lloyd
Sun, 24 Sep 2000 08:08:51 -0700
-Caveat Lector- .............................................................. >From the New Paradigms Project [Not Necessarily Endorsed] Note: We store 100's of related "conspiracy posts" at: http://www.msen.com/~lloyd/oldprojects/recentmail.html From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Fw: Fw: Dick Cheney & Halliburton's Ties to Russian Mafia Oligarchs - 8Aug2000 Date: Sunday, August 27, 2000 1:23 AM From: Stefan Lemieszewski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Newsgroups: soc.culture.russian,soc.culture.usa,soc.culture.canada, soc.culture.ukrainian Subject: Dick Cheney & Halliburton's Ties to Russian Mafia Oligarchs - 8Aug2000 Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2000 12:42:07 -0700 Organization: Look Communications - http://www.look.ca The U.S. loan guarantees included $300 million for purchases from Cheney's Halliburton in partnership with Tyumen Oil, which was owned/controlled by Putin's government and "Russian oligarchs." "The Russian government at the time owned 49 percent of Tyumen, and two Russian oligarchs with close ties to President Vladimir Putin ran a bank that controlled much of the rest." Stefan Lemieszewski ==================================================== http://www.thenewrepublic.com/080700/kaplan080700.html The New Republic What Dick Cheney has been doing all these years. >From Russia With Loans By LAWRENCE F. KAPLAN Issue date: 08.07.00 One of the reasons George W. Bush chose Richard Cheney as his running mate is the foreign policy experience his father's secretary of defense brings to the ticket. And, by most accounts, Cheney was indeed an impressive defense secretary, presiding over American victories in Panama and Iraq. It's his foreign policy experience since he left the Pentagon that's problematic. Following a stint at the American Enterprise Institute, in 1995 Cheney became CEO of Halliburton Company, a major provider of energy services and products (oil-drilling equipment, for example). Halliburton didn't hire Cheney for his managerial skills alone. "Dick gives us a level of access that I doubt anyone else in the oil sector can duplicate," said one Halliburton executive. And, like a number of Bush père's other foreign policy counselors--including James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, and Lawrence Eagleburger--Cheney began prospecting for oil contracts in parts of the world once off-limits to American investors, namely the former Soviet Union. One of Halliburton's major areas of operation is the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. And, while the company's interests there derive from a single concern--beneath Azerbaijan lies one of the largest untapped oil reserves in the world--there's more to the country than just oil. Above ground, in fact, Azerbaijan is a complete mess. The country's president, Heydar Aliyev, deserves much of the blame. In 1993, the former Soviet Politburo member and head of the local KGB directed a coup against his country's elected president. He has held power ever since. Among other things, Aliyev has presided over the latter half of a vicious war and blockade against the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh and over the ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijan's Armenian population. According to Human Rights Watch, his tenure has been characterized by "the treason trials of President Heydar Aliyev's personal enemies, brutal treatment in detention, and continued repression of freedom of speech." Responding to such facts (and to lobbying by Armenian-Americans), Congress in 1992 passed legislation prohibiting the United States from providing official aid to Azerbaijan. Alas, the legislation seems not to have made the slightest impression on Cheney, who has become one of Aliyev's biggest backers in the United States, schmoozing with the aging dictator when he comes to Washington. "The average Halliburton hand," Cheney has said, "knows more about the world than the average member of Congress." So Cheney has tried to educate the poor saps. He's lobbied to repeal the aid embargo against Azerbaijan, fretting about the price "domestic constituencies" exact from American interests abroad. He's even denounced sanctions against Iran, complaining, "Our policy toward Iran contradicts our policy of encouraging the independence and sovereignty of the states of the Caspian region." Indeed, his efforts on behalf of Aliyev have been so impressive that, as well as being named honorary adviser to the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce, Cheney has been awarded its "Freedom Support Award." Cheney suggests that selling oil-drilling equipment to Azerbaijan furthers America's national interest by bolstering Azeri independence from Russia. But one of Halliburton's most recent ventures--in Russia, no less--was certified by the State Department as explicitly contravening U.S. national interest. More than 1,000 miles to the north of Azerbaijan, deep in western Siberia, lies the massive Samotlor oil field. Until last year, a Russian firm called Chernogreft controlled the northern part of the field, while another Russian company, Tyumen Oil, operated in its southern half. Along with Halliburton, Tyumen had been awaiting word from the U.S. Export-Import Bank on what would eventually amount to a $490 million loan guarantee, almost $300 million of which was to be used to support purchases of equipment from Halliburton. Last April, the Export-Import Bank--whose chairman, James Harmon, had been keeping Cheney apprised of the loan's progress--offered its preliminary approval. Then Tyumen went on a rampage. Flush with the prospect of the largest Ex-Im loan guarantee ever made to a Russian company, Tyumen's chairman, Simon Kukes, set about stripping his corporate neighbor to the north. Exactly how Kukes was able to snatch Chernogreft remains the subject of considerable disagreement. But this much, at least, is clear: Chernogreft's troubles began in early 1999, when an obscure company filed a suit against Chernogreft's parent company, calling in a $20,000 debt. Despite revenues of more than $1 billion per year, the parent company was subsequently declared bankrupt. A Russian court appointed insolvency managers, whom press reports have linked to Kukes, to oversee Chernogreft's finances. (Many of the region's power brokers are Kukes's associates--he has even appointed the mayor and governor of the area around Chernogreft as directors of Tyumen.) Aided by the bankruptcy managers, Kukes helped pay off some of Chernogreft's debts and effectively seized control of the firm. Before long, Chernogreft was no longer supplying oil to its parent company, which itself was now being harassed by Russian police raids and hit with government fines. (Kukes wasn't the only engine of the Chernogreft takeover. The Russian government at the time owned 49 percent of Tyumen, and two Russian oligarchs with close ties to President Vladimir Putin ran a bank that controlled much of the rest.) Finally, last November, Tyumen cleaned Chernogreft's bones. The billion-dollar company was auctioned off to Tyumen for $176 million. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development pronounced the sale "a sham" and "wholly contrary to the concepts of fairness and transparency." Reasonable people can disagree about how Cheney and Halliburton should have responded to well-publicized reports of corrupt practices by their Russian loan partner. On one hand, Tyumen's deal with Halliburton was to be guaranteed by American taxpayer money, and Halliburton officials were keenly aware of Tyumen's dubious conduct. On the other, the arrangement had been "baptized" by the Ex-Im Bank; bank chairman Harmon had traveled to Russia himself to meet with Tyumen officials. Unfortunately for Halliburton, a few weeks after Chernogreft's destruction, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright--now armed with a CIA report detailing Tyumen's corrupt practices--invoked a seldom-used State Department prerogative and ordered the Ex-Im Bank to suspend approval of the loan. The guarantee, she wrote, ran counter to America's "national interest." According to Stephen Sestanovich, the State Department's ambassador-at-large for the newly independent states, the issue was "serious allegations concerning abuse of investor rights by Tyumen Oil." In fact, even George W. called on the administration to halt Ex-Im loans to Moscow. But, if Tyumen's conduct prior to the State Department's intervention didn't give anyone at Halliburton pause--and sources there say it did not--neither did the full force of the U.S. government. On the contrary, lobbyists whom Cheney had dispatched to Capitol Hill continued to press Halliburton's case. They lobbied, among others, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell and staffers on the Senate and House Appropriations Committees. (British Petroleum and George Soros joined the battle on the opposite side. Both owned a stake in Chernogreft.) Tyumen itself, meanwhile, employed Aken, Gump and Strauss to make its half of the case. Congressional opposition to the State Department's veto quickly began to mount. In response to the loan suspension, moreover, Tyumen had by this time agreed to return Chernogreft to its rightful owners--in exchange for a sizable share of the company. In the end, Albright relented, and in April of this year the Ex-Im Bank approved the loan guarantees. "This is exactly the type of project we should be encouraging if Russia is to succeed in reforming its economy," Cheney declared. Today Halliburton is Russia's largest provider of oil services. Cheney, to be fair, never intended to return to elective office. Indeed, when Bush asked him four months ago whether he was interested in the vice presidency, Cheney said no--so Bush asked him to head up the veep search. But, now that Cheney is on the ticket, his Halliburton days raise serious questions. Someone, it seems, forgot to vet the vetter. LAWRENCE F. KAPLAN is executive editor of The National Interest. ======================================================== From: Stefan Lemieszewski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Newsgroups: soc.culture.russian,soc.culture.usa,soc.culture.ukrainian Subject: Dick Cheney - Russian Mafia Oligarchs - Alpha Bank & Drug Trafficking - Moscow News - 3Aug2000 Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2000 21:37:46 -0700 Organization: Look Communications - http://www.look.ca http://www.moscowtimes.ru/03-Aug-2000/stories/story1.html Moscow Times August 3, 2000 Cheney Shares Close Ties To Russia By Catherine Belton Staff Writer Dick Cheney, the old-school conservative Republican running for vice president of the United States, might just have one thing in common with Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore -- a controversial history of relations with Russia. As CEO of Halliburton company, one of the world's leading energy service companies, former Defense Secretary Cheney has lobbied strongly for favors for lucrative projects in Russia and the oil-rich Caspian region f even if, in at least one instance, they have been declared against the national interest. He is said to have been a key powerbroker in procuring $489 million in loan guarantees from the U.S. Export-Import Bank last year for Tyumen Oil Co., or TNK, at a time when Russian-U.S. relations were rapidly turning sour, in part over Russia's war in Chechnya. To make matters worse, TNK was accused at the time of treading all over shareholders rights and is now embroiled in allegations that some of its owners are suspected of trafficking in drugs. Even as Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush has criticized Gore for providing billions of dollars in financial aid for Russia, it now seems he has a running mate who used his clout to get U.S. taxpayers' money for Russia. "There is a huge paradox and contradiction between what Cheney has been doing personally and what Bush has been saying during the campaign," said Michael McFaul, a U.S. Russia policy observer at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Bush's foreign policy adviser Kondoleeza Rice has basically been saying there should be no money for Russia because it is a criminal state. And now they have Cheney on board who is deeply involved with Russia." A report commissioned by the Republicans into President Bill Clinton's administration's Russia policy was expected to be released last week. But it has now been postponed until September, according to a spokesman for Representative Christopher Cox, who is in charge of writing it. Gore has long been under fire from the Republicans for overseeing ties with Russia at a time when the United States poured billions of dollars in International Monetary Fund and World Bank loans into Russia only to see its economy collapse in August 1998. Reports of widespread Russian corruption involving possible misuse of IMF loans and of the billions of dollars fleeing Russia monthly for safe bank accounts in Switzerland have only further undermined Gore's position as a close associate of former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had put the brakes on the Ex-Im Bank loan guarantee late last year "in the interests of national security." The State Department had moved to stop the deal after TNK aggressively took over Chernogorneft, a key subsidiary of Russian oil major Sidanko, treading hard on the toes of Sidanko's major foreign shareholder BP Amoco. BP Amoco cried foul. It claimed TNK's takeover of the company was a blow to foreign investors' rights in Russia and that the company had manipulated the legal system to its own advantage even as it infringed on shareholder rights. BP Amoco launched its own extensive lobbying campaign in Washington to block the Ex-Im Bank loan. It was widely reported that BP Amoco had commissioned an investigation into TNK's activities and handed it over to the CIA for perusal. A State Department official, however, said in a telephone interview Tuesday that she was not aware of that report's existence. But TNK had a few tricks up its sleeve f and one of them was Dick Cheney. Most of the Ex-Im Bank loan guarantee, $292 million, was to go toward buying equipment from Halliburton to develop TNK's Samotlor oil field. A TNK official confirmed Wednesday that Cheney was key in finally pushing through the deal for a signing in April this year after more than three months in limbo. "It is common knowledge that the CEO of Halliburton took a number of major steps in order to get the guarantees," said Andrei Krivorotov, TNK chief spokesman. "He undertook a very strong lobbying campaign." "Halliburton was very interested in getting the contract of almost $300 million. He worked through several channels through his contacts on the Hill [in Congress]," he said. Cheney served in the U.S. Congress from 1979 to 1989 before becoming defense secretary under President George Bush. According to U.S. Federal Election Committee data published on the web site of the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, when Cheney took over the management of Halliburton its political contributions to Washington soared, especially to the Republicans. Since Cheney became CEO in 1995, the company has donated $1.2 million to candidates and parties, the center's data shows. In the five years before his arrival, the company had given $534,750. Halliburton appears to have reaped some dividends. Under Cheney, the company has received guarantees or direct loans from state financial institutions like Ex-Im Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corp. and the Trade and Development Agency worth up to $1.5 billion, the Center for Public Integrity, a journalistic watchdog foundation renowned for its investigative reporting, said Wednesday. Ultimate approval for loans from these institutions lies with Congress. Many of those projects are in Russia and the other republics of the former Soviet Union. The Trade and Development Agency has funded Halliburton subsidiaries for a number of projects, including a $500,000 grant for converting the Severodvinsk shipyard, and $400,000 to produce pump trucks for the Russia oil industry, according to TDA data obtained by The Moscow Times. Halliburton is also sitting pretty in the oil-rich Caspian region. It has a major engineering contract with the head of the Caspian Consortium, BP Amoco, the company's project manager for Baku, K.C. Tsent, said in a telephone interview from Halliburton's Baku office. Cheney has played such a prominent role in the region that he has been named an honorary adviser to the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. Before Cheney headed Halliburton, it gained just around $100 million in government loans and guarantees, the Center for Public Integrity reported. Cheney's links with TNK might now come back to haunt him following the publication late Wednesday of a report citing U.S. and Russian intelligence sources that links a major shareholder of TNK, the Alfa Group, a leading financial-industrial holding, with trafficking drugs from Central Asia and the Far East into Europe. Alfa Group hotly denies these claims. The report published by the Center for Public Integrity late Wednesday cited a U.S. intelligence report based on an interview with an unidentified former KGB officer as saying that Alfa Bank and its trading arm Alfa Eko "had been deeply involved in the early '90s in the laundering of Russian and Columbian money and in the trafficking of drugs from the Far East to Europe." The report is almost identical to claims made by Communist Duma Deputy Viktor Ilyukhin in 1997 in a letter addressed to then-Interior Minister Anatoly Kulikov requesting an investigation into allegations the co-heads of Alfa Group, Pyotr Aven and Mikhail Fridman, "participated in the transit of drugs from Southeast Asia through Russia and into Europe." In that letter, a copy of which has been obtained by The Moscow Times, Ilyukhin cited information based on anonymous sources in the Federal Security Service. In a telephone interview Wednesday, Aven denounced those reports as being "a 100 percent lie," "a total lie" and "a complete lie." ============================================================= From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Viktor Olevich) Newsgroups: soc.culture.russian Subject: Russia Is an Eco-Disaster, and It Just Got Worse Date: 11 Jul 2000 20:16:03 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Washington Post 9 July 2000 Russia Is an Eco-Disaster, and It Just Got Worse By Mark Hertsgaard ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Mark Hertsgaard is the author of "Earth Odyssey: Around the World in Search of Our Environmental Future" (Broadway Books). A couple of months ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin abolished his country's environmental protection agency--a decision that bodes ill not only for the people and ecosystems of one of the world's most polluted nations, but also for the security and environmental health of the entire world. Yet Putin's action has attracted virtually no attention from Western politicians or news organizations. Acting by decree and without explanation, Putin shut down the State Committee for Environmental Protection on May 17 and transferred its responsibilities to the Natural Resources Agency, the government body that licenses the development of Russia's vast stores of petroleum and minerals. After eliminating the State Committee on Forestry, Putin completed his governmental reorganization by naming Alexander Gavrin, who has close ties to the country's biggest oil producer, Lukoil, as energy minister. In short, Putin has put industrial foxes in charge of the environmental henhouse. The State Committee for Environmental Protection had neither the power nor the status of its American counterpart, the Environmental Protection Agency. Created as a cabinet-level body under Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, the Ministry of the Environment was downgraded to a mere State Committee in 1996 by the newly reelected Boris Yeltsin. But many Russian environmentalists point out that the committee played a positive role in some cases--it helped the Russian environmental law firm Ecojuris stop Exxon from dumping toxic waste from oil drilling into the seas off the Sakhalin peninsula, for example. Despite their frequent criticisms of the committee's inadequacies, alarmed activists are now gathering signatures to force a national referendum on Putin's decree. "Even a shabby State Committee for the Environment is better than no environmental monitoring body whatsoever," argues Greenpeace Russia spokesman Alexander Shuvalov. Victor Danilov-Danilyan, who headed the committee when it was abolished, notes that 61 million Russians already live under environmentally dangerous conditions. In 120 Russian cities, air pollution levels are five times higher than acceptable, according to Russia's own standards. One million tons of oil--the equivalent of 25 Exxon Valdez spills--leak out of pipelines and into Russia's soil and water every month. The Russian news agency Tass reports that 30 percent of Chechnya is an ecological disaster zone, thanks in part to the 26 oil wells that have been on fire nonstop for months. Nevertheless, one day after Putin's announcement, the Natural Resources Agency declared it planned to "simplify" rules governing environmental behavior in Russia. Logging policy in particular is slated for overhaul. Russia contains 22 percent of the world's forests--more than any other nation. With help from a $60 million loan from the World Bank, the Putin government plans to improve the investment climate for logging in Russia. Leveling Russia's vast forests will speed the extinction of countless plant and animal species; it will also remove a major source of fresh air and water and a counter to global warming. Nowhere are Putin's actions more frightening, though, than with respect to nuclear technology. The State Committee for Environmental Protection did not directly oversee Russia's nuclear industrial complex, but Putin's business-first attitude seems certain to carry over to nuclear policy. Not one of Russia's 29 nuclear power plants has a complete safety certificate; many have been cited for hundreds of violations. Yet Putin's minister for atomic energy, Yevgeny Adamov, wants to build 23 more nuclear power plants, plus another 40 advanced, "fast breeder" reactors. Breeders rely on plutonium, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons. To have plutonium shipments crisscrossing Russia, where the rule of law is weak at best, is a recipe for catastrophe. One hijacking--or an inside job by workers vulnerable to temptation after months of unpaid wages--could give a terrorist group enough raw material to hold whole cities hostage. Adamov says fast breeder reactors will make Russia rich, which is the same reason he offers for changing Russia's laws to allow the import of tons of nuclear waste--as if Russia isn't already choking on the stuff. Instead of abolishing the State Committee, Putin should have strengthened it to address the dangers posed by his country's nuclear pollution and security. The infamous Chernobyl accident of 1986 took place in the Ukraine, of course, not in Russia, but its radioactivity continues to increase the risk of cancer and endanger human health throughout the region. Many of Russia's nuclear plants rely on the same technology as the Chernobyl facility. Less well-known is the still unfolding crisis near the western Siberian city of Chelyabinsk. The Mayak complex 50 miles north of Chelyabinsk was the heart of the Soviet nuclear weapons production system throughout the Cold War. Three disasters with Mayak's nuclear waste--in 1946, 1957 and 1967--have caused cumulative damages comparable to, and probably worse than, the Chernobyl meltdown. Even today, some 100 million curies of radioactivity, including six Chernobyls' worth of strontium 90 and cesium 137, remain in Mayak's Lake Karachay, which scientists from the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council have called "the most polluted spot on Earth." The groundwater is already contaminated, and the area is subject to cyclones and earthquakes that could further spread the radioactivity. Rivaling Chelyabinsk is the Kola Peninsula in northwestern Russia, near the border with Norway. During the Cold War, the harbors of Kola were home to the Soviet Union's Northern Fleet, which dumped used submarine reactors, spent fuel and other nuclear debris into the sea with abandon. The waters now contain two-thirds of all the nuclear waste dumped into the world's oceans. The problems at Kola came to light through the work of Alexander Nikitin, a former naval captain who co-authored with the Bellona Foundation, a Norwegian environmental group, a report documenting the potential for trouble. Though Nikitin's report relied only on previously published information, the Federal Security Police (FSB) arrested him in 1996 and imprisoned him on charges of treason and divulging state secrets. He was acquitted last December. Putin, who headed the FSB in 1998 and 1999, defended the FSB's aggressive stance toward Nikitin and other environmentalists, asserting last year that environmental groups provide convenient cover for foreign spies. But Putin's May 17 decree suggests that his real concern is not that environmentalists will compromise state security, but that their efforts will elevate ecological purity over the speedy resource development that the Russian leader believes his country needs. There is still time for Putin to reverse his anti-environmental initiatives. When biologist Alexei Yablokov, a leading figure in Russia's environmental movement, gave Putin a letter from members of the Russian Academy of Sciences urging restoration of the State Committee, the Russian president responded that he would think about it. But he assigned the review of his decision to Boris Yatskevich, who, as minister of natural resources, is unlikely to reverse course without pressure. Russian environmentalists, with their referendum drive, are doing their part. Outsiders, alas, are not. So far, the only official criticism of Putin's decree has been an "expression of concern" endorsed by the environmental ministers of the Nordic countries at a meeting last month. President Clinton declined to raise the subject in his speech to the Russian Duma in June. Surely the elimination of environmental oversight in one of the most polluted, militarily potent nations on earth deserves more attention than that. =========================================================== From: redflag <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Organization: Red Flag Enterprise Newsgroups: talk.politics.soviet Subject: The "New" Republican Party Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 21:26:02 -0400 THE PEOPLE SEPTEMBER 2000 VOL. 110 NO. 6 'NEW' REPUBLICAN PARTY OFFERS NOTHING FOR WORKERS BY KEN BOETTCHER Republican Party convention planners, with nearly $70 million at their disposal thanks to the party's corporate sponsors, produced a four-day fete last month that attempted to cast a new image for the Grand Old Party. The strident tones of the reactionary right, so prevalent in GOP conventions of the past two decades, were hushed in favor of the sights and sounds of "inclusion" and even of "reform." Television cameras sought out every minority face in the hall--a mere 7 percent of delegates by one count. Entertainment before the main speeches included, as one observer wrote, "a rhythm and blues break dance team and a gospel choir." Women and children were everywhere. The idea, of course, was to smooth the road ahead for the candidates the convention was assembled to rubber stamp. To gain more widespread appeal, an attempt was made to alienate fewer women and minority workers by avoiding the worn-out rhetorical appeals to "family values" and property interests that were so prevalent in past conventions. Those appeals often barely covered a homophobic or xenophobic bigotry and Victorian zeal whose promotion nationwide helped boost a virulent strain of anti-immigrant, antiabortion and homophobic hooliganism that still contributes to tragic consequences on the U.S. social scene. The ultimate goal was to pull the wool over more workers' eyes and make more believe that the Republican Party had changed its spots, that it now in some way best represents the interests of all workers. But the acceptance speech of George W. Bush Jr., the man convention delegates nominated as the party's presidential candidate, made it clear that, as the Roman poet Horace might have put it, despite laboring mightily the "mountain" of the convention brought forth a mouse. To any clear-thinking worker the party's big bash delivered up NOTHING AT ALL that promoted working-class interests. Bush spoke of "fixing" the so-called Social Security system. Social Security has never been the boon for the elderly and disabled its defenders often make it out to be. Still, weakening it by encouraging younger workers to opt out of the system and purchase far riskier stocks instead would merely bring the whole shaky Social Security system closer to collapse. While Social Security always served the interest of the capitalist class by bolstering support for its system of exploitation, bankrupting it would make life more miserable for millions of retired and handicapped workers. Bush also spoke of promoting vouchers for private schools-- something that could bring more chaos to the nation's PUBLIC schools, which would receive correspondingly less federal money. The public schools have also always served the interests of the capitalist class, teaching primarily with capitalist-produced materials in capitalist-approved curricula using capitalist- approved methods. Nevertheless, public schools still represent a social gain--EDUCATION FOR MOST, IF NOT ALL--over no schools or private schools that are free to exclude on whatever basis they wish. Vouchers risk that social gain. Bush proclaimed the need--and his intent to pursue funding--for a national missile defense system, a system costing tens if not hundreds of billions that will not only spur the waste of vast resources on militaristic ends, but could dangerously escalate the now smoldering arms race. The GOP presidential hopeful proclaimed the need for tax relief and then pointed a finger at the inheritance tax as the first instance of the tax laws he would work to end. Yet workers seldom have anything left to pass on to their children except good advice. The capitalist class will exclusively benefit from the abolition of this tax. In fact, the capitalist class benefits foremost from any tax reduction. Workers can only benefit temporarily from such reductions, since their wages are roughly equivalent to the cost of production of labor power--including food, shelter, clothing, education and the like, AND ANY TAXES WORKERS MUST PAY-- moderated by supply and demand. Reduce the taxes "paid" by workers, and wages will eventually drop to account for the changed cost of production. Bush said he would work to reduce taxes on the poorest workers. This would be just wonderful--if wage reductions didn't eventually follow such tax reductions. The most workers could hope for is a few months of "tax relief" before wage reductions equalize their changed costs of production. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" includes, according to his acceptance speech, tax credits to ostensibly help low-income workers purchase homes. It includes tax credits for workers to support their favorite "antipoverty" charity's inadequate efforts to help the millions tossed off the welfare rolls by capitalism's compassionate "welfare reform." But, again, these tax credits, like all other tax credits and reductions, will eventually accrue to the benefit of the capitalist class via pay reductions for the workers they exploit. "Compassionate conservatism" apparently has much more to do with compassion for capitalists than for workers. Of course, Bush would have American workers believe otherwise. "Now is the time to give American workers security and independence that no politician can ever take away," said Bush in his speech--three times. But even if the Republican Party had anything meaningful to "give" to workers, ANYTHING POLITICIANS GIVE THEY CAN JUST AS EASILY TAKE AWAY. American workers cannot have "security and independence" given to them. Capitalism, the system under which we presently live, is built on private ownership of the means of life and production for the private profit of the tiny minority class that does the owning. It is therefore built on the exploitation and impoverishment of the working class. Under this system, competing companies must increasingly automate and throw more labor out of the productive process. They win their competitive battles by squeezing workers for less pay and more work in a thousand and one ways, aimed at underpricing their competitors in the marketplace and realizing profit by selling the goods their workers produce. The richer the capitalists get, the poorer must the working class collectively become. Workers have but one hope for real economic security and independence. They must organize in the industries and services to take, hold and operate those means of life, built by their collective labor and that of their forebears, collectively and democratically in the interest of all society. Bush claimed that the Clinton "administration had its chance. They have not led. We will." He was right about the Democrats. But the Republican Party has NOTHING to offer workers either. Both parties have had their chance at addressing the concerns of workers--falling real wages, economic insecurity, unemployment, poverty, racism, sexism, social violence, militarism, the worsening environment and a plethora of other unsolved problems brought on by the capitalist system to which both parties are totally committed. Reform after reform ostensibly intended to solve these problems has led instead to their continued and worsening existence. To paraphrase the lackluster Mr. Bush with the proper spin, THE CAPITALIST PARTIES HAVE HAD THEIR CHANCE. They have failed. Workers themselves must now act, in their own collective interest, to fundamentally reconstruct society along the socialist lines of economic democracy, the only road to peace, freedom and abundance. -- "Nowadays, atheism is itself *culpa levis*, as compared with criticism of existing property relations." Access The People on-line by using our gopher on the Internet at gopher://gopher.slp.org:7019 Access our web page at http://www.slp.org ============================================================ From: Stefan Lemieszewski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Newsgroups: soc.culture.russian Subject: Fighting Organized Crime over the Internet - Russiangate Database Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 21:33:06 -0700 FWD from JRL [ www.flb.ru ] ====================== BBC MONITORING RUSSIAN WEB SITE TO PUBLISH EXTENSIVE "RUSSIAGATE" DATABASE Source: `Nezavisimaya Gazeta', Moscow, in Russian 4 Jul 00 The Internet site of a private journalists' organization is about to publish almost 600 files containing transcripts of telephone conversations, pager messages, results of "surveillance", and "operations reports" on hundreds of Russian politicians, businessmen, journalists, actors, public figures, and criminals. The files contains not only material "gathered" by private special services but also data from the regional administration for combating organized crime, the Federal Security Service directorate for Moscow and Moscow Region, and the Moscow city hall Moscow Regional analysis centre. The following is text of report by the Russian newspaper 'Nezavisimaya Gazeta' on 4th July: The Internet site of the private journalists' organization Agentstvo Federalnykh Rassledovaniy [Federal Investigation Agency] at www.flb.ru will tonight publish almost 600 files running to approximately 20,000 typewritten pages: transcripts of telephone conversations, pager messages, results of "surveillance", and "operations reports" on hundreds of Russian politicians, businessmen, journalists, actors, public figures, and criminals. The site's chief editor Sergey Sokolov describes the imminent publication as nothing less than "Russiagate". His editorial office acquired this database some six weeks ago for a rather sizable amount and has spent all this time preparing it for publication, arranging material in alphabetical order and deleting from the files the home addresses, home and mobile telephone numbers, and passport details of more than 300 individuals who are well known across Russia. Furthermore, details of any sexual liaisons and "other dirty linen" were also deleted. Today it is already possible to read the transcripts of telephone conversations by Alfred Kokh, former chairman of the State Committee for the Management of State Property; former Deputy Finance Ministers Aleksey Kudrin and Andrey Vavilov; Moscow Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov; Yuriy Chayka, former deputy general prosecutor of the Russian Federation; Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoy; Information and Press Minister Mikhail Lesin; Anatoliy Lysenko, former Moscow Government minister of information and press; Unexim Group President Vladimir Potanin; financiers Arkadiy Yevsafyev, Mikhail Fridman, Boris Jordan, and Boris Ivanishvili; State Duma Deputy Aleksandr Korzhakov; and so on. Journalists Mikhail Leontyev, Sergey Dorenko, Aleksandr Khinshteyn, and Yelena Erikssen were being thoroughly bugged and shadowed. There was only slightly less keen interest in Natalya Gevorkyan, Lev Kolodnyy, Vladimir Yakovlev, Aleksandr Minkin, Aleksandr Budberg, and Nikolay Dolgopolov. `Kommersant''s former chief editor Raf Shakirov was actually "under surveillance" and the results of this surveillance are cited. TV-6 President Eduard Sagalayev; ATV head Anatoliy Malkin; producer Nikolay Dostal; actors Oleg Basilashvili and Leonid Yarmolnik; and several dozen other personalities of sociopolitical life were bugged as interlocutors of Anatoliy Lysenko. All the material refers to the period from the early 1990's through the end of 1998. Scandalous episodes from recent Russian history are most fully "represented": The so-called "writers case" involving the royalties for the book "History of Privatization in Russia" by Anatoliy Chubays, Alfred Kokh, Maksim Boyko, and Aleksandr Kazakov; the story involving the publication of the book "From Dawn to Sunset" [Ot Rassveta do Zakata] by Aleksandr Korzhakov; the story about the building of Anatoliy Chubays' dacha in the settlement of Zhavoronki; and the story about erotic adventures at the Unexim Bank's Luzhki recreation facility. The material about the late Mikhail Manevich, who was chairman of the Committee for the Management of St Petersburg Property, even contains a brief "operations report" on Vladimir Putin. The flb.ru editorial office has acquired material of this kind running to a total of 90 megabytes. Less than one-half of the data is being published after the culling. The site will eventually publish material under the "Find Your Bug" rubric. This will comprise transcripts of telephone conversation by hitherto unidentified but obviously high-ranking individuals who, apart from all else, say that they are "on the way to the White House", have "just come out of a conference with Chernomyrdin", and so on. In Sergey Sokolov's words, this database appeared in Moscow towards the end of 1998 and was offered for sale for 50,000 dollars. `Nezavisimaya Gazeta' wrote about this back on 2nd October last year. Journalists codenamed it "MOST security service database". But Sergey Sokolov believes that this is a consolidated database. It contains not only material "gathered" by private special services but also data from the regional administration for combating organized crime, the Federal Security Service directorate for Moscow and Moscow Region, and the Moscow city hall Moscow Regional analysis centre. Its only link with MOST is the time of its appearance: Major staff cutbacks occurred at the MOST Group's security department just a month before the database was "offered for sale". In addition, the database also contains several files of internal reports and official correspondence from within that security department. Over a two-year period the price of the information being published by flb.ru today fell almost tenfold and individual files could have been bought for 200 dollars each. Sergey Sokolov emphasized in an interview with `Nezavisimaya Gazeta' that his publication is in no way a targeted "leak" of compromising material but simply an attempt to submit for the public's judgment a picture of massive illegal interference in citizens' private lives. Furthermore, Mr Sokolov said, people would be quite interested in finding out how representatives of big business sort out their personal financial affairs cynically and with impunity with help from their friends in ministries and state departments. =============================================================== From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Farhan Siddiqui) Newsgroups: soc.culture.europe,soc.culture.usa,soc.culture.russian, soc.culture.british,soc.culture.canada,soc.culture.german, soc.culture.french Subject: US-UK bombing killing Iraqi civilians Date: Tue, 04 Jul 2000 01:05:54 GMT Organization: @Home Network Canada Death from the skies Civilians in Iraq are falling prey to the continuing British and US air operations over their country Suddenly out of a clear blue sky, the forgotten war being waged by the United States and Britain over Iraq visited its lethal routine on the shepherds and farmers of Toq al-Ghazalat about 10:30 am on May 17. Omran Harbi Jawair, 13, was squatting on his haunches at the time, watching the family sheep as they nosed the hard, flat ground in search of grass. Omran, who liked to kick a soccer ball around this dusty village, had just finished fifth grade at the little school a 15-minute walk from his mud-brick home. A shepherd boy's summer vacation lay ahead. That is when the missile landed. Without warning, according to several youths standing nearby, the device came crashing down in an open field 200 yards from the dozen houses of Toq al-Ghazalat. A deafening explosion cracked across the silent land. Shrapnel flew in every direction. Four shepherds were wounded. And Omran, the others recalled, lay dead in the dirt, most of his head torn off. ''He was only 13 years old, but he was a good boy,'' sobbed Omran's father, Harbi Jawair, 61. What happened four weeks ago at Toq al-Ghazalat, 35 miles southwest of Najaf in southern Iraq, has become a recurring event in the Iraqi countryside. A week of conversations with wounded Iraqis and the families of those killed, around Najaf and in northern Iraq around Mosul, showed that civilian deaths and injuries are a regular part of the little-discussed US and British air operation over Iraq. Lt Gen Yassin Jassem, spokesman for Iraq's air defense command, said about 300 Iraqis have been killed and more than 800 wounded by US and British retaliatory attacks in the 18 months since President Saddam Hussein ordered his anti aircraft batteries to fire on allied warplanes enforcing ''no-fly'' zones in northern and southern Iraq. Of those killed, Jassem said in an interview, ''well more'' than 200 were civilians like Omran Harbi Juwair, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Iraqi death toll has been substantiated in part by a UN survey that examined some incidents independently and accepted Iraqi reports on others. While inconclusive on the overall toll, interviews and observations during lengthy drives through the regions where airstrikes have often been reported backed up the government's contention that civilian casualties have become routine. US and British warplanes enforcing the zones were heard almost daily crisscrossing the skies, although they were invisible flying at more than 20,000 feet. The Iraqi air defense command says it has detected penetrations into Iraqi airspace by more than 21,600 US and British warplanes since December 1998, when Iraqis started opposing the patrols with anti aircraft fire. The sustained military operation results in bomb or missile attacks on an average of once every three days. The Pentagon says more than 280,000 sorties have been flown in the near decade since the no-fly zones were imposed, without a single loss of aircraft to hostile fire. Visits to a dozen airstrike sites, chosen by this correspondent, showed that Iraqi anti aircraft equipment is sometimes installed near towns and villages. That increases chances of civilians being hurt or killed when allied planes retaliate. But the travels showed that air attacks also have occurred in vast, open fields or grazing grounds - such as in the strike at Toq al-Ghazalat - with no signs of any military target present or having been present near the sheep and the boys who tend them. The mounting toll - averaging one civilian death every other day, by Iraq's count - has prompted France to freeze participation in enforcing the no-fly zones. It has generated growing protests from Russia and left neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Turkey increasingly uneasy about continuing to provide air bases for the US and British enforcement aircraft. The US-led air campaign over Iraq has been underway since shortly after the Persian Gulf War in 1991, but civilian casualties began to mount after Operation Desert Fox in December 1998 - a 70-hour US bombing campaign against targets across Iraq to retaliate for the government's refusal to cooperate with UN weapons inspectors. Iraqi air defenses received orders after that campaign to fire on US and British patrols, drawing retaliatory airstrikes. ''That was a watershed,'' Riyadh Qaysi, undersecretary in the Foreign Ministry, said in an interview. Previously, US and British aircraft were rarely challenged. When they were, pilots replied to the source of the challenge, usually with AGM-88 HARM missiles that homed in on the radars that guide anti aircraft missiles. But after Iraq's decision to challenge patrols regularly, US forces were authorized to attack any Iraqi air defense target - even unconnected to a specific attack, or at a time well after any challenge - in retaliation for anti aircraft fire, radar illumination or missile launch.The US and its allies first imposed the northern no-fly zone in April 1991, six weeks after the end of Operation Desert Storm, citing a need to protect northern Iraq's Kurdish population after an uprising against the Baghdad government. They imposed the southern no-fly zone in August 1992, citing a similar need to protect southern Iraq's largely Shiite Muslim population, which also had risen up against Saddam Hussein immediately after his defeat in the Gulf War. The northern operation, based at Incirlik, Turkey, banned Iraqi flights north of the 36th parallel, which runs just south of Mosul. The southern operation, enforced by planes based in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and aboard US aircraft carriers in the gulf, banned Iraqi flights south of the 32nd parallel. President Clinton ordered the southern no-fly zone widened to the 33rd parallel in 1996, after Iraqi forces intervened in clashes between two Kurdish guerrilla bands in northern Iraq. That gesture brought the southern ban right to the outskirts of Baghdad and left 60 per cent of the country off-limits to Iraqi planes. Since they were imposed, the no-fly zones have become more than just a means to protect restive Kurds or Shiites from retribution. According to officials in Washington, the Clinton administration also sees them as a tool to contain and degrade the Iraqi military, humiliate Saddam Hussein and perhaps generate opposition to his rule. ''I was thrown to the ground and covered with dirt,'' recalled Ziad Ibrahim Taha, a 50-year-old shepherd. ''Then another blast. It lifted me right up into the air.'' Taha was with scores of people on a broad, flat expanse of open land 45 miles west of Mosul just before 10 am on May 12 of last year. As he and others in the nearby village of Abu Auani recalled it, two, perhaps three warplanes made repeated passes over the congregated villagers, firing missiles and raking the area with machine guns. According to Iraqi authorities, 14 people were killed on the spot and five more died later from their injuries. Forty-six people were wounded and several hundred sheep were killed. Taha's right leg was injured at the ankle. Two of his sons, Mohammed, 24, and Ahmed, 20, were killed, leaving him with one remaining son. ''They are trying to destroy the Islamic people,'' Taha responded when asked what lay behind the attack. Taha and others in Abu Auani said a group of youths were tending 400 head of sheep that morning and had taken refuge from the searing sun in a goatskin tent pitched on the grazing range less than a mile from the village of 500 residents. Older people remained at home, tending to their affairs. Then, Taha said, he heard the tremendous crash of an exploding missile coming from the direction of the grazing range. Alarmed, he and others from the village ran to the site. What they found, Taha said, was carnage. Many sheep lay dead or dying. Several of the young shepherds were killed or wounded. As the wounded boys were carried away and owners began to slaughter their injured sheep and round up those that had fled, the number of rescuers and onlookers grew. ''When all the people were there together, another plane came, and another missile came down,'' he recalled. Nine missiles were fired in all, as best as he can remember, over an area of about 200 square yards. Hama Mahmoud Ahmed, 20, a soldier home on leave in Abu Auani, said he was in the goatskin tent when the first missile hit. Pandemonium broke out almost immediately, he recalled, and the situation became total chaos as the second, third and fourth missiles came down. ''I was running away carrying a wounded boy on my shoulder,'' he said. ''But the boy got cut through his stomach. Another boy I saw nearby got his head cut off.'' Ahmed himself received a piece of shrapnel through his left shoulder, leaving thick welts of scar tissue and withered muscles unable to fully lift the arm below. He was luckier than Raha Khader Ibrahim, 18, whose left arm was severed by a fragment just below the shoulder. The attack at Abu Auani was one of the few in which the US military has acknowledged an error. A communique from Incirlik Air Base that day said Operation Northern Watch aircraft were targeted by Iraqi radar and fired on by anti aircraft artillery, generating a response with AGM-88 and AGM-130 missiles and GBU-12 and GBU-15 precision-guided bombs. ''Results of the strike are still being assessed,'' the communique continued. ''However, a review of post-strike data indicates that one of the targets, believed to have been a surface-to-air missile site, now appears to have been a nomadic camp with a number of livestock in the area. Every effort is taken to avoid any collateral damage to civilians and civilian property. Ultimate responsibility, however, lies with Saddam Hussein.'' US officials have stressed that, although they seek to avoid civilian casualties, Iraq installs air defense equipment near civilian-inhabited areas in an effort to make civilian casualties more likely, generating news coverage and, Iraqi officials hope, more international opposition to the no-fly zones. In addition, US and UN officials have maintained that some casualties probably have been caused by Iraqi anti aircraft fire falling back to earth. Finally, the US and British governments have stressed that the airstrikes would be unnecessary if Iraq stopped firing at the US and British planes in its airspace. Jassem, the Iraqi air defense command spokesman, offered a theory that the civilian deaths and injuries occur in part because US pilots, who fly most strike missions, may have targeting data that confuse military equipment with farm machinery, such as large harvesters, or tents and big herds of sheep. And Jassem had another suggestion: Maybe, he said, some pilots fear flying near anti aircraft batteries and loose their munitions at what they hope is empty terrain. The airstrikes leave behind a lethal litter that could claim civilian casualties for years. In Rihaniyah, a farm village of 650 people 25 miles west of Mosul, most people were still indoors at 9:30 am on May 28, sheltered from the heat. But some boys went out to wander. Wearing the scruffy shirts and baggy, dusty pants of northern Iraqi peasant boys, they left home ready for fun. What they found instead was death and injury. Saoud Nouri Jassem, 12, Khalis Abdullah Jassem, 15, and Ahmed Omar Abdullah, 15, were killed. Fadhli Abdullah Jassem, 10, and Muzhir Abdullah Jassem, 9, were hospitalized and still carry their wounds. At the edge of the village, they picked up an unexploded piece of munition. It may have been one of the many fragments spit out by bombs and missiles from US aircraft to destroy Iraqi anti aircraft equipment. Or it may have been one of the many cannon rounds and missiles fired by Iraqi anti aircraft batteries. Whatever its origin, the fragment exploded as the boys were bringing their find to the centre of the village. ''The explosion woke me up,'' recalled Raha Nouri Jassem, 20, who looked over the edge of his roof as soon as he heard what happened, then piled downstairs in a panic. ''I ran over there and found them on the ground. Two of them were already dead, and another one died in the hospital.'' Although the Iraqi government emphasizes casualties among civilians, it was clear at Bashiqah, a town 18 miles east of Mosul that positioning anti aircraft emplacements near houses and towns also contributes to the toll. The danger was far from the minds of two friends, Mowafaq Atu Hathar, 23, and Shuthar Shukri Elias, 22, as they worked on a new cinder block house last August 23 on the edge of Bashiqah. Hathar was particularly glad for the work. His father had no job. Those in the family, mainly his parents and his own wife and children, depended on his income for a living. That was the way things stood when a missile came down just behind the house, killing Hathar and his friend. Since then, the would-be owner has sealed the entrance and stopped construction, convinced that no good can come of finishing a house where something so horrible happened. And the family has come to depend on donations. The missiles have continued to crash down around Bashiqah, where Iraqi anti aircraft installations are visible at two sites several hundred yards from town. An attack on May 29, Kithir Hathar, Atu Hathars mother recalled, sent ragged fragments six inches long clanging up against her home in the middle of Bashiqah. Luckily, she said, none of them pierced the walls and nobody in the family was injured. The Iraqi military announced later that two civilians were killed in the attack, and this was confirmed by an Iraqi army officer stationed at the town hall who accompanied a reporter to visit the Hathars. But suddenly an elderly man who had been sitting in on the conversation silently, fingering his worry beads, piped up uninvited. ''They were soldiers,'' he proclaimed. Fielding a suggestion to go to the destroyed building and get the story straight, the army officer said it probably would be dangerous because planes were flying overhead and could strike again. Pressed to go anyway, he replied, ''It is forbidden.'' Edward Cody The Washington Post ============================================================== From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.mantra.com/jyotish (Dr. Jai Maharaj) Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian,alt.fan.jai-maharaj,soc.culture.usa, soc.culture.russian,soc.culture.china,soc.culture.pakistan Subject: CHINA PROLIFERATES MISSILES TO THE TERRORIST STATE OF PAKISTAN Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2000 20:13:00 GMT Organization: Mantra Corporation X-Copyright: Copyright (C) 2000 Mantra Corporation. All Rights Reserved. How and why China proliferates ballistic missiles to Pakistan The Rediff Special By Philip Saunders, and Jing-dong Yuan, with Gaurav Kampani If you thought that China had become a serious missile nonproliferation convert, then think again. New evidence produced by US intelligence agencies suggests that Chinese ballistic missile-related technology transfers to Pakistan remain a serious proliferation concern. Between 1988-1994, China sold approximately 34 complete M-11 ballistic missiles to Pakistan; in this period China also allegedly built a turnkey missile plant for Pakistan at Tarwanah, a suburb of Rawalpindi. During the 1990s, the United States used a combination of sanctions and incentives to persuade China to halt missile exports and related technology transfers to Pakistan. For a while it appeared the US had succeeded in achieving the above goals. However, it is now clear that China, despite assurances to the US government to the contrary, has resumed missile-related technology assistance to Pakistan. To be fair to China, there is no international law or treaty that bans the trade in missiles or missile-related technologies between sovereign countries. The only restrictions that exist are the consequence of the US-led Missile Technology Control Regime, MTCR, to which China is an informal and partial adherent. Nevertheless, because China interprets its MTCR obligations very narrowly and treats missile proliferation as a function of its larger strategic and commercial interests, the question of regime compliance continues to dog US-China relations. What is the MTCR? The United States and its G-7 partners formed the MTCR in 1987. The MTCR is an informal cartel which seeks to ban the export of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and rocket systems capable of delivering a 500 kg payload over a range greater than 300 km. The MTCR's annex of controlled equipment and technologies is divided into two categories. Category I items, which include complete rocket and ballistic missile systems, cruise missiles, their production facilities and complete sub-systems, are subject to a presumption of export denial. On the other hand, Category II items, which cover a wide range of missile parts, components, and subsystems such as propellants, structural materials and flight test instruments, can be exported at the discretion of an MTCR partner government on a case-by-case basis for acceptable end uses. The MTCR initially focused on nuclear capable delivery systems; but in 1993, after the experience of the 1990-91 Gulf War, the guidelines were amended to cover all delivery systems capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, biological, and chemical. MTCR and the M-11 controversy China reportedly began negotiating the sale of M-11 ballistic missiles with Pakistan in the late-1980s and signed a sales contract in 1988. In 1991 US intelligence discovered that China had begun transferring the M-11s to Islamabad. Despite Chinese denials, the United States imposed sanctions against Chinese and Pakistani entities engaged in the trade in May 1991. In November 1991, Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen and US Secretary of State James Baker reached a verbal agreement whereby China agreed to "informally abide by the guidelines and parameters of the Missile Technology Control Regime, MTCR" in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions. After China sent a letter to the US State Department in February 1992 affirming the agreement, sanctions were lifted. China's 1991 commitment to informally adhere to the MTCR guidelines did not end the M-11 controversy. In December 1992, reports surfaced that China had transferred 34 complete M-11 missiles to Pakistan in violation of its 1991 pledge. As a result, in May 1993, the Clinton administration re-imposed MTCR-related sanctions on Chinese entities after determining that Beijing had engaged in missile trade with Pakistan. During post-sanctions negotiations with the United States, China argued that the deal did not violate the MTCR as the M-11 could deliver only a 500 kg payload over an advertised range of 280 km; in a narrow technical sense therefore, the missile's capabilities did not exceed the MTCR parameters. But the Clinton administration held its ground. The impasse was resolved in October 1994 when the United States agreed to lift sanctions in return for a Chinese pledge that it would abide by Category I of the MTCR and ban exports of all ground-to-ground missiles exceeding the primary parameters of the MTCR. More significantly, China also agreed to the concept of "inherent capability" which binds it from exporting any missile that is inherently capable of delivering a 500 kg payload over 300 km. For example, the Chinese M-11 can deliver a 500 kg payload over a range of 280 km; but the missile's range can be extended to cover distances beyond 300 km with a reduced payload. Hence, by agreeing to the inherent capability clause, China agreed to prohibit future exports of the M-11 missile and other longer-range missile systems. Persistent US diplomatic efforts since then led China to reaffirm its 1994 pledge. China also agreed to actively consider joining the MTCR. In June 1998, after India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests, China and the United States issued a joint statement affirming that they would strengthen their export control laws to "prevent the export of equipment, materials or technology that could in any way assist programmes in India and Pakistan for nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles capable of delivering such weapons." However, several issues pertaining to China's missile export policy remain unresolved. According to US government sources, China has interpreted its missile export controls very narrowly. Although Beijing has complied with the MTCR's Category I restrictions and had stopped the transfer of complete missile systems, it has not extended the ban to cover specific missile components and related technologies covered under Category II of the MTCR. In addition, China has kept the precise scope, content and extent of its internal missile export control list a secret. It is also unclear if this control list approximates MTCR guidelines. Continuing Chinese Transfers? New US intelligence reports suggest China has violated its 1994 pledge and has resumed missile-related technology transfers to Pakistan. Suspicions persist that Pakistan's Shaheen-1 and II medium-range ballistic missiles correspond closely to China's M-series of ballistic missiles, although there is no concrete evidence that Pakistan obtained either missile from China. For example, a CIA report on global weapons sales submitted to the US Congress in August 2000 states, "Chinese missile-related technical assistance to Pakistan increased during the reporting period (July-August 1999)." Similarly, another CIA report made public in February 1999 stated, "Chinese and North Korean entities continued to provide assistance to Pakistan's ballistic missile programme during the first half of 1998. Such assistance is critical for Islamabad's efforts to produce ballistic missiles..." This allegation was repeated in a February 2000 CIA report to the US Congress which said, "Some [Chinese] ballistic missile assistance [to Pakistan] continues." Predictably, China has dismissed these reports as "groundless." However, an alarmed Clinton administration recently dispatched John D Holum, senior advisor for arms control and international security affairs in the State Department, to take up the matter with the Chinese. But Holum failed in his mission and admitted, "The issue remains unresolved." Another senior US official who also attended the talks was more candid and told The New York Times that the two- day talks, "Did not allay concerns about recent Chinese help to Pakistan's ballistic missile programme." Explaining Chinese Behavior Why does China continue to transfer missile related technologies to Pakistan? Some analysts argue that the Chinese are the ultimate realists. China's proliferation and nonproliferation policies are governed by strategic and commercial interests. Even more significantly, China calibrates its proliferation behaviour and compliance with global arms control regimes and cartels to gain bargaining leverage in negotiations with the United States over Taiwan. Pakistan is China's "all weather" ally in South Asia and the two countries are united by their rivalry with India. In negotiations with the United States, China has described Pakistan as its "Israel." Therefore, China is committed to Pakistan's security. In the context of the nuclear arms competition in the region, China views Pakistan as the underdog and has therefore accepted the task of underwriting Pakistan's security against advances in the Indian nuclear and missile programme. The Chinese have also probably calculated that aiding Pakistan with nuclear and missile technologies will divert India's military attention and prevent it from focusing on China. This goal might have assumed added priority after May 1998, when India decided to deploy a minimum deterrent with China as its primary target. But China's policies are not monocausal. China also uses missile sales and the ambiguity of its commitment to MTCR standards as a bargaining chip to achieve other foreign policy goals with the United States. For example, during negotiations with American diplomats, China linked the M- 11 transfers to Pakistan with the US sale of 150 F-16s to Taiwan. Similarly, continuing technological assistance to Pakistan may be linked to US threats to transfer theater missile defense systems and other sophisticated conventional arms to Taiwan. China probably hopes to use the threat of ballistic missile proliferation and the carrot of full MTCR compliance to persuade the United States to forego any potential transfer of theater missile defense systems currently under development to Taiwan. Finally, commercial motives often merge with strategic concerns to determine Chinese decisions about arms sales. After Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping launched his modernisation drive in the 1980s, state-owned firms came under enormous pressure to adhere to market principles and operate on profit principles. Exports of dual-use nuclear technologies, ballistic and cruise missiles, especially those that were regulated by international cartels or subject to export denials by other countries, became a lucrative means of generating profits. For example, China earned nearly $ 3 billion from its CSS-2 intermediate-range ballistic missile sales to Saudi Arabia in the 1980s. Similarly, Chinese cruise missile sales to Iran and short-range ballistic missile sales to Libya and Syria were primarily guided by profit motives. Policy Implications Continuing Chinese missile proliferation to Pakistan will have the unfortunate effect of accelerating the nuclear domino dynamics in South Asia. During the 1980s China helped Pakistan acquire a nuclear weapons capability. It followed up this policy in the 1990s by proliferating ballistic missiles to Islamabad. India's own nuclear and ballistic missile advances played a role in China's decision to help Pakistan develop missile capabilities; but India cited China's policy of covert proliferation as one of the principal reasons why it made its own nuclear capability overt. Renewed Chinese missile assistance will not only help Pakistan weaponise its nuclear forces, but it will also increase pressures in New Delhi to operationalise India's proposed minimum deterrent. Weaponisation and deployment of nuclear forces by India and Pakistan will further obstruct the US goal of arranging a formal cap or nuclear "restraint regime" in the region. Fledgling nuclear arsenals are usually characterised by complex organisational and management problems such as weak command and control, poor real-time surveillance and intelligence gathering, force stability, etc. These problems will increase the chances of a dangerous nuclear crisis in South Asia significantly. Regardless of whether Pakistan's ballistic missile programme is the result of India's own advances, analysts in New Delhi have interpreted the Chinese transfers as another example of Beijing's attempts to contain India. In the United States, conservatives and China-bashers have begun citing China's recurring missile transfers in apparent violation of its earlier pledges as an example of Chinese perfidy. They have used the episode to press their case for robust theater and national missile defenses and have threatened to enact a China nonproliferation law that would mandate sanctions if China continues its recent proliferation behaviour. As a result, the emerging nuclear and missile race between India and Pakistan has the potential to damage US-China relations and affect both regional and global stability. Indeed, unraveling the proliferation connection between China and Pakistan remains one of the most important and difficult challenges for global nonproliferation efforts. Phil Saunders is Director of the East Asia Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey, CA. Jing- dong Yuan and Gaurav Kampani are Senior Research Associates at the Center. Tuesday, August 22, 2000 Click on the Rediff link at News Plus http://www.mantra.com/newsplus Om Shanti JANMASHTAMEE GREETINGS! Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion. The contents of this post may not have been authored by, and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the poster. The contents are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works. <A HREF="http://www.mantra.com/newsplus/"><B>Jai's News Plus</B></A> Panchaang for 23 Shravan 5101, Tuesday, August 22, 2000: Vikrama Nama Samvatsare 5102 Dakshinaya Jivana Ritau Singha Mase Krishna Pakshe Mangala Vasara Yuktayam Krittika-Rohini Nakshatra Vyaghat Yoga Balava-Kaulava Karana Ashtamee Yam Tithau Jai's News Plus http://www.mantra.com/newsplus Hindu Holocaust Museum http://www.mantra.com/holocaust Information about Hindu life, principles, and philosophy http://www.hindu.org http://www.hindunet.org Information about Islam http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate PayPal is a no-cost service that lets you 'beam' money https://secure.paypal.com/refer/pal=mantra%40mantra.com For-pay Internet distributed processing http://www.ProcessTree.com/?sponsor=17423 Open a no-cost, no-obligation real gold worldwide money account http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid=108077 ============================================================= From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic,soc.culture.russian, it.media.tv,alt.lifestyle.all-faiths Subject: AUM Shinrikyo Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2000 06:05:52 GMT **************************************************************** "Japan's Imperial-Era Society: From the Anti-AUM Movement to the Elimination of all Heterodoxies" a report by Kenichi Asano (Professor of Journalism, Doshisha University, Japan) Introduction The Yasukuni Shinto Shrine, located near the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, is dedicated to the late Premier Hideki Tojo and other Class A war criminals of World War II. During the war, the Japanese military was responsible for the deaths of twenty million innocent people in Asia and the Pacific; yet at Yasukuni, Tojo and others responsible for those deaths have been worshiped as gods in the name of Shintoism. Shintoism is the nationalistic religion that served as the foundation for the imperialist, militarist view of Japanese history and society in which Asian peoples were indoctrinated prior to and during the World War II era. Under Shintoism, both Japanese citizens and conquered Asians were coerced into accepting their status as children of the then-living god, Emperor Hirohito, and into participating in the creation of the Japan- dominated "Great East Asian Prosperity Sphere." After World War II, both Hirohito and Shintoism evaded responsibility and accountability for their role in the onset and conduct of the war. Indeed, Shintoism has survived as a religious entity in the post-war era. A recent movie entitled "Pride" that glorified Tojo attained great popularity, while a comic book that describes World War II as a holy war fought to free Asian countries from the Western colonial powers sold like hot cakes. Our society, while not requiring accountability of Emperor Hirohito and Shintoism fifty-four years ago, today demands the dissolution of AUM Shinrikyo as a religious corporation and blatantly tramples on the residence rights of faithful AUM adherents. These actions are based on the prosecution's charges against some AUM members of murdering the family of a Yokohama lawyer and of conducting two sarin nerve gas attacks that together killed twenty people. Ironically, while the detestable, nationalistic Shintoism that played a central role in Japan's aggressive and murderous policies during the war has remained intact, AUM followers are being mercilessly persecuted and their high- profile members are being tried and convicted one after another. Although there is a national taboo against recognizing Emperor Hirohito's culpability for the war, a widespread public consensus has already emerged on what to do with Shoko Asahara and his followers, even before they have been convicted of any crimes: "AUM members should be hanged." Few people speak out for the human rights of AUM followers. Why is AUM Hated? In early September of 1999, the anchorman of a nationwide news telecast on the TV-Asahi network surprised himself, as well as his listeners, with the following statistic: the Jinja Honcho is the largest formal religion in Japan, with a total of seventy million followers. If this statistic is accurate, it follows that most adults in Japan must be adherents of the Jinja Honcho. In fact, the Jinja Honcho is the same religion as Shintoism and controls 79,184 Shinto shrines throughout the country. There are also a number of different sects and schools in Shintoism, including some independent shrines such as the Yasukuni Shrine. According to The 1998 Religious Almanac of Japan, the statistics on religion in Japan are as follows: 104,553,179 Shintoist 95,117,730 Buddhist 1,761,835 Christian 11,214,331 other religions 212,647,075 Total. Since there are only 120 million people in Japan, these statistics seem to indicate that most Japanese adults believe in both Shintoism and Buddhism. Despite these statistics, however, I believe that only a very small percentage of the Japanese population is sincerely and piously religious. Indeed, the fact that only a little more than one percent of its population is Christian makes Japan unique in the world. My own experience illustrates this point. In 1966, I had the opportunity to study as an American Field Service International Scholarship student at a high school in Springfield, Missouri. Although at that time most Japanese were atheists, as they are now, my father's family line was Shintoist, and indeed, several of my relatives are Shinto priests. Because of this, I unthinkingly wrote "Shintoist" in the religion blank on my personal data form. Because the members of my host family were earnest and pious Baptists, they took this seriously and attempted to persuade me to study more about Shintoism and then to abjure it. In 1972, I became a correspondent for The Kyodo News, one of the most notable news agencies in Japan. Since then, throughout my career as a journalist, I have had the opportunity to observe and reflect upon religious issues and the influence of religion. From February 1989 to July 1992, for example, I was chief of the Jakarta branch office of The Kyodo News, a situation which afforded me the opportunity to live in and observe an Islamic society. When I was in East Timor, I learned about how influential Catholicism was there; and, when I covered Southeast Asia, I learned and then wrote about Buddhism in Burma. In many countries it is a normal state of affairs to have different religions and ethnic groups living together. However, in Japan there is much less religious and ethnic diversity. The Yamato race comprises approximately ninety-eight percent of the Japanese population; foreigners, including Koreans, make up less than one percent; and other Japanese minorities, such as the Ainumoshiri and Ryukyu races, make up the other one percent. All but a very small percentage of the total population are more or less atheist. It was in this homogeneous cultural and religious context that AUM Shinrikyo emerged in the late 1980s as a new religion and gained popularity, especially among the younger generation. While I was living in Jakarta they participated in a national election, which aided their expansion considerably. AUM Shinrikyo members appeared on a popular television debate show, "Asamade Nama Terebi," and won an overwhelming victory over their opponents from another religious group. I was told that the emcee of the program even praised AUM Shinrikyo. I recall that AUM founder Shoko Asahara's books sold like hot cakes and were stacked up not only in the bookstore of Doshisha University, but also in that of Kyoto University, one of the most prestigious universities in Japan. After I became a professor of journalism at Doshisha University in 1994, I had the opportunity to present speeches for various occasions, and I made it a rule to distribute questionnaires asking the audience for the names of persons they wished to hear as a speaker in the future. Mr. Asahara's name was always near the top of the list. AUM Shinrikyo came under severe public criticism on March 22, 1995. On that day, the police raided AUM facilities across the country and arrested a number of followers in connection with the Tokyo subway gassing incident that had occurred two days earlier. AUM became the target of additional public censure when it was accused of responsibility for the 1989 murder of a lawyer and his family. In connection with these and other incidents, AUM's founder and almost one hundred of his followers have been indicted. Indeed, some of his followers have already been found guilty, despite the fact that Shoko Asahara's trial is not yet concluded, and despite the fact that it is not at all clear whether he ordered his followers as a group to perpetrate these incidents. The Japanese public, however, has already concluded that AUM as a group is guilty and has been engaging in discrimination and harassment against those who follow or formerly followed AUM Shinrikyo. Thus innocent, rank-and-file AUM followers who have never been accused of any crimes are being deprived of their rights to live as they wish. In our society, having a deep religious faith is regarded as bizarre. People tend to worship money and success instead. Indeed, a member of the foreign press at one time described the Japanese with contempt as "economic animals," and I cannot completely deny this. In addition, many Japanese people detest heterodoxies in any form. In the past, leftists have indiscriminately murdered innocent people while attempting to foment a communist revolution, and they have also killed each other in internal struggles. Gangsters and participants in organized crime also employ violence to achieve their purposes. Yet no group has been hated more than AUM, and the reason for this is that AUM Shinrikyo is a religion beyond the comprehension of ordinary Japanese citizens. The modern democratic principle that the accused is presumed innocent until he or she has been proven guilty has yet to take deep root in Japanese society. Worse still, there is as yet little understanding in Japan that journalists and the press should keep watch on officials such as the investigative authorities in order to prevent abuses of power. Instead, the Japanese media has joined the authorities in concluding that AUM's leader, Shoko Asahara, in his despair masterminded this series of deadly incidents. The media has thus played an important role in shaping the public's opinion that AUM's teachings are dangerous enough to provoke homicide. Few people have dared to object to this widely held opinion. The situation was accurately described in an article that appeared on the front page of The New York Times on August 27. This article, written by Mr. Calvin Sims and partially based on an interview with me, is entitled "Still Furious at Cult, Japan Violates Its Rights" and highlights the un-constitutionality of the ongoing anti-AUM discrimination. "Heads of municipalities said that although they knew their actions were unlawful, they would reject residency applications by AUM followers," Mr. Sims said to me, "In Japan, if an official takes an unlawful action, which authority should prosecute and punish it?" I had no choice but to answer, "The Ministry of Justice, I suppose." The journalist started his lengthy article by quoting a man who climbed the hill behind AUM's buildings in order to peer through the surrounding trees and spy on them. "This is bad, very bad," he said. Yet Mr. Sims remarked on the fact that no one criticizes the way in which the government is treating AUM followers except a few human rights activists and Constitutional scholars, whose comments were also quoted in his newspaper piece. Mr. Sims' article also used comments made by an anonymous police official, as well as by a named assistant chief of the Civil Liberties Bureau of the Ministry of Justice. This man told Sims: "We can't take any actions without a formal request," adding, "Both local residents and AUM followers have human rights." For the AUM perspective, the article quoted comments from Hiroshi Araki of AUM Shinrikyo's public relations department. Additionally, the article detailed harassment and violence perpetrated on AUM members by local residents and gangsters. In general, the article was well balanced in describing the current situation of AUM Shinrikyo. Reluctance of Government Officials and Newspaper Reporters to Conduct an Inside Investigation of AUM You speak highly of us because we were the only newspaper to visit that former guest house to interview them. But I, for one, was opposed to that interview. I didn't go with the others because, if I had, I would have known there was no danger, and I knew how the people here felt about AUM. Even though members of the municipal assembly inspected the building and found it to be safe, it does not matter because the local residents are vehemently demanding that AUM vacate. The first comment was made on August 4, 1999 by a young Asahi Shinbun reporter who works in the Utsunomiya branch office and who reports on Tochigi prefectural government issues. The second was made a week earlier, on July 28, by a member of the municipal assembly of Otawara, Tochigi Prefecture, while he was attending a meeting of the municipal assembly's special committee for anti-AUM measures, chaired by Takeo Yanagida. Shortly after two children of AUM Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara moved to Otawara on June 25 and applied for residency, city officials announced that their applications were being denied. As illustrated by the preceding two quotes, journalists and members of the municipal assembly stated that they would not conduct any investigation of the AUM building because if they did, they would have to acknowledge that there was no danger. In the midst of this and other unjust anti-AUM campaigns by local residents, the press and members of the municipal assembly, which should be scrutinizing the conduct of local authorities, refrained from performing their duty in this vital function. Most people in Otawara were perfectly aware that the AUM members living there posed no imminent danger. However, the city government upheld the rejection of their applications for residency even thought it was clearly illegal to do so. Other than in the interests of public welfare, the only reason officials were able to give for their actions was that they sympathized with Otawara residents' unrest and uneasiness. The local people themselves are frightened by the presence of the AUM members, although they cannot say exactly why. Agitated by the information released by the media and the authorities, they are effectively depriving AUM followers of their basic civil liberties. Shops display "NO AUM" signs on their facades; newspaper vendors refuse to sell them newspapers; gas stations refuse to sell them fuel; public baths refuse to admit them; municipal authorities refuse to provide them with garbage and sewage disposal services or even to read their water meter. Almost all lifelines are being cut off. Indeed, signs held by local residents demonstrating outside the AUM buildings read "Get off the earth" and "Go to outer space." Japan is supposedly a country governed by law, yet what is occurring here is just the opposite. Local residents view all AUM followers as deserving of no human rights and wish to be rid of them. I find this mass hysteria much more frightening than the AUM movement itself. In 1997 there occurred in the city of Kobe, in the Hyogo Prefecture, a series of incidents involving the murder or injuring of infants. Soon afterwards, false news reports appeared claiming that juvenile crimes were dramatically increasing in number. Basing its actions on the Kobe incidents and the news reports, the government attempted to make the Juvenile Law Code more stringent. However, it was discovered that there were no actual statistics to back up the reported upsurge in juvenile delinquency. More recently, Taku Yamazaki and other members of the Lower House have used the massacre of East Timorese citizens by Indonesian army troops as a pretext to immediately lift the ban on sending Japanese peacekeeping forces abroad. Ironically, they show no repentance for any responsibility they might have in the present situation: in 1976, the then-dominant LDP Party supported the Suharto military regime in Indonesia, giving it tacit permission to invade East Timor. The strategy of conservative reactionaries appears to be to foment fear in order to create bad legislation, without regard for appearances or consequences. The neo-fascists in Japan are using the AUM situation as a pretext for increasing their control over Japanese society as a whole and to expedite the creation of a police state. What we must oppose is not AUM Shinrikyo so much as the growth of a nationalist power that takes advantage of the AUM situation to build a regime that could easily restrict the human rights of its citizens and suppress anti- establishment and grass roots movements. Local Residents are Unable to Explain or Justify their Anti-AUM Campaigns On August 4, 1999, the Liaison Committee on Human Rights and Media Conduct, of which I am a director, conducted a field investigation in and around an AUM complex in Tochigi Prefecture. Nineteen people who came from all over the country participated in this exercise. We were also joined by Mr. James Lewis, an American scholar of religion. Our first stop was at a complex in which AUM followers resided, located in the Sakuyama Ward of Otawara. As we approached, we observed many signs and posters of various colors and sizes erected on the street, all with the slogan "We don't want AUM." In front of the AUM building there was a "unity barracks," so-named to symbolize the solidarity of local residents against AUM; about ten older people were present. Behind the barracks was a small hill. Half way up this hill, trees had been cut down and a shack had been built. >From this shack several people were peering through binoculars, keeping a vigilant watch over the AUM complex. Many signs with vitriolic slogans were fastened to the wall of this observation post: "We don't want AUM;" "We shall never forgive you! Get out immediately;" and "You murderers are our enemies!" We were welcomed by two men representing AUM Shinrikyo. The first was Mr. Nagayama, whom I had first met in 1995 at Aoyama General headquarters, on the occasion of my interviewing Mr. Fumihiro Joyu, the former chief of the group's public relations department. The second was Mr. Akitoshi Hirosue, the head of AUM's office for emergency measures against anti-AUM movements. These two officials had been using a video camera to record the outrageous anti-AUM activities of Otawara's residents. At a later conference entitled "The Public Welfare Vs. the Rejection of AUM Residency Applications," held on September 15 in Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefecture, I had the opportunity of seeing their film. Although the video was only fifteen minutes in length, I found its contents profoundly disturbing. On the video, one Otawara resident shouted, "Go back to your mothers. Except none of you have families, do you?" Another asked, "Don't you realize that you are being used by Asahara?" A third said, "You'll never succeed. Asahara will exploit you for the rest of your life," while another yelled at the AUM followers, "You're just practicing yoga, so why do you call it religion?" Singling out one particular AUM follower and calling his name without using an honorific title, another resident loudly claimed, "I know you! Don't look away from me!" And finally, contemptuously, a resident suggested, "Why don't you kill yourself! You've got nowhere else to go, nowhere else to live!" In addition to this evidence of the verbal harassment to which AUM followers were subjected, the video included footage of an incident in which a right-wing activist deliberately smashed his truck into the closed gates of the AUM compound, injuring two followers who were attempting to open the gates. Luckily, the two individuals were not seriously harmed, although the incident could have been fatal to one or both of them. Another scene on this video showed a group of right-wing activists standing on their sound truck and throwing juice cans at the compound. One AUM follower was hit in the face, resulting in an injury serious enough to require stitches. After spending some time in the AUM building, I returned to the "unity barracks" and interviewed some of the elderly Otawara residents I found there. I asked them why they felt justified in telling the AUM followers to leave. Their responses varied, from "Please ask our leaders," to "Because it's my turn to be here," to "I can't answer that because those in charge are not here." By those in charge they seemed to mean the head of the Sakuyama Ward committee for anti-AUM measures. Then I dared to ask them, "Are you really so frightened of those AUM followers over there? What do you find so frightening about them?" They made various telling replies to my questions. "They do terrible things; they murdered innocent people with sarin, yet they show no remorse; they act as if they did nothing wrong," one said. Another complained, "They lack common courtesy. They don't say hello, and some of them even try to hide their faces from us or block our view of them with a barrier. They use a hidden camera to take videos of us." Ironically, these Otawara residents had completely ignored the fact that they were the ones who were spying on AUM followers and harassing them. How can anyone be expected to be courteous in such a situation? In my opinion, it is not just the anti-AUM movement in Otawara that is being orchestrated by the government, because televised coverage of anti-AUM campaigns in other prefectures show that they are very similar. Is the Media Under the Control of the PSIA? AUM Shinrikyo was dissolved as a religious corporation in 1995, and the following year its headquarters facilities at the base of Mount Fuji were confiscated. As a result, the members were dispersed into small, scattered groups across the country. The group claims to have a total of approximately five hundred monks and nuns and one thousand lay practitioners. In February of 1999, the national media began to report that a resurgence of AUM activity was causing trouble with local residents in various locations. Ostensibly in response to this situation, the National Police Agency and the Public Security Investigation Agency (PSIA) began organizing anti-AUM campaigns. The timing coincided with the government's attempts to pass certain controversial legislation in the National Assembly. Prior to the outbreak of the trouble in Otawara, the residency applications of 23 AUM followers in Sanwa in the Ibaraki Prefecture had been rejected by that city's authorities. Consequently, the mayor of Otawara was quoted as saying that, although he was aware that the action was unlawful, Otawara city officials also would reject AUM members' notifications that they were moving to Otawara. The news of the AUM members' notification that they were moving into a new residence in Otawara was scooped by Shimotsuke Shinbun, the town's local newspaper. The inflammatory front page headline read: "AUM Establishes Foothold in Otawara." This article was reinforced, in the general news pages of the paper, by others with equally alarming headlines like: "Residents Stand Up to Fight;" "Resident Anger and Fear Result in Emergency Meeting of Ward Heads;" "Why Otawara?" and "AUM's Sudden Appearance Shocks Residents." Mr. Yoshiyuki Kohno, who for eight months was treated by the police and the media as the perpetrator of the 1994 Matsumoto sarin gassing incident, commented to me: "During the last war, all of the newspapers must have been like this." AUM Shinrikyo as a group has done nothing unlawful since it was raided in March of 1995. Ordered to formally dissolve as a religious corporation, it is now a private organization, neither controlled nor protected by law. A strict surveillance of its followers has been maintained by both the NPA and the PSIA, and their arrests on petty charges and separate charges are everyday occurrences. They are arrested, for example, on a charge of trespassing in a private residence if they try to distribute their leaflets in the mailboxes of an apartment building. Or they are arrested if their actual addresses are found to be different from those recorded on their residency certificates. When I interviewed Mr. Kohno in July, he observed that if Japan is indeed a country ruled by law, then that law must be applied dispassionately and impartially to all citizens without exception and without discrimination. If this is not the case, it would not be possible for citizens to question or criticize when necessary the actions of the police and the media, the very institutions that were responsible for Mr. Kohno being unjustly blamed for the Matsumoto sarin attack. "AUM followers are being unfairly arrested because they try to distribute flyers," Mr. Kohno said. "Municipal officials announce that although they are aware that their action is unconstitutional, they will reject AUM's move- in notifications. That this can happen demonstrates that this is not a country ruled by impartial law applied to all citizens, but is in fact a lawless country. On the one hand, the authorities do nothing about powerful organized crime and the gangsters who blatantly engage in illegal activities. On the other hand, because they know that AUM is powerless to resist, they persecute and harass its members for engaging in activities that are legal." Even though his wife remains in a coma as a result of the Matsumoto sarin gassing and he himself still suffers from the aftereffects of the gas, Mr. Kohno nevertheless affirms: "I want to know who is going to distinguish the AUM followers from ordinary citizens. People scream that AUM should get out, but everyone has the freedom of their own beliefs and their own thoughts. Our law maintains that the courts should pronounce punishment, but as we saw in the Wakayama poisoned curry murder, the public unofficially enacts sanctions against suspects. I believe it is wrong to punish suspects before they have even been tried." Is AUM Being Used as a Pretext for Erecting a Police State? The anti-AUM campaign in Otawara has triggered similar movements across the country. More than half the wards in Tokyo, for example, have declared their intent to prohibit the use of public facilities by AUM followers. Municipalities and local assemblies have requested that the national government draft AUM-specific legislation and add amendments to the Anti-subversive Activities Law. It seems evident that, with municipalities formally refusing to allow new AUM followers to move in and attempting to force those already in residence to leave, and now with their added request for AUM-specific legislation, the official goal is to make it impossible for AUM followers to practice their faith indeed to eliminate AUM Shinrikyo altogether as a viable religion in Japan. This has been made possible because the media and the PSIA successfully incited an anti-AUM movement among the general public that has culminated in the demand for anti-AUM measures. The government is now citing this public demand as justification for creating AUM-specific legislation. On September 8, 1999, the press reported on an announcement by Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiromu Nonaka that the government was preparing a bill for submission to a special session of the Diet to be held later in the fall. Originally this bill was intended to expand the Anti- subversive Activities Law to cover cult groups as well as political organizations. In the process of forming a coalition consisting of the LDP, the Liberal Party, and the New Komeito, however, the New Komeito rejected the idea of amending the existing law. As a result, the government is now aiming at drafting new legislation specifically against AUM. This law draft has passed the House of Representatives in November. Although details are still unclear as to the substance of this new law, it has been reported that its target is a group "that has committed indiscriminate mass murder in the past and yet remains basically unchanged." Obviously, this is AUM Shinrikyo. The new law will allow both surveillance and regulation of activities of targeted groups, including groups whose activities are so inoffensive that it would not ordinarily be considered necessary to dissolve them. The PSIA, once at the top of a list of several government offices scheduled for closing, has been resurrected in the wake of the AUM incidents of recent years. In 1996, it requested that AUM be formally outlawed under the Anti-subversive Activities Law, but that request was denied by the Public Security Examination Commission in January 1997. Indeed, this extra- ministerial board of the Ministry of Justice focused attention again on the possibility of discontinuing the PSIA. To insure its survival, the agency was instrumental in manipulating the media into inciting a public outcry against a supposedly resurgent AUM, ultimately resulting in the current demands for anti-AUM legislation. If this new legislation is passed by the Diet, the PSIA will enlarge both its organization and its breadth of operation, with powers of surveillance over religious organizations, civil rights groups, and other similar entities. Under the current law, PSIA officials are only allowed to accompany law enforcement authorities on raids on suspect groups, and are not authorized to carry out their own raids independently of law enforcement. It is imperative to keep in mind that the passage of this new law will follow the relatively recent passage of the Organized Crime Counter- measures Law. Considered together, these two new laws represent a fundamental change in how the legal principles concerning crime and the charging with and prosecution of a crime will be defined in the Constitution, in criminal law, and in the Criminal Procedural Code. With the passage of these two laws, the emphasis will shift from consideration on an individual basis to consideration on a group basis. These laws, supposedly passed to strengthen police powers in order to preserve public order, will, in effect, allow the central government to transform Japan into a police state. Intent on strengthening its control of citizens through control of the groups to which they might belong, the government first enacted the anti- organized crime law a law the public was reluctant to oppose. Encounter- ing little public opposition to this, they have now, under the continued guise of preserving peace and order, drafted the proposed anti-AUM legislation. In the meantime, the media continues to release sensationalistic AUM- related information fed to them by the police and the PSIA, and designed to incite further anti-AUM sentiment among the public. For example, on July 29, 1999, Asahi Shinbun included the following in a story: "It (AUM Shinrikyo) has approximately 2,100 followers in forty major locations across the country....There are about forty businesses associated with AUM Shinrikyo, including computer-related companies that grossed seven billion yen in 1998." On September 29, in a similar story, Asahi Shinbun related that "Recently AUM Shinrikyo has established a number of footholds across the country and is consolidating its strength. This is causing distress in those municipalities where it has located, with the result that some of these municipalities have rejected AUM followers' residency applications." To counteract this negative and incendiary publicity, AUM Shinrikyo, as a private corporation, has published a small book entitled The Present Situation of AUM Shinrikyo and the Problems it Faces. The book explains that AUM followers are only looking for places where they can reside in peace and pursue their religious way of life. The media, however, rarely gives AUM followers the chance to make their voices heard in their own defense. We Cannot Fight for AUM? The Liaison Committee on Human Rights and Mass Media Conduct held a conference September 13-15, 1999 in Tokyo and Utsunomiya to discuss AUM- related issues. At the meeting in Shinjuku on the 14th, a representative of the Committee to Abolish the Anti-subversive Activities Law stated: "I share with others here the concerns about basic civil liberties that are raised by a question such as 'Do AUM followers have human rights?' At the same time, I am bothered by the fact that AUM followers as a group have not shown remorse or taken responsibility for the crimes they have committed. For this reason I cannot wholeheartedly support the movement in opposition to the anti- AUM legislation." More than a few people at the conference concurred with this sentiment, saying they find it difficult to sympathize with the plight of the AUM followers because they have not taken responsibility nor apologized for the crimes of which AUM has been accused. These people accept completely and uncritically what they have read in the media concerning AUM. Ironically, when it comes to the suppression of neo-leftists or to the problems related to nuclear electric power plants, they question the media coverage and call it "neo-bourgeois." Yet concerning AUM coverage by the media, these same people say it is unfair or exaggerated to claim the media distorts or manipulates the facts. Some representatives of the media, for example, have said that in some AUM trials guilty verdicts were handed down, while others reported that in those same cases the accused admitted their crimes. Leftists in charge of anti-establishment movements in Japan have labeled AUM followers as fascists because, they say, those followers have committed terrorist acts against human beings. Again, they have accepted without question the information the police and the media have released. I asked them, "When did your political group decide that AUM members were fascists? Was it before or after 6:00 a.m. on March 22, 1995, when the police initially raided AUM?" They would not answer me, because they know that the answer is that they began to view AUM negatively only after the police raids began. AUM's teachings and practices have not changed since that date in 1995, but the way AUM is perceived by others has changed. Without question, a series of atrocious incidents took place. More than four hundred AUM followers were arrested, and approximately one hundred of them were indicted and are being tried. Some have already been found guilty. But by now, the media-fabricated version that AUM founder Shoko Asahara ordered his followers to commit all of these crimes and that the doctrines and teachings of AUM Shinrikyo were a factor in these crimes being committed has become widely and unquestioningly accepted as the truth. In reality, whether this is in fact the true version of events has yet to be demonstrated. To find out, we must wait for the results of Mr. Asahara's trial. When the PSIA requested that the Anti-subversive Activities Law be used to outlaw AUM Shinrikyo, I was elected as one of five members of an observer group to attend the hearings. I attended all of the sessions, and was present on January 31, 1997 when the Public Security Examination Commission rejected the request. Conservative politicians and various media representatives who are under the government's thumb have recently argued that those intellectuals who opposed the use of the Anti-subversive Activities Law against AUM Shinrikyo should be held responsible for its resurgence. Obviously this does not make sense, since those who made this unanimous decision, the members of the Public Security Examination Commission, had been appointed by the Prime Minister and approved by the Diet. Unfortunately, the law was not at that point abolished and the PSIA disbanded, as it properly should have been. Mr. Kohno, the victim of the 1994 Matsumoto sarin nerve gas attack, has given us an effective lesson on human rights. In our opposition to the new anti-AUM law, we must make the issue of human rights the unequivocal foundation for our stance, just as we did when we opposed the Anti- subversive Activities Law. By this I mean that crime and the devising of deterrents to crime must be considered in the context of society as a whole; the effects of efforts to punish or deter crime on the rights of the members of our society must be considered seriously. Of equal importance, it is imperative that the government never has the right to judge or regulate the religious thoughts or beliefs of any suspects. The other day I met a friend of mine, a television journalist, who had just returned to Japan after a lengthy absence in the United States. He said, "I am frightened of Japanese who are yelling hysterically about being scared of AUM. It seems pretty dangerous to me for the whole country to be heading in such a totalitarian direction." But another situation frightens me even more. We are faced today with a new law that denies the post-World War II legal system and attempts to regulate and control the very thoughts and beliefs of a group, yet the leaders of civil and human rights groups state that they will not oppose this law because AUM has not yet apologized. They fiddle, Rome burns. ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. 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