-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Impeachment Watch Key Republicans Dessert Clinton Momentum for Impeachment Builds WASHINGTON - In an ominous development for President Bill Clinton, several key Republican moderates in the House of Representatives added their voices Tuesday to the mounting calls for his impeachment. ''Clearly, the momentum is in the direction of the House voting articles of impeachment,'' said Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, an influential Democrat. The White House has desperately sought to persuade some of the 20 to 24 undeclared Republicans to oppose impeachment in what is expected to be an extremely close vote in the House on Thursday or Friday. But in the last two days more than a dozen previously undeclared Republicans have come out in favor of impeachment. In a blow to White House hopes, Representative Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, co-leader of a group of moderate House Republicans, said Tuesday that she would vote to impeach President Clinton. ''The president does not have the right to commit perjury when it is convenient or when he thinks the charges against him are frivolous,'' Ms. Johnson said. Another Republican, Representative Jay Dickey, who represents Mr. Clinton's home district in Arkansas, criticized the White House for what he said were scare tactics to influence his vote. It is like a ''tidal wave'' against the president, said Harold Ickes, a Democratic consultant and Mr. Clinton's former deputy chief of staff. He said there was still a chance of stopping that tide, however. But the latest Republican declarations left prospects sharply higher that the full House would approve at least one of the four articles of impeachment before it, in effect indicting the president and sending the case to the Senate for trial. As representatives streamed back to Washington for party caucus meetings Wednesday and the historic debate to open Thursday, only a few were still undecided which lever they would pull. They were much on the mind of the president, who was returning late Tuesday from the Middle East. It was unclear whether there was time left for even a dramatic gesture - perhaps a statement to the House of Representatives - to tip the balance away from impeachment. White House aides said they were waiting to hear whether Mr. Clinton had decided to run the risks of such a gesture. His earlier comments have often fanned Republican anger because the president has not admitted that he lied under oath in the Paula Jones sexual harassment inquiry or before the grand jury of the independent counsel, Kenneth Starr. And while some House members have said they will oppose impeachment only if Mr. Clinton admits to having lied under oath about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern, others might use such an admission to justify a vote to impeach. Another jolt to White House prospects came from Representative Jack Quinn of New York, who had been one of the first Republicans to publicly oppose impeachment. He reversed himself Tuesday, saying he would vote for the four articles of impeachment. Representative John McHugh of New York was among the other Republicans who said they would support impeachment. Two of the four articles of impeachment, sent to the full House by the Judiciary Committee, assert that Mr. Clinton committed perjury in his sworn denials of having had an intimate relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, one holds that he obstructed justice in seeking to conceal the relationship, and one holds that he abused his power in his attempts to resist the investigation of his affair. If a simple majority of House members - 218 of the 435 - votes for even one article, then the Senate will hold a trial, presided over by the chief justice. With senators acting as a jury, 67 votes in the 100-seat chamber would be required to remove the president from office. Clinton loyalists and Democratic allies carried their anti-impeachment drive forward Tuesday on a variety of fronts, from radio ads to rallies and vigils. The White House, however, seemed shaken and unsure of what more it could do. ''The reality is there is less and less that can be done from here,'' Ann Lewis, the White House communications director, told the Los Angeles Times. ''This is a somber place. We've got a very difficult challenge.'' Pressure on still-undeclared legislators was intense. Some were receiving 250 telephone calls an hour. Representative Dickey of Arkansas likened the pressure to ''12 hours of surgery without anesthesia'' and lashed out at an unidentified White House aide for suggesting that it would be ''political suicide'' for him to oppose impeachment. Mr. Dickey said he would not decide how to vote until returning to Washington on Wednesday. The White House spokesman, Joe Lockhart, said the president would meet with Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut, who has opposed impeachment but then indicated Monday that he was wavering. The pressure will continue on Wednesday in Republican and Democratic caucuses ahead of the debate Thursday. Leaders of each party say impeachment votes should be a matter of conscience, not subject to party discipline. But Republicans, at least, have made it clear that defections on procedural votes, which are rare in normal circumstances, will not soon be forgiven. That is important because censure, as an alternative to impeachment, is likely to reach the House floor only if the Democrats succeed in a parliamentary maneuver, called a motion to recommit, that could not pass without the defection of at least a few Republicans. International Herald Tribune, Dec. 16, 1998 Middle East Politics Clinton Peace Mission a Failure Nothing changes JERUSALEM - President Bill Clinton concluded a three-day visit to the Middle East on Tuesday that was rich in symbolism but short on tangible achievements, having failed to nudge Israel to resume the troop withdrawals from the West Bank that it agreed to in U.S.-brokered talks two months ago. After a contentious three-way meeting Tuesday morning with the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Clinton departed the region much as he found it on his arrival: with the peace process teetering and mistrust seething between Israelis and Palestinians. If there was anything fundamentally changed in the dynamic of Middle East peacemaking as a result of Mr. Clinton's visit, it was new tension between the Clinton administration and the Israelis and, at the same time, an emerging partnership between Washington and the Palestinians that is more intimate than has ever been seen before. Mr. Netanyahu, who suspended further withdrawals two weeks ago and set an obstinate tone with his remarks when Mr. Clinton stepped off Air Force One on Saturday, served notice Tuesday that he has no intention of carrying out the next troop pullback, scheduled for Friday, until the Palestinians meet a long list of requirements. some of which Washington plainly considers unreasonable. Mr. Clinton tried to put the best face on things, telling reporters that ''the proof is always in what happens tomorrow, not what happens today.'' But it was apparent that Mr. Netanyahu, fighting for his political survival against hard-liners opposed to any territorial compromise, is unlikely to order further Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank as long as his government is in peril. Sounding like the candidate on the stump he may soon be if his government falls, Mr. Netanyahu took the hard line with the Palestinians that has marked his political career, and added a note of defiance that plays well with his voters. ''I think the Americans are wise enough to understand that no amount of pressure can force Israel to relinquish its capital in Jerusalem, that no amount of pressure will force us to release terrorist murderers, that no amount of pressure will force us to make withdrawals when the Palestinians don't carry out their part,'' Mr. Netanyahu said. ''It's just not a subject on the table.'' The upshot of the trip, Mr. Clinton's fourth to Israel as president, is that the peace process he revived at the Wye River Plantation in Maryland in October now enters a season of suspended animation. Glossing over the difficulties, the sides announced that a number of committees and channels would attempt to grapple with problems that the principals have been unable to resolve. Chief among these is the incendiary issue of what to do about hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Israel promised at Wye to release 750 prisoners but refuses to free more than 100 of what the Palestinians call political prisoners, some of whom were convicted of murdering Israelis. That stance has touched off riots throughout the West Bank for the past three weeks and caused fears that the Palestinians are gearing up for a new intifada, the uprising that paralyzed the region for six years starting in 1987. Despite the threat of more violence inspired by the prisoner issue, the parties were able to agree to nothing more concrete than what Mr. Clinton called ''an informal channel'' to deal with the controversy, apparently by reviewing some individual prisoner files. The final day of the president's visit was further marred by the bitter reaction of some Israelis to a speech by Mr. Clinton on Monday, in which he equated the suffering of Palestinian children whose fathers are in Israeli jails and Israeli children whose fathers were killed by Palestinians. Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon protested the comment to Mr. Clinton personally, and Mr. Netanyahu was scathing on the subject. ''It's not legitimate to compare those who murdered innocent citizens and children deliberately and the suffering of the victims,'' Mr. Netanyahu said at a news conference. International Herald Tribune, Dec. 16, 1998 Biological Warfare ATTACK OF THE KILLER FIRE ANTS Mutants on the march DEADLY fire ants are on the march across America after developing a mutant strain that can survive winters. The ants, whose venom has killed dozens of people in the southern states, also cause damage to crops, lawns and electrical equipment estimated at £1.5 billion a year. In the past, they could survive only in the humidity of the American south. Now they are heading north. Their most recent victim was a woman in a nursing home in Jackson, Mississippi who died in September after the ants swarmed over her body, riddling her with stings. Children in the suburban south are regularly stung. Most come away with a painful blister which subsides after a few days. Two in every 100, however, need immediate hospital treatment or they die. In the American south-east, the ants have overtaken wasps and bees as the major source of allergic insect reactions. A hybrid strain that seems able to withstand cold weather has now been found in California, far from the ants' traditional areas, which stretch from Florida to Texas. The insects, whose mounds pop up from the ground after rain, are believed to have crossed from South America to Alabama in the early part of this century. They travel across country on livestock or bundle into giant balls that can float down flooded rivers. After swarming on to a human victim, they are believed to emit an alarm pheromone, at which point they all sting at once, causing maximum pain. Most fatalities occur in those who cannot escape: elderly people, babies in cribs or people who suffer from dementia. Now scientists are commandeering the ants' natural enemies from South America. They have imported a parasitic fly that can wriggle inside the quarter-inch long ant and lay its egg. When the larvae hatch, they move into the ant's head where they feed until the head falls off. Faced with the fly, the normally fearless ant recoils and races towards its mound. The scientists are also testing a micro-organism that occurs naturally in Brazil, which, if implanted into a fire ant nest, sickens the ants, slows their reproduction and causes the queen ant to produce fewer eggs. The London Telegraph, Dec. 16, 1998 Japanese Financial Crisis Bankrupt Japan Calls for New "Financial Architecture" Currency regime, IMF modifications TOKYO - Japan's finance minister called Tuesday for a ''new international financial architecture'' that would overhaul the way the International Monetary Fund works and allow a ''managed flexibility'' among the world's major currencies. ''Talk about reforming the international financial architecture should not be just a passing fancy,'' Kiichi Miyazawa, a 79-year-old veteran politician, told the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan. Mr. Miyazawa called for studying creation of an ''exchange-rate regime'' that would ''bring about greater stability on the one hand and needed flexibility on the other, among the yen, the U.S. dollar and the euro.'' Mr. Miyazawa said the recent Asian currency turmoil had revealed the risk of pegging regional currencies to a single foreign currency such as the dollar. The finance minister also acknowledged that Japan's economy remained weak and said it would be at least two years before officials could determine whether there is positive and sustainable growth. He said Japanese companies may start to ''ruthlessly'' cut jobs next year to cope with the recession, pushing up the country's record-high unemployment rate of 4.3 percent. Noting that ''the IMF is not very popular in this part of the world,'' Mr. Miyazawa said that in the absence of an alternative institution, the IMF should be improved. He said the IMF needed improvement and that combining the agency with the World Bank ''might be one way if it improves efficiencies.'' While Mr. Miyazawa's remarks on a new exchange-rate regime were not specific, analysts interpreted his remarks as backing the creation of a system of targeted bands within which currencies would trade. In Europe, Germany's finance minister, Oskar Lafontaine, created a controversy this autumn by calling for a managed exchange-rate regime. ''Although it is a difficult challenge, we have to work hard to attain this 'managed flexibility' among the three currencies,'' Mr. Miyazawa added. ''Setting a target zone may be useful in the short-to-medium term. But macroeconomic cooperation would be needed for it to work,'' said Taisuke Tanaka, a global foreign-exchange strategist at Credit Suisse First Boston in Tokyo. ''Japan has to first correct existing domestic and external imbalances before it could consider such a step.'' Mr. Miyazawa also said that countries across Asia should contribute to a new regional fund to protect their currencies and fight off speculators. Similar currency support funds could be used in Latin America and Eastern Europe and should accompany capital controls as part of a new approach to global economics, he said. He said such a facility would be different from what the IMF now offers, because it ''would not require pre-agreed arrangements, but would base itself primarily on good track records certified through regular surveillance.'' Commenting on conditions the Fund attached to massive bail-out programs for Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia, Mr. Miyazawa said ''it might be advisable for the IMF to refrain from requiring too broad or too ambitious structural reforms at a time of crisis.'' Japan plans to set up a $30 billion fund for loans to its Asian neighbors. A previous plan was criticized by the United States as running at cross purposes to the IMF. Mr. Miyazawa said Japan's latest push to set up a fund would lead to further discussion of a regional currency support mechanism. But analysts said Japan was in no position to guide such a regional fund until it cures its own economic ills. The country's economy is deeply mired in recession and the Bank of Japan's key quarterly tankan survey of corporate sentiment released on Monday continued to show a deteriorating business sentiment. ''It may take at least two years until I can decide if we are at a sustainable growth basis or not,'' Mr. Miyazawa said. But he said the economy had bottomed. ''I interpret yesterday's tankan as indicating the situation will not get worse,'' Mr. Miyazawa said. ''I don't think things will get better immediately.'' He said that rising unemployment was ''my main concern for the coming year.'' International Herald Tribune, Dec. 16, 1998 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! 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