[PEN-L:12433] Fw: No U.S. intervention in Colombia!

[Frank Durgin]

--
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: Yugoslavia list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: No U.S. intervention in Colombia!
> Date: Wednesday, October 06, 1999 11:21 PM
> 
> NO U.S. INTERVENTION IN COLOMBIA!
> NO MORE VIETNAM WARS!
> 
> The International Action Center will hold a demonstration at the 
> Colombian Mission to the United Nations
> 140 E. 57th St. in New York City
> at 5:00 pm
> to protest the dangerous new escalation of 
> U.S. military intervention in Colombia.
> 
> “The United States government is at war with the Colombian people,” said
IAC 
> spokesperson Teresa Gutierrez. “Colombia is now the third largest
recipient of 
> U.S. military aid in the world.”
> 
> The U.S. government is considering a vast increase of up to $1.5 billion
for the 
> Colombian government, mostly military. Colombia received $290 million
this 
> year. 
> 
> In addition to military aid, the Pentagon has already sent troops to
Colombia. 
> “U.S. Special Forces are already on the ground in Colombia training 
> counterinsurgency battalions,” Gutierrez charged. “White House diplomats
are 
> preparing the grounds for a “regional intervention force,” drawing in
other 
> Latin American countries in Colombia’s civil war.”
> 
> “This military aid is disguised as part of the “war on drugs,”” Gutierrez

> explained. “But Colombia’s biggest drug traffickers—the big landlords,
the 
> paramilitary death squads and their allies in the military high
command—are the 
> ones benefiting from the huge infusion of U.S. cash and hardware. Huge
U.S. 
> banks get rich from billions of dollars in drug profits.”
> 
> The International Action Center, founded in 1992 by former Attorney
General 
> Ramsey Clark, is one of the foremost anti-war organizations in the United

> States. It has organized demonstrations of tens of thousands against U.S.
wars 
> and intervention in Iraq, Cuba, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Haiti, and others.
> 
> “We aren’t waiting for the Pentagon to turn Colombia into the grounds for
the 
> next Vietnam War,” said IAC co-director Sara Flounders. “It’s time for
anti-war 
> activists and all progressive people in the United States to resist the 
> Pentagon’s drive to war.”
> 
> “The people of the United States have nothing to gain by being drawn in
to the 
> U.S. and Colombian governments’ war against Colombia’s working people,” 
> Flounders said. “The billions of dollars sent to the death squad regime
in 
> Bogota could be used in New York City for jobs, housing, drug treatment,
or 
> health care.”
> 
> International Action Center
> 39 West 14th Street, Room 206
> New York, NY 10011
> email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.iacenter.org
> phone: 212 633-6646
> fax:   212 633-2889

[PEN-L:12325] Fw: Tribunals planned internationally to indict NATO for war

[Frank Durgin]

--
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: Yugoslavia list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Tribunals planned internationally to indict NATO for war
> Date: Monday, October 04, 1999 1:48 PM
> 
> Commission of Inquiry
> c/o International Action Center
> 39 West 14th St., #206, New York, NY  10011
> (212) 633-6646   fax: (212) 633-2889
> http://www.iacenter.org
> email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> For immediate release 
> October 4, 1999
> 
> TO INDICT NATO FOR WAR CRIMES 
> AGAINST YUGOSLAVIA
> IAC ANNOUNCES HEARINGS ALREADY PLANNED 
> IN 8 COUNTRIES, 25 CITIES
> 
> Speaking for the Independent Commission of Inquiry to Investigate 
> U.S./NATO War Crimes Against the People of Yugoslavia, 
> International Action Center co-coordinator Sara Flounders said Oct. 
> 1 that organizations supporting her group’s initiative “were already 
> planning to hold hearings in eight countries and 25 cities.”
> 
> IAC founder—former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark—will be 
> the key speaker at some of these hearings. Clark prepared the 
> “complaint” against the principal NATO heads of states and militaries 
> responsible for the war and its consequences.
> 
> “The hearings follow the work we started on July 31-Aug. 1 here in 
> New York when 700 people attended the first hearing of the 
> commission,” said Flounders. “This initial hearing raised the charges 
> against NATO and especially the U.S. government for instigating the 
> war and committing other war crimes. We have now gathered a 
> substantial amount of additional evidence to substantiate the charges, 
> including admissions by NATO commanders that they purposely 
> chose civilian targets in Serbia to bring pressure on Belgrade.”
> 
> Flounders said that hearings scheduled in October in Novi Sad, 
> Yugoslavia, in Oslo, Norway and in Berlin, Germany would gather 
> more first-hand accounts of NATO war crimes. But she emphasized 
> that the hearings “were not just to gather evidence, but to bring before 
> an ever greater public the truth about NATO’s aggression against a 
> small Balkan state. This truth has been hidden by the close 
> collaboration between the corporate media and the government in 
> each of the NATO countries.”
> 
> She said meetings are also set for Atlanta and Athens, Ga.; 
> Milwaukee and Madison, Wisc. in October; and for Los Angeles, 
> San Francisco, Detroit and Washington in November, along with 
> others in U.S. cities. In Europe groups are bringing charges against 
> their own governments at hearings in Norway, Germany, Austria and 
> Italy, among others. 
> 
> “This is only the beginning,” Flounders said. “We expect there to be 
> other hearings not only in NATO countries but in other places such as 
> Eastern Europe and Asia where there is concern about NATO 
> aggression.”
> 
> The commission plans to hold a culminating tribunal in New York in 
> March 2000, she said. This is the year anniversary of the bombing 
> attack that opened the hot war against Yugoslavia.
> 
> “We will gather evidence from all these hearings worldwide and bring 
> them before a tribunal here,” Flounders said.
> International Action Center
> 39 West 14th Street, Room 296
> New York, NY 10011
> email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.iacenter.org
> phone: 212 633-6646
> fax:   212 633-2889

[PEN-L:11558] Fw: Demonstrations to Stop the War Against Iraq!

[Frank Durgin]

--
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: Yugoslavia list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Demonstrations to Stop the War Against Iraq!
> Date: Thursday, September 23, 1999 11:06 AM
> 
> Emergency Protest Actions to Stop the War Against Iraq!
> 
> As part of the internationally coordinated week of activities on Iraq
from 
> Sunday, September 26 to Saturday, October 2, there are demonstrations 
> and other activities in New York City, San Franicisco, Los Angeles, Ann 
> Arbor, Minneapolis, Oregon, and other cities.  
> 
> Please send your local information in as soon as possible so it can be 
> listed on the web page.  
> 
> Below is information for the New York City demonstration.  The text can 
> be used for organizing purposes nationally.
> 
> Stop the War Against Iraq!
> Stop the Bombings-Lift Sanctions Now!
> Stand Up Against Genocide!
> 
> DEMONSTRATION
> Thursday, September 30, 5 pm
> at the New York Times (229 W. 43rd St., between 7th and 8th)
> 
> Part of the internationally coordinated Week of Emergency Protest 
> Actions, September 26-October 2, 1999.
> 
> Join the protest September 30, 1999, in front of the New York Times
office to 
> protest the ongoing U.S. bombing war inst Iraq and to demand the
immediate 
> lifting of  economic sanctions that have killed more than 1 million
Iraqis since 
> August 1990.
> 
> What are economic sanctions? They are the decision by rich and powerful 
> countries to forbid poor countries to carry out trade. The poor countries
cannot 
> buy or sell products. Their economies shut down. Their workers become 
> unemployed. Food products vanish. Medicine and health care products 
> disappear. Sanctions can kill more people than actual warfare. But the
rich 
> countries can kill the people in poor countries without putting their own

> soldiers at risk. 
> 
> The U.S. has used sanctions and regular bombing of Iraq for nine long
years. 
> More than one million Iraqis have died. Those responsible for this policy

> should be put on trial for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Instead of 
> exposing this criminal policy, the New York Times functions like a
propaganda 
> arm of the Pentagon and CIA. We want the truth, not lies!
> 
> The United States government has carried out more than 10,000 combat or 
> combat support sorties since the conclusion of the so-called Operation
Desert 
> Fox Operation between December 16-19, 1998. This is terrorism, plain and 
> simple.
> 
> The people in the United States are led to believe by the pro-big
business 
> media that the U.S. policy of economic strangulation of Iraq, coupled
with 
> constant bombings of the country, is caused by the “dictatorial” and 
> “dangerous”  government of Saddam Hussein. This is part of the propaganda

> campaign by the criminals to make their victims appear to be the guilty
party.  
> The Clinton Administration is waging this against the people of Iraq
because 
> the biggest U.S. oil monopolies and banks want to dominate Iraq’s huge
oil 
> reserves (estimated to be 10% of the entire world’s oil.) These ruthless 
> corporations don’t care if there is a dictatorial regime in Iraq as long
as it would 
> be a puppet government, like the governments in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and 
> Israel. 
> 
> We demand that the multi-faceted war against the people of Iraq be ended.
No 
> bombing! Lift the sanctions! Self-determination for the Iraqi people!
Please 
> join in protest in New York City on Thursday September 30, 1999 in front
of the 
> New York Times.
> 
> International Action Center
> 39 West 14th Street, Room 296
> New York, NY 10011
> email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.iacenter.org
> phone: 212 633-6646
> fax:   212 633-2889

[PEN-L:10584] Fw: Emergency Protest Actions to Stop the War Against Iraq!

[Frank Durgin]

--
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: Yugoslavia list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Emergency Protest Actions to Stop the War Against Iraq!
> Date: Thursday, September 02, 1999 1:55 AM
> 
> Emergency Protest Actions to Stop the War Against Iraq!
> 
> Internationally Coordinated Week of Emergency Protest Actions 
> Monday, September 27 - Saturday, October 2, 1999
> to demand:
> 
> Stop the War Against Iraq!
> 
> Stop the Bombings-Lift Sanctions Now!
> 
> Stand Up Against Genocide!
> 
> The International Action Center is calling on all its affiliate chapters
and 
> member organizations and all other anti-war and anti-sanctions 
> organizations to initiate demonstrations, rallies, vigils and teach-ins
during the week of 
> September 27-October 2, 1999, to protest the apparently imminent 
> escalation of the bombing war against Iraq and to demand the immediate
lifting of 
> economic sanctions that have killed more than 1.5 million Iraqis since 
> their imposition in August 1990.
> 
> The French Press Agency (AFP) and other media sources have issued 
> reports that the recent heavy US/British bombing of Iraq is a prelude to
a 
> vast escalation of a new bombing campaign. These media sources report
that 
> the US and British governments will attempt to issue new ultimatums to
Iraq 
> regarding the acceptance of a new weapons inspection regime to take the 
> place of the thoroughly discredited UNSCOM. These media sources indicate 
> that this campaign will be launched after the mid-September meeting of
the 
> UN Security Council.
> 
> The United States government has carried out more than 10,000 combat or 
> combat support sorties since the conclusion of the so-called Operation
Desert
> Fox Operation between December 16-19, 1998. The U.S. is also stepping up 
> its CIA-run destabilization campaign coupled, of course, with the ongoing

> genocidal sanctions against the Iraqi people.
> 
> The U.S. goal is to overthrow the Iraqi government (the new official
lingo is 
> `regime change') and replace it with a U.S. puppet regime in this
oil-rich 
> region. Let us never forget that this was precisely what the U.S./CIA 
> operations accomplished in the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran in 1953; 
> against the Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954; and against the
Allende 
> government in Chile in 1973. No one should be under any illusion. All 
> historical evidence indicates that when U.S. imperialism targets
governments 
> for overthrow it is not to replace them with more humanistic, more
democratic 
> regimes. The Shah in Iran, the military dictatorship in Guatemala, and 
> Pinochet in Chile--they all slaughtered hundreds of thousands. But they
also 
> returned nationalized oil fields, fruit plantations and copper mines to
their 
> former Wall Street overlords. This is what made them invaluable "allies"
for 
> successive administrations in the White House. 
> 
> We demand that the multi-faceted war against the people of Iraq be ended.
No 
> bombing! Lift the sanctions! Self-determination for the Iraqi people!
Please 
> join in the international effort to organize emergency actions between 
> Monday, September 27 and Saturday, October 2, 1999.
> 
> Brian Becker & Sara Flounders
> Co-Directors of the International Action Center 
> International Action Center
> 39 West 14th Street, Room 296
> New York, NY 10011
> email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.iacenter.org
> phone: 212 633-6646
> fax:   212 633-2889

[PEN-L:10521] AN INTIMATE HISTORY OF KILLING.

[Frank Durgin]

Book review from the Economist on Line
 
The morality of warfare 

Is closer necessarily worse? 

 
AN INTIMATE HISTORY OF KILLING.
By Joanna Bourke.
Granta; 564 pages; £25 
 

   

 LIEUTENANT William Calley
seemed bewildered
 when he was prosecuted for
organising the massacre,
 accompanied by sadism and
sexual violence, of about
 500 unarmed civilians in the
Vietnamese hamlet of My
 Lai in March 1968. “I had
killed, but so had a million
 others,” he wailed. “It
couldn’t be wrong or else I would
 have remorse about it.” Having
recently had a scolding
 from his colonel for allowing
“men, women and
 children or other Viet Cong
soldiers in our area to
 escape,” he was determined, he
said, to act as
 ruthlessly as Saul had in the
Old Testament, when he
 set out to “utterly destroy”
the Amalekites. 

 Mr Calley himself was not the
only person who fumed
or protested over his indictment and eventual conviction
for premeditated murder.
Eight out of ten Americans disapproved of the conviction or
sentence, according to one
opinion poll. Some insisted the massacre could never have
happened. “Any atrocities
in this war were committed by the communists,” said the
governor of Alabama.
Others, including many of those in a position to know, made
the opposite point: there
was no reason to single out the My Lai killings from a
general pattern of behaviour by
American troops in Vietnam or in other 20th-century wars. 

Anyone now pondering the moral and judicial issues raised
in the aftermath of the
Kosovo war should read Joanna Bourke’s scholarly,
spine-chilling and almost
encyclopedic account of the agonies (and occasionally the
joys) of combat as
experienced by English-speaking soldiers in two world wars
and Vietnam. She
maintains (though her case is not quite proven) that
atrocities in Vietnam were easily
matched by those committed by the Americans, Britons and
Australians in the other
two conflicts. Only because part of American society
dissented from the war in
Vietnam did a climate exist in which horror stories could
come to public knowledge.
Or so Ms Bourke argues, recalling public rallies in 1971 at
which more than 100
Vietnam veterans “bore witness” to atrocities they had seen
or even helped to commit.
After 1945, when American troops entering Germany “engaged
in orgies of rape and
murder”, there had been no appetite for collective
self-examination. 

She also reports the scepticism among war veterans,
whatever they think of the
causes in which they fought, over the ability of civilian
judges to reach fair
conclusions about the deadly calculations of war. “How can
anyone judge who has
never seen his buddies mangled or been shot at himself?”
asked an Australian
military trainer in 1946. 

Most of the book is about combat at close quarters—how men
were trained to kill, why
they fought (for comrades and the respect of comrades,
mostly) and what role doctors
and clergymen played in combat. But it is also studded with
reminders that different
moral and psychological issues can arise in “standoff”
warfare: the launching of
bombs and missiles from a safe distance. Not even the most
hardened Vietnam vet
could match the sang-froid shown by the navigator of the
Enola Gay, who after doing
his bit to annihilate close on 100,000 people in Hiroshima,
recalls that he “had a bite
and a few beers, hit the sack” and, so he claims, never
lost a moment’s sleep for the
next 40 years. Admittedly, some bombers were less sanguine;
the book also quotes
airmen who observe (more as a passing thought than in
self-reproach) that, if
Germany had won the war, they might be facing a war-crimes
prosecution for
carpet-bombing civilians. 

As Ms Bourke reminds us, different sorts of wa

[PEN-L:10378] Fw: Normal Profits: was FWD: Re: Baker on IP

[Frank Durgin]

I always thought that a normal proofit was defined as a profit just large
enought to get an item produced.
E.g.  If I can make a two dollar profit producing it I will do it.   For a
one dollar profit I will not. One dollar is a normal profit. Thus,  in an
economic, but not accouting, sense, normal profits are counted as part of
costs. 

It is also, as Michael asserts, the level to which profits will be driven
in a perfectly competitive market

Was I teaching it wong all those years? Or have I missread something here.

Frank



From: Michael Perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L:10373] Normal Profits: was FWD: Re: Baker on IP
> Date: Wednesday, August 25, 1999 10:45 AM
> 
> Bill, there is a good reason that nobody answered your question below.
> Nobody has ever defined it precisely.  On an abstract level, it
supposedly
> means the profit in a perfectly competitive market, another abstraction
> without any empirical content.
> 
> "William S. Lear" wrote:
> 
> > >
> > >THE REAL DRUG CRISIS
> > >by Dean Baker
> > >
> > >...
> > >
> > >The most basic principle in economic theory is that goods should sell
> > >at their marginal cost of production (including a normal profit). In
> > >the case of patented drugs, prescriptions that are produced for as
> > >little as $1 each can sell for hundreds of dollars as a result of
> > >patent protection. The rationale for this gap is that the firm has to
> > >be able to recover its research costs, which are often quite
> > >significant.
> >
> > I've always wondered how one stipulates "normal profit".  Is it some
> > percentage of cost?
> 
> --
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA 95929
> 
> Tel. 530-898-5321
> E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 

[PEN-L:10367] Fw: Sanctions, Covert Action, Destabilization, and Bombings

[Frank Durgin]

--
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: Yugoslavia list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Sanctions, Covert Action, Destabilization, and Bombings
> Date: Monday, August 23, 1999 11:25 AM
> 
> SANCTIONS, COVERT ACTION, DESTABILIZATION, AND BOMBINGS:
> The U.S. Plan to Overthrow the Government of Iraq
> 
> STATEMENT from the INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER 
> on the UNICEF report released 
> Thursday, August 12 on the continually increasing mortality rates for 
> children in Iraq
> 
> On Thursday, August 12, UNICEF released a report detailing a two-fold 
> increase for infant and child mortality in Iraq over the past decade. 
This 
> adds to a litany of reports that have been released during this period 
> detailing the dire health situation in Iraq.  It is with these reports
that a 
> growing international anti-sanctions movement has demonstrated that the 
> U.S.-led UN sanctions have caused massive destruction throughout
Iraq--that 
> they are, in fact, a weapon of mass destruction.
> 
> In the past nine years, over 1.7 million people in Iraq have died as a
direct 
> result of the sanctions.  250 die each day.  Every child in Iraq suffers
from 
> some degree of malnutrition.  A simple cut can lead to death because of 
> contaminated water and lack of even the most basic medicine.
> 
> For the past nine years, it is the U.S. that has led the effort to
continue 
> the UN-imposed sanctions.  This is not headline news.  But this UNICEF
report 
> has been.  Why is that?
> 
> When people find out the true effects of the sanctions and the U.S. 
> intentions in the region, they join the anti-sanctions movement.   The
U.S. 
> and other backers of the sanctions don't want this, so they attempt to 
> manipulate the facts to justify continuing sanctions.
> 
> And how are the doing this?
> 
> The report claims that it is to the credit of the oil-for-food deal that 
> infant and child mortality is lower in the north than in the central and 
> south of Iraq.  There are many factors that contribute to malnutrition, 
> including access to medication and health care facilities, education, and

> water.  According to the WHO, in 1989-90, 96 percent of the population in

> Iraq had access to clean drinking water.  By 1994, it had dropped to 45 
> percent.
> 
> Eighty percent of disease in Iraq originates in contaminated water.  It
is 
> the south of Iraq that is downstream from the country's capital of
Baghdad, 
> meaning the water is far more contaminated.  Water contaminated from the 
> central city of Baghdad with far under the required amount of chlorine
must 
> travel through pipes damaged heavily during the war and left unrepaired 
> because the sanctions prohibit the importation of the necessary parts and

> equipment.  And again, 80 percent of disease originates in the water.
> 
> The UN's own agencies—FAO, UNICEF, WHO, WFP—report that 250 people die
every 
> day as a direct result of the sanctions.  They report that Iraq's 
> distribution of aid receives an ‘A' rating.  They
> conduct over 650 observations of day of Iraq's civilian sector.  And they

> report that it is the UN committee that is delaying contracts for the 
> oil-for-food program.
> 
> THE U.S. ROLE IS DESTABILIZATION
> 
> The U.S. has clearly admitted that it has a destabilization plan for
Iraq, in 
> public speeches and in the recent allocation by Congress of $97 million
to 
> fund Iraqi opposition groups.  Each component of the attack on Iraq is a
part 
> of this strategy, be it the bombing blitzes, the imposition of the no-fly

> zones, or the sanctions.
> 
> This same strategy has been used by the Pentagon and CIA many times in
the 
> past:  from 1950 to 1953 against the elected government of Mossadegh in
Iran, 
> leading to its overthrow and the bloody reign of the Shah; in 1954
against 
> the democratically elected government of Arbenz in Guatemala, leading to
a 
> U.S.-engineered military coup and the subsequent slaughter of over
100,000 
> Indian people; from 1970 to 1973 against a democratically elected
government 
> of Salvador Allende in Chile which ended in the coming to power of the 
> dictatorship of General Pinochet and the murder of 30,000 Chileans.
> 
> In each case, those governments were replaced by U.S. puppets that looted
the 
> countries' land and resources for the benefit of Western corporations and

> transformed the territory into a staging ground for CIA operations in the

> respective regions.  This is precisely what they seek in toppling the 
> government of Iraq.  You do not have to be an ideological or political 
> supporter of the Iraqi government to mobilize militant opposition against

> this kind of imperialist interference.  
> 
> The International Action Center believes that the Iraqi people must be
free 
> to determine their own destiny without CIA subversion, sanctions or war. 

> Understanding this must be the basis for any genuine international
solidarity 
> movement with the people of Iraq.
> 
> The U.S. policy 

[PEN-L:10219] Fw: Re: Re: Racial Profiling & the Media (wasRe:Race...)

[Frank Durgin]

This whole thing is getting pretty darn rotten! I can not beleive what I'm
reading.
Is this really the highly respected  PEN-1?
Frank--

> From: Charles Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L:10213] Re: Re: Racial Profiling & the Media
(wasRe:Race...)
> Date: Thursday, August 19, 1999 10:51 AM
> 
> I thought Michael Perelman is Black !
> 
> CB
> 
> >>> Yoshie Furuhashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 08/19/99 01:42AM >>>
> Michael Perelman wrote:
> >I have not experienced racial profiling.  When I went back to school and
> >let my hair and beard grow, suddenly I was stopped with great frequency.
> 
> When was that?  (I've always wondered how old you are.)  Maybe that's a
> counter-culture profiling that Michael Hoover could relate to   Send
us
> a photo, and we'll see if the police were justified in stopping you!   :)
> 
> Yoshie
> 

[PEN-L:10218] Fw: John Lloyd article on Russian collapse

[Frank Durgin]

It is strange the myths that persist concerning the Soviet Union. One has
it that Soviet Statistics were grossly overblown (See the attached
postings). Another has it that the System simply collapsed. I will address
solely the question of statistics.

In the aggregate, Soviet Statistics  were as reliable as those of the best
of Western nations 

   I offer several points to support that statement. Two are a priori in
nature, two are a posteriori

  

A )  A priori

Micro level
1) The idea that Soviet managers could pull wool over the eyes of higher
ups by over-reporting output just does not make sense.   A manger who
produced only one thousand tons of steel but claimed to have produced two
thousand would have had to be able to come up with documents and receipts s
 showing shipments of two thousand tons. If those shipping documents and
receipts could not be produced he would be placing himself in jeopardy for
prosecution for theft of state property i.e.,  the death penalty.

  Macro level   

2) The idea that Soviets kept two books, one for internal usage and one for
their propaganda arm does not make sense either. Concocting an internally
consistent set of national economic statistics is not an easy thing, 
particularly  given the ability of the outside world to obtain independent
checks on certain categories (exports and imports come to mind). And if the
statistical administration were using two books, if they exaggerated the
rate of soviet growth by as little as 2 percent per year, by the end of 20
years the Soviet economy statistically would be appear to be some 48%
larger that it actually was and thus showing living standards rivaling
those of some may European nations and the fraud would be painfully evident

   B) A posteriori:

1)  I'm writing here from my memory of readings I did many years ago. 
   
During World War II the Germans has special intelligence units
charged with gathering up all of the economic documents they could as the
swept  through the USSR

These were sent back to Germany and placed in a large warehouse in Berlin. 
Both the English and Americans were aware of that cache and when they
entered the city rushed to find it.  They both arrived at the site at the
same time and agreed to split the warehouse down the middle.

  The American half went back to the US and in that trove was found the
Gosplan plan for 1940 in its entirety  (I may be mistaken on the exact
year) They had found, so to speak the  Rosetta stone of Soviet Statistics.
By comparing the data in that Plan document with the statistics the Soviets
had been putting out over the years, experts of that era concluded that the
statistics Soviets had been releasing to the West were the same one as they
ones they them selves were utilizing. 


2) Sometime in the fifties, the Rand Corporation, under a contract from the
Air Force, and the Harvard Russian research center did a study on Soviet
GDP.   One of those institutions (I don't remember just which one it was)
calculated Soviet GDP for a twenty year period using Soviet reported
physical data. While the other institution constructed it using reported
financial data.  The GDP the two institutions came up with fell within 1 or
2 percent of each other for every year of the entire period , except for
two years (I forget which) in which they deviated in one year by 3% and in
the other year by 5%, if I remember correctly.

The expert comments at that time  were that very few  
Western statistics could have withstood so rigorous a test.

Frank




--
> From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L:10189] John Lloyd article on Russian collapse
> Date: Wednesday, August 18, 1999 1:23 PM
> 
> >The USSR might have overstated GDP and understated
> >negative social indicators, while the underground (and thus
undermeasured)
> >economy is probably a much bigger factor in present-day Russia. 
> >
> >Gil
> 
> Kotz-Weir, "Revolution from Above", pp. 39-40:
> 
> In the perestroika years of 1985-91, open criticism became possible the
> Soviet Union for the first time since the 1920s. Some dissident Soviet
> economists published greatly diminished evaluations of past Soviet
economic
> performance. These claims were soon picked up by conservative foundations
> in the West, and the new Soviet critics were invited to conferences and
> their claims widely publicized. As Soviet economic problems mounted at
the
> end of the 1980s, followed by the demise of the system in 1991, these new
> downward re-evaluations of Soviet economic performance had a great impact
> on the Western public.
> 
> For example, in the 1980s a Soviet economist, Grigory Khanin, issued
> challenges not only to the official Soviet statistics on past economic
> growth but to Western estimates as well. His own estimates were well
below
> the official Soviet growth rates, and for some periods below the Western
> estimates. Khanin's work was widely publicized, with help fr

[PEN-L:10212] Hitler Endorsed by 9 to 1 in Poll on his

[Frank Durgin]

I thought that this would be of interest to those who participated in the
long and very interesting discusssion on Fascism which ran on this list for
a couple of weeks a short time back'

The New York Times  runs a column every day titled  "This Day in History",
in which it reproduces articles published on that date 10, 20 thrity fifity
etc years back.

Attached  is an article which ran in the front pages of the New York Times 
on Aug. 19, 1934

It, to gether with a picture of page one of the New York Times of Aug 1934,
 can be found at

==

The New York Times August 19, 1934 page 1
Hitler Endorsed by 9 to 1 in Poll on his
Dictatorship, but Opposition Is Doubled 


Absolute Power Is Won 

38,279,514 Vote Yes, 4,287,808 No on Uniting Offices 

871,056 Ballots Spoiled

Negative Count Is Larger in Districts of Business Men and
Intellectuals 

Hamburg Has 20% Noes 

Reich Bishop at Victory Fete Says Hitler's Anti-Semitism Is
Fight for
Christianity 



By Frederick T. Birchall 

Special Cable to The New York Times 

 erlin, Monday, Aug. 20 --
 Eighty-nine and nine-tenths per
cent of the German voters endorsed in
yesterday's plebiscite Chancellor
Hitler's assumption of greater power
than has ever been possessed by any
other ruler in modern times. Nearly 10
per cent indicated their disapproval.
The result was expected. 

The German people were asked to vote
whether they approved the
consolidation of the offices of President
and Chancellor in a single
Leader-Chancellor personified by Adolf
Hitler. By every appeal known to
skillful politicians and with every
argument to the contrary suppressed,
they were asked to make their
approval unanimous. 

Nevertheless 10 per cent of the voters
have admittedly braved possible
consequences by answering "No" and
nearly [text unreadable] made their
answers, ineffective by spoiling the
simplest of ballots. There was a plain
short question and two circles, one
labeled "Yes" and the other "No," in
one of which the voter had to make a
cross. Yet there were nearly 1,000,000
spoiled ballots. 

38,279,514 Vote "Yes." 

The results given out by the
Propaganda Ministry early this
morning show that out of a total vote of
43,438,378, cast by a possible voting
population of more than 45,000,000,
there were 38,279,514 who answered
"Yes," 4,287,808 who answered "No"
and there were 871,056 defective
ballots. Thus there is an affirmative
vote of almost 90 per cent of the valid
votes and a negative vote of nearly 10
per cent exclusive of the spoiled ballots
which may or may not have been
deliberately rendered defective. 

How Chancellor Hitler's vote declined
is shown by a comparison with the
result of the Nov. 12 plebiscite on
leaving the Disarmament Conference
and the League of Nations. The
tabulation follows: 

Yesterday
Nov. 12
 Yes 
38,279,514
40,600,243
 No
4,287,808
2,101,004
 Invalid
371,058
750,282
 Per cent of noes
9.8
4.8


These results therefore show that the
number of Germans discontented with
Chancellor Hitler's course is increasing
but is not yet seriously damaging to it.
He is the Fuehrer [leader] of the Reich
with absolute power by the vote of
almost 90 per cent of the Germans in it
but the number of dissentients has
doubled since the last test. 

It is not yet a matter for international
concern but there

[PEN-L:10171] Western airstrikes in Iraq 'kill 19'

[Frank Durgin]

>From Electronic Telegraph  

 Western airstrikes in Iraq 'kill 19'
 
By Hugo Gurdon


 BRITISH and American military jets
killed 19 people and
 wounded 11 yesterday in attacks on
northern and southern
 Iraq, said Baghdad officials.

 If the report is accurate, the
death count was one of the
 highest for a single day in
clashes following the four-day
 Desert Fox raids. Those were
carried out by the United
 States and Britain last December
after Iraq expelled United
 Nations weapons inspectors.

 Yesterday's action was reported to
have been staged by the
 jets in response to enemy fire.
The Pentagon would not
 comment on the reported deaths,
saying only that the
 attacks followed Iraqi
"provocation".

 The US European Command in Germany
confirmed that
 F-16s and F-15s bombed missile
sites in the northern no-fly
 zone, near the city of Mosul. But
there was no confirmation
 of a report from the Iraqi News
Agency of a separate raid in
 the South in which 11 people were
said to have been killed.

  The Ministry of Defence later
denied that British aircraft
 had taken part in the raids.

 1 August 1999: Britain urges
easing of sanctions to end UN
 impasse on Iraq
 31 July 1999: US planes attack
Iraq for fifth day running
 28 July 1999: American planes hit
Iraqi sites
 20 July 1999: Iraq claims 17
civilians killed in US strike
 21 December 1998: 70-hour blitz
doubles tally of Desert
 Storm
 17 December 1998: Allies launch
blitz on Iraq

  


© Copyright of Telegraph Group
Limited 1999. Terms & Conditions of reading. Commercial
information. 

[PEN-L:10050] U.S. Bombs Iraq

[Frank Durgin]

Sunday August 15 7:12 AM ET 

U.S. Bombs Iraqi Radar Site

BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. planes enforcing a no-fly zone over Iraq bombed a
radar site Sunday after coming under anti-aircraft
fire, the U.S. Air Force's European Command said.

F-15 aircraft dropped laser-guided bombs on the site south of the Saddam
Dam in northern Iraq in self-defense after Iraq used
its air defenses between 10 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., the German-based command
said in a statement.

All aircraft returned safely.

The bombings are the latest in a series of incidents involving American and
British warplanes and Iraqi air defenses after
Baghdad said in December it would not recognize Western-enforced no-fly
zones set up after the 1991 Gulf War. The
monitoring of the northern no-fly zone, code-named Operation Northern
Watch, is a joint U.S., British and Turkish operation

Friday, Iraq launched surface-to-air missiles and used anti-aircraft
artillery against Northern Watch planes. U.S. planes
bombed two sites around the northern city of Mosul, European Command said. 

Earlier Stories

 Iraq Fires Missiles At Western Aircraft (August 13) 
 Iraq Fires Missiles At Western Warplanes (August 13) 
 U.S. Says Iraq Fired Missiles At Air Patrol (August 13) 
 U.S. Air Force Bombs Iraq Sites For Second Day (August 10) 

[PEN-L:10025] Re: Re: US Has been bombing Iraq all year

[Frank Durgin]

Yoshie:

 Regarding the ongoing bombing of Iraq you wrote:

"Given the simultaneity of the attacks against Iraq and Yugoslavia, it is a
shame that we couldn't generate a united opposition to both on the
grassroots activist level. (Lots of people who protested agaisnt the Gulf
War were uninvolved in protests against NATO.) If we had, the protests
would have been a lot bigger. Any thoughts on this?"

Yoshie


  I'm still confused and dejected  about the lack of any significant
protests.   But the Iraq bombings during the time of the  Kossovo campaign
were not noted even on the back pages of the nation's dailies .The Pro NATO
campagin propaganda was so effective that many of this nation's Anti-Gulf
War activists and its most fervent and sincere leftists bought into it.

 I'm ashamed to admit it, but had it not been for the excellenet postings
on this list I too would have bought into it all

I've attached a related piece from today's Boston Globe

Best Wishes

Frank






  Iraq fires at Western air patrols 

  By Reuters, 08/14/99 

  NKARA, Turkey - Iraqi gunners stepped up
  resistance to Western air patrols yesterday, firing
  surface-to-air missiles at warplanes monitoring a no-fly
  zone over northern Iraq, a US Air Force officer said.

  It appeared to be the first use of such missiles since
  December of last year, when Iraq actively started
  challenging US and British planes patrolling the no-fly
  zones over its south and north set up after the 1991 Gulf
  War.

  ''To the best of my knowledge this is the first time they
  have used those weapons since December 28,'' the
  spokesman at the warplanes' Incirlik airbase in southern
  Turkey said. 

  He did not say how many missiles had been launched.

  All the Operation Northern Watch aircraft had departed
  the area over northern Iraq safely, he said.

  In Baghdad, Iraq said Western planes attacked sites in
  northern Iraq yesterday before antiaircraft defenses and
  missile units forced them to return to their bases in
  Turkey.

  ''Ten hostile formations ... flew over regions in
provinces of
  Duhok, Arbil, and Nineveh and attacked our service
  installations,'' the official Iraqi News Agency quoted a
  military spokesman as saying.

  ''Our brave missile and ground resistance forces
  intercepted those crows and forced them to leave our
  airspace and return to the bases of evil where they came
  from in the Turkish territories,'' the spokesman said.

  Clashes between Iraqi air defenses and the US and British
  jets are frequent but generally involve Iraqi
antiaircraft
  artillery fire or simple lock-ons with radar guidance
  systems.

  A US F-16 jet responded to the missile launch yesterday
by
  firing a high-speed antiradiation missile, and F-15s and
  F-16s dropped guided bombs on an artillery site and a
  communications site around the Iraqi city of Mosul.

  This story ran on page A4 of the Boston Globe on
08/14/99. 
  © Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company. 

  

[PEN-L:9986] US Has been bombing Iraq all year

[Frank Durgin]

New York Times on Line
  August 13, 1999


  With Little Notice, U.S. Planes Have
  Been Striking Iraq All Year

  By STEVEN LEE MYERS

WASHINGTON -- It is the year's other war. While
 the nation's attention has focused on Kosovo,
  American warplanes have quietly, methodically and
  with virtually no public discussion been attacking Iraq. 

  Over the past eight months, American and British pilots
  have fired more than 1,100 missiles against 359 targets. 

  That is more than triple the targets attacked in four
  furious days of strikes in December that followed Iraq's
  expulsion of U.N. weapons inspectors, an assault that
  provoked an international outrage. 

  By another measure, the pilots have flown some
  two-thirds as many missions as NATO pilots flew over
  Yugoslavia in 78 days of around-the-clock war there. 

  The strikes, including ones as recently as Tuesday,
  have done nothing to deter Iraqi gunners from firing on
  American and British planes patrolling the "no flight"
  zones over northern and southern Iraq. They, like
  officials in Baghdad, are acting as defiant as ever. And
  there appears to be no end in sight to the war -- to the
  surprise and chagrin of some administration and
  Pentagon officials. 

  The cycle of tit-for-tat skirmishes has gone on so long
  that the administration is debating whether to intensify
  its attacks, expanding the list of targets to include more
  significant military targets, from air defenses to things
  like bases and headquarters, as long as Iraq fires at
  American and British jets, according to senior
  Administration officials. 

  President Clinton has not made a decision, but within
  the administration, some hawkish officials have argued
  that broader, more punishing strikes would deter the
  Iraqis and do more to weaken President Saddam
  Hussein's government, the officials said. On the other
  hand, a tougher stand could also draw attention to
  strikes that have generated little opposition at home and
  abroad. 

  "Our use of force so far has not risen to a threshold to
  cause international concern," especially among Arab
  allies in the Persian Gulf, one senior official said.
  "Disproportionate responses might." 

  Overshadowed for much of the year by the war in the
  Balkans, the administration's policy toward Iraq is
  increasingly facing criticism. 

  On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of prominent
  senators and congressmen sent a letter to Clinton
  scolding him for what they called "the continued drift" in
  the administration's efforts. 

  While they expressed support for the strikes, they called
  on Clinton to give Iraq a new deadline to comply with
  U.N. inspections and threaten "serious consequences" if
  Saddam refuses, including more potent air strikes
  throughout Iraq and an expansion of the "no flight"
  zones. They also called for increased support, including
  military aid, to Iraqi opposition groups. 

  The letter was signed by the Senate majority leader,
  Trent Lott of Mississippi; Sens. Jesse Helms of North
  Carolina, Richard Shelby of Alabama and Sam
  Brownback of Kansas, all Republicans; Sens. Joseph
  Lieberman of Connecticut and Bob Kerrey of Nebraska,
  both Democrats; Rep. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., and
  Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif. 

  Administration and Pentagon officials defend their
  policy -- including the unending air strikes -- as a firm,
  but measured effort to isolate Saddam and weaken his
  armed forces. 

  They concede, however, that the Iraqis have proved more
  resilient than expected. They have quickly repaired
  damage done to air-defense weapons, forcing the
  Americans to bomb some targets over and over. They
  have even rebuilt some of the factories, barracks and
  other sites destroyed in December's raids, including
  buildings at the Al Taji missile complex, one of the
  critical targets, according to Defense officials. 

  Of greater concern is Iraq's ability to rebuild its nuclear,
  chemical and biological weapons, programs that
  Saddam pledged to halt as part of the cease-fire that
  ended the Persian Gulf war in 1991. In their letter, the
  lawmakers said there was "considerable evidence" that
  Iraq continued to pursue those weapons, though neither
  they nor their aides elaborated. 

 

[PEN-L:9967] PEN-L:9958] Self-criticism

[Frank Durgin]

Jim Craven posted a self-critic for the rage he expressed over the truly
hellish  conditions so many  North and South  American people live and die
in.

 I think all of us on the list should be posting self-criticisms for our
lack of rage.

Lady luck has been riding on my shoulder all of my life. One of my big
winnings at the "Roulette Table of Life" was to spend a great deal of time
in the Soviet Union. I had the good fortune to work at the American
National Exhibition in Moscow during the summer of 1959 and was a close up
witness to the famous Nixon-Khruschev debate.  Since that time I attended
numerous conferences there and for many summers led student tour groups
there.

  Now what I am coming to is this: In all of my many visits there, to many
places and cities, I never saw anything coming anywhere close to the
horrendous human suffering that Jim describes in his two recent postings ,
and which any American (who dies not engage in a massive amount of
self-denial) can find in his own city or town. Yet among all of the
"leftists" I have been acquainted with over the years, I have heard far
more rage expressed over the conditions of the poor "Suffering Soviet
Citizen" than over the conditions of those living so wretchedly on this
nation's reservations, ghettos, migrant labor camps etc,

And now that the condition of those "Suffering Russian People" has
drastically worsened, and they too now experience unemployment, hunger,
homelessness, lack of health care, and utter dispair, I hear no outrage
coming from the left.

I want to thank Jim Craven once again for his excellent postings.

Frank

[PEN-L:9957] Fw: Now, a bit calmer

[Frank Durgin]

I want to thank Jim Craven for his very excellent thought provoking
posting.


Frank

--
> From: Craven, Jim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'; '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
> Subject: [PEN-L:9944] Now, a bit calmer
> Date: Wednesday, August 11, 1999 8:55 PM
> 
> Last night I was watching the History Channel "Hitler's Henchmen" about
> Keitel. They were interviewing former soldiers on the Eastern Front and
> German citizens all of whom came up with the usual "We didn't know". "We
> heard rumors but..." And the bottom line was that for them, at least up
to
> the point when the bombs started coming back to Germany and the body bags
> started flowing back home (like Vietnam) Germany wasn't that bad at all;
> they weren't Jewish, or Homosexual, or Communists, or Trade Unionists, or
> Socialists, or Gypsies, or Progressives; they didn't say or do anything
> really radical.
> 
> So when I hear about all these bourgeois freedoms (and I enjoy many
because
> of my station and because I can "pass") and I hear about how far removed
> from nazi Germany we are, and I hear about how unique America is and how
"It
> Can't Happen Here.", I have to say, "It" is happening here... Right Now.
> depending on who you are.
> 
> Has anyone seen the estimates of Central and South American refugees who
> were forcibly deported back to face--and be killed by--the death squads
from
> which they were refugees (while all sorts of anti-communist criminals,
even
> currently wanted war criminals, werre being welcomed)? What is the
> difference between herding thousands of people into gas chambers versus
> taking the gases and chemicals to areas occupied exclusively by the
targeted
> victims? Does anyone thisnk there is no relationship between full-blown
> nazi-like (actually run by real wanted nazis) fascism in Chile, Bolivia
> (Cocaine Coup of Barbie et al), Argentina, Indonesia etc etc and the
> "wealth" and "prosperity" for a chosen white few (and some non-white
> compradors) in America? Does it only matter if full-blown fascism is
going
> on within the territorial limits of the U.S.?
> 
> How many have been on an Indian Reservation on this list? Have you seen
the
> broken-down HUD homes with radon gas levels at 5 times the condemnable
> levels with whole families living in them? Have you seen the Indian
Health
> Clinics grossly over-worked and under-staffed/equipped dealing with
> illnesses that flow directly from conditions that are knowlingly created
and
> maintained to "solve the Indian problem" by getting rid of all Indians?
Are
> the conditions of misery among African-Americans, conditions we know can
> only produce early and horrible deaths, really different in nature or
effect
> from the conditions that the nazis engineered to solve the "Jewish" or
> "Gypsie" problems by eliminating the target groups as groups and all
> individuals of those groups as members of those groups? How many have
seen
> Tribal elections rigged by the Feds to put in sell-out Indians guaranteed
to
> facilitate the wholesale elimination of "protected"Indian lands. cultures
> and eventually individual Indians? Have you seen the documents leaked out
of
> BIA that resemble in exact tone and content, the minutes of the Wansee
> Conference or the infamous Hossbach Memorandum laying out the "Final
> Solution?"
> 
> I'm sorry, but maybe you just don't know or perhaps some don't care.
Fascism
> doesn't just drop out of the sky one day. The foundations of fascism, in
> every single past and present case, legal, political, economic, social,
> technological, cultural etc are progressively laid under various
> covers--usually national security etc--and usually by
> conservative/proto-fascist forces before the advent of full-blown
fascism.
> 
> Do you really think that the types of scum who ran ITT, manufacturing
Focke
> Wulf fighters shooting down American and Allied Airman and then daring to
> collect $27 million in reparations in 1967 for the allied bombing of
> "German" Focke Wulf plants would hesitate one moment to put in any and
all
> aspects of nazi-like fascism if that were what was required to protect,
> consolidate and expand monopoly capitalism in America? Would they prefer
it?
> Of course not--bourgeois democracy, with its "velvet glove" and alluring
and
> mind/soul-numbing diversions and illusions ("necessary illusions") and
> illusory "freedoms" (freedom de jure means nothing in a system that
> commodifies everything and in which your rights can only be "protected"
by
> expensive lawyers).
> 
> But for me, expecially after one of my little trips to Browning and
> elsewhere, when I hear about how far America is from nazi Germany, it
feels
> like it would for a Jew in Germany hearing, "It's not really that bad,
"It
> couldn't be", "That couldn't happen", "This is a cultured nation" from a
> quiet and very insulated non-Jewish German.
> 
> The instruments of genocide are often different and much more
sophisticated;
> but really, people are dying e

[PEN-L:9886] U.S. Bombs Iraq For Second Day

[Frank Durgin]

   
 


Tuesday August 10 7:16 AM ET 

U.S. Air Force Bombs Iraq Sites For Second Day

  BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. planes bombed two Iraqi
communication centers near the northern city of Mosul
  Tuesday after being fired upon by Iraqi anti-aircraft
artillery, the U.S. Air Force's European Command said.

The attacks on sites to the north and northeast of Mosul, the second U.S.
strike in the region in as many days, took place
between 10:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. Iraqi time, the German-based command said
in a statement.

It said all aircraft charged with monitoring the no-fly zone over northern
Iraq returned safely.

It added that the extent of damage caused by the F-15 and F-16 jets, which
dropped laser-guided bombs on the targets, was
still being assessed.

The bombings are the latest in a series of incidents involving American and
British jets and Iraqi air defenses after Baghdad
said in December it would not recognize Western-enforced no-fly zones set
up after the 1991 Gulf War.

The monitoring of the northern no-fly zone, codenamed Operation Northern
Watch, is a joint U.S., British and Turkish
operation. 

[PEN-L:9852] Fw: speech by Brian Becker--Commission of Inquiry Hearing

[Frank Durgin]

--
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: Yugoslavia list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: speech by Brian Becker--Commission of Inquiry Hearing
> Date: Thursday, August 05, 1999 2:43 PM
> 
> Presented by 
> Brian Becker, Co-Coordinator of the Commission of Inquiry,
> at the July 31, 1999 New York City
> Independent Commission of Inquiry Hearing 
> to Investigate U.S./NATO War Crimes 
> Against the People of Yugoslavia.
> 
> We would like to open the closing plenary session of the Independent
> Commission of Inquiry to Investigate U.S./NATO War Crimes Against the
> People of Yugoslavia.  We will hear in this session from Ramsey Clark,
the
> former U.S. attorney general, who will present a 19-count indictment of
> President Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and other high officials in the
> U.S. government and military and NATO officials for Crimes Against Peace,
> War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity.  
> 
> The United States government leaders speak so piously about human
> rights in countries that they have decided to attack.  This is part of
war
> propaganda, but it is also designed to divert attention from their own
> history.  
> 
> We all learn in school and the government leaders tell us and it's
> repeated in the media that the United States became a rich and
> powerful country because of the so-called "magic of the free market."
> Because of the purported virtues of capitalism.  Or sometimes they tell
us
> it's because of their love for democracy, or "the rule of law."  These
> supposed virtues are supposed to have lead to such a spontaneous and
> creative outpouring of human energy that it made the United States a
> wealthy and powerful country.  
> 
> But what is the truth?  For more than three centuries U.S. capitalism
grew
> largely from the accumulation of wealth from slave labor. Millions and
> millions of African people worked as slaves, as human chattel, and it was
> their unpaid labor that led to a vast accumulation of capital and wealth.
> Was this slavery legal according to U.S. law? Yes it was.  But do we
> consider it any less of a crime against humanity?  Of course not.  In the
> United States slavery was legal, but the system of slavery was a criminal
> affront to humanity.  
> 
> The rulers in the United States speak in the name of legality and
> about the rights of national minorities.  But they neglect to mention
that
> the wealth of this country was also derived from the theft and the
> genocidal ethnic cleansing of millions of Native Indian people. They
> neglect to mention that these Indian people were deliberately massacred
> throughout the continent of North America and that the few survivors were
> forced into reservations, deprived of their language, and of their
> culture.  It was the theft of their rich, bountiful land that made the
> corporate establishment of the United States very rich indeed.  How dare
> these same forces lecture the people of Yugoslavia and denounce the
> government in Yugoslavia and Serbia for failing to uphold the national
> minority rights of Albanian people in Kosovo.  
> 
> The United States and NATO launched this war against the Yugoslav
> people in 1999 for about the same reason they invade Cuba, Puerto Rico
and
> the Phillipines in 1898-99.  They want to turn Central and Eastern Europe
> into a haven for a new kind of colonial domination.  They don't care
about
> the lives of working people in Yugoslavia any more than they did about
the
> rights of workers and farmers in Cuba, Puerto Rico, or the Philippines.
> Colonialism, the negation of soveriegnty and independence must be
> considered by history to be one of the great crimes against humanity.
> 
> And look what's happening today in Kosovo under U.S./NATO occupation.
> 
> Who should be held responsible for the cascading violence sweeping
> through Kosovo? 
> 
> The reign of fascist terror in Kosovo against Serbs, Roma people and
> pro-Yugoslav ethnic Albanians is now in full swing. As reports of
> murder, beatings and house burnings have finally filtered into the
> Western media, local refugee officials in Kosovo report that over
> 80,000 people have fled in the last three weeks. 
> 
> Yugoslav officials estimate that another 70,000 Serbs had fled Kosovo
> during the 78 days of NATO bombing. 
> 
> Until the U.S./NATO occupation forces entered Kosovo on June 8, the
> village of Belo Polje was an entirely Serb town. Today it lies in
> smoldering ruins. Soldiers wearing the uniform of the Kosovo
> Liberation Army murdered Serb civilians, and then looted and torched
> the whole village, according to June 28 dispatches from a San
> Francisco Chronicle reporter at the scene in Belo Polje. 
> 
> NATO soldiers did nothing to stop the mayhem, the Chronicle reported. 
> 
> It is the KLA that initiated the insurgency to separate Kosovo from
> Yugoslavia. Their history of fascist terror is well substantiated.
> Even the New York Times carried a long piece by Chris Hedges on June
> 25 documenting the 

[PEN-L:9828] Children living below poverty line

[Frank Durgin]

>From Wall St. Journal Aug. 4, 1999 p. A4..  

An article  by Shailagh Murray titled "Poverty seen rising for some
children after Welfare Act starts off  "The number of children of single
mothers living in extreme poverty jumped in the first year after the 1996
welfare-to-work Act, a study shows."

   The article goes on to cite the Children's Defense Fund, on the basis of
US Census data, states that the number of children living below half the
federal poverty line rose 347,000, or 26% to 1.8 million in 1997 as
compared with 1.5 million in 1996. It represents the reversal of what had
been a four-year decline in extreme-poverty trends.

Article also reports that in Chicago yesterday, President Clinton hailed
Welfare to Work programs and announced that welfare rolls have fallen to
7.3 million from 14.1 million in 1993.

[PEN-L:9824] Russia Criticizes Attacks On Iraq

[Frank Durgin]

 


   
   

 Russia Criticizes Attacks On Iraq
 No-Fly Zones

 UNITED NATIONS, Aug 4, 1999 --
 (Reuters) Russia's Security
Council
 representative criticized on
Tuesday
 U.S. and British attacks in no-fly
zones
 over Iraq but the discussion that
 followed was inconclusive, council
 sources said.

 Russia often raises the issue
during
 closed-door council consultations
after
 Baghdad says such raids have
caused
 civilian casualties, the sources
said.

 Russia argues the no-fly zones,
 established by the Western powers
after
 the 1991 Gulf war, are illegal and
the air
 strikes harm civilians and damage
the Iraqi economy.

 Iraq said nine people were killed
and 23 wounded last
 Friday in raids on the country's
northern and southern
 no-fly zones. The previous day it
said eight civilians were
 killed by air attacks in southern
Iraq.

 The air strikes have become
commonplace since December
 1998 when U.N. weapons inspectors
were withdrawn from
 Iraq, citing Baghdad's failure to
cooperate, and Iraqi
 anti-aircraft forces began
challenging the air patrols.

 Council members said the United
States on Tuesday gave
 its usual response that the zones
were set up to protect
 Iraqis from the depredations of
their own government. This
 is a reference to attacks by Iraqi
troops after the Gulf war
 against Kurdish dissidents in the
north of the country and
 Shiites in the south.

 The United States also said allied
planes only attacked
 installations that targeted them
with radar or launched
 ground-to-air missiles.

 China and Malaysia were also said
to have called for an
 end to the no-fly zones while
Bahrain said the situation
 only emphasized the need for the
divided Security Council
 to come up with a unified policy
on Iraq.

 Iraq's news agency reported
Tuesday that Iraqi Foreign
 Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf
sent letters asking
 the United Nations and the Arab
League to press the
 United States and Britain not to
bomb civilian sites in the
 no-fly zones.

 He also said Iraq held responsible
all states whose planes
 carried out "these criminal acts"
and those whose territories
 were used by the planes, such as
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait
 and Turkey. ((c) 1999 Reuters) 

[PEN-L:9809] Fw: Over 700 Participate in Commission of Inquiry Hearing

[Frank Durgin]

--
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: Yugoslavia list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Over 700 Participate in Commission of Inquiry Hearing
> Date: Tuesday, August 03, 1999 10:48 AM
> 
> Commission of Inquiry
> c/o International Action Center
> 39 W 14 St #206  New York, NY 10011  
> 212-633-6646   fax: 212-633-2889
> email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
> web site: http://www.iacenter.org
> 
> August 2, 1999
> 
> OVER 700 PARTICIPATE
> IN JULY 31 NEW YORK CITY 
> INDEPENDENT COMMISSION OF INQUIRY HEARING 
> TO INVESTIGATE U.S./NATO WAR CRIMES 
> AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF YUGOSLAVIA
> 
> Over 700 people participated in the July 31 New York City Independent
> Commission of Inquiry Hearing to Investigate U.S./NATO War Crimes 
> Against
> the People of Yugoslavia.  The hearing was the first of scores of
meetings
> that will be held in cities throughout the United States, other NATO
> countries, and elsewhere to collect evidence, eyewitness testimony,
expert
> testimony and analysis of Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes
> Against Humanity.
> 
> The featured presentation at the July 31 hearing was Ramsey Clark’s
> 19-count indictment of William J. Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Sandy
> Berger, William Cohen, Tony Blair, Gerard Schroeder, and other high
> officials in NATO and NATO countries.
> 
> We are offering with this communication the full text of the 19-count
> indictment.  The indictment will soon appear in published form.  
> 
> There was also a collection of selected findings of the Commission of
> Inquiry research committee that will appear on the IAC web page this
week.
> 
> In the coming days we will be sending out selected speeches and papers
> that were presented at the July 31 hearing.  In total, there were more
> than 50 presentations and papers presented.  
> 
> Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general; Brian Becker, Co-Director,
> Commission of Inquiry; Gloria La Riva, editor of “NATO’s Targets”; Elombe
> Brath, Patrice Lumumba Coalition; Vladislav Jovanovic, Ambassador,
> Permanent Mission of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to the UN; Dr.
> Saeed Hasan, Ambassador, Permanent Mission of Iraq to the UN; Michel
> Chossudovsky, economist and author; Roland Keith, OSCE monitor in
> Kosovo;Dr. Sapphire Mann Ahmed, International Health Care Activist; taped
> message from Mumia Abu-Jamal;
> 
> Maude Le Blanc, Haiti Progres; Kani, Kurdish American Information Center;
> Freddie Marrero and Carlos Rovira, Vieques Support Committee; Preston
> Wood, International Action Center—Los Angeles; John Kim, attorney,
> Veterans for Peace (NYC); John Parker, International Action Center—Los
> Angeles; Monica Moorehead, Workers World newspaper and Mumia Awareness
> Week; 
> 
> Shani Rifati, Roma activist from Kosovo; Felix Wilson, Cuban Interests
> Section; Michael Parenti, author; Prof. Michael Mandel, York University
> Law School, Canadian lawyers group; Gregory Elich, Journalist and
> Researcher; Vondora Jordan, Workfairness; David Jacobs, attorney,
Canadian
> lawyers group; Will Harrell, Representative of International Association
> of Democratic Lawyers; Ruba Fakhoury & Milos Petrovic;
> 
> Ulrich Dost, attorney, German lawyers group; King Downing, attorney;
Barry
> Lituchy, Director, Jasenovic Research Institute; Gloria Rubac, Texas
> Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty; Sladjana Dankovic, Investigator,
> Commission of Inquiry (Washington, D.C.); Tamara Bedic, attorney; 
> 
> John Catalinotto, Co-editor of Depleted Uranium: Metal of Dishonor; Pat
> Chin; Lenore Foerstel, author; Bill Doares, International Action Center;
> Frank Kovac; Deirdre Sinnott; Karen Talbot, International Center for
Peace
> and Justice; Herb Foerstel, author; Heather Cottin, Serbian-Jewish
> Friendship Committee; Sarah Sloan; Jane Cutter, International Action
> Center—Ann Arbor.
> 
> Following is the text of the indictment prepared by Ramsey Clark.
> 
> THE INDICTMENT
> 
> Submitted to the Independent Commission of Inquiry to 
> Investigate U.S./NATO War Crimes Against the People of Yugoslavia
> 
> by Ramsey Clark
> July 30, 1999
> 
> Complaint
> 
> Charging William J. Clinton, The Government Of The United States, NATO
And
> Others With International Crimes And Violations Of International And
> Domestic Laws Causing Deaths, Destruction, Injury And Suffering.
> 
> The Charges   
> 
> (1)Planning and Executing the Dismemberment, Segregation and
> Impoverishment of Yugoslavia. 
> 
> (2)Inflicting, Inciting and Enhancing Violence Between and Among Muslims
> and Slavs.
> 
> (3)Disrupting Efforts to Maintain Unity, Peace and Stability in
> Yugoslavia. 
> 
> (4)Destroying the Peace Making Role of the United Nations.  
> 
> (5)Using NATO for Military Aggression Against, and Occupation of, Non
> Compliant Poor Countries.  
> 
> (6)Killing and Injuring a Defenseless Population Throughout Yugoslavia.
> 
> (7)Planning, Announcing and Executing Attacks Intended to Assassinate The
> Head of Government, Other Government Leaders and Selected C

[PEN-L:9755] Re: 1/3 of Russians in Poverty;

[Frank Durgin]

According to Izvestiya of July 21, 1999 p. 6, the All-Russian Center for
the Study of Living standards reported that 57% of all Russians had incomes
below the minimum subsistence level. That level averaged 985 rubles $40 per
month for all of Russia and 1,304, $53) for Moscow.  In Moscow, 25% the
population had below subsistence incomes and in St Petersburg 50%.

By way of contrast  only  4.1%  of all Russians had incomes of over 4854
rubles  (threshold for the well off and wealthy)(about $200 at current rate
of exchange). 
In Moscow 23% of the population had incomes above the "well off and wealthy
threshold" which in Moscow is 6534 rubles($267). In St Petersburg only
1.75% had incomes over the  "well of and wealthy" threshold

--
> From: meisenscher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: Recipient list suppressed
> Subject: [PEN-L:9747] 1/3 of Russians in Poverty; US Blocks Query on VX
Gas;Colombian Strike Looms
> Date: Friday, July 30, 1999 11:04 PM
> 
> IN THIS MESSAGE:   1/3 of Russians in Poverty; US Blocks Query on VX Gas;
> Colombian Strike Looms
> 
> Study: 1/3 of Russians in Poverty 
> 
> By Nick Wadhams
> Associated Press Writer
> Friday, July 30, 1999; 11:20 a.m. EDT
> 
> MOSCOW (AP) -- More than one in three Russians is living below the
official
> poverty line, according to government figures released Friday, the latest
sign
> of the wreckage left by last year's economic meltdown. 
> 
> About 35 percent of the population, or 51.7 million people, received
monthly
> salaries below Russia's minimum subsistence level of 872 rubles ($36)
during
> the first half of the year, the Russian Statistics Agency said. 
> 
> That figure was up from 22 percent living in poverty during the same
period
> last year, when the minimum monthly subsistence level averaged out to
> about 429 rubles ($71 at the time). 
> 
> Some economists say the figure overstates the poverty problem somewhat
> because many Russians make money in the economy's informal sector and
> don't declare their income to the government. 
> 
> Still, the figures reflect the dramatic decline in living standards that
has
> been
> taking place throughout this decade. 
> 
> The financial crash last August resulted in widespread job layoffs and
pay
> cuts, sent inflation soaring, and pushed millions more into poverty. 
> 
> In more fallout from the crisis, imports crashed by 46 percent in the
first six
> months of 1999, while exports fell by 11 percent, the agency said. 
> 
> After the ruble devaluation, many imports became prohibitively expensive
for
> Russians. The agency didn't give exact foreign-trade volumes, but monthly
> figures show exports totaled $34.4 billion against imports of $19.6
billion, for
> a trade surplus at around $14.8 billion for the first half of the year.
Russia's
> trade surplus was just $900 million from January to June of 1998. 
> 
>   © Copyright 1999 The Associated Press
> ===
> 
> U.S. Blocks Questions About VX Gas 
> 
> By Edith M. Lederer
> Associated Press Writer
> Friday, July 30, 1999; 4:16 a.m. EDT
> 
> UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The United States has blocked China and France
> from asking weapons inspectors questions about the use of small
quantities
> of the deadly VX nerve agent left in a Baghdad laboratory. 
> 
> Hasmy Agam, Security Council president and Malaysia's U.N. ambassador,
> had circulated a letter to Secretary-General Kofi Annan with questions to
the
> U.N. inspectors from France and China, which asked for proof that VX
wasn't
> used to contaminate Iraqi missile warheads. 
> 
> The United States on Thursday objected to France's questions, which U.S.
> officials felt trivialized the issue of disarming Iraq and focused
unfairly on
> weapons inspectors from the U.N. Special Commission, or UNSCOM. The
> letter to Annan has not been sent. 
> 
> The issue of VX became a flash point for the Security Council last year
when
> the United States found traces of the nerve agent on fragments of Iraqi
> missile warheads. Iraq has admitted producing 3.9 tons of VX agent, but
has
> denied loading the deadly agent into missile warheads. 
> 
> Seven vials containing tiny quantities of VX were among the chemical and
> biological material left in a Baghdad laboratory when inspectors pulled
out of
> Iraq in mid-December on the eve of U.S. and British airstrikes. Iraq
barred
> them from returning. 
> 
> France, China and Russia -- Iraq's closest allies on the Security Council
--
> urged the council to have the samples analyzed, intimating inspectors may
> have laced Iraqi warheads with the agent. 
> 
> But the majority of the 15-member council agreed with the weapons
> inspectors, who said the VX could only be used to calibrate equipment
used
> to test for the nerve agent, posed no danger, and should be destroyed. 
> 
> A team of independent chemical experts sent to Baghdad to make the
> laboratory safe went ahead and destroyed the VX samples on Tuesday. But
> China and France wanted

[PEN-L:9752] US planes attack Iraq for fifth day running

[Frank Durgin]

   From  Electronic Telegraph < http://www.telegraph.co.uk > july 31, 1999


US planes attack Iraq for fifth day running

 AMERICAN war planes bombed
anti-aircraft artillery sites
 in Iraq's northern "no-fly" zone
for the fifth day running
 yesterday after coming under fire
during a routine patrol.

 The US European Command, based in
Stuttgart, Germany,
 said F-15 and F-16 fighter jets,
acting in "self-defence",
 bombed sites north and north-west
of Mosul, Iraq's second
 city. All the aircraft returned
safely to the Incirlik air base
 in south-eastern Turkey after the
strike, and the military
 was assessing damage to Iraqi
forces, the statement added.

 Incirlik is home to American and
British aircraft which
 patrol the northern no-fly zone
imposed on Iraq after the
 1991 Gulf war to protect the
region's Kurdish population.

 28 July 1999: American planes hit
Iraqi sites
 28 July 1999: Iraq claims 17
civilians killed in US strike

[PEN-L:9650] Fw: Speakers and Topics for the Commission of Inquiry

[Frank Durgin]

--
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: Yugoslavia list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Speakers and Topics for the Commission of Inquiry
> Date: Monday, July 26, 1999 10:07 PM
> 
> Commission of Inquiry
> at the International Action Center
> 39 W. 14th St., #206  New York, NY  10011
> (212) 633-6646  fax: (212) 633-2889
> { HYPERLINK http://www.iacenter.org }http://www.iacenter.org   email:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> INDEPENDENT COMMISSION OF INQUIRY TO INVESTIGAE 
> U.S./NATO WAR CRIMES AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF YUGOSLAVIA
> 
> A more detailed program will be distributed later in the week.  
> Stay tuned…
> 
> PANELS AND TOPICS INCLUDE
> 
> Targeting civilians and environmental destruction
> Violations of international laws and conventions
> The Rambouillet Accords and the conspiracy to go to war
> Why the Chinese Embassy was bombed
> How the Pentagon used the war to further militarize the U.S. economy
> The war at home
> War propaganda and media lies
> How the U.S. and Germany enflamed ethnic conflicts in Yugoslavia
> U.S occupation—liberation or colonial enslavement?
> U.S. geopolitical strategy for Eastern Europe and the former USSR
> 
> SPEAKERS INCLUDE
> 
> Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general
> Felix Wilson, Cuban Interests Section
> Michael Parenti, author
> Maude Le Blanc, Haiti Progres
> Elombe Brath, Patrice Lumumba Coalition
> Dr. Sapphire Ahmed
> Shani Rifati, Roma activist
> David Jacobs, Canadian Lawyers Group
> King Downing, attorney
> John Kim, NY Veterans for Peace
> Monica Moorehead, Workers World newspaper
> Michel Chossudovsky, economist and author
> Gloria La Riva, Director, NATO Targets
> Heather Cottin, Serbian-Jewish Friendship Committee
> Barry Lituchy, CUNY
> Roland Keither, OSCE Monitor in Kosovo
> Sara Flounders, International Action Center
> Brian Becker, International Action Center
> 
> PEOPLE COMING FROM ACROSS THE COUNTRY…
> 
> Vans and car caravans are coming from Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, 
> Washington DC, Boston, and a number of other cities.  People are 
> coming in from Ann Arbor, MI; Richmond, VA; Western MA; Rhode 
> Island; Baltimore; Florida; Milwaukee; Houston, TX; Los Angeles, San
> Francisco, and San Diego, CA.  International guests are coming from
> Germany, Japan, Belgium, England, and Canada.
> 
> HOUSING
> 
> Hostelling International
> 891 Amsterdam Ave. (at 63rd St.)
> 212-932-2300
> $27
> call for reservations
> 
> Mid City Hostel
> 608 8th Ave. (between 39th and 40th St.)
> 212-704-0562
> $27
> call for reservations
> 
> Chelsea International Hostel
> 251 W. 20th St. (between 7th and 8th Ave.)
> 212-647-0010
> $23
> reservations day of only, open at 8 am
> 
> 
> Please e-mail us to let us know if you are planning on joining us.
> Thank you.
> International Action Center
> 39 West 14th Street, Room 296
> New York, NY 10011
> email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.iacenter.org
> phone: 212 633-6646
> fax:   212 633-2889

[PEN-L:9618] U.S. Bombed Iraq

[Frank Durgin]

Monday July 26 9:12 AM ET 

U.S. Says It Bombed Target In Northern Iraq

BONN (Reuters) - U.S. warplanes bombed a communications center in northern
Iraq Monday after coming under attack from
anti-aircraft batteries, a spokeswoman for the U.S. European Command in
Germany said.

All aircraft returned safely after F-15 and F-16 jets dropped laser-guided
bombs between 10:30 a.m. and 1 p.m.

Damage to the site north of Mosul, which served as a relay station for
Iraqi radar, was being assessed, the spokeswoman said.

The bombings are the latest in a series of incidents involving U.S. and
British aircraft after Iraq said in December it would not
recognize Western-imposed no-fly zones set up after the 1991 Gulf War.

The United States, Britain and Turkey cooperate in what is known as
Operation Northern Watch to police the northern zone.
The U.S. planes operate from bases in Turkey. 

[PEN-L:9589] Cherokee Trail of Tears

[Frank Durgin]

Final-Recipient: RFC822; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Action: failed
Remote-MTA: DNS; galaxy.csuchico.edu
Last-Attempt-Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 13:50:36 -0400 (EDT)





http://rosecity.net/tears/trail/tearsnht.html




   
   
   
   The Cherokee Trail of Tears - National Historic Trail - 1838-1839





National Historic Trail



The Cherokee Trail of Tears

1838-1839


Federal Indian Removal Policy


Early in the 19th century, the United States
felt threatened by England and Spain,who held land in the western continent.
At the same time, American settlers clamored for more land. Thomas Jefferson
proposed the creation of a buffer zone between U.S. and European holdings,
to be inhabited by eastern American Indians. This plan would also allow
for American expansion westward from the original colonies to the Mississippi
River.

 







President

Andrew Jackson



Between 1816 and 1840, tribes located between
the original states and the Mississippi River, including Cherokees, Chickasaws,
Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles, signed more than 40 treaties ceding their
lands to the U.S. In his 1829 inaugural address, President Andrew Jackson
set a policy to relocate eastern Indians. In 1830 it was endorsed, when
Congress passed the Indian Removal Act to force those remaining to move
west of the Mississippi. Between 1830 and 1850, about 100,000 American
Indians living between Michigan, Louisiana, and Florida moved west after
the U.S. government coerced treaties or used the U.S. Army against those
resisting. Many were treated brutally. An estimated 3,500 Creeks died in
Alabama and on their westward journey. Some were transported in chains.

 

The Cherokees








General

Winfield Scott



Historically, Cherokees occupied lands in several
southeastern states. As European settlers arrived, Cherokees traded and
intermarried with them. They began to adopt European customs and gradually
turned to an agricultural economy, while being pressured to give up traditional
homelands. Between 1721 and 1819, over 90 percent of their lands were ceded
to others. By the 1820s, Sequoyah's syllabary brought literacy and a formal
governing system with a written constitution. In 1830--the same year the
Indian Removal Act was passed--gold was found on Cherokee lands. Georgia
held lotteries to give Cherokee land and gold rights to whites. Cherokees
were not allowed to conduct tribal business, contract, testify in courts
against whites, or mine for gold.

 The Cherokees successfully challenged
Georgia in the U.S. Supreme Court. President Jackson, when hearing of the
Court's decision, reportedly said, "[Chief Justice] John Marshall has made
his decision; let him enforce it now if he can.

 

The Treaty of New Echota








Major Ridge



Most Cherokees opposed removal. Yet a minority
felt that it was futile to continue to fight. They believed that they might
survive as a people only if they signed a treaty with the U.S.

 In December 1835, the U.S. sought out
this minority to effect a treaty at New Echota, Georgia. Only 300 to 500
Cherokees were there; none were elected officials of the Cherokee Nation.
Twenty signed the treaty, ceding all Cherokee territory east of the Mississippi
to the U.S., in exchange for $5 million and new homelands in Indian Territory.

 More than 15,000 Cherokees protested
the illegal treaty. Yet, on May 23, 1836, the Treaty of New Echota was
ratified by the U.S. Senate--by just one vote.

 

"Many Days Pass And People Die Very Much"


Most Cherokees, including Chief John Ross,
did not believe that they would be forced to move. In May 1838, Federal
troops and state militias began the roundup of the Cherokees into stockades.
In spite of warnings to troops to treat the Cherokees kindly, the roundup
proved harrowing.

Families were separated--the elderly and ill
forced out at gunpoint-- people given only moments to collect cherished
possessions. White looters followed, ransacking homesteads as Cherokees
were led away.

 







Chief John Ross



Three groups left in the summer, traveling from
present-day Chattanooga by rail, boat, and wagon, primarily on the Water
Route. But river levels were too low for navigation; one group, traveling
overland in Arkansas, suffered three to five deaths each day due to illness
and drought.

 Fifteen thousand captives still awaited
removal. Crowding, poor sanitation, and drought made them miserable. Many
died. The Cherokees asked to postpone removal until the fall, and to voluntarily
remove themselves. The delay was granted, provided they remain in internment
camps until travel resumed.

 By November, 12 groups of 1,000 each
were trudging 800 miles overland to the west. The last party, including
Chief Ross, went by water. Now, heavy autumn rains and hundreds of wagons
on the muddy route made roads impassable; little grazing and game could
be found to supplement meager rations.

 Two-thirds of the ill-equipped Cherokees
were trapped between the ice-bound Ohio and Mississippi Rivers during Ja

[PEN-L:9581] Indian Removal

[Frank Durgin]

 

  Indian Removal
   Extract from Andrew Jackson's Seventh Annual Message
to Congress
December 7, 1835

 

The plan of removing the aboriginal people who yet remain within the
settled portions of the United States to the country west
of the Mississippi River approaches its consummation. It was adopted on the
most mature consideration of the condition of this
race, and ought to be persisted in till the object is accomplished, and
prosecuted with as much vigor as a just regard to their
circumstances will permit, and as fast as their consent can be obtained.
All preceding experiments for the improvement of the
Indians have failed. It seems now to be an established fact they they can
not live in contact with a civilized community and
prosper. Ages of fruitless endeavors have at length brought us to a
knowledge of this principle of intercommunication with
them. The past we can not recall, but the future we can provide for.
Independently of the treaty stipulations into which we
have entered with the various tribes for the usufructuary rights they have
ceded to us, no one can doubt the moral duty of the
Government of the United States to protect and if possible to preserve and
perpetuate the scattered remnants of this race which
are left within our borders. In the discharge of this duty an extensive
region in the West has been assigned for their permanent
residence. It has been divided into districts and allotted among them. Many
have already removed and others are preparing to
go, and with the exception of two small bands living in Ohio and Indiana,
not exceeding 1,500 persons, and of the Cherokees,
all the tribes on the east side of the Mississippi, and extending from Lake
Michigan to Florida, have entered into engagements
which will lead to their transplantation.

The plan for their removal and reestablishment is founded upon the
knowledge we have gained of their character and habits,
and has been dictated by a spirit of enlarged liberality. A territory
exceeding in extent that relinquished has been granted to
each tribe. Of its climate, fertility, and capacity to support an Indian
population the representations are highly favorable. To
these districts the Indians are removed at the expense of the United
States, and with certain supplies of clothing, arms,
ammunition, and other indispensable articles; they are also furnished
gratuitously with provisions for the period of a year
after their arrival at their new homes. In that time, from the nature of
the country and of the products raised by them, they can
subsist themselves by agricultural labor, if they choose to resort to that
mode of life; if they do not they are upon the skirts of
the great prairies, where countless herds of buffalo roam, and a short time
suffices to adapt their own habits to the changes
which a change of the animals destined for their food may require. Ample
arrangements have also been made for the support
of schools; in some instances council houses and churches are to be
erected, dwellings constructed for the chiefs, and mills for
common use. Funds have been set apart for the maintenance of the poor; the
most necessary mechanical arts have been
introduced, and blacksmiths, gunsmiths, wheelwrights, millwrights, etc.,
are supported among them. Steel and iron, and
sometimes salt, are purchased for them, and plows and other farming
utensils, domestic animals, looms, spinning wheels,
cards, etc., are presented to them. And besides these beneficial
arrangements, annuities are in all cases paid, amounting in
some instances to more than $30 for each individual of the tribe, and in
all cases sufficiently great, if justly divided and
prudently expended, to enable them, in addition to their own exertions, to
live comfortably. And as a stimulus for exertion, it is
now provided by law that "in all cases of the appointment of interpreters
or other persons employed for the benefit of the
Indians a preference shall be given to persons of Indian descent, if such
can be found who are properly qualified for the
discharge of the duties."

Such are the arrangements for the physical comfort and for the moral
improvement of the Indians. The necessary measures
for their political advancement and for their separation from our citizens
have not been neglected. The pledge of the United
States has been given by Congress that the country destined for the
residence of this people shall be forever "secured and
guaranteed to them." A country west of Missouri and Arkansas has been
assigned to them, into which the white settlements
are not to be pushed. No political communities can be formed in that
extensive region, except those which are established by
the Indians themselves or by the Untied States for them and with their
concurrence. A barrier has thus been raised for their
protection against the encroachment of our citizens, and guarding the
I

[PEN-L:9580] Jackson's Case for the Removal Act

[Frank Durgin]

 

President Andrew Jackson's Case for the Removal Act
First Annual Message to Congress, 8 December 1830



It gives me pleasure to announce to Congress that the benevolent policy of
the Government, steadily pursued for nearly thirty
years, in relation to the removal of the Indians beyond the white
settlements is approaching to a happy consummation. Two
important tribes have accepted the provision made for their removal at the
last session of Congress, and it is believed that their
example will induce the remaining tribes also to seek the same obvious
advantages.

The consequences of a speedy removal will be important to the United
States, to individual States, and to the Indians
themselves. The pecuniary advantages which it Promises to the Government
are the least of its recommendations. It puts an
end to all possible danger of collision between the authorities of the
General and State Governments on account of the Indians.
It will place a dense and civilized population in large tracts of country
now occupied by a few savage hunters. By opening the
whole territory between Tennessee on the north and Louisiana on the south
to the settlement of the whites it will incalculably
strengthen the southwestern frontier and render the adjacent States strong
enough to repel future invasions without remote
aid. It will relieve the whole State of Mississippi and the western part of
Alabama of Indian occupancy, and enable those
States to advance rapidly in population, wealth, and power. It will
separate the Indians from immediate contact with
settlements of whites; free them from the power of the States; enable them
to pursue happiness in their own way and under
their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is
lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them
gradually, under the protection of the Government and through the influence
of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits
and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community. These
consequences, some of them so certain and the rest so
probable, make the complete execution of the plan sanctioned by Congress at
their last session an object of much solicitude.

Toward the aborigines of the country no one can indulge a more friendly
feeling than myself, or would go further in attempting
to reclaim them from their wandering habits and make them a happy,
prosperous people. I have endeavored to impress upon
them my own solemn convictions of the duties and powers of the General
Government in relation to the State authorities. For
the justice of the laws passed by the States within the scope of their
reserved powers they are not responsible to this
Government. As individuals we may entertain and express our opinions of
their acts, but as a Government we have as little
right to control them as we have to prescribe laws for other nations.

With a full understanding of the subject, the Choctaw and the Chickasaw
tribes have with great unanimity determined to
avail themselves of the liberal offers presented by the act of Congress,
and have agreed to remove beyond the Mississippi River.
Treaties have been made with them, which in due season will be submitted
for consideration. In negotiating these treaties they
were made to understand their true condition, and they have preferred
maintaining their independence in the Western forests
to submitting to the laws of the States in which they now reside. These
treaties, being probably the last which will ever be
made with them, are characterized by great liberality on the part of the
Government. They give the Indians a liberal sum in
consideration of their removal, and comfortable subsistence on their
arrival at their new homes. If it be their real interest to
maintain a separate existence, they will there be at liberty to do so
without the inconveniences and vexations to which they
would unavoidably have been subject in Alabama and Mississippi.

Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country,
and Philanthropy has been long busily employed in
devising means to avert it, but its progress has never for a moment been
arrested, and one by one have many powerful tribes
disappeared from the earth. To follow to the tomb the last of his race and
to tread on the graves of extinct nations excite
melancholy reflections. But true philanthropy reconciles the mind to these
vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one
generation to make room for another. In the monuments and fortresses of an
unknown people, spread over the extensive
regions of the West, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which
was exterminated or has disappeared to make
room for the existing savage tribes. Nor is there anything in this which,
upon a comprehensive view of the general interests of
the human race, is to be regretted. Philanthropy could not wish to see this
continent restored to the conditions in which it was
found by our forefathers. What good man would prefer a country covered with
forests a

[PEN-L:9575] A Simple Solemn Farewell

[Frank Durgin]

The headlines of today's local paper  (Portland Press Herald) read "A
Simple, Solemn farewell"  The article describes how  Kennedy "Family
members watched from the deck of a Navy destroyer as a brass quintet played
a hymn...The flag was lowered to half mask as ...mournersflanked by
sailors in dress whites gathered on the stern of the USS Briscoe...A Navy
honor guard was also on hand to fire a rifle volley...The service was
conducted in private...amid orders that planes keep five miles away. Boats
were allowed no closer than a mile."

As I read this  I could not keep my mind from straying to the 17 Iraqi
civilians killed by US Bombers last Sunday, and trying to picture  just
what kind of funeral they had, and what would be the fate of their family
members

Frank

[PEN-L:9407] US warplanes continue killing in Iraq

[Frank Durgin]

 From World Socialst Web Site
 
US warplanes continue killing in Iraq

Seventeen dead, eighteen injured near Najaf

By Martin McLaughlin
21 July 1999

Use this version to print

American fighter bombers inflicted their bloodiest
attack
on Iraqi civilians in nearly six months Sunday, killing
17 people and wounding 18 more along a highway near
the city of Najaf in the South of the country. It was
the
highest civilian casualty toll since 24 people were
killed
by missiles which slammed into a residential
neighborhood in the city of Basra, also in the South,
last
January.

Local residents told a photographer for the French news
agency AFP that four missiles crashed into vehicles on
the road, causing terrible carnage, mainly among
women, children and the elderly. The dead included a
pregnant woman and her husband in their car, and six
members of a single family in an all-terrain vehicle. A
seventh person in the same vehicle, a six-year-old boy,
had to have his hand amputated because of his injuries.

The US Central Command claimed that the American
planes had hit a missile battery near Abu Sukhayr,
200 miles south of Baghdad, and a military
communications site near Al Khidr, 150 miles southeast
of the capital. Abu Sukhayr is near the site of the
massacre along the Najaf road.

It was at least the fourth such air strike on Iraqi
targets
during the month of July. Previous strikes took place
on
July 2, July 8 and July 13, all in northern Iraq in the
area around Mosul, that region's largest city.

American and British officials reacted to the casualty
reports from Najaf with practiced cynicism. State
Department spokesman James Rubin declared,
repeating his mantra during the bombing of Yugoslavia:
“In these actions, every effort is taken to avoid any
casualties to civilians or damage to civilian
property.”

British Defence Minister George Robertson accused the
Iraqis of causing casualties by firing anti-aircraft
missiles unsuccessfully at US and British warplanes.
These weapons then fell back to earth and hit Iraqi
civilians, he said. Similar claims were made by US and
British spokesmen during the 1991 Persian Gulf War,
when the extensive civilian casualties in Baghdad and
other cities, caused by air strikes, were initially
blamed
on Iraqi anti-aircraft fire.

The US and Britain have carried out dozens of bombing
raids on Iraqi targets since the four-day air war last
December, after the withdrawal of United Nations
weapons inspectors from the country. Two justifications
have been advanced for the raids: preventing Iraq from
building atomic, biological and chemical weapons, and
enforcing compliance with the “no-fly” zones in
southern
and northern Iraq.

Both claims are no more than pretexts, riddled with
contradictions. Last week the Washington Post reported
that an internal US government study had found no
evidence of any Iraqi effort to develop weapons of mass
destruction in the eight months since the UNSCOM
inspectors were removed.

As for the “no-fly” zones, these were imposed
unilaterally
by the US, Britain and France after the Persian Gulf
War, and were never approved by the UN Security
Council, or even presented for a vote, because of
Russian
and Chinese opposition. They have no standing under
international law and are a flagrant violation of
Iraq's
sovereignty.

When the zones were first declared, US President George
Bush claimed that his goal was to protect the Shiite
Moslem population of southern Iraq and the Kurdish
population of northern Iraq against military reprisals
by
Saddam Hussein. The C

[PEN-L:9391] Fw: Commission of Inquiry

[Frank Durgin]

--
> From: iacenter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Commission of Inquiry 
> Date: Tuesday, July 20, 1999 5:54 PM
> 
> 
> 
> 
> International Action Center
> 39 W 14 St #206  New York, NY 10011
> Phone  212-633-6646  Fax  212-633-2889
> E-mail  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  web site  www.iacenter.org
> 
> Commission of Inquiry to Investigate 
> U.S./NATO War Crimes Against Yugoslavia
> Saturday, July 31, 10 am to 6 pm
> Fashion Institute of Technology (27th St. and 8th Ave.), NYC
> 
> On Saturday, July 31, the Commission of Inquiry to Investigate
> U.S./NATO War Crimes Against Yugoslavia will hold a meeting in New
> York City.  Initiated by the International Action Center and former
> U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, this meeting will include the
> reading of a multi-count indictment written by Clark accusing Bill
> Clinton, General Wesley Clark, and others with war crimes against
> Yugoslavia.  
> 
> Clark and other expert witnesses will present testimony based on the
> collective work of a team of researchers investigating War Crimes,
> Crimes Against Peace, and Crimes Against Humanity committed by the
> U.S., England, Germany, and other NATO countries.
> 
> Speakers representing a number of international struggles against
> imperialism will be traveling to New York for the meeting.  Felix
> Wilson from the Cuba Interest Section will be coming from Washington
> DC.  Maude Le Blanc, from Haiti Progres will speak about the true
> nature of an occupying force.  Ismael Guadalupe will be traveling from
> Puerto Rico to represent the Committee for the Rescue and Development
> of Puerto Rico, a group leading the struggle to demand the ouster of
> the U.S. Navy from Puerto Rico.
> 
> King Downing, an African American lawyer, will speak about the effect
> of the war on oppressed communities in the U.S. Shani Rafati, a Roma
> activist from Kosovo whose family was in Pristina during the bombing,
> will speak about the many nationalities of the region, and Frank Kovac
> will describe conditions of the Hungarian minority in multi-ethnic
> Yugoslavia.  
> 
> Monica Moorehead, an organizer of the Mumia September Awareness Week,
> and Gloria Rubec, from the Texas Coalition Against the Death Penalty,
> will speak about the crimes of the U.S. government against the people
> here.  John Kim, who is a Korean veteran, the President of Veterans
> for Peace in New York and an attorney in New York City, will speak.
> And Roland Keith, an OSCE monitor in Kosovo, will testify on the role
> of the KLA.
> 
> Other speakers include economist and author Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
> from Toronto; author Michael Parenti will discuss the role of the
> media along with Karen Talbot and Herb Foerstel; Gloria La Riva from
> the International Action Center, who traveled to Yugoslavia twice
> during the bombing; Michel Collon from the Belgium Workers Party; and
> David Jacobs, a lawyers from Canada involved in bringing an indictment
> against the Canadian government and other NATO countries. 
> 
> The hearing will also examine the past U.S. patterns of criminal
> behavior.  This panel will include Iraqis, Sudanese, Haitians, Kurds,
> and more.  Also speaking will be members of the research committee,
> who, along with a number of the speakers, will be presenting the
> findings of the Commission of Inquiry.  The meeting will include a
> multi-media presentation of video and slides taken in Yugoslavia,
> showing the effect of the bombing campaign.
> 
> Sara Flounders, an organizer of the Commission of Inquiry, said, "We
> are not simply trying to reveal the truth about U.S./NATO war crimes
> before, during, and after the war.  We are also trying to educate and
> mobilize broad public opinion to oppose imperialism.  The war is not
> over.  The U.S./NATO occupation of Kosovo and the cessation of the
> bombing campaign is not, in our opinion, a sign that peace has arrived
> in the Balkans.  The U.S. goal is to destroy all of Yugoslavia and to
> continue its march through Central and Eastern Europe, into the
> Caucuses, and into the former southern republics of the Soviet Union."
> 
> Activists from around the country are expected to attend the July 31st
> event.  They will then organize local hearings to collect evidence of
> U.S./NATO war crimes.  Hearings are expected in Washington DC,
> Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, NATO countries,
> Russia, Yugoslavia, and many other cities.
> 
> The Commission of Inquiry to Investigate U.S./NATO War Crimes Against
> Yugoslavia will be meeting on Saturday, July 31 at the Fashion
> Institute of Technology (27th St. and 8th Ave.), in Dubinsky Hall from
> 10 am to 6 pm.  For a detailed schedule, see the International Action
> Center web page at www.iacenter.org or call 212-633-6646.
> 

[PEN-L:9386] Re: Re: How to handle virus?

[Frank Durgin]

Doug:

 I thank you for the message.

As regards how to cure it, a message I got yesterday ( copied below)
indicates that
there are ways of cleaning it.

 I'm an absolute novice here, but I thought possibly the message might be
of interest

Frank

 




Virus Incident Information
Database: mail.box
Author: Frank Durgin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Andvig/OU=Person/O=World Bank@WorldBank
Subject: [PEN-L:9288] The disastrous effects of Russian Ag. Reform
Date: 7-19-1999

The file attachment final ag art.doc you sent to the recipients listed
above was
 infected with the W97M/Marker.gen virus and was successfully cleaned.

[PEN-L:9372] Fw: Re: RE: Re: JFK Jr and the Hubris of the Rich

[Frank Durgin]

> 
> Eugene Coyle wrote
> , July 19, 1999 3:24 PM
> > 
> > Like Jim I am an experienced pilot -- with maybe more actual crashes
than
> he
> > has -- and thought about JFK Jr's flight quite a bit over the last few
> days.  I
> > have an instrument rating and have myself become a bit disoriented at
> times and
> > struggled to maintain trust in the instruments and not in my senses.
> > 
> > The trip was foolish to undertake.  I'm recalling the hangar
stories
> that
> > the most dangerous pilots are those with around 100 to 200 hours --
like
> > Kennedy -- and doctors.  (Medical doctors, not Ph. D.'s.)  The latter
> kill
> > themselves at a disproportionate rate attributed to arrogance.  So
> Kennedy
> > might have had two strikes, low time plus arrogance, and the third
strike
> was
> > the haze.
> 
>   
> My personal take on this  whole affair is this: An expereicned pilot is
one
> who has had the dumb luck to survive, and thus learn from, all of his
> mistakes.
> 
> Frank

[PEN-L:9365] Fw: Re: RE: Re: JFK Jr and the Hubris of the Rich

[Frank Durgin]

Eugene Coyle wrote
, July 19, 1999 3:24 PM
> 
> Like Jim I am an experienced pilot -- with maybe more actual crashes than
he
> has -- and thought about JFK Jr's flight quite a bit over the last few
days.  I
> have an instrument rating and have myself become a bit disoriented at
times and
> struggled to maintain trust in the instruments and not in my senses.
> 
> The trip was foolish to undertake.  I'm recalling the hangar stories
that
> the most dangerous pilots are those with around 100 to 200 hours -- like
> Kennedy -- and doctors.  (Medical doctors, not Ph. D.'s.)  The latter
kill
> themselves at a disproportionate rate attributed to arrogance.  So
Kennedy
> might have had two strikes, low time plus arrogance, and the third strike
was
> the haze.

  
My personal take on this  whole affair is this: An expereicned pilot is one
who has had the dumb luck to survive, and thus learn from, all of his
mistakes.

Frank

[PEN-L:9364] How to handle virus?

[Frank Durgin]

 I apologize to the list for the infected attachment to the  the message on
Russian Agriculture  [PEN-L:9288]. The disastrous effects of Russian Ag.
Reform)


That is was infected came as quite a surprise to  me.  I do a McAfee scan
virtually every day, and have never had a virus reported.

As It will be a couple of weeks before I can get any help 'from the
mainland", I wonder if anyone could offer some advice to this computer
novice on how to handle it.

Frank

[PEN-L:9310] Fw: Virus Report to Sender

[Frank Durgin]

--
> From: WBLN0024 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: Frank Durgin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Virus Report to Sender
> Date: Monday, July 19, 1999 12:50 PM
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Virus Incident Information
> Database: mail.box
> Author: Frank Durgin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Andvig/OU=Person/O=World Bank@WorldBank
> Subject: [PEN-L:9288] The disastrous effects of Russian Ag. Reform
> Date: 7-19-1999
> 
> The file attachment final ag art.doc you sent to the recipients listed
above was
>  infected with the W97M/Marker.gen virus and was successfully cleaned.
> 
> 
> 

[PEN-L:9288] The disastrous effects of Russian Ag. Reform

[Frank Durgin]

Economic reform has ravaged the Russian countryside and, in some ways, far
more than World War II did. In 1945 gross agricultural output in the USSR
was down by 31% from the prewar level. In 1996 and 1997,by way of contrast,
it was down by some 38% from the pre-reform 1986-1990 average. In 1998, a
year of severe drought, it was down 45.1% from the pre-reform average.
And while the scale of the current decline is slightly more severe than
that triggered by World War II, it has been far more severe than the 24%
decline triggered by the collectivization in the 1930's. The decline in net
agricultural output, a concept that factors in the depletion of the machine
parks and livestock, soil degradation etc (all described below) has been of
a much larger but undetermined magnitude.
 
Given the  exceptionally cold spring in the principal growing regions and
another record breaking hot summer, the prognosis for the 1999 harvest is
bleak.

Attached is a free standing commentary I was invited to do sometime back
for a volume to be published  sometime this summer. The commentary is
primarily a statistical portrait of the disaster. 
I followed the directions I was given by one of the co-editors ,i.e., do
not propose cures, nor comment on the chapter devoted to cures.
A few weeks ago I received notice that the other co-editor (Lawrence 
Klien) felt that the piece was not "solid enough" to stand alone and that
it would
be used as an appendix to the chapter devoted to remedies. I would
be listed as one of the chapter's co-authors. I responded by withdrawing my
piece.


The volume in question is.



REBUILDING RUSSIA
A Balanced Approach to Economic Transition

edited by Lawrence R Klein (University of Pennsylvania) & Marshall Power
(Harvard University)
foreword by Mikhail Gorbachev .
REBUILDING RUSSIA
A Balanced Approach to Economic Transition

edited by Lawrence R Klein (University of Pennsylvania) & Marshall Pomer
(Harvard University)
foreword by Mikhail Gorbachev 

World Scientific Publishing Company . 
   300pp (approx.)
Pub. date: Summer 1999 
   ISBN 981-02-3853-3
US$58 / £35.


J.K Galbraith's pre-publication review is as follows;

"No writing (or oratory) in history has been more replete with bad advice
than that given Russia in the
last decade. Here, for a change, is something very good: the best, in fact,
that truly competent and
responsible American and Russian scholars have to offer. I strongly
recommend it."John K Galbraith


As I said, the commentary is attached. It may be a question of ego, but
honestly do not know where one can find a more complete picture of the
degree to which reform has ravaged the Russian countryside.


 final ag art.doc (Microsoft Word Document)

[PEN-L:9254] Blackshirts fuel Kremlin fears of Nazi revival

[Frank Durgin]

  Elelctronic 
Telegraph July 17,1999 

Blackshirts fuel Kremlin fears of Nazi
revival
By Marcus Warren in Voronezh


RUSSIA'S neo-Nazis are on the march, taking to the streets
and preaching their message of hatred with a zeal viewed
with growing alarm by the Kremlin.
Black-uniformed toughs from the most well-organised group
are particularly visible in the south and have covered one of
its largest cities with their swastika-like emblem and
sinister slogans.
Parallels between the Russian National Unity movement
and the Nazis are too striking to ignore: virulent
anti-Semitism, the uniform, a stretched-arm salute, and a
war cry "Glory to Russia" in addition to a cult of the group
leader, Alexander Barkashov. Yet they operate with
impunity in Voronezh, a city almost wiped off the face of the
earth in fighting between the Red Army and the
Wehrmacht during the Second World War and a
Communist stronghold to this day.
Visitors could be forgiven for concluding that the group's red
and white symbol - based on an ancient Slav design
according to RNU claims - is the city's coat of arms. It
decorates almost every lamppost and covers bridges and
walls. Members have held party conferences and parades
in Voronezh and regularly turn out in uniform to distribute
their newspaper Russian Order to passers-by. 
Last winter local members patrolled the streets, SS-style, in
long leather trenchcoats with alsatian dogs at their side.
Recruiting films show members practising with firearms
and learning martial arts at a network of secret camps
throughout Russia. A number of anti-Semitic outrages,
most recently a stabbing in Moscow's main synagogue, the
increasingly high profile of groups such as RNU and the
reluctance of local authorities to take action against them
are worrying the Kremlin. Boris Kuznetsov, President
Yeltsin's representative in Voronezh said: "I am extremely
dissatisfied with the reaction of our local authorities to this
sort of extremism. Basically, there is no reaction." 
Gauging RNU's size - or even how much support it enjoys -
is not easy. Members despise journalists and when they do
talk to outsiders like to hint at a huge number of secret
sympathisers in the police, security services and army. RNU
may have less than 10,000 full members nationwide. But
they are only the highly motivated core of a much bigger
movement, running to tens of thousands of supporters,
untried recruits and young people. 
"The media tell lies and creates an image of a gang of
bandits and society rejects," one member of the Voronezh
organisation said."But society supports us." Vladimir
Firstov, a former member who set up the Voronezh branch
but has now split from the party, said: "RNU is not political,
it is more of a sect. It has its own internal laws and
doctrines and exists mainly to recruit acolytes for the faith."
Touchstones of the faith include violent anti-semitism,
dressed up as opposition to "Jewish fascism" which aims "to
destroy the Russian people", and hatred for all
non-Russians, especially those from the Caucasus.
Tim Brown in Madrid writes: A 500-strong mob led by
skinheads wearing swastikas and other neo-Nazi emblems
attacked shops and vehicles owned by Moroccan
immigrants in a second night of violence in the industrial
town of Tarrassa outside Barcelona.
6 June 1999: Exodus as thousands flee from Russian
anti-Semites
3 May 1999: Moscow synagogues bombed
17 May 1998: Synagogue bomb marks sinister rise of
Russia's neo-Nazis
15 May 1998: Fascists blamed for synagogue bomb
24 August 1996: Jews fearful after Moscow bomb

[PEN-L:9253] Turkey shoot continues

[Frank Durgin]

   Home -
Yahoo! - My Yahoo! - News Alerts - Help
Friday July 16 1:51 PM ET 

Iraq Says Western Planes Attacked Sites In North

  BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq said Western warplanes attacked
sites in northern Iraq Friday before
  anti-aircraft defenses forced them return to their bases
in Turkey.

The U.S. Air Force's European Command said U.S. planes bombed a
communications site near the northern Iraqi city of
Mosul Friday after being fired on by Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery.

``Nine hostile formations ... flew over regions in the provinces of Duhok,
Arbil and Ninevah and the enemy attacked civil and
service installations in the said provinces,'' the Iraqi News Agency quoted
a military spokesman as saying.

``Our brave ground resistance forces intercepted them and forced them to
leave our airspace to the bases of aggression in
Turkey,'' the spokesman said.

Such attacks are not uncommon in the no-fly zone imposed by U.S. and allied
aircraft over northern Iraq.

The attacks on the site southeast of Mosul took place between 11 a.m. and
12:30 p.m. Iraqi time (3 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. EDT),
the German-based command told Reuters. It said all aircraft charged with
monitoring the no-fly zone over northern Iraq left
the area safely.

It added that the extent of damage caused by the F-16 jets, which dropped
laser-guided bombs on the target, was still being
assessed.

The Iraqi spokesman also said other planes flew over the southern provinces
of Basra, Meisan, Dhi Qar and Muthanna
without reporting any incident.

Friday, Iraq urged the Arab League to press Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to stop
allowing U.S. and British aircraft from using
their airbases to patrol a no-fly zone over the south of the country.

In a dispatch from Cairo, INA said Iraq's representative at the Arab
League, Sultan al-Shawi, had submitted a memorandum
to Arab League Secretary-General Esmat Abdel-Meguid, criticizing Kuwait and
Saudi Arabia.

Shawi told Meguid that U.S. and British warplanes based in Kuwait and Saudi
Arabia had carried out 288 sorties between
July 1 and July 8.

Western air strikes on Iraq have become regular since Baghdad decided last
year to challenge U.S. and British jets patrolling
northern and southern no-fly zones set up by Western powers after the 1991
Gulf War.

The zones, which Baghdad does not recognize, were imposed to protect
minority groups from attack by Iraqi forces. 

[PEN-L:9252] Fw: military keynesianism redux

[Frank Durgin]

--
> From: Michael Perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L:9241] military keynesianism redux
> Date: Friday, July 16, 1999 5:42 PM
> 
> Nicholas von Hoffman recently published an article claiming that there
> are more than 738,000 police in the U.S., 1 for every 24 people.  Is
> that number in the ball park.  It was not clear who was counted.  Prison
> guards?
> 
> --
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA 95929
> 
> Tel. 530-898-5321
> E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 

As can be seen by the data provided by Max and Doug,  738,000 is an
understatement.

Doug mentioned the armed guards on all of the nation's  campuses.   One
also finds them  in shopping malls, at the entrances to various
institutions (museums, corporate headquarters, banks etc. Peek in the
yellow pages for a listing of the large number of private security agencies
in your locality.

I do not have statistics available, but I remember that more than ten years
ago the number of private police in the US had already exceeded the number
of public police.
and was continuing to grow.

Another aspect of this same question might  be the large number of private
investigation agencies. Look in the yellow pages. you'll get a rude
surprise.

Frank

[PEN-L:9230] Iraq still being bombed

[Frank Durgin]

Friday July 16 7:15 AM ET 

Air Force Says It Bombs Northern Iraq Site

  BONN, Germany (Reuters) - U.S. planes bombed a
communications site near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul
  Friday after being fired on by Iraqi anti-aircraft
artillery, the U.S. Air Force's European Command said.

The attacks on the site southeast of Mosul took place between 11 a.m. and
12:30 p.m. Iraqi time (3 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. EDT),
the German-based command told Reuters. It said all aircraft charged with
monitoring the no-fly zone over northern Iraq left
the area safely.

It added that the extent of damage caused by the F-16 jets, which dropped
laser-guided bombs on the target, was still being
assessed.

The bombings are the latest in a series of incidents involving American and
British jets and Iraqi air defenses after Baghdad
said in December it would not recognize Western-enforced no-fly zones set
up after the 1991 Gulf War.

The monitoring of the northern no-fly zone, code-namedOperation Northern
Watch, is a joint U.S., British and Turkish
operation. 

[PEN-L:9212] The “back-to-the-Soviet Union” candidates

[Frank Durgin]

   

 
   


>From The Economist
July 10-July16

Ukraine 

Grim choices 

K I E V 




NEARLY eight years after independence from the Soviet
Union, many of the
candidates in Ukraine’s presidential election, due in
October, say they want to go
back, more or less, to the old days. And at least three out
of the seven most serious
say they want to recreate the Soviet Union in one guise or
another—with Ukraine
inside it. 

Even candidates who claim to want reform, President Leonid
Kuchma included, hark
back to the Soviet Union in other respects. Mr Kuchma’s
heavy-handed tactics smack
of the era when a vote of 99% in favour of the incumbent
was pretty average. “Ukraine
must follow the European road,” he said recently. “Changing
the president would
mean changing the political course: I have no right to let
that happen.” Hardly the
spirit of democracy. 

Certainly, if various of the proclamations by other
candidates are to be believed,
Ukraine would veer sharply in another direction under
several of Mr Kuchma’s
rivals. Parliament’s speaker, for instance, Oleksandr
Tkachenko, has been full of
enthusiasm for the (so far mainly theoretical) reunion of
Russia and Belarus, clearly
implying that Ukraine should join it. Piotr Simonenko, head
of Ukraine’s Communist
Party and another candidate for president, favours that
three-country link too. Natalia
Vitrenko, running for the Progressive Socialist Party,
wants the entire Soviet Union
put back together. Each of these three old-guard candidates
is well up with Mr
Kuchma in the opinion polls. An analyst at the East-West
Centre, a think-tank in
Kiev, says—with some justification—that the forthcoming
election could decide
whether Ukraine has a future as an independent state. 

The “back-to-the-Soviet Union” candidates certainly have
supporters, especially in
Ukraine’s east and south, where ethnic Russians (numbering
about 10m out of
Ukraine’s 50m people) and Ukrainians with old-left
sympathies are most numerous.
In 1991, even they voted for independence, thinking that
Ukraine was being exploited
by the rest of the Soviet Union and that independence would
bring prosperity. Eight
years on, GDP has fallen by two-thirds. Easterners are
particularly despondent. 

NATO’s war over Kosovo has also helped set Ukrainian minds
against the West.
Though the Socialist Party’s Oleksandr Moroz, a former
speaker of parliament, is
casting himself as a Scandinavian type of social democrat
(albeit with the expectation
of winning a lot of communist votes), the prevailing mood
may also prod him into
pandering to nostalgia for the Soviet Union. Of the wily
old operators, Mr Kuchma
apart, only Yevhen Marchuk, a former KGB boss for Ukraine,
is still clearly
pro-western. 

In his determination to fight back, Mr Kuchma is playing
dirty. Last month the
Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe
(OSCE), which tries, among
other things, to encourage democratic habits, said his
tactics could harm Ukraine’s
relations with western institutions. Some of the
president’s men have told television
bosses that, if they give presidential challengers
air-time, they may lose their licences
or find that advertisers withdraw their business. 

The electoral commission has been helping the president,
too. For example, it made
life hard for Mr Moroz by stalling for a month over whether
it would hand his party
the forms it needed to get the minimum 1m voters’
signatures entitling him to run.
“We’re facing a deliberate, planned campaign to stop me
taking part in the election,”
complains Mr Moroz, who says some of his party’s buildings
have been set on fire
and his supporters attacked. 

Recent events in Donetsk, the coal-mining area in the east
that is a hotbed of
anti-Kuchma feeling and happens also to be the country’s
most populous region,
have been particularly murky. Ivan Ponomarev, the head of
the region’s assembly
and an enemy of Mr Kuchma’s, mysteriously resigned in May.
The chief beneficiary
has been Viktor Yanukovich, the region’s 

[PEN-L:9203] Fw: Charge U.S./NATO with War Crimes-July 31, NYC

[Frank Durgin]

--
> From: iacenter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Charge U.S./NATO with War Crimes-July 31, NYC
> Date: Thursday, July 15, 1999 11:01 AM
> 
> International Action Center
> 39 W. 14th St., # 206, New York, NY 10011
> 212-633-6646 Fax: 212-633-2889
> Web: www.iacenter.org   email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> 
> Dear Friend,
> 
> We wanted to take some time to explain the new project that we have
> initiated called the Commission of Inquiry to investigate U.S./NATO
> War Crimes.  We believe that this Commission of Inquiry has a great
> and historic task to achieve.  Ramsey Clark and other expert witnesses
> will indict and present testimony on July 31 in New York City accusing
> Bill Clinton, General Wesley Clark, and others with war crimes against
> the people of Yugoslavia.
> 
> On July 31, there will be a series of panels and workshops.  There
> will be exciting presentations.  There will be analysis and
> discussion.  Literature and video resources will be available to be
> used for local organizing efforts.  Ramsey Clark will be the key note
> speaker presenting the multi-count indictment.  We are also making
> time so that local anti-war activists and organizers from throughout
> the country can have a chance to meet and plan for Commission of
> Inquiry hearings in their cities.
> 
> We are not simply trying to reveal the truth about U.S./NATO war
> crimes before, during, and after the war.  We are also trying to
> educate and mobilize broad public opinion to oppose imperialism.  The
> war is not over.  The U.S./NATO occupation of Kosovo and the cessation
> of the bombing campaign is not, in our opinion, a sign that peace has
> arrived in the Balkans.  The U.S. goal is to destroy all of Yugoslavia
> and to continue its march through Central and Eastern Europe, into the
> Caucuses, and into the former southern republics of the Soviet Union.
> 
> We are organizing to have Commission of Inquiry hearings in cities
> throughout the United States, every NATO country, Russia, and around
> the world.  We are heartened that this call for an independent War
> Crimes Tribunal is resonating on all seven continents.  All who have
> suffered the ravages of colonialism, racism, and imperialism are
> finding a way to establish a new international network of coordinated
> activity in this field.  Exploratory committees for Commission of
> Inquiry hearings have been formed in several European countries, in
> Canada, and in India.
> 
> This process begins on July 31 with a day-long hearing of the
> Commission of Inquiry at the Dubinsky Hall at the Fashion Institute of
> Technology campus (27th Street and 8th Ave._see enclosed leaflet).
> After hearings are held in other cities over the next months, there
> will be a culminating International War Crimes Tribunal in New York
> City (date to be announced) where collected material is presented to
> an international panel.
> 
> This is a vast undertaking.  We have set up an international research
> effort conducting investigations into twenty-five broad categories of
> war crimes and related subjects.  We are collecting public documents,
> interviews, eyewitness testimony, expert testimony, video footage,
> photos, and other materials to document the charges of Crimes Against
> Peace, Crimes Against Humanity, and War Crimes.  Please see our web
> page, www.iacenter.org, for a list of the charges and updates on the
> Tribunal.
> 
> Join This New International Movement
> 
> As  you know, the IAC played a major role in initiating and organizing
> protest activities and demonstrations between March 24 and June 5.
> More than 10,000 people marched on the Pentagon on June 5, and the
> three-hour rally was broadcast live on C-SPAN and then rebroadcast.  A
> similar mass demonstration was held in San Francisco on June 5, as
> well as in cities around the world.  
> 
> Hundreds of thousands of people opposed this war.  They distributed
> leaflets, put up posters, helped get out mailings, did phone banking,
> and generously contributed their hard-earned dollars for this effort.
> It was amazing that in such a short time a new mass anti-war movement
> started to take shape.  We couldn't have done it without your help. We
> greatly appreciate your contributions in the many ways you made them.
> The building of a grass roots anti-war movement_on a worldwide
> scale--is  the foundation for the struggle against imperialism,
> racism, and injustice.  We believe that the Commission of Inquiry to
> investigate U.S./NATO war crimes can play an important role in
> sustaining and building this international movement. To be a powerful
> movement we must be able to assess and analyze the system that is
> promoting war, while developing effective literature and outreach
> resources that connect the issue of war with the growing problems of
> poverty, racism, and oppressio

[PEN-L:9122] High Imprisonment Rates Fuel Crime

[Frank Durgin]

  High Imprisonment Rates Could Fuel
  Crime

  By Michael A. Fletcher
  Washington Post Staff Writer
  Monday, July 12, 1999; Page A01 

  TALLAHASSEE—Things were looking up in
  Frenchtown. After years of spiraling out of control,
crime
  had been declining sharply in this neighborhood of
  rickety frame houses and tumbledown carryouts that
  forms the historic hub of this city's African American
  community. Observers credited a variety of aggressive
  police tactics, including more and longer prison
sentences
  for offenders.

  But in 1997, the declining crime rate in Frenchtown
  began to level off, failing to keep pace with drops in
  similar Tallahassee neighborhoods. And researchers
  analyzing crime trends here have fingered an unlikely
  culprit: the high number of Frenchtown residents sitting
  in prison cells.

  Research here supports a controversial theory being
  advanced by an increasing number of criminologists,
  who have concluded that although high incarceration
  rates generally have helped reduce crime, they eventually
  may reach a "tipping point," where so many people in a
  given neighborhood are going to prison that it begins to
  destabilize the community and becomes a factor that
  increases crime.

  "Until recently, nobody has really thought about
  incarceration in the aggregate," said Dina R. Rose, one
of
  the researchers studying the relationship between
  incarceration and crime in the Frenchtown area. "Many
  people assume that incarceration reduces crime. But
  when incarceration gets to a certain density, that is
when
  you see the effects change."

  Rose, a sociologist at New York's John Jay College of
  Criminal Justice, found that in high-crime Tallahassee
  neighborhoods that were otherwise comparable, crime
  reductions were lower in those with the greatest number
  of people moving in and out of prison. With high
  incarceration rates, she argues, prison can be
  transformed from a crime deterrent into a factor that
fuels
  a cycle of crime and disorder by breaking up families,
  souring attitudes toward the criminal justice system and
  leaving communities populated with too many people
  hardened by the experience of going to prison.

  Frenchtown provides abundant evidence for the thesis.
  There are few men available to volunteer in the youth
  programs at the Fourth Avenue Recreation Center. And
  every day, dozens of men line up in front of a soup
  kitchen run out of a small frame house in the heart of
  Frenchtown.

  Robert J. Roeh, who runs the soup kitchen, estimates that
  four out of five of those who show up for the free meals
  have some type of prison record. "Going to prison keeps
  you locked up without bars for the rest of your life," he
  said. "We need to look at some other sanctions for
people."

  Dale Landry, a former police officer and Marine who
  heads Tallahassee's Neighborhood Justice Center, an
  alternative corrections program, said the volume of
people
  going to prison has reached the point where it hurts the
  very communities it is intended to help.

  "When a crime is committed, an offender should be held
  accountable," Landry said. "But the way we do it now,
  when a crime happens there is a damaged relationship
  between people who live in this community. We need to
  work on fixing these relationships. But when we send
  people away, those relationships remain broken, but we
  are left with a false sense of security that the prisons
are
  working."

  It is a problem recognized by local police, who have
  increasingly turned to community policing in an effort to
  mediate some of the social problems that often arise in
  conjunction with crime.

  "We are looking at a lot of these issues," said Maj.
George
  Creamer, head of the Tallahassee p

[PEN-L:9113] Quarter Million Inmates Mentally Ill

[Frank Durgin]

Monday July 12 12:46 AM ET 

U.S. Says Quarter Million Inmates Mentally Ill

   WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An estimated 283,800 inmates held in
U.S. state and federal prisons and local jails
   last year suffered from mental illness, including nearly one
in six of the inmates held in state facilities, the
   Justice Department said Sunday.

In its first comprehensive report on mental illness in correctional
facilities, the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics said
nearly 20 percent of incarcerated violent offenders were identified as
mentally ill.

The report found that offenders identified as mentally ill were more likely
than the general inmate population to have
committed a violent offense. The report said an estimated 13 percent of
mentally ill prisoners in state facilities had committed
murder and 12 percent had committed rape or sexual assault.

When compared to other inmates, the mentally ill reported higher rates of
prior physical and sexual abuse and higher rates of
alcohol and drug abuse by a parent or guardian while growing up, the report
found.

Sixteen percent of inmates held in state prisons or local jails or on
probation at midyear 1998 either had a mental illness or
had stayed at least overnight in a mental hospital, unit or treatment
program, the report added.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics said it identified people with mental or
emotional problems based on information from
personal interviews with a representative sample of offenders.

The report found that the highest rate of mental illness was among white
females in state prisons. It said 29 percent of that
population was mentally ill, while 40 percent of the white female state
prisoners age 24 or younger was mentally ill.

Twenty percent of black women and 22 percent of Hispanic women in state
prisons were found to be mentally ill, the report
said. 

[PEN-L:9101] Re query

[Frank Durgin]

I want to thank Max,  Brad and Henry for their helpful responses  to my
query, "Is there some rule of thumb which sates how many dollars the tax
harvest
falls for each $billion decline in GDP?"

Henry stated that total tax receipts( fed, state and local) are some 36% of
GDP.  But given the progressivity of  the income tax,  won't tax receipts
fall off by more than 36 cents for each dollar of GDP decline? Are there
any known estimates of the magnitude.

Thank  you
Frank

[PEN-L:9083] Departing aid chief scolds US on its global role

[Frank Durgin]

Departing aid chief scolds US on its global role 
By John Donnelly, Globe Staff, 07/09/99 

WASHINGTON - From J. Brian Atwood's perspective, two numbers out of
Washington are combining to send a dangerous message to the world: The
Clinton administration's forecast of a $1 trillion budget surplus and
Congress's refusal to repay $1 billion in UN dues.
Atwood, the Wareham, Mass., native who leaves his job today as US foreign
aid chief, said in an interview yesterday that the world's disfranchised
increasingly are looking at ever-richer America as "arrogant" for hoarding
its bounty.
After overseeing the Agency for International Development during a six-year
decline of funding for foreign assistance, Atwood will head international
development programs at Boston's Citizens Energy Corp.  beginning in
August.
But Atwood, 56, has been using the last days of his government pulpit to
speak with a degree of candor rarely heard in official Washington.
He called the government's foreign affairs budget a "joke," blaming
Congress for whittling foreign assistance in the AID budget from $7.5
billion in 1993 to $6.9 billion last year and for cutting agency staff by a
third.
He has said no one is speaking out about the troubling global trend of a
widening gap between rich and poor. Further US aid cuts could hinder the
push for emerging democracies because fewer people are reaping democracy's
fruits, he said.
Atwood took the job at Citizens Energy, which was founded by former US
representative Joseph P. Kennedy II, after realizing that his nomination as
US ambassador to Brazil never would come up for a vote before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Jesse Helms, the North Carolina
Republican who is chairman of the panel, and Atwood had long feuded over
the senator's plan to merge AID into the State Department.
In his spacious office in the Ronald Reagan Building, which still had
pictures on the walls yesterday, Atwood said he hoped his words would
inspire development professionals and perhaps a presidential candidate or
two to raise the issue of helping the less fortunate.
"When someone leaves a job like this, they all of a sudden have a platform.
It is important to try to provoke people into thinking about what is right
and what is wrong. ... It just seems to me that I have almost an obligation
to speak out. There are probably no other voices in this town that are
going to speak out on behalf of the poor around the world."
The United States, he said, "needs to be shaken out of our lethargy" and
begin helping the world's poorest. "We'll be lost if we don't, and the
resentment toward the US will only grow."
He urged the United States to immediately pay back its UN debt without
conditions. The Senate has passed a bill that would earmark $800 million
for the United Nations as long as the body reduced the US contribution to
20 percent from 25 percent of the UN's budget.
With the predicted $1 trillion US surplus, Atwood recommended putting $10
billion a year for five years toward development in the neediest parts of
the world.
Atwood, a career diplomat long connected to the Democratic Party, said he
wasn't upset about leaving Washington this way. His new job, he said, would
keep him doing the work he enjoys most. This month, Kennedy and Atwood plan
to travel to Angola and Nigeria to help steer corporations toward
development projects.
People want to portray him as angry, "but I really don't feel that way,"
Atwood said. "It was just fate. It wasn't meant for me to go to Brazil at
this time. I was prepared to go. I was excited about going.  But what I'm
going to be doing in Boston is, I think, going to be more important. ... If
I went to Brazil, no one would hear my voice on these issues."
This story ran on page A02 of the Boston Globe on 07/09/99.

[PEN-L:9080] query

[Frank Durgin]

Is there some rule of thumb which sates how many dollars the tax harvest
falls for each $billion decline in GDP?

Thank you
Frank

[PEN-L:8885] Fw: Eye witness account of the impact of war and sanctions

[Frank Durgin]

  
> From World Socialist Web Site
> Eye witness account of the impact of war and sanctions
> on Iraq
> 
> "It really is a New World Order
> imposed by Britain and the US"
> 
> A two-part interview with journalist Felicity
Arbuthnot
> by Barbara Slaughter
> 
> Part One
> 
> 5 July 1999
> 
> 
> Felicity Arbuthnot is a freelance
> journalist, who has visited Iraq on
> many occasions since the end of the
> Gulf War. She has just returned to
> Britain from her eighteenth visit. In the
> first of a two-part interview she
> explained to Barbara Slaughter how
> she became involved.
> 
> Like many others I had opposed the
> Gulf War. I knew that, like the war in
> Yugoslavia, it was about the strategic interests of
the
> western powers and not about either Saddam Hussein
> or "little Kuwait". At the end of the war I thought,
> "We
> did our best and failed. And now the rebuilding of
the
> country will begin."
> 
> A few months later I attended a press conference
given
> by Magne Raundalen, a Norwegian professor in child
> psychology, and Eric Hoskins, a Canadian public
> health expert, on child trauma in Iraq. They were the
> first people to report what was actually going on.
> 
> Nothing was being done to help and I felt impelled to
> go
> to Iraq and see for myself. A week later I was in
> Baghdad and I was appalled by what I saw. It was a
> country which had, as James Baker had threatened,
> literally been reduced to a pre-industrial age; a
> country,
> which had been highly dependent on modern
> technology, was just being left to rot. What was
unique
> was that this was done in the name of the people of
the
> United Nations. It will go down in history as one of
> the
> great crimes of the twentieth century, along with the
> Holocaust, Pol Pot and the bombing of Dresden.
> 
> This was my 18th visit to Iraq since the Gulf War.
The
> last four have been very close together: last
October,
> January/February, I went back at the end of March
> and then again in May.
> 
> Each time I am struck by the deterioration. Each time
> there is another horror. In March it was the daily
> bombing of the infrastructure. The electricity has
just
> died. Many people can't afford candles and use
> makeshift lamps. People put a wick in a bottle with
oil
> and quite often the bottle explodes. The injuries
have
> soared. The burns are horrendous and there is no
> treatment, not even cling film as an emergency
measure
> to cover the wounds. There are no painkillers. There
is
> no plastic surgery.
> 
> There were two other things I noticed. Like with
every
> embargo in history, there was a small amount of
> profiteering in money dealing. You have a fraction of
> the
> population at the top of the regime who have family
> abroad sending in dollars. There are restaurants
> springing up. You can get Christian Dior sunglasses,
> absolutely anything. Yet 98 percent of the population
> don't have a way of sterilising burns.
> 
> The other thing that struck me was the breakdown in
> the spirit of these very brave people. They feel that
> it is
> never, ever, going to end. Yet when I became ill on
> this
> trip, they were so concerned. I suddenly collapsed in
> the
> hotel foyer in Mosul and was virtually unconscious.
My
> interpreter and my driver kept letting themselves
into
> my
> room, touching me on the head and saying: “Are you
all
> right? Shall we get a doctor?" They were saying, “You
> keep coming back here and Iraq has made you so ill."
> 
> I was in and out of consciousness for about 18 hours.
I
> don't know what caused it. I just think 

[PEN-L:8884] Pharmaceutical companies dump useless drugs in Albania

[Frank Durgin]

 
 

   
WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : The Balkans

Pharmaceutical companies dump
useless drugs in Albania

By Debra Watson
3 July 1999

Use this version to print

The World Health Organization (WHO) has charged
that Western pharmaceutical companies are dumping
tons of unusable surplus and expired drugs into
Albania for the Kosovo relief effort, simply to reap
generous tax breaks from their governments and to
avoid paying substantial costs of disposing of
hazardous
waste.

A WHO audit of humanitarian drug donations received
in Albania during May 1999 was conducted in
collaboration with Pharmaciens sans Frontières (PSF).
Indro Mattei, a member of the Swiss Disaster Relief
Unit
working with the WHO Humanitarian Assistance Project
Office in Tirana was one of the two pharmacists
conducting the audit. "We estimate that 50% of the
drugs coming into Albania donated by non-medical
organizations are inappropriate or useless and will
have
to be destroyed. We are very concerned that some
pharmaceutical companies are using this humanitarian
crisis to get rid of unwanted stockpiles."

In April 1999, the Albanian health authorities relaxed
import controls to speed up the entry of urgently
needed
drugs and medical supplies to meet the needs of the
460,000 Kosovar refugees and the continuing needs of
the rest of the Albanian population. Even before the
refugee crisis, the Albanian health care system
depended heavily on drug donations, being able to cover
only 20 percent of the drug and medical supply needs of
its hospitals.

In December 1997, an article in The New England
Journal of Medicine (NEJM) chronicled similar bogus
drug-donations in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to
1996. Using a grant from Medecins sans
Frontières-Belgium, Philippe Autier, M.D. from Milan
and Patrick Berckmans, M.D. and Gerard Schmets,
Ph.D. of Brussels investigated rumors about massive
quantities of irrelevant drugs that arrived in Mostar,
Tuzla, Gorazde, Sarajevo, and Bihac, cities that were
key targets for humanitarian assistance.

The authors estimated that 50 to 60 percent of the
27,800 to 34,800 metric tons of drugs and medical
materials that entered Bosnia and Herzegovina between
1992 and mid-1996 were inappropriate. Although
miscellaneous donations of small amounts of drugs
accounted for 60 percent of all inappropriate
donations,
they also documented dumping of large quantities,
which accounted for 35 percent of such inappropriate
donations. They used the example of France to
illustrate
the large amount of medical waste that needs disposal
every year in the industrial countries. In that
country,
they wrote, the 22,500 metric tons of unused medicines
each year equal 40 percent of the annual drugs sold.

"Our investigations nonetheless underscore that
inappropriate medical donations to Bosnia and
Herzegovina were common, as they were to Armenia
and Mexico after their earthquakes, or to Africa during
its food crisis, and to the former Soviet Union.
Individuals and organizations have many reasons for
sending medical supplies to a disaster area. Charitable
gifts may lead to tax deductions and represent a
convenient way to dispose of waste medical supplies
without having to pay for their destruction. Publicity
about humanitarian aid usually promotes the image of
the people or organizations involved." Added to the
cost
of destroying the unusable drugs are health and
environmental hazards, as well as the costs of storing,
handling, sorting, and managing the useless and
unusable medicines.

  

[PEN-L:8216] IRAQ: NEW U.S. ATTACKS

[Frank Durgin]

>From New York  Times On Line June 23 '99
  IRAQ: NEW U.S. ATTACKS
  For the second day in a row, U.S. fighter jets bombed
  radar installations around the city of Mosul in the
  northern no-flight zone after being fired at by
  antiaircraft guns, the U.S. Air Force's European
  Command said. It said all aircraft left the area safely.
  (Reuters) 


 

[PEN-L:8104] Mobs put City under siege

[Frank Durgin]

   
   




eletronic Telegraph
 
ISSUE 1485
   
Saturday 19 June 1999






 Mobs put City under siege
 By David Millward, George
Trefgarne and Peter Foster 


  

 






Carnival turns into
nightmare
Protest part of global plan
Strange mix of defiance and
pot plant
  barricades

 AN anti-capitalist demonstration
 in the City of London deteriorated
 into violence yesterday as
 protesters pelted police with
 bricks and bottles and attacked
 financial institutions, causing
 widespread damage.

 After more than six hours of
 rioting and vandalism by up to
 4,000 protesters, one woman was
known to be in hospital
 after falling under the wheels of
a police van. There were
 also reports that four police
officers received hospital
 treatment and a male protester was
also injured in an
 incident with a police van. Shops,
buildings and
 monuments in the Square Mile were
left damaged or
 defaced.

 The "Carnival Against Capitalism"
was organised to attract
 environmental protesters and
opponents of capitalism to the
 City, one of the world's leading
financial centres. In its early
 stages yesterday morning, the
demonstration passed with
 little trouble as massed ranks of
cyclists brought traffic to a
 standstill and other protesters
staged sit-ins in a number of
 buildings.

 Police and staff in the
institutions adopted a low-key
 approach in what was, generally, a
good-natured
 atmosphere. After lunch, however,
when it became evident
 that many protesters had been
drinking heavily, the mood
 became violent. A large crowd
gathered outside Liverpool
 Street station, with police
avoiding any conflict, but then
 split into four groups, which
moved in different directions
 through the City.

 The City of London force - which
 deployed up to 800 officers,
 many in riot gear, with support
 from the Metropolitan and
 British Transport police - said
 these groups started to use
 "gratuitous and unprovoked"
 violence against officers.

 Cars were attacked, buildings,
statues and seating were
 damaged. A bar was attacked and a
branch of McDonalds
 in Cannon Street was wrecked. Tube
and mainline stations
 were closed as police tried to
contain protesters who, in some
 cases, seemed bent on
confrontation.

 In some of the worst violence,
several hundred protesters
 smashed down the doors of the
Liffe building, London's
 futures market. They were repelled
by security staff who
 reversed the escalators, sending
the demonstrators tumbling
 

[PEN-L:7884] Biggest one-day slaughter in war

[Frank Durgin]

 

Biggest one-day slaughter in war
NATO cluster bombs kill hundreds of
Serb troops
By Martin McLaughlin
10 July 1999

The US-NATO air war against Yugoslavia culminated Monday in the biggest
one-day slaughter since the bombing campaign began, with as many as 600
Yugoslav Army soldiers killed when their column was hit by cluster bombs
from a single B-52 bomber.
American and NATO officials said two battalions of Yugoslav troops had left
their bomb shelters to engage a Kosovo Liberation Army force that had
crossed the Kosovo-Albania border near Mt. Pastrik. The soldiers, who
numbered between 800 and 1,200, were caught in the open on the mountain
hillside.
According to the Washington Post account, "Initial aerial assessments
showed such massive annihilation that fewer than half the targeted troops
are believed to have survived." Cluster bombs scatter hundreds of powerful
explosive charges when they detonate, each charge capable of inflicting
multiple casualties. The bomb is used as an anti-personnel weapon and is
particularly effective against massed ground troops.
The massacre on Mt. Pastrik was the worst of a series of mass killings by
NATO warplanes during the eleven-week bombardment of Yugoslavia. NATO
officials estimated last week that 5,000 Yugoslav soldiers had been killed
and 10,000 wounded, and the death toll has increased significantly this
week, with hundreds of casualties each day from intense bombing, especially
in Kosovo.
The stepped-up bombing has been closely coordinated with the KLA's
activities on the ground, demonstrating the role of the guerrilla force as
a direct instrument of US-NATO policy. The KLA launched an offensive in
late May, which failed to hold much territory inside Kosovo. Nor was it
really intended to. Its purpose was to engage Yugoslav Army forces in
combat and have NATO warplanes annihilate them from the air.
According to one summary given out by NATO, bombing this week has destroyed
29 tanks, 93 armored personnel carriers, 209 artillery pieces, 11 air
defense artillery positions, 86 mortars and many other military vehicles. 
Given the manpower required to maintain and operate such weapons, this
translates into thousands of casualties.
KLA guerrillas have also carried out an increasingly aggressive series of
terrorist attacks on Serb targets in Kosovo, especially on passenger buses
traveling between the cities. A Serb bus driver was killed Tuesday when KLA
gunmen ambushed a passenger bus bound from Pristina, the Kosovo capital,
for Belgrade. Another bus driver and four passengers were wounded in a
second attack just outside Pristina, while a Serb passenger was killed in
an attack Sunday on a bus near Kosovska Mitrovica.
These shootings go beyond retaliation against Serb police and government
officials involved in attacks on Kosovar Albanians. The KLA is clearly
seeking to intimidate the Serb minority in Kosovo and create the conditions
for a full-scale flight of the Serb population once the Yugoslav Army is
withdrawn and NATO troops and KLA guerrillas take over the province. As
many as 200,000 Serb civilians would become targets for a new round of
ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia.
The gruesome death toll on Mt. Pastrik is reminiscent of another military
slaughter in the waning days of another US war against a small and
completely out-gunned opponent — the Persian Gulf War against Iraq. After a
six-week aerial bombardment and a four-day ground war that destroyed much
of the Iraqi army, there was a wild flight of thousands of soldiers and
civilians from Kuwait back across the border into Iraq. Navy and Air Force
jets caught one long column of fleeing Iraqi vehicles on the Kuwait to
Basra highway and pounded it mercilessly with bombs and machine-gun fire.
As we described it at the time:
"Soldiers seeking to flee north away from the fighting were attacked
without mercy. Pilots flying missions against the highway between Kuwait
City and Basra, the main evacuation route for Iraqi troops, described the
systematic bombing and strafing as 'shooting in a sheep pen.' The road,
clogged by four lanes of one-way, bumper-to-bumper traffic, was carpet
bombed by B-52s dropping 1,000-pound bombs, and repeatedly hit with
laser-guided missiles and 'smart' bombs" ( Desert Slaughter, p. 229) 
Like the attack on the "Highway of Death," there was no military necessity
for the cluster-bomb attack on Yugoslav conscripts on Mt. Pastrik. The
Yugoslav government had already capitulated to the US-NATO air war and
committed itself to a complete withdrawal from Kosovo, while discussions
were stalled in Macedonia over the exact timetable and modus operandi for
implementation. The immensity of the slaughter, however, sheds light on the
legitimate concerns of Yugoslav military officials over the terms of the
withdrawal and their desire to secure guarantees for the safety of their
retreating troops.
This assault was above all staged to demonstrate the ruthlessness of
American and 

[PEN-L:7883] (no subject)

[Frank Durgin]

Thursday June 10 7:05 AM ET 

U.S. Marines Face Anti-NATO Protest In Greece

 By Karolos Grohmann EVZONI, Greece (Reuters) - A huge
banner saying ``U.S. killers go home'' greeted
 U.S. marines heading for Kosovo when they landed in
Greece Thursday, but there were no other
 anti-American incidents as they traveled across the
country.

 Greece is a member of NATO but it is also a
traditional friend of the fellow-Christian Orthodox Serbs and
 has contributed no troops or aircraft to NATO's
Yugoslav campaign, which has been highly unpopular
 among the Greeks.

 ``The first thing we saw on the beach was a giant
banner which had 'U.S. killers go home' written on it,''
 a marine told Reuters as members of the 2,200-man
force entered Macedonia at this frontier post after
 travelling through Greece.

 ``We are a peacekeeping force. There is a
misunderstanding here,'' the marine said.

 Previous protests blocked the passage of U.S. troops
heading through Greece for neighboring Macedonia
 for a time.

 Greece this week blocked the disembarkation of the
2,200 marines for several days, saying they could
only cross its territory when it was certain they would enter Kosovo as
peacekeepers only.

The government in Athens has been particularly wary of letting the U.S.
troops through this week, seeking to win favor with
voters before European Parliament elections Sunday.

The marines had been kept waiting since last Sunday aboard three U.S. ships
off the port of Thessaloniki.

Before they landed on Litohoro beach near Thessaloniki, the main transit
point for NATO troops and supplies into Macedonia,
hundreds of Greek riot police pushed about 500 demonstrators back from the
beach.

The protesters, mostly from the Greek Communist Party, chanted slogans like
``Yankees go home'' and ``American murderers''
as they were pushed back.

The marines traveled some 175 miles across northern Greece to the
Macedonian frontier to join the NATO-led force of some
50,000 troops preparing to enter Kosovo. There were no more protesters at
the Greek-Macedonian border and the marines'
progress through Greece appeared to have gone without a hitch.

Reporters at the border saw two convoys cross with marines in buses and at
least 12 of the amphibious assault craft they had
earlier used to land at Litohoro beach near the port city of Thessaloniki.

``These marines will be among the first to enter Kosovo,'' a NATO official
told Reuters as the first members of the 26th Marine
Expeditionary Force waded up the beach at Litohoro. 

Earlier Stories

 U.S. Marines Land In Greece On Way To Kosovo (June 10) 
 Yugoslavs Sign Kosovo Pull-Out Terms (June 9) 
 Bombing Set To Stop As Kosovo Peace Signed (June 9) 
 Yugoslavia To Start Pullout In Hours -- Minister (June 9) 
 Serbs To Start Kosovo Pullout Thursday-Yugo Formin (June 9) 



 

[PEN-L:7772] Air Strike Kills Four in Iraq

[Frank Durgin]

 

Monday June 7 12:47 AM ET 

Iraq Says Western Air Strike Kills Four

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq said four people were killed and five were wounded
Sunday when Western planes bombed targets
in a no-fly zone in the south of the country.

``Four citizens met martyrdom and five others were wounded in Abu al-Khasib
and Qurna region of Basra province today due
to U.S. and British planes' bombing,'' the Iraqi News Agency quoted a
military spokesman as saying.

The spokesman said one of the planes was hit by Iraqi anti-aircraft
defenses.

``At 10:05 a.m. (0605 GMT), 15 hostile formations violated our airspace
coming from Saudi and Kuwaiti skies,'' the spokesman
said.

He said the planes bombed a civilian installation in Abu al-Khasib region,
killing one person and wounding two.

``The hostile formations attacked one of our military sites in Samawa
region and were intercepted by our ground resistance
defenses,'' the spokesman said.

He added that Iraqi defenses ``hit one of the hostile planes prompting one
of the hostile formations to carry out a barbarous
and brutal act of bombing a farmer's house in Qurna...leading to the
martyrdom of three citizens and the injury of another
three.''

The spokesman said the planes left Iraqi airspace at 11:45 a.m. (0745 GMT),
but ``eight hostile formations'' returned about four
hours later and flew over Muthanna, Dhi Qar and Basra provinces.

There was no immediate confirmation of the attacks from the United States
or Britain.

U.S. and British planes regularly patrol no-fly zones over southern and
northern Iraq set up after the 1991 Gulf War. The
zones, which Baghdad does not recognize, were imposed to protect minority
groups from attack by Iraqi forces.

Iraq said three people were killed and two were wounded when Western planes
bombed civilian and military targets in
northern Iraq Saturday. 

Earlier Stories

 U.S. Says Allied Planes Attack Iraqi Targets (June 6) 



 

[PEN-L:7688] Russian Envoy Branded 'Traitor'

[Frank Durgin]

  St Petersburg Times  
   #471, Friday, June 4, 1999



  TOP STORY


  Russian Envoy Branded 'Traitor'

  By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
  STAFF WRITER

  MOSCOW - The Kosovo peace plan accepted Thursday by
Yugoslavia
  may have champagne corks popping in the West, but
back in Russia
  Special Envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin faces a tough task
defending the plan
  and his role in the negotiations.

  The Russian public and politicians have been
frustrated by his failure to
  win substantial concessions from NATO, and the
settlement plan
  announced Thursday is almost certain to be seen as a
near total
  capitulation to the Western military alliance. 

  The deal - which says NATO air strikes may continue
until the beginning
  of a Serb withdrawal is verified and leaves unclear
who will exercise the
  "unified control and command" of international
security personnel "with
  an essential NATO participation" - looks like a
surrender of Russian
  demands for an immediate halt to the bombings and for
putting the United
  Nations firmly in charge of peacekeeping. 

  At least on the ever-growing anti-Western flank of
Russian politics, the
  peace plan is perceived as Chernomyrdin's failure to
defend Yugoslavia's
  and Russia's interests against heavy pressure from
Washington and other
  NATO powers.

  Upon his return to Moscow on Thursday evening,
Chernomyrdin,
  apparently aware of the harsh criticism, appeared to
try to shift
  responsibility toward President Boris Yeltsin, who
approved the
  instructions for the Russian delegation. "Russia has
not retreated from
  those principles that were worked out under the
direction of [Yeltsin]," he
  said.

  Even before the details of the Bonn agreement were
released, left-wing and
  nationalist State Duma deputies began their session
Thursday morning by
  lashing out at Chernomyrdin. 

  The Duma voted to invite high-level representatives
of the Foreign and
  Defense ministries, as well as Yugoslav ambassador to
Moscow, Borislav
  Milosevic, for immediate hearings. But after
Yeltsin's representative in the
  Duma, Alexander Kotenkov, insisted that no one would
report to the
  Duma before negotiators reported to Yeltsin, the
hearings were postponed
  until 5 p.m. Friday.

  Fueling the harsh reaction of the deputies were media
reports that Russian
  generals who were part of Chernomyrdin's negotiating
team disagreed with
  the envoy. Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov, who is in charge
of the military's
  foreign contacts and is known for his hawkish
position on Yugoslavia,
  was a member of Russian delegation.

  Chernomyrdin and Ivashov denied that there were
disagreements.

  Ivashov, however, said the military part of Russia's
delegation was "not
  quite satisfied with the imposed role of NATO and the
diminishing of
  Russia's position in the conflict settlement." 

  Agrarian faction leader Nikolai Kha ritonov accused
Chernomyrdin of
  carrying out a "Munich conspiracy" by appeasing NATO.
"Even the
  generals who were at the negotiations with
Chernomyrdin are puzzled,"
  Kha ri to nov said at the Duma session.

  While representatives of Chernomyrdin's Our Home Is
Russia party
  attempted to defend their boss, nationalist Deputy
Vladimir Zhirinovsky
  attacked both the former prime minister and the
Agrarians, saying that "a
  gas specialist should not be working in foreign
policy," nor should
  agricultural lobbyists meddle in Balkan affairs.

  The Duma opposition's negative reaction to
Chernomyrdin's efforts is not
  entirely new. Earlier this week, Communist leader
Gennady Zyuganov
  labeled Chernomyrdin not a special envoy, but a
"special traitor."

  "I have not heard from Chernomyrdin any coherent
programs connected
  with a Yugoslavia settlement," 

[PEN-L:7625] Re: Re: Re: What I would love to see...

[Frank Durgin]

J. Devine:
  
  I know very well they were by Jim Craven.

I miss your point
Frank

[PEN-L:7622] Buchanan on the Balkans

[Frank Durgin]

>From Johnson russian list

Date: Tue, 01 Jun 1999
From: "Wladislaw George Krasnow, PhD" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Organization: Russian American Goodwill Associates
Subject: Buchanan on Russia at National Press Club in Washington

Patrick Buchanan became the first U.S. presidential candidate to declare
the war in the Balkans the greatest obstacle to better relations with
Russia which, he said, would be "priority number one" if he is elected
to the White House. During a luncheon presentation at the national Press
Club on Tuesday June 1, Buchanan criticised the four other Republican
presidential candidates, George W. Bush, Elisabeth Dole, Steve Forbes
and Sen. John McCain for failing to distance themselves from "Clinton's
war."

Buchanan disputed McCain's suggestion that "we must do whatever is
necessary to win lest we be perceived by our enemies as an uncertain foe
and by our friends as an unreliable ally." "If a war is unwise, unjust,
or unwinnable except at exorbitant cost," argued Buchanan, "a
statesman's duty is to end it on the best terms attainable, as
Eisenhower did in Korea, DeGaulle in Algeria, and Gorbachev in
Afghanistan."

According to Buchanan, "the only winner thus far has been Milosevic who
has earned a niche in Serb mythology for defying 'the most successful
alliance in history' rather than surrender Kosovo, the sacred cradle of
the Serb nation." Concluded Buchanan: "Let us cut a deal and end this
wretched war now."

When asked about his vision of the U.S.-Russia relations in the 21st
century, Buchanan said that "the greatest achievement of Ronald Reagan
was not only ending the Cold War but also turning the millions of
ordinary Russians to our friends. Under Clinton, anti-Americanism in
Russia became rampant and reached the lowest pointly after the expansion
of NATO and the start of the war in Yugoslavia."
"If elected, I'd make the reparing of U.S.-Russian relation the
number one priority of my foreign policy to keep Russia from moving
closer to Red China," promised Buchanan.

[PEN-L:7592] Re: What I would love to see...

[Frank Durgin]

Jim: thanks for those two great posts:
"What I would love to see"  and the "open invitation"

frank

[PEN-L:7471] U.S. Jet Bombed North Iraq

[Frank Durgin]

   
  Top Stories Headlines 


Monday May 31 7:18 AM ET 

U.S. Says Jet Bombed Radar Site In North Iraq

ANKARA (Reuters) - U.S. warplanes attacked Iraqi air defenses near Mosul
Monday after being fired on by anti-aircraft guns
and targeted by radar in the no-fly zone over northern Iraq, a statement
from the jets' base in southern Turkey said.

``All coalition aircraft departed the area safely,'' the statement said.

Air strikes on targets in northern Iraq and in a no-fly zone in the south
of Iraq have become a regular occurrence since
December when Baghdad began actively challenging the patrols.

The U.S.-British Operation Northern Watch operates out of Turkey's Incirlik
airbase some 340 miles from the Iraqi border.

The force is designed to protect the mainly Kurdish population north of the
36th parallel from air attack by Iraqi government
forces.

Most of the area is under the control of Iraqi Kurdish groups who slipped
from Baghdad's control in the aftermath of the 1991
Gulf War, but the Iraqi government retains a triangle of territory around
the city of Mosul.

Turkey's permission is needed for any planned strikes against Iraq from its
territory, but planes flying from Incirlik are
allowed to fire in self-defense against any threat, including being tracked
by radar. 

[PEN-L:7443] PEN-L:5412] Rambouillet Agreement

[Frank Durgin]

I just got around to perusing the Rambouillet  Agreeement that Michael
Eisenscher posted on April 15.

It may have been commented on before. If so I missed it. The first sentence
of  Article 1 of Chapter 4 reads:


1.   The economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free market
principles.

Frank

[PEN-L:7398] Milosevic indictment a pretext for invasion

[Frank Durgin]

 
>From World Socialist Web Site  
WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : The Balkan Crisis
Milosevic indictment provides pretext for invasion

By the editorial board
28 May 1999

The indictment of Slobodan Milosevic by the International Criminal Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is a political measure taken in behalf of
the NATO powers that are waging war on the Yugoslav people. Its purpose is,
first, to legitimize the present bombing campaign and provide a
justification for its escalation, and, second, lay the propaganda and legal
foundation for an invasion of Kosovo in the south and Belgrade in the
north, the arrest and imprisonment of the Milosevic leadership, and the
installation of a puppet regime subservient to the US and its European
allies.
The ICTY was set up in the Hague in 1993 at the behest of the NATO powers
to serve as an instrument for coercing and intimidating political forces in
Yugoslavia who were resisting the carve-up of the country. Its essential
role is to provide the predatory policies of the imperialist powers with
the cover of "international law."
The announcement of the indictment was immediately hailed by President
Clinton and British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook as a vindication of the
bombing campaign that has already cost thousands of civilian lives and is
creating conditions of untold human misery, which will last for years to
come.
Cook declared that the indictment meant there would be "no compromise" with
the present Yugoslav government and NATO would step up its military
campaign. He went on to place the onus directly on the Yugoslav people,
saying, "Today's indictment is a further compelling reason why the people
of Yugoslavia should reject Milosevic and his evil policies." The
implication is that the population itself would be considered complicit in
Milosevic's alleged war crimes should it fail to rise up and topple the
regime in Belgrade.
The indictment is the latest propaganda salvo in a war that has depended
from the outset on a massive and concerted effort to deceive, confuse and
manipulate the public. It is aimed primarily at American and European
public opinion, where there are signs of growing concern and opposition to
the targeting of civilians and the rudiments of modern civilization in
Yugoslavia—oil supplies, electricity, water, roads, bridges, hospitals,
etc.  NATO's hope is that the branding of Milosevic as a war criminal will
quell popular revulsion over the barbarity of its attack.
The implicit argument is: "This is a criminal government, comparable to
Nazi Germany, which is supported by a criminal people—the Serbs." Virtually
any measures are therefore justifiable in NATO's "humanitarian" war.
On the same day as the tribunal's announcement, the Wall Street Journal
reported on a closed-door briefing given by NATO Commander-in-Chief Wesley
Clark to the alliance's 19 ambassadors. The US general said NATO
governments would have to brace themselves for a sharp escalation of the
bombing and a rising toll of civilian casualties.
Britain's Times newspaper reported that the US was considering launching a
ground war in Kosovo if no peace agreement emerges in the next three weeks.
 Quoting unidentified NATO sources, the Times said Clinton was considering
sending 90,000 US combat troops.
The indictment of Milosevic is calculated to sabotage attempts to broker a
diplomatic settlement. From the beginning of the conflict, the US and
Britain have demanded nothing short of total surrender and sought to block
any moves toward a peace deal.
The indictment
Without any substantiation, the ICTY attributes the entire responsibility
for the exodus of 740,000 Kosovo Albanians to the Milosevic regime. There
is not even a suggestion that NATO might share responsibility for the
refugee crisis—this despite the well-known fact that the mass flight of
ethnic Albanians only began after NATO launched its air war on March 24.
Nor is there any reference to the activities of the NATO-backed Kosovo
Liberation Army, which carried out attacks on Serb targets—civilian as well
as military—in advance of the NATO war, and has continued to wage war
within Kosovo since March 24.  Thus the supposedly neutral war crimes
tribunal ignores the existence of a civil war in Kosovo and accepts
entirely and uncritically the premises put forward by the NATO powers to
justify their attack.
Moreover, the tribunal is only able to come up with the names of "over 340
persons" whom it claims were killed by Serb forces in Kosovo between
January 1, 1999 and the present. The death of hundreds of civilians is a
tragedy, and criminal acts may well be involved. But these deaths take
place within the context of a civil war, exacerbated by foreign military
intervention.
One further point: NATO bombs in just two months have killed many times the
number of civilian deaths attributed to the Serbs.
Washington's double standard
The hypocrisy that underlies the indictment is summed up by the fact that
the United States has

[PEN-L:7379] Action Against Iraq Escalating

[Frank Durgin]

   Friday, May 28, 1999 

  MIDEAST 
  Overshadowed by Kosovo War, Action Against Iraq
  Escalating 
  By JOHN DANISZEWSKI, Times Staff Writer
   



   AIRO--While NATO jets have been slamming
   targets in Yugoslavia for the past nine weeks,
   the United States' other--and far less
  visible--air war has intensified over Iraq. 
   Virtually unnoticed, U.S. and British aircraft
  have responded to what the coalition partners
  describe as provocations by Baghdad. The allied jet
  fighters, flying from Turkey and the Persian Gulf,
  have been chipping away systematically at Iraqi
  radar posts, air defenses, and other military and
  command facilities. 
   Despite the allies' use of laser-guided rockets
and
  other precision munitions, Iraq claims that some of
  the strikes have gone astray, destroying private
  property, killing at least 20 civilians and leaving
  scores injured. 
   Although one might think that the enormous
  demands for air power in the Balkan conflict would
  diminish allied activity over Iraq, if anything, the
  pace of attacks has picked up slightly since the
  North Atlantic Treaty Organization action in
  Yugoslavia began. 
   According to an unofficial tally of actions
  announced by the U.S. Central and European
  commands, there have been about 19 strikes against
  Iraq in April and May, roughly equal to the total for
  all of January, February and March. In other
  words, airstrikes have been taking place about every
  third day. 
   In a way, the Yugoslav conflict has worked to
the
  advantage of U.S.-British forces in the Persian Gulf,
  Mideast analysts say, by distracting the attention of
  the Arab world away from Iraq--and deferring any
  action on the basic split in the U.N. Security
Council
  over what to do about Iraq. 
   "The daily attacks are a war of attrition
against
  Saddam [Hussein], and [yet] at the same time, they
  do not arouse mass anger among Arabs," observed
  Nabil Abdel Fattaj, a researcher at Cairo's Al
  Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. "It
  is not making headlines anymore." 
   And it is not only the Kosovo war that has put
  Iraq on the back burner. In the Mideast, the top item
  on the diplomatic agenda for the year is likely to be
  Israel's new government under Ehud Barak and the
  peace process. 
   U.S. officials say the bombings have exacted a
  heavy toll on Hussein's regime. 
   "We have certainly degraded their ability to
  respond," said Air Force Maj. Joseph LaMarca Jr.,
  spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, which
  oversees U.S. forces in the Gulf. He said Iraqi air
  defenses have been weakened and noted that the
  bombings may have fueled dissension in the Iraqi
  military. 
   Since Iraq announced in January that it would
  begin resisting the Western-imposed "no-fly" zones
  in northern and southern Iraq, the U.S. military
  said there have been about 180 Iraqi threats against
  allied forces, including 111 violations of the no-fly
  zones, nine cases of illuminating allied aircraft
with
  radar, 16 firings of surface-to-air missiles and at
  least 50 engagements with antiaircraft artillery,
  LaMarca said. 
   U.S. officials deny that the coalition
airstrikes
  are anything but defensive and say they are an
  appropriate response to the Iraqi actions. 
   Among ordinary Iraqis, the mood is bleak, said
  journalist Subhy Haddad, speaking from Baghdad.
  "It seems that 

[PEN-L:6866] U.S. Says Jets Strike North Iraq

[Frank Durgin]

Sat. May 15, 15 9:53 AM ET 

U.S. Says Jets Strike Air Defenses In North Iraq

  ISTANBUL (Reuters) - U.S. warplanes bombed a range of
Iraqi air defense sites Saturday after being
  tracked by radar in the no-fly zone above northern Iraq,
said a statement from the jets' base in southern
  Turkey.

U.S. Air Force F-16s and F-15s, ``responding in self defense,'' dropped
precision-guided bombs and fired anti-radiation
missiles on anti-aircraft artillery sites north of the city of Mosul, the
statement said.

``All coalition aircraft departed the area safely,'' it said.

Air strikes on targets in northern Iraq and in a no-fly zone in the south
of Iraq have become routine since December, when
Baghdad began actively challenging the patrols.

The U.S.-British Operation Northern Watch force operates out of Turkey's
Incirlik airbase some 550 km (340 miles) from the
Iraqi border.

NATO member Turkey said last week that it had ordered its military
authorities to allow the alliance to use its air bases in the
west of the country for operations against Yugoslavia.

Operation Northern Watch, in the east, is designed to protect the largely
Kurdish population there from air attack by Iraqi
government forces.

Turkey's permission is needed for any planned strikes against Iraq from its
territory, but planes flying from Incirlik are
allowed to fire in self-defense against any threat, which includes being
tracked by radar. 

[PEN-L:6787] Fw: Re: Re: EPR, prison, interest rates

[Frank Durgin]

What would it be if we counted the homeless? Unemployment count, like the
poverty count I think, is a household count. They are not counted in the
poverty count. There are millions of them
Frank
--
> From: Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L:6783] Re: Re: EPR, prison, interest rates
> Date: Thursday, May 13, 1999 4:19 PM
> 
> Doug wrote:
> >If you counted all U.S. prisoners as unemployed, it would push up the U
> >rate from around 4.3% to 5.6%. Details also forthcoming in LBO.
> 
> If most of these are structurally unemployed (i.e., having the wrong
skills
> or living in the wrong location, like the inner city, for the jobs
> available), then this would lower the structural unemployment rate and
thus
> the NAIRU, the threshold unemployment rate beneath which inflation gets
> worse and worse.
> 
> Prison labor also competes with free labor, undermining its bargaining
> power and keeping wage demands down. 
> 
> Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
> http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
> Bombing DESTROYS human rights. US/NATO out of Serbia!
> 

[PEN-L:6706] No comment

[Frank Durgin]

USIA
10 May 1999 
U.S. ENVOYS TO CASPIAN BASIN TOUT INVESTMENT PROSPECTS 
(Say financial payoff requires long-term commitment) (900)
By Phillip Kurata
USIA Staff Writer

Washington -- U.S. ambassadors assigned to energy-rich countries
surrounding the Caspian Sea are offering "gold key" service to U.S.
businesses considering investing in Central Asia.

"We offer gold key service We will help you get started. We'll
help you make appointments. We'll rent you a car. We'll rent you an
interpreter. We'll make hotel reservations -- all kinds of things like
this," U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan Stanley Escudero said at a May 7
business forum in Washington.

The U.S. embassies in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan offer similar
services to help U.S. companies capitalize on potentially enormous
opportunities in the Caspian Basin, which has huge oil and gas
reserves. The U.S. government has opened a business center in Ankara,
Turkey, staffed by trade promotion officials to help U.S. business
people to establish contacts in Turkey and points east.

The U.S. Caspian diplomacy is pegged to two proposed pipelines. One
would carry crude oil from Baku, Azerbaijan, through Georgia to
Turkey's Mediterranean port at Ceyhan. The second would pump natural
gas from Turkmenistan, under the Caspian Sea, through Azerbaijan and
Georgia to Turkey.

The United States and its NATO partner Turkey have embarked on a
policy to bring democracy, stability and prosperity to the Caucasus
and Central Asia by encouraging foreign investment in the region's
fledgling free market economies.

Ambassador Escudero said business, not aid, fosters development.

"What develops a nation is business activity. What develops a nation
is the new wealth which is created and the new knowledge that is
created and the multiplier effect of successful activities
Azerbaijan is ready for that. It's ripe for it," Escudero said.

Speaking at the same forum with Escudero were U.S. Ambassador to
Armenia Michael Lemmon, U.S. Ambassador to Georgia Kenneth Yalowitz,
U.S. Ambassador to Kazakhstan Richard Jones, U.S. Ambassador to
Turkmenistan Steve Mann, U.S. Ambassador to Uzbekistan Joseph Presel,
and U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Mark Parris.

With the exception of Parris, the ambassadors also spoke to business
conferences in New Orleans and New York to publicize the investment
opportunities in the Caucasus Basin. The three main U.S. trade
agencies -- the Trade and Development Agency, the Export-Import Bank,
and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation -- are offering
incentives and guarantees to U.S. companies willing to risk investment
in the former Soviet republics.

Jones, the U.S. envoy to Kazakhstan, voiced a theme common to all the
ambassadors.

"Kazakhstan is not a market for the faint hearted. It's a
high-maintenance business environment that will require financial
strength and a significant amount of executive time and energy to make
your business profitable," he said.

Costly customs delays, bureaucratic red tape to obtain work permits,
inconsistent application of the tax code and lack of respect for
contracts are a partial list of pitfalls facing U.S. businesses in
Kazakhstan, Jones said.

Nevertheless, more than 100 U.S. companies have opened offices in
Almaty, the commercial capital of Kazakhstan, in sectors such as oil
and gas, consumer goods, power generation and telecommunications,
Jones said. The ambassador has a doctorate in business and said he was
chosen for the Kazakhstan assignment because he could be instrumental
in helping the country's conversion to a Western-style economy.

"I met with President (Nursultan) Nazarbayev just prior to my
departure from Kazakhstan for this tour to stress our concerns in
commercial issues. In this meeting, he reiterated his strong desire
for more U.S. direct investment in Kazakhstan. He also reiterated his
wish to diversify Kazakhstan's economy, create more jobs and spur
economic growth," Jones said.

Turkmenistan, possessing the world's fourth largest proven reserves of
natural gas and large oil deposits, is hampered by a lingering
addiction to central planning, Ambassador Mann said.

President Saparmurat Niyazov personally supervises political affairs,
even at the local level, Mann said.

"With Turkmenistan, the question is, When is this energy potential
going to be exploited? Will it be? I think the answer is, yes, it will
be. I think the time is now," Mann said.

Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan are progressing toward a resolution of
their territorial dispute over the delineation of the Caspian Sea.

The ambassador said he is encouraged by the competence of Niyazov's
advisers and ministers in the energy sector who have convinced the
Turkmen leader to approve the construction of a trans-Caspian natural
gas pipeline.

Turkmen gas is a crucial element in Turkey's development plans. Within
a decade, natural gas is projected to account for a quarter of
Turkey's energy needs. At present, the clean-burning fuel satisfies
ab

[PEN-L:6570] U.S. Jets Attack North Iraq

[Frank Durgin]

 Yahoo! News
   
  Top Stories Headlines 


Monday May 10 6:21 AM ET 

U.S. Says Jets Attack North Iraqi Air Defenses

ANKARA (Reuters) - U.S. warplanes based in southern Turkey hit Iraqi
artillery and command sites in the northern no-fly
zone Monday after they were tracked by Iraqi radar, a statement from the
base said.

The planes returned safely, it added.

Air strikes on Iraqi targets in northern Iraq and in a second no-fly zone
in the south have become routine since December,
when Baghdad began actively challenging the patrols.

``Responding in self-defense, U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles and F-16C
Falcons dropped GBU-12 laser-guided bombs on
Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery and command and control sites northwest of
(the Iraqi city of) Mosul,'' the statement said.

The U.S.-British Northern Watch force operating out of the Incirlik airbase
some 550 km (340 miles) from the Iraqi border has
enforced a no-fly zone north of the 36th parallel in Iraq since the 1991
Gulf War.

The operation is designed to protect the largely Kurdish population there
from air attack by Iraqi government forces.

Turkish permission is needed for any strikes to be launched against Iraq
from its territory, but planes flying from Incirlik are
allowed to fire in self-defense. 

[PEN-L:6500] Best posting of the week

[Frank Durgin]

Following is my nomination for the Best Post of the week.

It was posted on Johnson's Russian List #3273 of May 7, 199


From: Wayne Merry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: 3271-Cohen/Yugoslavia,
Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 

Stephen F. Cohen has performed a great service in his brief opinion piece
in
"The Nation" by drawing attention to the profound moral failures of United
States policy in Yugoslavia.  Mr. Cohen is right on the mark in condemning
the use of bombardment of Serbian civil society as an instrument of
American
policy, an instrument we condemn as barbaric when employed by others. Mr.
Cohen is also correct when he states that our military actions have greatly
increased the scale of suffering of the Kosovar Albanians without
preparation to assist them.  I will add only that the logical, and moral,
consequence of our complicity in this humanitarian disaster is to accept
national responsibility for the displaced victims on a large scale, either
in this country or in the Balkans (recognizing that the likelihood of their
return to Kosovo anytime soon is near zero).  We cannot undo our mistakes,
but this country certainly can recognize failure, change course, and
undertake to compensate the innocent human "collateral damage" from our
misuse of our great power.  Again, thanks to Mr. Cohen for his perception
and courage of expression.

Wayne Merry, Director
Program on European Societies in Transition
The Atlantic Council of the United States
Washington, DC

[PEN-L:5753] Iraq reports air attacks in northern zone

[Frank Durgin]

  Iraq reports air attacks in
  northern zone 

  Baghdad cites deaths from jet debris

  By Reuters, 04/22/99 

  AGHDAD - Iraq said Western
  warplanes attacked Iraqi civilian and
  military sites in the north of the country
  yesterday.

  A military spokesman said Iraqi air
  defenses engaged the attacking planes and
  forced them to flee. There was no mention
  of casualties or damage.

  ''Crows of evil and aggression returned to
  violate our national airspace targeting the
  service establishments and our weapon
  sites,'' the spokesman said in a statement
  carried by the official Iraqi News Agency.

  ''Our ground resistance units intercepted
  them and forced them to flee,'' the
  spokesman added.

  ''At 12:50 p.m on April 21, 10 hostile
  formations of the kind F-14s, F15s, F-16s,
  violated our airspace coming from Turkish
  skies,'' the spokesman said.

  He said the planes supported by an early
  warning, command and control plane flew
  over the northern regions of Amadiya,
  Zakho, Duhok, Arbil, Aqra, Mosul and
  Talafar.

  The spokesman said Western planes had
  also flown over southern Iraq and were
  also ''challenged'' by Iraqi ground
  batteries.

  ''At 13:45 p.m, 11 hostile formations
  violated our airspace coming from Kuwaiti
  and Saudi skies. They implemented 18
  sorties from Saudi and six sorties from
  Kuwaiti skies,'' the spokesman said.

  He said the planes left Iraqi airspace for
  their bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait at
  3:40 p.m. 

  Earlier, a spokesman at an airbase in
  southern Turkey said US warplanes
  bombed Iraqi air defenses in the northern
  no-fly zone yesterday after being tracked
  by radar.

  He said all the aircraft had left the no-fly
  zone safely.

  Iraq also said a fuel tank discarded by a
  Western warplane had killed civilians
  when it hit the ground.

  INA quoted a letter from Iraq's Foreign
  Minister Mohammed Saeed Sahaf to the
  Arab League as saying the tank had been
  dropped on an agricultural area in the
  Afak district of southern Iraq.

  This story ran on page A26 of the Boston Globe on
  04/22/99. 
  © Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company. 

   [ Send this story to a friend | Easy-print version |
   Add to Daily User ] 

[PEN-L:5629] Clark proposed bombing Russian warships

[Frank Durgin]

Follwoing is an item that David Johnson posted in the Johnson Russian List
# 3249 of April 189, 1999



Excerpt
Chicago Sun-Times
Clark on the offensive 
April 18, 1999
BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST 

Members of Congress who, during their spring recess, met in Brussels with
Gen. Wesley Clark, the NATO supreme commander, were startled by his
bellicosity.

According to the lawmakers, Clark suggested the best way to handle Russia's
supply of oil to Yugoslavia would be aerial bombardment of the pipeline
that runs through Hungary. He also proposed bombing Russian warships that
enter the battle zone.

The American general was described by the members of the congressional
delegation as waging a personal vendetta against Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic. "I think the general might need a little sleep,"
commented one House member

[PEN-L:5595] U.S. Jets Hit Iraqi Targets

[Frank Durgin]

 AP Headlines 


Monday April 19 12:48 PM ET 

U.S. Jets Hit Iraqi Targets

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - U.S. fighter planes attacked Iraqi defense sites in
northern Iraq today after being targeted by Iraqi
radar, U.S. officials said.

It was the second confrontation in the northern no-fly zone in about a
month.

U.S. Air Force F-15Es dropped laser-guided bombs on radar sites in the
vicinity of Mosul, according to a statement from the
Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey where American jets are based.

The statement said damage was being assessed. All coalition aircraft left
the area safely.

On Saturday, the Iraqi armed forces said four civilians died and another
was injured when U.S. jets struck Iraqi military sites
in the area.

British and U.S. planes have targeted Iraqi defense sites in northern and
southern Iraq since Iraq started challenging allied
planes enforcing the no-fly zones in mid-December.

The northern and southern zones were set up after the 1991 Gulf War to
prevent Iraqi warplanes from threatening rebel groups
in the north and south. 

Earlier Stories

 U.S. Planes Strike Iraqi Targets (April 17) 



 
  Search News Stories   Search
News Photos

   Apr 19 | Apr 18 | Apr 17 | Apr 16 | Apr 15 | Apr 14 |
Apr 13 | Apr 12 | Apr 11 | Apr 10 

[PEN-L:5478] Russian press on yugoslovia

[Frank Durgin]

 


>From Russia Today  Updated Mon., Apr. 19, 1999
at: NY 9:17 a.m.
Lon 2:17 p.m. Pra 3:17 p.m. Mos 5:17 p.m. 

Review of Russian Press
Apr. 19, 1999

   

Lead Story  Izvestiya
Slavic Bazaar 

Summary
The daily commented on the Duma decision to support Yugoslav entry into the
Russian-Belarussian union.  "No one is really thinking about unification of
the three countries into a union state," the daily wrote. "Integration is
not an objective here, but only a means to achieve goals, which are less
lofty and less utopian. However, the consequences of this process, however
inoffensive it may seem, may be absolutely unpredictable." 
The Duma on Friday supported the idea of unification as proposed by their
Yugoslavian counterparts, and recommended that the president and the
government start considering international, political, economic and legal
issues, relative to the said Yugoslavian Parliament resolution." 
Six of the seven Duma factions and groups spoke in favor of union, and the
vote was 293 to 54. Most of the speakers' arguments could be reduced to one
reason: that it would end the war in Yugoslavia. 
The only opponent of the document - the Yabloko faction - circulated a
statement which said: "The proposal to accept Yugoslavia into the union
between Russia and Belarus not only pushes Russia to war, but also opens
the possibility of real military confrontation between the leading nuclear
powers." 
about   I Z V E S T I Y A (circulation 600,000) The former official paper
of the USSR Supreme Soviet, Izvestiya managed to become financially
independent in the early 1990s. Now owned by the UNEXIM Group, it has a
definite pro-government orientation. This national daily is a popular paper
among the Russian intelligentsia.


Lead Story  Segodnya
The State Duma is
Territory of
Yugoslavia 
THE LEFTISTS VOTED FOR WAR,
ISOLATION AND COLLAPSE OF
RUSSIA 

Summary
The daily wrote that Friday's State Duma decision to support admission of
Yugoslavia into the Russian-Belarussian union has put the country under
threat of international isolation, war and collapse. 
Apparently, supporters of the union with Yugoslavia did not think about the
possible consequences of this move, said the daily. 
First, this could result in religious unrest in Russia, because the Moslem
peoples of Russia (Tatars, Ingushis and many others) would not think see
the Serbs as brothers, while the Kosovo Albanians are. This difference in
attitudes could result in the complete collapse of the Russian Federation. 
Moreover, defense policies as outlined in the Russian-Belarussian
agreement, as confirmed by the presidents of both countries, says that the
states participating in the union should create a regional military body to
resist aggression against any member of the union." In the case of
Milosevic's Yugoslavia, this provision would mean war with NATO. 
So far, said the paper, the leftist "integrators" sit in the Duma, but not
in the Kremlin.  It has become clear now, that if the Communists gain full
power in the country it would result in national catastrophe. 
The daily quoted recent polls, according to which 86 percent of Russians
think that Russia should not be involved in the Yugoslavian conflict. 
about   S E G O D N Y A (circulation 100,000) Owned by the Most Group
headed by Vladimir Gusinsky, the paper was set up in 1993 and now targets a
business-minded audience. It has managed to pool some good journalists who
report on a wide range of issues and opinions, although some have since
defected to the new daily, Russkie Telegraf.
 ===  

N E Z A V I S I M A Y A  G A Z E T  
V.S.Chernomyrdin" 
HOW SUCCESS IN THE BALKANS
COULD TRANSFORM INTO SUCCESS
IN MOSCOW 
Summary
The daily commented on the recent appointment of former Prime Minister
Victor Chernomyrdin—the leader of the NDR party and a presidential
candidate - as the President's representative for the settlement of the
Yugoslavian conflict. 
According to the paper, Chernomyrdin's new mission has provoked a negative
reaction among both his political competitors from other parties, and
diplomats. Their apprehensions with regard to Chernomyrdin are obvious:
that he is not a diplomat, and that the West will force him to bend to its
will. 
The paper said that the best Yugoslavian scenario for Moscow would be to
allow the West to sink deeper into the conflict, because, the deeper the
West sinks, the further it would have to retreat. However, said the paper,
Chernomyrdin will probably take a milder stand— a tough and clear position,
which is at the same time flexible with respect to the West. 
Should Chernomyrdin's mission be a success, Yeltsin will appoint him acting
prime minister to replace Primakov, the daily concluded. 
about   N

[PEN-L:5284] News from Serbia

[Frank Durgin]

someone may have already posted this but just in case they have not  the
following to sites
give news in English from the Serbian point of view


http://www.borba.co.yu/daily.html

http://www.tanjug.co.yu/

[PEN-L:5203] Yougoslavia bid to Join Russia

[Frank Durgin]

These are some items from the April 13 Russia Today's
(http://www.russiatoday.com/) review of the Russian press for April 12,
1999.
   
IZVESTIYA Lead Story
Yugoslavia Wants to Join
Russia to Itself 
THIS IS BE THE PAY FOR DECLINE OF
IMPEACHMENT 
Summary
President Boris Yeltsin's recent statements on Yugoslavia have caused
confusion among Russia's political circles, the daily wrote. 
On Friday, Duma speaker Gennady Seleznyov told the chamber that Yugoslav
leader Slobodan Milosevic had requested that his country be admitted into
the union of Russia and Belarus.  Seleznyov said he had passed this
statement on to Yeltsin, and that the Russian President supported the
proposal. 
However, on the same day, Yeltsin made a number of conflicting statements
about Yugoslavia. First, he said that Russia should not be involved in an
armed conflict in Yugoslavia, but added only unless "the Americans do not
push us to this by starting ground operations." At a meeting with heads of
Russia's republics, Yeltsin said that "adventurers from the party of war"
should not be allowed to have their way. He also commented on the future of
Yevgeny Primakov's government, saying "at this point Primakov is useful for
us, but then we will see." Earlier, Seleznyov had said that Yeltsin was not
interested in dissolving Primakov's Cabinet of the Communist party. 
Yeltsin statements have already caused a split among the opposition. Some
Communists say that the Duma should go on with the impeachment proceedings,
regardless of the process of unification with Yugoslavia, while others say
that the idea of impeachment is worthless, considering the new political
situation. 
The daily concluded that the worst point, however, is that Yeltsin will
have to explain his own position to the Western countries. Some embassies
have already requested information about the new union of three countries
and the "re-targeting of Russian missiles to NATO countries," which Yeltsin
allegedly promised. 
about   I Z V E S T I Y A 
(circulation 600,000) The former official paper of the USSR Supreme Soviet,
Izvestiya managed to become financially independent in the early 1990s. Now
owned by the UNEXIM Group, it has a definite pro-government orientation.
This national daily is a popular paper among the Russian intelligentsia.

   
== 


S E G O D N Y A 
Lead Story
Russia Was Accepted by
Yugoslavia 
PROBABLY BECAUSE BORIS YELTSIN AIMED
MISSILES AT MILOSEVIC'S ENEMIES 
Summary
Russians had only just heaved a sigh of relief after hearing President
Boris Yeltsin's promise "not to get involved in the war in Balkans," when a
new danger appeared: Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic began seeking
admission to the Russia-Belarus union. 
According to Duma speaker Gennady Seleznyov, Yeltsin liked the idea very
much. Seleznyov went on to tell Duma deputies that the president had
informed him that Russia would retarget its missiles at the countries which
are now attacking Yugoslavia. 
It seemed like the president and the Duma had reached a consensus. However,
later officials in the Kremlin and in the Defense Ministry began to
interpret the president's words in different ways.  Senior military
commanders said they had not received any orders to re-target the missiles.
Then NATO hastened to reject Seleznyov's information as unofficial.
However, Seleznyov insisted that he had quoted the president correctly, and
that the statements had been made in front of television cameras. 
The daily concluded that, with all of Yeltsin's well-known controversial
statements, the process of integration between Russia and Yugoslavia is
well underway. And this means that Russia is getting involved in the Balkan
war. 
about   S E G O D N Y A 
(circulation 100,000) Owned by the Most Group headed by Vladimir Gusinsky,
the paper was set up in 1993 and now targets a business-minded audience. It
has managed to pool some good journalists who report on a wide range of
issues and opinions, although some have since defected to the new daily,
Russkie Telegraf.










N O V Y E   I Z V E S T I Y A 
This Is How World Wars Start 
Summary
The daily commented on the statements that President Boris Yeltsin made on
Thursday and Friday. 
Yeltsin first said that Yugoslavia cannot join Russia or the
Russian-Belarussian union, unless a referendum is held in Yugoslavia on
this issue.  What about a referendum in Russia?, the daily asked.
Yugoslavia is now in a state of war, even if it is an undeclared one. If
Russia gets involved in a union with it, an attack against Yugoslavia would
mean aggression towards Russia. 
Yeltsin reportedly discussed the issue of a Russian-Yugoslav union with
Duma speaker Gennady Seleznyov. But the daily asked: How could the
Communist Duma leader discuss anything with the president, when the
Communists are preparing to impeach Yeltsin in a coup

[PEN-L:5116] Fw: random thoughts on the slaughter

[Frank Durgin]

Michael Perelman wrote 

   "I am very appreciative of all the intelligent analysis I am reading on
> this list, although I am a loss to see how anyone in their right mind
> could credit Clinton and company with some humanitarian concerns."


I too am very appreciative,. Were it not for the the discussions on this
list, I would not have a clue
as to  what the origins and realities of the Kosovo situation were and are.

Sincerely
Frank


> 

[PEN-L:5103] 500 KLA recruits leave London

[Frank Durgin]

   





 
ISSUE 1416
 Sunday 11
April 1999


  KLA recruits leave London
  By Rajeev Syal 


Invincible sails in as UK doubles war
  effort

  MORE than 500 Albanians have left Britain
  after volunteering to become guerrilla
fighters in
  the war against Serbia, according to Kosovo
  Liberation Army representatives in London.

  Men and women from Britain's 8,000-strong
  Albanian community have gone to Tirana, the
  Albanian capital, to be trained as soldiers.
They
  are responding to a general order issued by
the
  KLA last month asking all Albanian people
  from 18 to 50 to report to join the war to
free
  Kosovo.

  Pleurat Sejdiu, the KLA's official
representative
  in London, said yesterday that they had been
  inundated with new recruits. "We have
received
  many requests to join the KLA from people who
  have heard that their friends and relatives
have
  been killed or hurt in the conflict," he
said.

  More than 340 volunteers have signed up to
the
  KLA in the past three weeks. Once they have
  pledged themselves to the army, they are
  interviewed by a number of KLA
representatives
  at a secret north London address.

  One volunteer, Ekrem, 34, last week pledged
to
  fight for Kosovo - even though he has never
been
  there - and has lived a settled, trouble-free
life in
  Britain for four years after leaving Albania.

  He said that he was ready to leave his job as
a
  mini-cab driver, his British girlfriend of
two
  years and his home in Cricklewood, north
  London, for the war because his cousin,
Burim,
  died fighting for the KLA.

  "I do not want to die - but if I do not go
and
  defend my brothers, and fight for my family
  members who have died in battle, I cannot
  expect a single Nato soldier to die for
Kosovo,"
  Ekrem said. He will be sent to Tirana via
Italy
  because the airport in the Albanian capital
has
  been closed. Once in Italy, he will cross the
  Adriatic Sea by ferry and take a coach to
  Tirana.

  The volunteers are allocated to military
training
  in camps around the Albanian capital.
  Ex-servicemen from the Albanian or
  Yugoslavian armies receive just 15 days of
  training. If they are without military
experience
  they are sent away for a month's training.

  New soldiers are then assigned to the
infantry,
  artillery or anti-tank units. Some are sent
  straight to the front to fight. The KLA
claims
  that it has turned away hundreds of other
  volunteers because it is sticking to its
strict
  policy of only allowing Albanians to join the
  army.

  More than 300 non-Albanians, many of whom
  are British-based Muslims or former British
  servicemen, have asked if they can fight in
  Kosovo. They have been turned away because
  the KLA does not want to be accused by Serb
  propogandists of running an Islamic movement
  or an army of foreigners.

  More than 30,000 members of the KLA have
  died since it was formed in 1996. Yesterday,

[PEN-L:5102] 80 SAS men in Kosovo to target

[Frank Durgin]

Electronic Telegraph
 
ISSUE 1416
 Sunday 11
April 1999

  80 SAS men in Kosovo to target
  death squads
  By Alastair Mcqueen 

 

  
   Special Air
   Service - Secret
   Kingdom



Invincible sails in as UK doubles war
  effort

  A SQUADRON of SAS soldiers has been sent
  deep into Kosovo after moves to deploy US
  special forces were put on hold until
Congress
  approves the committal of US ground forces.

  Eighty SAS men were ordered into action after
  an appeal by Nato commanders to Tony Blair.
  The Prime Minister is being advised by the
new
  Director of Special Forces, an expert in
Balkans
  undercover operations.

  The SAS role is to target for the RAF the
Serb
  Special Police and army units responsible for
  the eviction and massacre of thousands of
ethnic
  Albanians. They have also been ordered to
find
  and mark massacre sites, to locate the
hideouts
  of the death squad leaders and to find the
secret
  arsenals where the Serbs have hidden many of
  their heavy weapons. 

  The SAS is also on hand to rescue Kosovars
  who are trapped or awaiting execution. A
  Parachute Regiment battalion has been put on
  standby to move to the Balkans if required.
The
  paras are the only infantry unit trained in
  large-scale hostage rescue. 

  Ministers have overturned their original
decision
  that no ground troops - including Special
Forces
  - were to set foot in Kosovo until agreement
for
  an international force had been thrashed out.
  They also feared that if SAS soldiers were
  captured they would be paraded in show trials
  or tortured and executed.

  However, Nato commanders were anxious to
  make their airstrikes more precise. An SAS
  member said: "Technology is brilliant, but
all
  the technology in the world cannot replace
the
  Mark One Eyeball. Having men on the ground
  reporting back accurately and guiding
aircraft
  and other troops to locations is the ideal.
We
  can check out targets before the RAF even
lift off
  the ground or we can change them at the last
  moment if the guys on the ground spot
  something more important."

  The soldiers are understood to be wearing
their
  normal camouflaged lightweight windproof
suits
  for moving across country, but once they find
  lying-up points or observation posts they
will
  change into fleeces to avoid exposure and
  hypothermia.

  As allied aircraft approach they move closer
to
  the target, pointing laser beams at the
location
  and quietly talking the pilots into position.
They
  will carry the latest US weapons including an
  Armalite rifle with a grenade launcher,
MiniMi
  machine-guns, long-range "super rifles" plus
  mortars, claymore mines and pistols. 


   







   
   

[PEN-L:5101] Cossacks Vow To Help Serbs Defeat The West

[Frank Durgin]

Saturday April 10 8:08 PM ET 

Cossacks Vow To Help Serbs Defeat The West

By Philippa Fletcher

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Russian Cossacks joined groups of Serbs trying to
shield Yugoslavia's bridges
from NATO bombing Saturday and promised to help them defeat the West.

``Russian love and Russian power are with you,'' said one, part of a
colorful array of men in Tsarist
uniforms and traditional sheep skin hats, some sporting impressive waxed
mustaches.

``Here on the bridge are Russian Cossacks, Russian officers, Russian
generals, said another Cossack.

They said they had come to Yugoslavia to help defend the country against
NATO.

``We'll put (U.S. President Bill) Clinton in the electric chair,'' he added
to a cheer from the crowd on
Belgrade's Brankov bridge who are hoping their presence will deter NATO
from bombing it.

Last month, Cossack leaders said they planned to mobilize up to 5,000
volunteers to defend their
fellow Slavs, the Serbs.

NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia has fuelled strong anti-Western sentiments in
Russia and prompted
the government to freeze relations with the Western alliance.

``You are a great people worthy of a leader like (Yugoslav President
Slobodan) Milosevic,'' another
Russian said.

``Russia, Russia,'' chanted the crowd. One demonstrator carried a placard
promising support in
return: ``Russia do not fear, Serbia is with you.

Many Russian members of parliament have voiced their anger about the NATO
bombing and urged
President Boris Yeltsin to take steps to support Yugoslavia. Suggestions
have ranged from military
cooperation to Yugoslavia joining a Russia-Belarus union.

Several Russian ships left their base in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol
Wednesday for a ``planned
exercise.''

The move followed warnings by Moscow that it may send eight warships to the
Adriatic, where NATO
warships bombarding Yugoslavia are deployed, to show its solidarity with
Belgrade. The
reconnaissance ship Liman is already in the Mediterranean.

As Belgrade residents formed a human shield for the fifth consecutive night
on the Brankov bridge,
thousands of other Serbs staged similar demonstrations on bridges across
the country.

The Yugoslav state news agency Tanjug said a large group of people were
gathering on the Beska
bridge, near the northern city of Novi Sad.

``The people are determined to protect the bridge, which NATO aggressors
have twice attempted to
destroy, by staying the whole night,'' Tanjug said.

Last week, NATO missiles destroyed two bridges across the Danube in Novi
Sad.

Tanjug also reported that residents of Sremska Mitrovica, west of Belgrade,
had been asked to protect
a local bridge over the river Sava from NATO attacks.

NATO's 17 day-old bombing campaign -- mostly conducted by night -- has so
far targeted half a dozen
bridges in Serbia. 



|

[PEN-L:4971] Review of Russian Press

[Frank Durgin]

Here are two items from Russia Today"s (http://www.russiatoday.com/)review
of the Russian press for April 7
Russia Pressing Issues on Apr. 07,
1999

>From IZVESTIYA
Russia Does Not Owe
Anything to Serbia 
Summary
A deputy prime minister in the Serbian government has demanded that Russia
offer "weapons and not advice" and has accused Moscow of betrayal, the
daily wrote. 
Izvestiya commented that such is the gratitude of the small Balkan state.
Russia has given it almost unlimited diplomatic support and has sacrificed
its own relations with the entire world because of this, but the Serbs are
apparently not satisfied. They are demanding arms, knowing perfectly well
that their country is under a blockade and that any attempt to break the
U.N. arms embargo would put Moscow on the verge of a confrontation with
NATO - a confrontation which could potentially grow into a nuclear
conflict. 
According to the daily, Russia has nothing to be ashamed of in its
relations with Yugoslavia. On the contrary, Serbia owes a great debt to
Russia, one that it will never be able to pay back. This debt has
accumulated since the 1870's, when Russia fought a bloody two-year war with
Turkey for Serbia's independence. But Moscow will not fight with the U.S.
now so that Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic can finish his ethnic
cleansing in Kosovo, the daily concluded. 
about   I Z V E S T I Y A 
(circulation 600,000) The former official paper of the USSR Supreme Soviet,
Izvestiya managed to become financially independent in the early 1990s. Now
owned by the UNEXIM Group, it has a definite pro-government orientation.
This national daily is a popular paper among the Russian intelligentsia.


>From N E Z A V I S I M A Y A   G A Z E T A 
 
Lead Story
A Humanitarian Catastrophe
of European Scale 
Summary
The refugees from Kosovo over the two weeks of NATO air strikes (400,000
people, according to U.N. estimates) is double the number of refugees from
Yugoslavia during the preceding 14 months of conflict, the daily wrote. 
This humanitarian catastrophe became a fact only after NATO started "to
prevent" it, the daily commented. Apparently, NATO strikes provoked Serb
repression against ethnic Albanians and caused a rise in Serbian
nationalism, but it is not clear yet if genocide is taking place in Kosovo,
the daily wrote. There is no reliable information that civilians are being
killed there. Serbs are expelling Albanian people from their homes, but
this is justified—when one ethnic group calls for NATO military strikes
against the other, anger at the bombing will always be vented at the ones
who prompted the bombing, the daily wrote. 
The daily also commented that Yugoslav forces are acting more humanely in
Kosovo than Russian did in Chechnya. The Serbs always allow civilians to
leave an area before they begin to contest with the Kosovo Liberation Army
for control of the territory. 
The European Union has agreed to take 20,000 refugees. According to the
daily, many of them will end up joining the Albanian mafia, which is one of
the strongest in the world, and after the war they are not likely to be
willing to leave wealthy Europe and return to ruined Yugoslavia. 
about   N E Z A V I S I M A Y A   G A Z E T A (circulation 52,000) This
daily is controlled by financial magnate Boris Berezovsky. It is respected
for its thoughtful and well-written articles and often includes unique
comments or reports the other papers miss. However, critics sometimes
complain it serves Berezovsky's interests.


  

   


 

[PEN-L:4968] $100bn Bill Gates richer than most countries

[Frank Durgin]

>From Electronic Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk:  April 7, 1999

 $100bn Bill Gates richer than
 most countries
 By Robert Uhlig, Technology Correspondent 




 BILL GATES, already the world's richest
person
 by a considerable margin, was confirmed as
the
 world's first $100 billion man after the
surge in
 American shares made his 21 per cent
holding
 in Microsoft worth more than 12 figures.

 With each of the 1,031,555,600 shares in
the
 software company he co-founded in 1975
worth
 $98.5 (about £62), Mr Gates's personal
fortune
 now exceeds the economic output of all but
the
 18 wealthiest nations.

 Last week he increased his
 wealth by more than $1
 billion (£650 million) when
 the Dow Jones industrial
 average breached 10,000
 points for the first time,
 but his achievement is
 unlikely to be the final
 chapter in the rise of
 William Henry Gates III.

 His wealth from his
 Microsoft shares alone (he
 also owns several other
 companies and is the
 major shareholder in a $9
 billion satellite venture) is
 so enormous that it
 fluctuates by tremendous
 amounts. For every hour
 of the past year Mr Gates
 made about $4,566,000
 and if his wealth
 continues to grow at the 61
 per cent compound
 annual rate it has enjoyed
 so far, he will become the
 world's first trillionaire, worth
 $1,000,000,000,000 in 2004.

 The statistics of such affluence are
baffling. His
 personal fortune is more than twice as
much as
 all the $1 bills in circulation.

 On Jan 20, the 43-year-old's riches - at
the time
 already worth more than the gross domestic
 products of Singapore and Israel - grew by
$3.5
 billion in just three minutes when
Microsoft
 announced its quarterly profits. The
software
 giant based in Seattle had made $2 billion
profit
 in three months (up 75 per cent on same
period
 in the previous year); by the end of the
day, its
 founder was more than $5 billion richer.

 If the Harvard drop-out was to stash his
cash in
 dollar bills under the mattress in the $56
million
 "smart" home on Lake Washington, near
 Seattle, where he lives with his wife
Melinda and
 daughter, he would have to parachute 16
miles
 down to his bedroom floor every morning.
The
 United Kingdom's gross national product in
 1997 was $1,220 billion, according to
 preliminary figures from the World Bank.
If Mr
 Gates's wealth continues its relentless
rise, it
 will overtake Britain's output in 2005.

 His $101,608,226,600 share holding in
Microsoft
 is worth the same as the annual output of
4.9
 million Britons.

 Even an anti-trust fight with the American
 government has not stopped Microsoft's
soaring
 share price. With the company's products
 installed on more than 90 per cent of the
two

[PEN-L:4797] A first group of Russian volunteers

[Frank Durgin]

BELGRADE, Apr. 05, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) A first group of Russian 
volunteers arrived Sunday in the northern Serbian town of Novi Sad to
defend 
Yugoslavia, the official Tanjug news agency said. 

"The Russian volunteers are waiting to be posted to defend Yugoslavia
against 
the shameless attacks by the bloody NATO aggressors," said Vlado Micunovic,

chairman of the Yugoslav branch of the Russian-Yugoslav Fraternity Fund. 

It is not known how many Russians arrived in Novi Sad. 

Russian nationalists and former servicemen were reported to have started 
recruiting volunteers to fight in Yugoslavia a few days after the NATO air 
strikes on Yugoslavia began on March 24. 

Russia has bitterly opposed the NATO campaign, aimed at forcing Milosevic
to 
halt an offensive against ethnic Albanians that has triggered a refugee 
exodus from Kosovo. 

But Kremlin deputy chief of staff Sergei Prikhodko was quoted Sunday as 
saying Moscow was opposed both to sending volunteers and to lifting the
arms 
embargo on Yugoslavia. 

Prikhodko said: "We have on several occasions repeated our opposition to
the 
intentions of certain politicians to launch a recruitment campaign for 
volunteers and to send arms." 
( (c) 1999 Agence France Presse) 

[PEN-L:4783] Re: Re: Assistance to the Refugees

[Frank Durgin]

Carol, Thanks for  the response.   I guess there are some people out there
screaming.

This is from the electronic telegraph < http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ >

   
   






 Despair over Kosovo's fate
 By Philip Smucker in Blace,
Macedonia, and Tim Butcher, Defence
 Correspondent 




Hungry, cold and exhausted,
they scrambled
  for survival in the mud
Serbs 'seeking to
repopulate the province'
Feedback: Bombing the baby
with the
  bathwater

 TENS of thousands of ethnic
 Albanians trapped in Kosovo are
 facing slaughter and starvation,
 Western intelligence sources in
 Macedonia said yesterday.

 "People at Nato headquarters are
 pulling their hair out wondering
 how to save these people," a
 Western diplomat said. Nato
 sources said that some refugees
were dropping dead from
 exhaustion and dehydration in an
eight-mile queue which
 has built up on the border with
Macedonia.

 Those being allowed into
Macedonia, which has been
 overwhelmed by the crisis, still
face privation. With few
 supplies available, they have to
spend freezing nights in the
 open without shelter, food, or
drinking water. Serb security
 forces were intent on worsening
the food crisis, some of the
 refugees said.

 "I saw mothers risking their lives
under the sights of snipers
 to try to stand in line and buy
milk," said one, called
 Bukaria, who arrived in the border
town of Blace yesterday.
 "When the women came back with the
milk, the Serb police
 would grab them, throw the milk
cartons down and stamp
 on them with their big black
boots."

 A German doctors group said that
Serb soldiers were raping
 and torturing ethnic Albanians in
their push to drive them
 from Kosovo's towns and villages.
Monika Hauser, the
 founder of the group, Medical
Mondiale, said she had
 received reports of the mass rape
of women fleeing the city of
 Pec in the south-west of the
province.

 In Albania, which has also
received a flood of refugees, the
 government said the situation was
"out of control". The
 United Nations High Commission for
Refugees described it
 as "a major humanitarian
emergency". By last night 42,000
 refugees had reached Macedonia,
aid sources said. The
 total in Albania was believed to
be 130,000 and the number
 of displaced Albanians still in
Kosovo was thought to be
 much greater. Nato said that
so-called ethnic cleansing had
 forced more than 634,000 Albanians
from Kosovo in the
 past year, a third of the
province's original population. 

 British defence sources suggested
that President Milosevic of
 Yugoslavia was planning to eject
more than 1.5 million
 ethnic Albanians to leave the
Serbs as the dominant group.
 Nato has given permission for its
force of 12,000 mainly
 British troops in Macedonia to
help provide aid to the
 

[PEN-L:4782] Russian Press on Kosovo

[Frank Durgin]

Following is Russia Today's < http://www.russiatoday.com/ > review of  the
Russian Press for April 2.

I have deleted reviews of articles not dealing with Kosovo



 
Updated Fri., Apr. 02, 1999 
Russia Pressing Issues on Apr. 02, 1999

   
   
Izvesitya april 2, 1999
Lead Story
The West Would Like to Buy Our
Armed Forces 

Summary
The world order that has existed since the end of World
War II was violated with the bombing of Yugoslavia,
Izvestiya wrote. But this new situation was forecast, the
daily noted—the West seems to have been preparing in
advance for the "weakening of Russia's territorial
integrity and the loss of centralized control of Russian
nuclear weapons." 

The daily commented on recent Western studies,
including research by the conservative American
Heritage Foundation, on the condition of Russia's armed
forces and the possibility of dividing their ranks. 
Western analysts have predicted that, in a possible
decentralized Russia, regional unions—for example a
Moslem bloc or a North Caucasus group—would want
to reinforce their military power, and might even want
their own portion of nuclear weapons. Considering this
scenario, the daily wrote, it is no wonder that the West
would like to put Russia's nuclear weapons under the
control of NATO or the United Nations, which would be
much cheaper than creating a balanced system of
constraints. 
Developed countries would also want to establish a
coalition of inspectors to monitor Russia's nuclear forces.
Or researchers said it may be possible to buy up a major
part of the Russian armed forces, because Russia itself
will not be able to provide for them. 
about   I Z V E S T I Y A 
(circulation 600,000) The former official paper of the
USSR Supreme Soviet, Izvestiya managed to become
financially independent in the early 1990s. Now owned
by the UNEXIM Group, it has a definite pro-government
orientation. This national daily is a popular paper
among the Russian intelligentsia.
   
   


K O M S O M O L S K A Y A   P R A V D A 

The Kosovo Funnel May Suck in All of
Europe 
Summary
NATO has expanded its targets in Yugoslavia in order
to "weaken the military potential of [Yugoslav leader
Slobodan] Milosevic," according to Secretary-General
Javier Solana. 

In reality, it is mostly civilians who are killed by the
bombing, the daily wrote. The population of Kosovo is
fleeing the province - the humanitarian catastrophe
which NATO reportedly wanted to prevent with its air
strikes. 
Solana also said the bombing will not be suspended
during the Easter holiday, because it would give
Milosevic a break. In NATO's headquarters in Brussels,
they ignored an appeal from Pope and the Russian
Orthodox Church to halt the bombing for the religious
celebration. 
Russia, meanwhile, is sending a reconnaissance ship
from Sevastopol to the Mediterranean Sea, where it will
gather information in the Balkan zone of conflict. Other
Russian ships will be sent to the Adriatic Sea. NATO's
ships may want to prevent the Russian cruisers from
entering Adriatic waters, and this could lead to an
exchange of fire or torpedo strikes, which would mean
start of a war between Russia and NATO. 
The appearance of Russian ships may interfere with
NATO's plans, because they could provide full
information for Russia and also because NATO would
have to divert part of its forces simply to guard the
Russian group. 
Russia could share its intelligence information with
Yugoslavia, and radar surveillance by the battleships
could make NATO's strikes less effective, Komsomolka
wrote. 
about   K O M S O M O L S K A Y A   P R A V D A 
(circulation 1.6 million). A former Soviet youth
newspaper, it is now a national daily owned by the
UNEXIM Group with the largest circulation of any
Russian newspaper. It has a good network of
correspondents throughout the country but provides little
analysis.
   
   
===
N O V Y E   I Z V E S T I Y A 
Lead Story
Ten Days of Someone Else's War That
Shook Our Country 
Summary
According to the daily, Russia views the war in
Yugoslavia as "collective political madness, which has
seized all the branches of power, the media and a wide
section of the population." 

Russia's righteous anger and sympathy for the brother
Slavs has made the country put its own reality behind -
including the problems of debt, corruption and poverty.
The daily commented that this "collective madness" was
not an epidemic but was organized by Russian officials
in order to support the country's dying statehood. The
daily compared the move to giving the nation a dose of
hormones. 
Various political forces are now rushing to play the
Yugoslavia card. President Boris Yeltsin thinks this is
his only chance to defer impeachme

[PEN-L:4777] Assistance to the Refugees

[Frank Durgin]

Why is no one out there screaming to Clinton and and his NATO lackies, 
"Get  tents, blankets ,food, and medical assistance to the refugees, and
fast"?

I can not believe the horror which is unfolding there.
Frank

[PEN-L:4774] Moscow Times

[Frank Durgin]

 
 Jim 

 Mosow times is published by Independent Media. 

They also publish the St Petersburg  Times. 


  Here is what they say about themselves,

Take a peek sometime at the Global Eye column of the St Petersburg Times
for some highly insightful looks at US politics.

   

 INDEPENDENT MEDIA: AN OVERVIEW 

 Independent Media, a privately owned limited
 liability Dutch company, is one of the strongest
 publishing houses on the Russian mass media
 scene today. IM dominates the Russian women's
 magazine market with Russian-language editions
 of Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar, Domashnii
 Ochag (Good Housekeeping) and Marie Claire and
 is the leader in the English-language newspaper
 market with its flagship, The Moscow Times. With
 a total of 18 publications that include women's
and
 men's glossy magazines, trade magazines,
 exclusive financial data newsletters and diverse
 Russian- and English-language newspapers, IM
 has an excellent record for providing attractive
and
 informative publications in the Russian
 marketplace. 

 A BRIEF HISTORY 

 Independent Media grew out of Independent Press
 BV, founded in March 1992 by Derk Sauer (CEO),
 Annemarie van Gaal (COO) and their partners. In
 that year, IP launched its first publication, The
 Moscow Times, an English-language daily, and
 has since become a fully owned subsidiary of
 Independent Media. Since 1992, the portfolio of
 publications has increased from 1 to 18 and the
 staff has grown from 10 to almost 500. 

 As the company has grown, so has IM's dedication
 to quality and journalistic integrity in all of
its
 publications. Our publications, by date of
 appearance, include: 

  The Moscow Times -- October 1992. 
  Cosmopolitan -- April 1994. 
  Vitrina Food Manager -- 1994. 
  Kapital -- May 1995. 
  Domashnii Ochag (Good Housekeeping) -- May
  1995. 
  Playboy -- June 1995. 
  Russia Review -- 1995. 
  Harper's Bazaar -- March 1996. 
  The St Petersburg Times -- April 1996. 
  Marie Claire -- March 1997. 
  Vitrina Restaurant Business -- 1997. 
  Men's Health -- December 1997.

   Other services of IM include ITC Training House.





   


 The Moscow Times, Independent Press' flagship
 edition, was launched in March 1992 as a
 twice-weekly, and relaunched in October 1992 as a
 daily. The foreign community and Russian
 business people depend a great deal on the
 newspaper for up-to-the-minute news on Moscow,
 Russia and the world. The paper is an objective,
 reliable source for English-language news on
 business, politics and culture. It remains an
 unrivaled advertising medium for reaching local
 business people and decision makers. 

  Editorial offices: 
   Ulitsa Pravdy, Dom 24,
   125865 Moscow, Russia 
   tel: (7-095) 937-3399 
   fax: (7-095) 937-3393 
  Commercial offices: 
   Ulitsa Vyborgskaya 16, Floor 5, 
   125212 Moscow, Russia 
   tel: (7-095) 232-3200/1750
   fax: (7-095) 232-1761 
  Publisher: Derk Sauer 
  Editor: Geoff Winestock 
  Managing Editor: Matt Bivens 
  News Editor

[PEN-L:4759] Moscow Times Article

[Frank Durgin]

I got this off of Johnson's Russia List.



Moscow Times
April  1, 1999 
DEFENSE DOSSIER: NATO Joins Balkan Sinners 
By Pavel Felgenhauer 

After a week of war in the Balkans, with thousands of people killed,
wounded or displaced, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the
Yugoslav military have reached a bloody military stalemate. NATO bombs
Yugoslavia at will, while the Serbs are equally free to hit and molest the
Kosovo Albanians in any way they choose.  

NATO has easily achieved full air supremacy. French Army Chief of Staff
Jean-Pierre Kelche nicely summed up the situation: "NATO controls the
airspace and the Serbian air force no longer has any coordinated or
sophisticated capacity to oppose the alliance."  

Of course, that was an easy shot. The Yugoslav air force had no more than
10 battle-ready MiG-29s to repulse more than 400 modern NATO warplanes. The
 Yugoslavs also had an antiquated air defense system made up of obsolete
1970s-vintage Soviet-made SAM missiles.  

It was obvious from the very beginning that the Serbs did not have the
slightest chance of standing up to NATO in the air and would be lucky to
down a single enemy warplane. NATO military planners, of course, knew that
in advance. Nevertheless, the Western military chiefs deliberately puffed
up the Yugoslav military capabilities during the run up to the war so that
Kelche and other high brass could issue glorious victory communiques
afterward.  

NATO military spokesmen also say that their bombs have severely maimed the
Yugoslav military's lines of communication. But these announcements sound
hollow, especially when the same NATO spokesmen say that the ethnic
cleansing in Kosovo is "well planned and organized." If that is really so,
what "lines of communication" did the NATO bombers really cut, if any? Or
perhaps NATO is providing Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic with an
easy explanation for the Kosovo cleansing: local commanders went berserk
and could not be stopped from Belgrade because NATO bombs cut the lines of
command and control?  

The inconsistency of NATO's communiques is most likely a sign of growing
panic. Politically and strategically NATO is losing its first real war.
Apparently Western military and political leaders actually believed the
Serbs would cave in after several cruise missile volleys. Sources in
Washington say that Western prewar intelligence reports from Yugoslavia
indicated that Milosevic was losing control, that the Yugoslav military did
 not like Milosevic because he was spending money to beef up his special
police force and not the army and that if Milosevic dragged Serbia into a
war with NATO, the Yugoslav military would disobey orders or possibly even
rebel.  

Western diplomats in Moscow also told me that they expected the tiny
republic of Montenegro - which, together with Serbia, comprises rump
Yugoslavia - would use NATO bombing to rebel and secede. If such a
secession took place, Milosevic would simply forget about Kosovo.  

Of course, nothing of the sort happened. But Western diplomats were so
sure Milosevic would either cave in or be overthrown that, during the
Rambouillet peace talks, they threatened to use force against the Serbs if
they rejected a peace plan that would in effect lead to Kosovo's total
independence after a three-year interim autonomy period under NATO military
 protection.  

Western arrogance made the Serbs rally behind their president even before
the bombings began. Serbia turned out to be not a "failed state," but a
nation ready to fight the strongest military alliance in the world to
defend its land and its freedom from foreign occupation.  

NATO's military aggression has triggered an ethnic cleansing in Kosovo
that the West does not seem to be able to stop. The only counteraction NATO
 is now planning is an escalation of bombing. The NATO supreme commander,
General Wesley Clark, has sought political authorization to hit "military"
targets in downtown Belgrade. A senior U.S. official said Clark's request
has "100 percent support" from U.S. President Bill Clinton's
administration.  

The U.S. military has certainly recovered from the post-Vietnam syndrome.
There they go again - planning to bomb a sovereign nation back to the Stone
 Age if it does not accept a U.S.-imposed partition of its territory.  

There are millions of innocent war victims in the Balkans, but not a
single innocent warring party. NATO has now joined the club. The Serbs are
committing atrocities in Kosovo, while NATO bombers are committing other
atrocities all over Yugoslavia. At any future peace conference, senior U.S.
 officials and Milosevic will truly be able to shake hands as equals.  

[PEN-L:4750] bombing of Iraq continues

[Frank Durgin]

  


Friday April 2 6:07 AM ET 

Iraq Says Two Injured In Western Air Strike

BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq said two people were injured Friday when
Western warplanes bombed targets
in the Western-imposed no-fly zone in southern Iraq.

``The hostile formations... bombed residential quarters in regions of Afak
of Qadissiya Province and the hostile
bombing led to destruction of two houses and injured two citizens,'' the
official Iraqi news agency (INA) quoted a
military spokesman as saying. Iraq last reported Western bombing on March
19.

``American and British warplanes violated our national airspace, targeting
some service installations and
weapons sites,'' the spokesman said.

``Thirteen hostile formations of such planes as F-14, F-15, F-16, F-18 and
the Tornado violated Iraqi airspace at
9 a.m. local time (midnight EST) Friday.''

The spokesman said the planes carried out ``13 sorties from Kuwaiti
airspace and 33 from Saudi airspace,
supported by early warning AWACs and A2C from Saudi airspace.

``Our intercepting planes and missile units intercepted these hostile
formations and compelled them to flee to the
bases they came from in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia at 10.35 a.m. (0635 GMT).''

There was no immediate confirmation of the incident from Washington or
London.

Air strikes against Iraqi military targets became commonplace after Baghdad
decided in December to attack
U.S. and British jets patrolling the no-fly zones in the north and south of
Iraq, but a 12-day lull preceded
Friday's reported bombing.

Iraq does not recognize the no-fly zones, set up after the 1991 Gulf War to
protect Kurds in the north and Shi'ite
Muslims in the south from possible attack by Baghdad's forces. 

Earlier Stories

Iraq Says Two People Hurt By Western Bombing (April 2) 

[PEN-L:4725] A question

[Frank Durgin]

 It is agonizing for all of us here to watch the Kosovians flow into
Albania.

  If the object of creating the inferno  was the well being of the people
of Kosova, 
why isn't NATO  dropping tents, field kitchens, blankets, stocks of food ,
medical units 
etc. into the refugee holding areas rather than bombing and killing
thousands of people in many miles away in Yugoslavia?

Frank

 

   

[PEN-L:4657] prepare public opinion for ground war

[Frank Durgin]

 World Socialist Web Site
   US, NATO prepare public opinion for
   ground war against Serbia

   By the Editorial Board
   30 March 1999

   Less than one week ago, according to no less an
authority
   than President Bill Clinton, most Americans had never
   heard of Kosovo and would not know where to find it on a
   world map.

   Now, after several days of massive bombing, the
   escalating media campaign over the fate of the Kosovan
   Albanians is setting the stage for the commitment of US
   troops in the war against Serbia and the long-term
   military occupation of Kosovo.

   In an article that is typical of what has been appearing
in
   American newspapers and television over the last three
   days, Charles A. Kupchan, who served on the staff of the
   National Security Council during Clinton's first term,
   wrote in the Los Angeles Times:

   "Now that the air campaign is underway, the president
   has no choice but to prepare the country and America's
   armed forces for a major ground war in the Balkans ...

   "Air attacks will no doubt weaken Yugoslav defenses and
   soften up the units operating in and around Kosovo. But
   it may take ground forces to expel them from Kosovo and
   stop the killing of Albanians."

   In interviews conducted on national television, two
   leading senators--Shelby of Alabama and McCain of
   Arizona--stated that the Clinton administration must be
   prepared to place troops on the ground in Kosovo. "I
don't
   know myself of any war," Shelby said, "that's been
totally
   won by air power." Warning that the desire to avoid
   casualties should not determine US strategic aims,
   McCain declared, "We're in it, and we have to win it.
This
   means we have to exercise every option."

   While the Clinton administration continues to state that
it
   does not "intend" to order ground forces into battle, it
has
   signaled an impending change in policy by claiming that
   the violence of Serb army attacks on Kosovan Albanians
   has come as a surprise. If this were true, it would mean
   that the policy pursued by the Clinton administration in
   launching the bombing was not merely reckless, but also
   extraordinarily stupid. It is, however, impossible to
believe
   that the tragic events that have been the first fruits
of this
   war were not foreseen by the US government.

   The very nature of the US-NATO demands--that Serbia
   cede control of Kosovo, acquiesce in the expulsion of
the
   Serb minority from the province, submit to foreign
   occupation and the destruction of its national
sovereignty,
   and accept the revision of its international
borders--could
   not but lead to an eruption of violence against the
   Kosovan Albanians once full-scale war broke out.

   It is the height of cynicism for the United States to
feign
   horrified surprise over the fate of the Kosovan
Albanians
   when similar methods were employed by Croatia, with US
   political support and military assistance, during the
   Croatian offensive against Serbs in Krajina province in
   1995. As even the New York Times admits, "the West
   looked the other way" as 200,000 Serbs were "ethnically
   cleansed" from Krajina and tens of thousands more were
   driven from their homes in Bosnia because the actions of
   Croatia served the strategic interests of the United
States.

   It would not be difficult to prove that the Clinton
   administration's invocation of "human rights" and
   "self-determination" as a justification for its
onslaught
   against Serbia is shot through with duplicity and
   hypocrisy. (We invite our readers to review an earlier
   article, " Whom will the United States bomb next?")

   But what concerns us here are the implications of the
   accelerating pace and escalating scale of US military
   violence. Serbia is the fourth country to have been
   

[PEN-L:4634] Mass graves hold the secrets of

[Frank Durgin]

 From Eectronic Telegraph

 Mass graves hold the secrets of
 American race massacre
 By James Langton in New York 



 
   1921 Tulsa race riot -
   Homestead Press

   Black Wallstreet -
   Davey D






 INVESTIGATORS are searching for
the graves of up to 400
 black Americans in an attempt to
end the 78-year cover-up
 of one of the worst acts of mass
slaughter in the country's
 history.

 Dr Clyde Snow, the world's leading
authority in forensic
 anthropology, is preparing to
spend the coming months in
 his home state of Oklahoma,
identifying the remains of
 hundreds of men, women and
children believed buried in
 communal graves.

 The dead are the long-missing
casualties of the Tulsa race
 riot in 1921, a little-known
chapter in American history
 which, if substantiated, would
eclipse even the 1995
 Oklahoma bombing as the country's
worst civilian atrocity.

 Using accounts from newly
discovered witnesses and
 sophisticated ground-penetrating
radar, a team of
 historians and scientists believes
that the death toll from the
 massacre could have been as high
as 400.

 Dr Snow, 71, has uncovered the
bones of Josef Mengele, the
 Auschwitz "Angel of Death", in
Brazil and the victims of
 atrocities in every continent from
Argentina to Ethiopia and
 Bosnia. "I was used to seeing such
things in Bosnia or
 Africa," he said. "But this is so
close to home. It is important
 to remember these things can
happen in your own
 backyard." 

 The Tulsa riot has been largely
forgotten for more than
 seven decades, not least because
of a campaign by the local
 authorities to cover up the full
extent of the killing in its
 immediate aftermath.

 Dozens of official documents are
missing, believed destroyed
 in the cover-up. Most
controversially, a headline and
 editorial from the Tulsa Tribune
that called for whites to
 "lynch a negro tonight", which is
widely believed to have
 sparked the slaughter, have been
removed from every
 surviving archive edition. A
reward is now being offered for
 a copy of the original newspaper.

 New evidence uncovered in the past
months backs long-held
 views among black survivors of the
riot that the number of
 victims was far higher than the
official report of between 36
 and 100. One 88-year-old man,
Clyde Eddy, has come
 forward to say that he saw boxes
of dead blacks being
 buried secretly in crates in
unmarked graves at a city
 cemetery. Four other possible
sites of mass graves are also to
 be investigated.

 The violence followed the arrest
of Dick Rowland, a black
 shoeshine boy on May 31, 1921.
Newspaper reports wrongly
 claimed that he had sexually
assaulted a 17-year-old white
 girl in the lift of the office
block where they both worked.

 Later, gangs of blacks and whites
clashed

[PEN-L:4597] Fw: Ground war next?

[Frank Durgin]

It would, seem based on the multiplication of the number of news reporrts
comming over the line about Serb "atrocities" in Kosovo. that the ground
war is not far off.

Attached is the type of report I have been seeing quite a few  of.

Frank
=
Saturday March 27 1:52 PM ET 

NATO Fears 'Dark Things' Happening In Kosovo

 By Giles Elgood

 BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) - NATO Saturday expressed
grave concern at growing reports that
 Yugoslav forces were killing, harassing and
intimidating ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

 Political representatives of the Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA) welcomed NATO air attacks on Yugoslav
 targets but called for the swift intervention of NATO
ground forces.

``We welcome the strikes, but we demand that NATO ground troops come into
Kosovo as quickly as possible,'' a spokesman
said at a news conference near NATO headquarters in Brussels.

NATO has said it currently has no plans to introduce ground forces into
Kosovo, but is extremely concerned by reports of
killings and ethnic cleansing.

NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said the reports from a variety of sources
indicated that ``dark things are happening'' in
Kosovo, although their extent was not yet completely clear.

Albanian sources in Kosovo have described an alarming rise in reprisals
against ethnic Albanians by Yugoslav paramilitary
gangs since NATO began air raids Wednesday.

KLA political representative Bardhyl Mahmuti said that in two houses in the
southern city of Djakovica, 70 people had been
killed. Accusing the Yugoslav government of ``ethnic cleansing'' said there
were dozens of cases of men having been killed in
front of their own children.

One ethnic Albanian woman in the Kosovo capital Pristina, contacted by
telephone, appealed to a relative abroad: ``Do
something for us now or forget about us forever.''

NATO says the atrocities were long planned by Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic and were not caused by the alliance's
air raids, which it says are intended to end the violence.

Shea said there was no evidence yet but ``the concordance of different
reports is enough to alarm us.''

He said those found to be responsible for atrocities would be treated as
war criminals and brought before the International
Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

The army was mounting sweep operations in northern and central Kosovo, Shea
said, and a large part of the town of Podujevo
was in flames.

``Armed Serb civilians are blocking all access to Pristina and within that
city there have been door-to-door operations in which
men have been separated from their families and taken away to undisclosed
destinations,'' Shea told a news conference.

In one village alone, Shea said, 20 ethnic Albanians had been killed, while
many other Kosovo Albanian refugees had been
pushed across the border into Albania itself. These groups comprised women
and children only -- there were no men.

Earlier, British Defense Secretary George Robertson said some Kosovo
villages had been wiped out.

``And I ask you to reflect on these chilling words -- These villages do not
exist,'' Robertson told a London news conference.

At alliance headquarters in Brussels, NATO said its aircraft attacked 10
targets overnight in the area of the Yugoslav capital
Belgrade, the second city Nis and in Kosovo itself.

In the first two nights, 50 targets were hit.

Some warplanes had to return without dropping their bombs because of bad
weather in Friday night's wave of attacks.

Seventeen Yugoslav surface to air missiles had attempted unsuccessfully to
engage NATO aircraft. It was the first reported
significant attempt by Yugoslav missiles to shoot down NATO aircraft since
the raids began.

The alliance had lost no planes to date while five Yugoslav warplanes had
been shot down, a NATO spokesman said. 

Earlier Stories

 Bombs Can't Stop Kosovo Village Attacks-NATO (March 26) 



  
--
> From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED];
[EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED];
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L:4593] Ground war next?
> Date: Saturday, March 27, 1999 12:11 PM
> 
> The Washington Post 
> 
> March 27, 1999, Saturday, Final Edition 
> 
> U.S., Allies Weigh Use of Ground Forces; Commanders Fear Bombing Won't
Stop
> Serb Offensive 
> 
> Dana Priest, Washington Post Staff Writer 
> 
> The deteriorating situation in Kosovo has prompted discussions among
senior
> NATO and U.S. officials about the possibility of introducing U.S. and
> allied ground forces into the three-day-old air campaign against the
> Yugoslav military. 
> 
> Senior officials said a decision on a deployment was still unlikely and
> that the subject has not yet been broached with President Clinton, who
said
> this week he did not intend to send U.S. troops to Kosovo to fight.

[PEN-L:4591] US military uses Yugoslavia as testing ground for high-tech

[Frank Durgin]

 
   
   WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : The Balkan Crisis

   US military uses Yugoslavia as
   testing ground for high-tech
   weaponry

   By Jerry White
   27 March 1999

   The US military has welcomed the confrontation
   with Serbia as an opportunity to test its arsenal of
   high-tech weaponry and to train American military
   personnel in a new theater of war.

   Military commanders were elated the night the
   bombing began, according to the New York Times.
   "For some diplomats and officials at NATO
   headquarters in Brussels, where [Supreme
   Commander US General Wesley] Clark has made
   no secret of his judgment that an air campaign
   against Milosevic was justified long ago, the mood
   this evening was almost jubilant," the newspaper
   wrote. "'It's accelerating and exhilarating,' said
   one."

   Each branch of the armed forces is jockeying for
   the chance to display its weapon systems,
   regardless of whether any specific military purpose
   is fulfilled, simply to justify their multibillion-dollar
   budgets.

   Since the bombing began US Navy warships and
   submarines in the Adriatic Sea, and bombers
   flown from Italy, have launched scores of cruise
   missiles at Serbian targets. These include a new
   generation of Tomahawk missiles, which the
   Pentagon says have "proven effective" during recent
   raids against Iraq, hitting 80 percent of their
   targets.

   Military planners prefer the unmanned
   missiles--which cost $750,000 each--in the initial
   stages of an attack rather than risking more
   expensive manned aircraft. The cruise missiles,
   built by Raytheon Corporation, are launched with
   the click of a computer mouse from ships floating
   well out of reach of any enemy threat. Traveling at
   the speed of sound, the missiles are guided to their
   targets by 24 global positioning satellites orbiting
   the earth.

   Wednesday was also the debut of the US Air
   Force's most expensive warplane, the B-2 "Spirit"
   stealth bomber. Two of the $2.2 billion planes flew
   from air bases in Missouri to Yugoslavia, where
   they dropped 40,000 pounds of bombs each, and
   then returned nonstop to the US.

   First introduced in 1988 for long-range nuclear
   strikes deep into the former Soviet Union, the plane
   had been plagued by technical problems, including
   a radar system which had difficulty distinguishing
   mountain ranges from clouds and radar-absorbent
   paint that wore off too quickly. The fear of losing
   the aircraft, two of which cost as much as an
   aircraft carrier, led the military to pass over the
   B-2 for combat missions at a time when every
   other strike aircraft was being deployed in the
   Persian Gulf.

   The Air Force had been "champing at the bit" to
   test its B-2 squadron on real missions since its
   deployment in 1993, said Chris Hillman, an analyst
   with the Center for Defense Information in
   Washington, DC. Although the military has
   simulated using the B-2s, Hillman said simulations
   are like video games when compared to real battle.
   The only true test of the B-2 "is to have somebody
   who really hates us trying to shoot us down," he
   said.

   After the mission General Leroy Barnidge,
   commander of the B-2 Bomb Wing in Missouri,
   said, "I got to tell you, the crews in these jets
   performed magnificently. It says to the critics that
   this plane did everything it advertised, and then
   some."

   The US currently has a fleet of 21 B-2 bombers,
   which costs $44 billion. The warplane's "success"
   over the skies of Yugoslavia will surely mean
   billions more in future procurements for
   manufacturer Northrop Grumman.

   Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin,
   Boeing and other US defense contractors have
   made no secret of the fact that they see the conflict
   in Yugoslavia as an opportunity to market their
   weapons and secure new contracts. On Friday

[PEN-L:4540] World War II and Recovery

[Frank Durgin]

Wojtek Sokolowski (PEN-l 4537 wrote on Martch 25th


> 
> If I recall correctly, Baran & Sweezy (_Monopoly Capital_) counter that
> argument by saying that all measures to revive the US economy through
> peaceful demand stimulation (cf. auto industry + infrastructure) had
failed
> - it was the 2nd world war that reversed that trend.

Wojtek:   In my opinion iIt was simply a question of the magnitudes of
spending.  There is no comparison between the amounts spent to revive the
economy and the amounts spent on WW II.  Spending  the same amout of
dollars on housing, hospitals, roads, dams, planting trees etc etc would
have had the same effect.

Frank

[PEN-L:4526] Fw: Account of McCarthy period slanders socialist opponents ofStalinism

[Frank Durgin]

Louis:

Yesterday Pen-1 4499  you wrote the folloing description of people
behind the WSWS:

> A word or two about the people behind this web site. They were founded
and
> led by an Englishman Gerry Healy, who was thrown out of the organization
> for forcing himself sexually on young women in the group. Vanessa
Redgrave
> was a member. Over the past ten years it has imploded because the
paranoiac
> sectarianism directed against other groups on the left--as evidenced in
> their hatred for the CP--turned inward.
> 
> Louis Proyect
> 

I found your commentary highly  informative and I thank you for.

Below, I have posted today's  WSWS's editorial.I would very much apprecaite
reading your evaluation of it.

Sincerely

Frank

  
   
   WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : The Balkan Crisis

   US-NATO bombs fall on Serbia: the
   "New World Order" takes shape

   By the editorial board 
   25 March 1999

   The editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site
   emphatically opposes the US-led NATO attack on Serbia.
   The massive air assault against a small country of less
   than ten million people is an act of naked imperialist
   aggression. It represents a qualitatively new stage in
the
   eruption of American and European militarism.

   As the British Financial Times pointed out: "The
enormity
   of NATO launching its first attack against a sovereign
   state is not to be underestimated. Unlike Iraq, Belgrade
   has not invaded another country. Nor is the situation
   akin to Bosnia, where the legitimate government invited
   outside intervention. Nor, finally, has the United
Nations
   Security Council specifically authorized NATO to bomb."

   It is a telling commentary on the state of American
   democracy that the US government feels free to go to war
   without even bothering to offer a coherent explanation
for
   its actions to its own people. Without even a trace of
   embarrassment President Clinton acknowledged, only
   hours before the bombing commenced, that most
   Americans probably would not be able to locate Kosovo on
   a world map.

   Without a declaration of war--indeed, without anything
   that can even be remotely described as a public
   debate--the United States has commenced the bombing of
   another country which has not harmed, or even
   threatened, a single American citizen.

   What is the logic of this policy? The United States
   assumes the right to compel countries to change their
   policies in accordance with American demands, i.e., to
   relinquish sovereignty within their own borders. Even as
   ruthless a practitioner of imperialist realpolitik as
Henry
   Kissinger has warned that the war against Serbia
   represents an extraordinary and unprecedented
   redefinition of the "national interest"--which now, it
would
   appear, includes the domestic policies of other
countries.

   Though it has not been explicitly stated, the
implication
   of this new "Clinton Doctrine" is that the United States
   may bomb and even invade countries whose domestic
   policies are not to its liking. This doctrine implies
that
   any country in the world is a potential target for US
   bombing. It would not be difficult--based on the present
   state of world affairs--to draw up a list of 10 to 20
   countries that could be considered likely candidates for
   military attack by the United States. And, were a
   deterioration of world economic conditions to lead to an
   exacerbation of trade tensions, the size of that list
could
   quickly double.

   The aim of these assaults is to establish the role of
the
   major imperialist powers--above all, the United
States--as
   the unchallengeable arbiters of world affairs. The "New
   World Order" is precisely this: an international regime
of
   unrelenting pressure and intimidation by the most
   powerful capitalist states against the weakest.

   The attack on Serbia follows a definite pattern. In
recent
   years, military interventions by the US have occurred
   

[PEN-L:4496] Account of McCarthy period slanderssocialist opponents of Stalinism

[Frank Durgin]

>From World Socialist Web Site   
   WSWS : History

   Account of McCarthy period slanders
   socialist opponents of Stalinism

   Review of Ellen Schrecker's Many are the Crimes:
   McCarthyism in America

   By Shannon Jones
   24 March 1999

   Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America by Ellen
   Schrecker, Little, Brown and Company, 1998, 573 pages

   Much has been written about the terrible impact of the
   McCarthyite witch-hunts of the late 1940s and 1950s on
   American cultural and political life--the blacklisting
of
   actors and writers, the purging of militants from the
   unions, the stifling of critical thought. It was a
period of
   unrelenting reaction, hundreds were jailed, thousands
   more deprived of their jobs and livelihoods because of
   their political beliefs. No area of creative endeavor
escaped
   its impact.

   The scars of McCarthyism are still everywhere
   evident--the notoriously docile and subservient American
   trade union movement; the banal and commercialized
   Hollywood television and movie industry; the stultified
   and conformist state of academia. In no major industrial
   country in the world is intellectual and cultural life
so
   constricted.

   Given the advanced decay of American liberalism, as
   manifested in the crisis of the Clinton administration
and
   the growing influence at the highest levels of extreme
   right-wing and outright fascistic forces in the United
   States, a historical review of the origins and impact of
   McCarthyism is of the utmost timeliness.

   Any serious assessment of McCarthyism must consider
   fore and center the criminal role played by the
Stalinist
   Communist Party, which, by associating socialism with
   terrible crimes against the working class, helped create
   the political climate in which red-baiting could
flourish.
   Long before Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy arrived on
   the scene, the American Communist Party had earned
   well-deserved hostility throughout the working class for
its
   treacherous and deceitful politics and its ready use of
   physical violence against opponents.

   Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, published
   last year by historian Ellen Schrecker, attempts a new
   examination of the McCarthy period. While there is
   important material detailing the impact of McCarthyism
   on the American left, Schrecker's book distinguishes
itself
   principally by its apologetic attitude toward Stalinism.

   Schrecker, a professor of history at Yeshiva University,
   spent more than 20 years studying the McCarthy period.
   Her previous works on the subject include No Ivory
   Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities and The Age of
   McCarthyism. Schrecker's latest book gives a detailed
   account of the impact of McCarthyism on a wide range of
   American life. It follows the lives of several
McCarthyite
   victims to illustrate the utter viciousness of the
red-baiting
   campaign.

   Parts of the book are informative. Many are the Crimes
   documents the sinister role of the FBI in subverting
civil
   liberties. It follows the attempt by the government,
backed
   by the AFL-CIO, to destroy left-wing unions such as the
   International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers
   and the Maritime Cooks and Stewards Union.

   Schrecker gives an account of the attempts to stop the
   production and distribution of the film, Salt of the
Earth,
   an account of a strike by members of the Mine Mill union
   against Empire Zinc in New Mexico. The project, an
effort
   by blacklisted Hollywood screenwriters, actors and
   technicians, encountered ferocious resistance, including
   attacks by a vigilante mob and the refusal of
technicians
   to process and edit the film.

Sympathy for Stalinism

   However, the work's posi

[PEN-L:4471] Fw: Holocaust against Iraq

[Frank Durgin]

Charles: 

 Thank you for the excellent posting on Iraq.

  I would be interested in knowing the  Economist's source of the statement
that "Just prior to the Gulf War, Iraq's GDP was more than ten times
>  higher--around $60 billion."

   US Statistical Abstract states that  in 1990 it  was $23 billion in 1990
dollars and $26 Billion in 1995 dollars.Their scource is the U.S. Arms
control and disarmament Agency; the IBRD and CIA..

Frank



--
> From: Charles Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L:4470] Holocaust against Iraq
> Date: Monday, March 22, 1999 10:13 AM
> 
>  Subj:   Iraq's chilling economic statistics  (fwd)
>  Date:  3/19/99 7:15:30 PM Eastern Standard Time
>  From:  [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Eric A Schuster)
>  To:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> 
>  - Begin forwarded message --
> 
>  March 18, 1999
> 
>  IRAQ'S CHILLING ECONOMIC STATISTICS
> 
>  Iraq's total GDP has fallen to just $5.7 billion, or $247 per capita,
>  according to estimates by the well-respected Economist Intelligence Unit
>  in The Economist's newly published annual supplement "The World in
1999."
> 
> 
>  Just prior to the Gulf War, Iraq's GDP was more than ten times
>  higher--around $60 billion.
> 
>  Last year the Economist Intelligence Unit estimated Iraqi GDP at $30.4
>  billion, or $1,300 per capita. This year's figure represents both a
>  further precipitous decline, and more accurate estimates.
> 
>  To put this in perspective, Jordan, Iraq's tiny neighbor has a GDP of
>  $8.6
>  billion.
> 
>  With an estimated per capita GDP of only $247, Iraq, once one of the
most
>  developed countries in the Middle East, is now poorer than many
countries
>  in sub-saharan Africa.
> 
>  Just this evening I had the opportunity to attend a talk by former UN
>  humanitarian relief coordinator for Iraq, Denis Halliday. Halliday noted
>  that Iraq's recurring annual budget needs for health, food and essential
>  services, is $12-15 billion. With the Oil-for-Food program, which
>  Halliday
>  ran for thirteen months, Iraq gets barely $4 billion.
> 
>  With a total GDP of $5.7 billion Iraq's economy is worth about the same
>  as
>  four B-1 bombers. It is worth about half of Bill Gates.
> 
>  The entire Iraqi economy amounts to just 2% (two percent) of the annual
>  United States DEFENSE budget of $265 billion.
> 
>  The increase in the US defense budget proposed for next year by the
>  Clinton Administration ($12 billion) is more than twice the entire GDP
of
>  Iraq.
> 
>  Just exactly what kind of threat can Iraq present? You do the math.
> 
>  Ali Abunimah
>  [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
>  http://www.abunimah.org 
>  ---
> 
>  Note: The destruction of Iraq's economy by the sanctions has
>  distinctively
>  changed the life in Iraq: children are dying in greater numbers;
families
>  are breaking apart; educational systems are crumbling ... For more
>  information, please refer to the articles by Denis Halliday
>  
> 
> 


> 
>  
>  Iraq Action Coalition
>  http://iraqaction.org 
> 
> 
>   >>
> 

[PEN-L:4417] Fw: Lynn Turgeon

[Frank Durgin]

Barkley:

   Thank you very much for that real life portrait of Lynn you 
painted.

  I've printed it out and am sending it to two of his very good friends
who do not have E-mail access.

Sincerely
Frank
--
> From: J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED];
[EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L:4389] Lynn Turgeon
> Date: Wednesday, March 17, 1999 3:10 PM
> 
>  It was a privilege for me to have been a friend of Lynn Turgeon's. 
He
> was responsible for my meeting my wife, Marina, who was a researcher at
the
> Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) in Moscow
in
> the early 1980s.  She had been his translator when he served on his
> Fulbright in Moscow (in 1976, not 1975 as his obituary states) for his
> lectures at Moscow State University.  Those lectures would later be
issued
> as his book, _The Advanced Capitalist System_ published by M.E. Sharpe. 
He
> gave her away at our wedding and we shall both miss him very much.
> Over the more recent years Lynn participated in several panels at
> professional meetings on transitional economy issues, often ones that
either
> Marina or I would chair or organize.  Lynn had been scheduled to be a
> discussant in a session that I organized for the meetings in New York in
> early January.  He had had prostate cancer for several years that he knew
> was incurable and had warned me that he might not make the meetings,
which I
> said I understood.  However, during the middle of last year he seemed to
be
> doing better and I was hopeful that he would be participating as he lived
in
> Hempstead, New York, not far from the meeting site in New York City.  It
was
> only when he pulled out in early December that I realized that the end
was
> near.  He had fallen and his cancer had relapsed and he had gone to stay
> with his daughter who is a physician in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  It was
clear
> that he was not going to be going anywhere else again while alive,
although
> he did continue to be active on the pkt list into January.
>  Lynn always enjoyed challenging people with ideas that went against
the
> grain, and I sometimes had trouble figuring out to what extent he
actually
> believed some of the things he was putting forward (I certainly did not
> agree with all of them).  Louis Proyect has commented on how he used to
> appear to argue that fascism was good for the working class, a position
that
> I do not think he really held.  However, he certainly did think that
Hitler
> was a practitioner of a form of Keynesianism, perhaps the first "military
> Keynesian," and he always enjoyed confounding people with his apparently
> contradictory views on military spending (good for the US, bad for the
USSR,
> etc.).
>  In more recent years, besides his promulgation of his own
idiosyncratic
> version of a Post Keynesian vision as expressed in his last book,
_Bastard
> Keynesianism_, he also wrote and spoke much about the problems of
economic
> transition.  He had originally been inspired to study Russian back in
World
> War II out of a desire for world peace and a feeling that the US and USSR
> should remain allied and be friends.  In the early 50s he was apparently
the
> only person at the Rand Corporation not to have a security clearance.  In
> later years he would point out some of the virtues of the Stalinist
system
> even as he criticized its irrationality and oppressiveness.  His
_Economics
> of Discrimination_ (not the exact title) made the point that Gypsies and
> women were more equal and less discriminated against in Eastern and
Central
> Europe during the Stalinist period than at any other, an uncomfortable
fact
> for many of us.  In more recent years his appearances at ASSA meetings
often
> involved analyzing how the position of women was changing in different
> transitional economies and he initially had high praise for the
Hungarians
> for maintaining a very supportive system for women, although that has
since
> been cut back under IMF pressure.  He argued that how women are treated
is
> perhaps the real bottom line measure of a society.
>  He also had unconventional views on agriculture, documenting the
higher
> productivity of collectivized agriculture in Hungary (thanks to economies
of
> scale) compared to the privatized system in Poland with its small private
> plots.  He accurately foresaw problems for these agricultural systems
that
> would accompany the breakup of their collectives (although China, whose
> transition he often praised, improved agricultural productivity with
> privatization under Deng).
>  I always wanted to pin Lynn down on some of his views, but he had an
> amazing ability to wriggle out of apparent contradictions and
difficulties
> and to stand grinning at one like a Cheshire cat with his wit and agility
> and ability to provoke.  However, I think that in the end he was a fan of
> Gorbachev and regretted the

[PEN-L:4366] Fw: Re: NYT Obit for Lynn Turgeon

[Frank Durgin]

I am utterly baffled by William Lear's posting.

Bill, just what do you mean by "hand-picked" and "unwashed"?

You are touching a raw nerve here. I am very fortunate in having been able
to consider Lynn a friend. He was one hell of a nice guy, highly energetic,
highly personable, great sense of humor, a great conversationalist and a
great fun guy to have around. He sent me copies of just about every thing
he wrote, and on occasion asked me to critique articles and or chapters he
was working on. 


I was amazed at how widely read he was. Although we were roughly the same
age, I always considered him "my professor" and some times would mockingly
address him that way. .Every time I had an opportunity to be with him he
would always ask "have you read this' or "have you seen this"
"What, you have not read this?"You just got to see this etc etc.


What I found missing from Lynn's obituaries was the fact that he was one of
the nation's leading Sovietologists back in the late 50's and middle
sixties.
He was right up there with other giants such as, Berliner and Bergson etc
at Harvard and the group at Rand.  He testified several times at
congressional hearings on the Soviet Economy.

What amazed me also was the fact that he could shift from the ranks of the 
Sovietolgist greats to  the raanks  of the Post Keynesian Greats.

He also presented many papers on the treatment of Gypsies.



He also had an unerring eye as to who the rising stars were.  On quite a
few occasions he would say hey, keep an eye on this guy.

 He was j one hell of a nice guy. Kathy and I will both miss him.

Frank


> From: William S. Lear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L:4354] Re: NYT Obit for Lynn Turgeon
> Date: Tuesday, March 16, 1999 1:43 AM
> 
> On Monday, March 15, 1999 at 22:27:58 (-0800) Michael Perelman writes:
> >...
> >  He served in the Navy during World War II and joined the Hofstra
> >faculty in 1957.
> 
> There was a wave of former military personnel into academia thanks to
> the GI bill.  Many of them turned progressive, or didn't turn
> reactionary, since they hadn't been hand-picked.  Was Lynn one of
> the unwashed, perhaps?
> 
> 
> Bill
> 

[PEN-L:4355] U.S. Jets Bomb ``in self defense''

[Frank Durgin]

   
  
   
  Top Stories Headlines 


Tuesday March 16 6:27 AM ET 

U.S. Jets Bomb North Iraqi Artillery Sites

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - U.S. warplanes bombed Iraqi artillery sites in the
northern no-fly zone Tuesday after being tracked by
Iraqi radar, officials at the jets' base in southern Turkey said.

A spokeswoman told Reuters that U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle warplanes dropped
GBU-12 laser-guided bombs ``in self defense'' on
several anti-aircraft artillery sites northwest of Mosul. 

Earlier Stories

 U.S. Jets Bomb Targets In Iraq No-Fly Zones (March 15) 
 U.S. Jets Bomb North Iraqi Anti-Aircraft Artillery (March 15) 
 U.S. Jets Fire At North Iraqi Air Defenses (March 15) 
 U.S. Jets Bomb Iraqi Artillery (March 14) 
 U.S. Jets Bomb Iraqi Artillery In North (March 14) 

[PEN-L:4316] U.S. Jets Fire At North Iraqi

[Frank Durgin]

Monday March 15 5:48 AM ET 

U.S. Jets Fire At North Iraqi Air Defenses

ANKARA (Reuters) - U.S. warplanes attacked Iraqi sites in the no-fly zone
over northern Iraq Monday, a statement from the
jets' home base in southern Turkey said.

It said the warplanes ``responded in self-defense to Iraqi threats'' but
gave no further details. Sunday the jets from the Incirlik
airbase bombed anti-aircraft artillery sites near Mosul after being fired
upon and detecting Iraq radar tracking the aircraft.

Such strikes have become regular since Iraq decided in December to actively
oppose U.S. and British jets patrolling the no-fly
zones in the north and south of the country.

The jets flying out of Incirlik patrol a mountainous Kurdish-held enclave
and a swathe of Baghdad-controlled territory around
the city of Mosul.

Iraq does not recognize the Western-enforced zones set up after the 1991
Gulf War to protect the Kurdish area in the north and
Shi'ite Muslims in the south.

NATO-member Turkey hosts the force, known as ``Operation Northern Watch,''
but has expressed concern in recent months
over the policy of the United States, a close ally, toward Turkey's
southern neighbor Iraq.