-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Legacy We Did It Our Way: with a Sledgehammer Make November 9 a German national holiday? THE lighting up of the line of the former Berlin Wall last night points up the failure to retain a convincing section of the original. The light-up was suggested by Jack Lang, the former French Minister of Culture, who said the same technique had been used to mark the 200th anniversary of the first ascent of Mont Blanc. The Berlin Wall was so effectively destroyed that no authentic impression of it can now be gained in Berlin. Tourists ask in vain to see the monstrosity which only 10 years ago ran for 26 miles through the heart of the city. Only fragments remain, and these convey none of the menace of the original with its barbed wire, minefields, dogs, guards and automatic shooting devices. Much of the Wall was used in the foundations of the Berlin motorway ring when it was widened to six lanes and many chunks were exported to museums all over the world. The memorial in Berlin at Bernauer Strasse looks particularly unconvincing, for the surviving section of the Wall is dwarfed by two rusty brown steel wall s, 24ft high, whose message, if any, has to do with modern art. The museum at Checkpoint Charlie contains an excellent collection of material about the ingenious ways in which East Germans tried to escape across the Wall. But that collection was put on show as a private initiative. The realisation is dawning on the Germans that the day the Wall fell and not Oct 3 should be when they celebrate their country's unification. Oct 3 1990 was the date when East and West legally became one, but it has none of the emotional resonance of the fall of the Wall. "We have the wrong national day," said Werner Schulz, a former East German civil rights activist who is now a Green MP. He argued that it was time for the Germans to "take responsibility for the whole of our history", including the terrible attack on the Jews on Nov 9, 1938. Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass, is believed by many members of the German establishment to make genuine celebration on Nov 9 an impossibility. The London Telegraph, November 10, 1999 Legacy Clinton: I Did It My Way The red, white, and blue babe behind the final curtain. PRESIDENT CLINTON has presented his survival of impeachment as a personal triumph in which the American people stood at his side in a patriotic fight against enemies of the Constitution. Evoking an almost heroic view of his ordeal at the hands of the Republican-controlled Congress, Bill Clinton said historians of the future would salute his defence of the Constitution. His words seemed part of an effort to shape his own political legacy. This process includes reaching out to a population which has always warmed to his personal touch, not least by his first question and answer session on an internet site. Mr Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives in December for lying to a grand jury when he denied having a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. But Republicans in the Senate could not raise the two-thirds majority to remove him. In an interview with ABC television, Mr Clinton said: "I think that history will view this much differently. They will say I made a bad personal mistake, I paid a serious price for it, but that I was right to stand and fight for my country and my constitution and its principles, and that the American people were very good to stand with me." He put the Lewinsky scandal in the context of other investigations into his conduct, like the Whitewater development deal in Arkansas. He said: "I made a personal mistake and they spent $50 million trying to ferret it out because they had nothing else to do, because all the other charges were totally false, bogus, made up, and people were persecuted because they wouldn't commit perjury against me. I think that over the long run, the fact that we accomplished as much as we did in the face of the most severe, bitter partisan onslaught . . . will, in a way, make many of the things we achieve seem all the more impressive." When he appeared on the Web via George Washington University, Mr Clinton likened his internet debut to the "fireside chats" that Franklin Roosevelt held with the American people on the radio, or John F Kennedy's first televised press conferences. Asked by "Mark of England" if he wished he could serve a third term, something prohibited in the constitution, he said: "I love this job and I would continue to do it if I could." With an online audience of 50,000, he told another questioner that he thought his legacy would be "a time of transformation, hope, of genuine opportunity, a time when we deepened the bonds of freedom". The London Telegraph, November 10, 1999 Legacy Camdessus at the IMF: I Did It My Way, Too Just follow the money through Mexico, Asia, and Russia. ROME - Michel Camdessus, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund who steered the organization through the Asian financial crisis, announced his resignation Tuesday after more than 12 years in the job. Mr. Camdessus, 66, a former governor of the Bank of France, cited personal reasons for his departure, which is expected to take place early next year. ''My friends, this is the right time,'' Mr. Camdessus said in a letter to Fund board members. ''The world economic outlook allows us to anticipate favorable trends for the world economy. So I see it as my duty now to suggest that you take advantage of these favorable circumstances to select my replacement.'' His resignation had been rumored in recent months, but a spokesman for Mr. Camdessus denied it during the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in September. The resignation, although believed to be genuinely motivated by personal reasons, came after months of criticism of the IMF's handling of both the Asian crisis and the Fund's loan program for Russia. Mr. Camdessus a graduate of the elite Ecole Nationale d'Administration, the training school for French civil servants, also had been accused by his critics of being overly secretive and even authoritarian in the way he ran the IMF. He also was attacked for having failed to spot warning signs ahead of the Asian currency crisis, and for then pushing some Asian countries into recession by making bailouts conditional on their accepting painful austerity programs. But even his critics admitted that ultimately, Mr. Camdessus succeeded in steering the IMF through multiple crises, ranging from the Mexican crisis in 1995 to the Asian currency and financial crisis of 1997-98. Since last summer, the IMF has come under fire for its handing out of large loans to Russia despite allegations - unsubstantiated thus far - that Moscow might have misused or siphoned off as much as $4 billion of IMF money In September, Mr. Camdessus responded to critics by claiming that the IMF's Russia program was working well, that no evidence of wrongdoing had been found, and that Russia's economy was ''overperforming.'' On Tuesday, even before the official resignation, top officials began praising Mr. Camdessus. Lawrence Summers, the U.S. Treasury secretary, hailed Mr. Camdessus as having ''provided very important and valuable leadership on a range of issues from the Latin American debt crisis in the 1980s to the challenge of the transition of economies following the fall of the Berlin Wall to the emerging market challenges of recent years.'' Mr. Summers added that Mr. Camdessus had played a key role in working to engineer a debt-forgiveness program for some of the world's poorest nations. Speculation about who the new IMF boss will be has been under way for some weeks. The job normally goes to a European. Among those being mentioned are two Germans, Caio Koch-Weser, state secretary at the German Finance Ministry, and Horst Koehler, head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Also being mentioned are Mario Draghi, director-general of the Italian Treasury, Andrew Crockett, who heads the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland, and Jean-Claude Trichet, governor of the Bank of France. International Herald Tribune, November 10, 1999 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
