last weekend in a bid to bar known violent militants from 
  reaching the Mediterranean port city.
  Security forces have cordoned off the area around the summit venue, as 
  well as around the hotels where the EU delegations will be staying.
  But one protest group member said that reining in wayward elements of 
  the campaign was not the job of the group. "The climate of violence 
  doesn't come from us, but the security forces and the government," he 
  said, referring to a June 2001 protest during a World Bank summit in the 
  city.
  That demonstration ended in scenes of violence which overshadowed the 
  summit's political agenda, with protesters smashing windows on the 
  up-market Paseo de Gracia shopping street, before a face off with police 
  in the city center.
  
  Copyright © 2002 
AFP
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Barcelona - update [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---


AP; Reuters. 15 March 2002. Protesters at EU Summit in Spain; EU
Wrestles with Free Market as Riot Police Wade In.

BARCELONA -- Police fired rubber bullets and clubbed anti-globalization
protesters who threw rocks and garbage cans and rampaged through
downtown Barcelona as EU leaders met inside a heavily guarded compound
outside the city.

The rioters were among about 2,000 protesters who marched through
Barcelona's central shopping district Friday, trailed by the wail of
sirens and a police helicopter.

Police said 24 people -- including six Basque nationalists who
overturned a car -- were arrested for public disorder and resisting
authority, but no major injuries were reported.

A photographer for Barcelona's La Vanguardia newspaper was struck by
officers when he got in the way but was not wounded, police said.

Dozens held a candlelight memorial for a protester who was shot and
killed by police last summer at a Genoa, Italy, summit of the world's
richest nations. "An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth" was painted on
the wall of a nearby apartment building.

Hundreds of young activists who accuse their governments of selling out
to global big business ran from baton-swinging officers as they tried to
gather in Barcelona's downtown port area, several km (miles) from where
EU leaders were meeting within the fortress-like confines of a suburban
congress center.

Though the first flare-up of violence was quickly quelled, some 8,500
police remained on alert as darkness fell, wary of a repeat of rioting
at an international summit in July at Genoa in which a young Italian,
Carlo Giuliani, was shot dead by police.

"Carlo vive!" (Carlo lives) yelled some young activists as they ran down
Barcelona's historic Ramblas Avenue.

Organizers said there were 10,000 demonstrators in town, but not all
participated in Friday's rallies. A larger protest was planned Saturday.



. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Barry Stoller
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews

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Vreeland - 9-11 conspiracy theory [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---


>From The Wilderness. 15 March 2002. Vreeland in Safe House, All Canadian
Charges Dropped, Temporary Refugee.

Delmart "Mike" Vreeland is out of danger for the time being.

9-11 whistleblower Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, the US Navy officer who
wrote a written warning of the 9-11 attacks, a month before they
occurred, was released on bail yesterday after a hearing in Toronto
Superior Court in which he was ordered to reside at a Toronto apartment
leased by his mother.

At the time the bail release order was issued, the address was made part
of the public record and announced in open court, raising immediate
fears that Vreeland, who has expressed fear for his safety, would become
easy prey for would-be assassins.

The same pattern was followed immediately before the public execution of
drug smuggler and intelligence operative Barry Seal in 1986.

Late yesterday afternoon, FTW Publisher/Editor Mike Ruppert spoke by
telephone with both Vreeland and his attorney, Paul Slansky, and learned
that Canadian authorities had agreed, shortly after the court hearing,
to allow Vreeland to change his approved residence location to an
undisclosed address in the Toronto vicinity in order to ensure his
safety.

FTW has also learned that all Canadian charges connected to Vreeland's
December 2000 arrest have been dropped and that Vreeland, who is seeking
permanent political refugee status in Canada, has been granted temporary
refugee status until February 2003, or until his extradition case has
been resolved in Canadian courts.

Vreeland, who has also served as an informant on organized crime
investigations in the US, allegedly while working as a Naval
intelligence officer, has stated in Canadian court proceedings that he
fears immediate assassination if forced to return to the US because of
his ability to prove US government foreknowledge of the 9-11 attacks and
because of continuing threats from Russian and American organized crime.

Canadian courts have continually refused to allow Vreeland or his
attorneys to present mounting evidence validating his assertions -- in
many cases corroborated by official records -- that he was a Naval
lieutenant conducting secret intelligence operations for the US
government in Russia just before his Canadian arrest on Michigan fraud
charges in December 2000.

Vreeland's claims that a Canadian diplomat, Marc Bastien, was murdered
in Moscow, originally denied by Canadian officials, have since proven
true as a result of autopsy findings. The Canadian government has since
acknowledged that Bastien was murdered.

It was on these 2000 intelligence operations in Russia that Vreeland
obtained the information which told him attacks against the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon -- among other targets -- were pending, and that
US intelligence was aware of them. Vreeland's warning note, sealed and
placed in the sole custody of Canadian jailers on Aug. 11 or 12, also
contained the ominous statement, "Let one happen. Stop the rest."

That document was entered into evidence in Vreeland's extradition
hearing on Oct. 7, 2001. At that time Canadian authorities acknowledged
that the letter had been written a month before the attacks.


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Barry Stoller
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews

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Re: BARCELONA! COPS!! - Photo! [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---

In a message dated 3/15/2002 3:06:40 PM Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:


Check out the cop who has the guy by the neck -- he's 
wearing a scarf over his face, almost as if he'd infiltrated 
the protestors, posing. 


He did. Memories of Seattle, DC, Genoa...
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Re: Vreeland - 9-11 conspiracy theory [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---

In a message dated 3/15/2002 5:20:48 PM Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:


It was on these 2000 intelligence operations in Russia that Vreeland
obtained the information which told him attacks against the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon -- among other targets -- were pending, and that
US intelligence was aware of them. Vreeland's warning note, sealed and
placed in the sole custody of Canadian jailers on Aug. 11 or 12, also
contained the ominous statement, "Let one happen. Stop the rest."

Seems like a conspiracy fact to me.
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Japan Cuts All Aid To Zimbabwe [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]


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---

Japan Cuts All Aid To Zimbabwe
3-15-2

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan said on Friday that its economic aid to Zimbabwe, on hold since 1999, would stay frozen after Japanese election monitors had determined that President Robert Mugabe was returned to office in an unfair poll.   "Because of the problem of the election, there are no prospects at all that Japan will resume its economic assistance to Zimbabwe," a foreign ministry official told Reuters.   The ministry said in a statement that the government endorsed the judgment of Japan's election monitors that the Zimbabwe presidential election had not been conducted fairly.   "Japan will continue to observe the domestic situation in Zimbabwe and consider what actions to take upon coordination with the international community," the statement said.   Japan had extended economic, technical and humanitarian aid totaling about $30 million to Zimbabwe each year until 1998.   But it has offered only a small amount humanitarian aid since then because of the unsettled political situation, including the illegal seizure of white-owned farms, the official said.   Mugabe, in power since 1980, was declared re-elected for a six-year term on Wednesday with 56% of votes cast.   A Commonwealth observer group issued a damning preliminary report on the poll, saying conditions did not adequately allow for a free expression of will by voters.   The verdict was a blow to the 78-year-old Mugabe, whose re-election has been condemned by the West as massively rigged, but the outcome was defended by other observer groups from South Africa, Namibia and Nigeria, who said the vote was legitimate.   Aid groups say more than half a million Zimbabweans are in desperate need of food and that four million of its 13 million people are at risk of going hungry soon.   Economic analysts say Mugabe's victory would further debilitate the economy as donors shun what is widely seen in the West as an illegitimate government.  



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RE: Japan Cuts All Aid To Zimbabwe [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]

2002-03-15 Thread cube321


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  like a good little imperialist...


[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Japan Cuts All Aid To Zimbabwe
> 3-15-2
> 
> TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan said on Friday that its economic aid to 
> Zimbabwe, on 
> hold since 1999, would stay frozen after Japanese election monitors had 
> determined that President Robert Mugabe was returned to office in an 
> unfair 
> poll.   "Because of the problem of the election, there are no prospects 
> at 
> all that Japan will resume its economic assistance to Zimbabwe," a 
> foreign 
> ministry official told Reuters.   The ministry said in a statement that 
> the 
> government endorsed the judgment of Japan's election monitors that the 
> Zimbabwe presidential election had not been conducted fairly.   "Japan 
> will 
> continue to observe the domestic situation in Zimbabwe and consider what 
> 
> actions to take upon coordination with the international community," the 
> 
> statement said.   Japan had extended economic, technical and 
> humanitarian aid 
> totaling about $30 million to Zimbabwe each year until 1998.   But it 
> has 
> offered only a small amount humanitarian aid since then because of the 
> unsettled political situation, including the illegal seizure of 
> white-owned 
> farms, the official said.   Mugabe, in power since 1980, was declared 
> re-elected for a six-year term on Wednesday with 56% of votes cast.   A 
> Commonwealth observer group issued a damning preliminary report on the 
> poll, 
> saying conditions did not adequately allow for a free expression of will 
> by 
> voters.   The verdict was a blow to the 78-year-old Mugabe, whose 
> re-election 
> has been condemned by the West as massively rigged, but the outcome was 
> defended by other observer groups from South Africa, Namibia and 
> Nigeria, who 
> said the vote was legitimate.   Aid groups say more than half a million 
> Zimbabweans are in desperate need of food and that four million of its 
> 13 
> million people are at risk of going hungry soon.   Economic analysts say 
> 
> Mugabe's victory would further debilitate the economy as donors shun 
> what is 
> widely seen in the West as an illegitimate government.  
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

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Yemen: Grenade hurled at US embassy [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]

2002-03-15 Thread Stasi


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Ananova :

Grenade hurled at US embassy
=

A university student has thrown a hand-grenade at the US Embassy in the
Yemeni capital San'a, hitting a tree but injuring no-one.

Samir Yahya Awadh has been arrested by security personnel within moments as
he reached in his pocket for another grenade.

A State Department spokesman in Washington said the explosion was a block or
so from the embassy.

Yemeni police and soldiers closed off streets around the embassy and
searched vehicles.

Witnesses had reported seeing a car speeding from the site after the
explosion.

The blast comes a day after US Vice President Dick Cheney visited San'a
airport for two hours of talks with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on
the war on terrorism.

Security in Yemen has been a top concern of the United States since a boat
laden with explosives slammed into the destroyer Cole in October 2000,
killing 17 American sailors in an attack the United States links to Osama
bin Laden.

Story filed: 17:58 Friday 15th March 2002

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Korea. KCNA Mar 15 [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]

2002-03-15 Thread sipila


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Korean Central News Agency

Extracts.


Silver jubilee of CILRECO marked
     Pyongyang, March 15 (KCNA) -- A meeting was held in Paris on March 9 to
mark the 25th anniversary of the International Liaison Committee for
Reunification and Peace in Korea (CILRECO). Present at the meeting were
honorary chairmen of the committee, personages from all walks of life and
representatives of international organizations.
    Introduced there were congratulatory messages to the committee from
political parties and organizations of different countries including the
Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea and international
organizations. 
    Guy Dupre, secretary general of the committee, made a report and the
DPRK chief representative in Paris and delegates from different countries
made congratulatory speeches there.
    The reporter and speakers recalled that the committee has contributed to
the cause of the independent and peaceful reunification of Korea through
such diverse activities as organizing over 20 international action campaigns
and more than 40 international and regional conferences on the Korean issue.
    They were unanimous in stressing that leader Kim Jong Il made a bold
patriotic decision to host the north-south summit and publish the June 15
North-South Joint Declaration, thus opening a bright prospect of Korea's
independent and peaceful reunification.
    Condemning U.S. President Bush for stepping up his hostile policy toward
the DPKK and repeating bellicose remarks against it in a bid to strain the
inter-Korean relations, they vowed to conduct more dynamic solidarity
activities for Korea's independent and peaceful reunification.
    A joint art performance and a reception took place at the end of the
meeting. 



Signature campaign supporting Korea's reunification
     Pyongyang, March 15 (KCNA) -- An international signature campaign was
conducted in different countries and by a regional organization in support
of the June 15 North-South Joint Declaration and in demand of the immediate
withdrawal of the U.S. troops from South Korea. In Ethiopia, the heads of
different units put their signatures to the signature papers on behalf of
over 34,000 Juche idea followers, teachers and students and Taekwon-do fans.
    General secretary Victor Oliva Miguel of the Revolutionary Socialist
Party of Peru signed a paper on behalf of his party, and chairman Ibrahim
Shamieh of the general union of Syrian peasants inked a paper on behalf of
one million members. Chairman Morad Ghaleb and secretary general Nouri Abdel
Razzak Hussein of the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization signed a
paper on behalf of the organization and chairman Juha Kieski of the Finnish
National Committee for the study of the Juche idea on behalf of the Juche
idea followers in Finland.




Withdrawal of U.S. nuclear war plan urged in S. Korea
     Pyongyang, March 15 (KCNA) -- The south headquarters of the National
Alliance for the Country's Reunification reportedly issued a statement on
March 12, censuring the U.S. for its reckless nuclear war plan recently
disclosed. The statement said:
    The confidential report "reexamination of nuclear posture" made by the
U.S. Department of defense early this year confirmed again that the
"reduction of strategic weapons" on its lips was only a camouflage to cover
up its brutal and violent nature.
    The U.S., which does not hesitate to threaten humankind with its nuclear
weapons, is real "axis of evil."
    The Korean nation has never given the U.S. the right to obstruct the
implementation of its task with nuclear weapons and will never remain a
passive onlooker to its aggressive acts, the statement stressed.




Rodong Sinmun calls for maintaining independence
     Pyongyang, March 15 (KCNA) -- A country depending on foreign forces can
not have its own view and faith and may dance to the tune of others and,
finally, go to ruin. Rodong Sinmun says this in a signed article.
    This is proved by the situation of the East European countries that had
once built socialism, the paper says, and goes on:
    The situation of these countries gives a serious lesson that
independence keeps a country alive and dependence on others brings forth
flunkeyism and makes a mess of the revolution and construction.
    It is more important to get rid of dependence on foreign forces and
maintain independence in connection with the cunning moves of the
imperialists. 
    Those countries that undergo socio-economic hardships and disasters of
national disputes should find a solution to them by themselves and should
not repose expectations in the imperialists' "aid" or "prescription".
    The experience of the Korean revolution clearly shows th

Tariq Ali: The new empire loyalists - Guardian(UK) [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]

2002-03-15 Thread Stasi


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The new empire loyalists
=
Former leftists turned US military cheerleaders are helping snuff out its
traditions of dissent

Tariq Ali
Saturday March 16, 2002
The Guardian

Exactly one year before the hijackers hit the Pentagon, Chalmers Johnson, a
distinguished American academic, staunch supporter of the US during the wars
in Korea and Vietnam, and one-time senior analyst for the CIA, tried to
alert his fellow-citizens to the dangers that lay ahead. He offered a
trenchant critique of his country's post-cold war imperial policies:
"Blowback," he prophesied, "is shorthand for saying that a nation reaps what
it sows, even if it does not fully know or understand what it has sown.
"Given its wealth and power, the United States will be a prime recipient in
the foreseeable future of all of the more expectable forms of blowback,
particularly terrorist attacks against Americans in and out of the armed
forces anywhere on earth, including within the United States."

But whereas Johnson drew on his past, as a senior state-intellectual within
the heart of the American establishment, to warn us of the dangers inherent
in the imperial pursuit of economic and military domination, former critics
of imperialism found themselves trapped by the debris of September 11. Many
have now become its most vociferous loyalists. I am not, in this instance,
referring to the belligerati - Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis and friends -
ever-present in the liberal press on both sides of the Atlantic. They might
well shift again. Rushdie's decision to pose for the cover of a French
magazine draped in the stars and stripes could be a temporary aberration.
His new-found love for the empire might even turn out to be as short-lived
as his conversion to Islam.

What concerns me more is another group: men and women who were once
intensely involved in leftwing activities. It has been a short march for
some of them: from the outer fringes of radical politics to the antechambers
of the state department. Like many converts, they display an aggressive
self-confidence. Having honed their polemical and ideological skills within
the left, they now deploy them against their old friends. This is why they
have become the useful idiots of the empire. They will be used and dumped. A
few, no doubt, hope to travel further and occupy the space vacated by
Chalmers Johnson, but they should be warned: there is already a very long
queue.

Others still dream of becoming the Somali, Pakistani, Iraqi or Iranian
equivalents of the Afghan puppet, Hamid Karzai. They, too, might be
disappointed. Only tried and tested agents can be put in power. Most
one-time Marxists or Maoists do not yet pass muster. To do so they have to
rewrite their entire past and admit they were wrong in ever backing the old
enemies of the empire - in Cuba, Vietnam, Angola, Afghanistan or the Arab
East. They have, in other words, to pass the David Horowitz test. Horowitz,
the son of communists and biographer of the late Isaac Deutscher, underwent
the most amazing self-cleansing in post-1970s America. Today he is a leading
polemicist of the right, constantly denouncing liberals as a bridge to the
more sinister figures of the left.

Compared to him, former Trotskyists Christopher Hitchens and Kanaan Makiya
must still appear as marginal and slightly frivolous figures. They would
certainly fail the Horowitz test, but if the stakes are raised and Baghdad
is bombed yet again, this time as a prelude to a land invasion, how will our
musketeers react? Makiya, recently outed in this paper as "Iraq's most
eminent dissident thinker", declared that: "September 11 set a whole new
standard... if you're in the terrorism business you're going to start
thinking big, and you're going to need allies. And if you need allies in the
terrorism business, you're going to ask Iraq."

Makiya's capacity to spin extraordinary spirals of assertion, one above
another, based on no empirical facts and without any sense of proportion,
becomes - through sheer giddiness of fantastical levitation - completely abs
urd. Not a single US intelligence agency has managed to prove any Iraqi link
with September 11. For that reason, in order to justify a war, they have
moved on to other issues, such as possession of "dangerous weapons". Not
even Saddam's old foes in the Arab world believe this nonsense.

Hitchens reacted more thoughtfully at first to the New York and Washington
attacks. He insisted that the "analytical moment" had to be "indefinitely
postponed", but none the less linked the hits to past policies of the US and
criticised George Bush for confusing an act of terrorism with an act of war.
He soon moved on to denounce those who made similar, but much sharper
criticisms, and began to talk of the supposed "fascist sympathies of the
soft left" - Noam Chomsky, Harold Pinter, Gore Vidal, Susan Sontag, Edward
Said et al. In recent television appearances he has sounded more

PREPARING TO ATTACK IRAQ - Bush Uses American MIA to Justify Political Aims [WWW