May 12, 1999 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS MOSCOW -- Russian lawmakers began impeachment hearings today to remove Boris Yeltsin, claiming that the Russian president is guilty of treason, first-degree murder and plotting to sell Russia out to the West. Political leaders say the chances of impeaching Yeltsin soared after the president outraged lawmakers Wednesday by sacking the country's popular prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov. A vote on impeachment in the lower chamber of parliament, the State Duma, could be held as early as Friday. Opening today's hearing, the impeachment commission read out its case on the five charges against Yeltsin. The president is charged with instigating the 1991 Soviet collapse, improperly using force against hard-line lawmakers in 1993, launching the botched 1994-96 war in Chechnya, ruining Russia's military, and waging genocide against Russians with market reforms that impoverished the country... ======== NY Times, May 12, 1999 China Students Are Caught Up by Nationalism By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL BEIJING -- Exactly 10 years ago, as protesters demonstrated in Tiananmen Square, a small grassy triangle in the center of Beijing University became a shrine to democracy, plastered with tracts about liberty and freedom. In recent years it had become a temple for the professions, filled with notices about computers and law examinations. But in the last four days, the plaza has been transformed anew, into a museum of frenzied nationalism and anti-American sentiment. Hundreds of handwritten letters and posters decorate the fence, the trees and nearby billboards in a vitriolic reaction to the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital. "Support Yugoslavia and Resist America," one poster read. "Adolph Clinton," another read. A letter suggested that students should cover the U.S. Embassy with garbage. A poem read, in part: "Resist America Beginning with Cola, Attack McDonald's, Storm KFC..." ========= But the revolution is thoroughgoing. It is still traveling through purgatory. It does its work methodically. By December 2, 1851, it had completed half of its preparatory work; now it is completing the other half. It first completed the parliamentary power in order to be able to overthrow it. Now that it has achieved this, it completes the executive power, reduces it to its purest expression, isolates it, sets it up against itself as the sole target, in order to concentrate all its forces of destruction against it. And when it has accomplished this second half of its preliminary work, Europe will leap from its seat and exult: Well burrowed, old mole!... Karl Marx, 18th Brumaire Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
