-Caveat Lector-
from:
http://www.aci.net/kalliste/
<A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A>
-----
Der Fuhrer's New Plan
Clinton Rushes to Exploit Colorado Shootings
In tragedy, there is political opportunity.
The Clinton Administration may use the tragic school shootings in
Colorado to propose sweeping new gun control legislation that could lead
to an outright gun ban or require Americans to register every gun they
own with the federal government, Capitol Hill Blue has learned.
Within minutes of learning of the shootings that left at least 15 people
dead in the Denver suburb of Littleton, the Clinton spin team went into
action, generating memos on the best ways for the President to
capitalize on the tragedy.
"The President asked for a number of scenarios for the best way to deal
with the situation," one White House aide said Tuesday night. "At first
he was going to decry the incident and call for new gun bans. Some
advised against doing so that quickly, so he backed off and just went
with a short statement that said it was too soon to say anything."
Aides say Clinton spent most of Tuesday afternoon monitoring the
situation where at least two students at Columbine High School in
Littleton went on a shooting and bomb throwing spree before killing
themselves.
White House pollsters worked the phones, sampling public opinion, trying
to gauge just how far Americans voters would let the administration go.
Hours later, Clinton went before a press conference and hinted that he
may use the tragedy for stronger action by the federal government.
"I think after a little time has passed, we need to have a candid
assessment about what more we can do to try to prevent these things from
happening," Clinton said.
According to White House sources, among the options being prepared for
Clinton's consideration:
�An outright ban on handguns and an expanded list of "non-sporting"
weapons;
�Mandatory registration of all guns owned by Americans;
�Laws to make parents criminally responsible when their children use
guns to commit a crime;
�Entering the many lawsuits that cities have filed against gun
manufacturers (on the side of the cities);
�Federal funds to place metal detectors in all American schools;
�Federal money to place undercover police officers in schools;
�Federally-mandated school dress codes that would ban gang colors and
other "non-appropriate attire;"
�Banning student shooting teams at schools.
"The President made it very clear he wants to take action on this," said
one White House senior aide. "He will not allow this incident to pass
without taking action. He feels the public will support whatever course
of action he decides to take."
One source said White House spinmeister Sidney J. Blumenthal has urged
the President to use the Colorado shootings to divert attention from
both the China spying scandal and the Kosovo war that has resulted in
mounting criticism of the White House.
Blumenthal reminded the President that his "show of concern" during the
Oklahoma City Bombing revived his Presidency just when Clinton's
popularity was at its lowest ebb.
"Leave it to Sid to find a bright spot in a public tragedy," says
veteran public relations man Samuel Wastell. "I'll bet you there's a
poll in the field right now testing the public's support for new gun
control legislation."
Gun show owner John Hylton said he isn't surprised to learn the Clinton
administration is considering a new gun ban.
"He will use this to curry favor with the gun-control advocates," Hylton
said. "But that's not the answer. From what I understand, these kids
also used pipe bombs. Pipe bombs are already illegal, but that didn't
stop the kids from using them."
Clinton also ordered his staff to see check into a trip to Colorado
immediately following the NATO summit in Washington.
"He feels a very public show of support is very important right now,"
one aide says. "It's a shame the NATO conference might get in the way of
this."
Capitol Hill Blue, April 21, 1999
Colorado Shootings
Pining for the Peaceful Paradise of An Omnipotent State
by Vin Suprynowicz
On April 20, the evening after armed culprits invaded a Colorado high
school with pipe bombs and firearms in what police described as an
"apparent suicide mission," an urban animal-rights activist, apparently
having seen my defenses of the Second Amendment, sent me the following
e-mail:
"I bet you must be very proud of those two militant freaks that murdered
their fellow student and then took their own worthless lives. Hopefully
you will be the next random victim of some loose cannon with an assault
weapon.
"May God have mercy on your misguided soul."
I replied:
Greetings, whoever you are --
In Israel, teachers and parents who serve as school aides go armed at
all times on school grounds, with semi-automatic weapons. Since this
policy was put into effect, terrorist attacks in Israeli schools have
dropped to zero. The only recent exception was the tragic case of a
group of schoolchildren who were murdered by an Arab gunman as they
visited the "Zone of Peace" on the Jordanian border. The Jordanians
specifically requested that the Israeli teachers and chaperones leave
their weapons behind ... which they did.
American schools are, on the other hand, "gun free zones" by order of
our chief cowards and socialist bed-wetters, Bill and Hillary Clinton,
and Charles Schumer and Diane Feinstein. Therefore, our schools make
ideal targets for misguided gunmen, who already violate dozens of laws
when they undertake such actions -- demonstrating that no number of
victim disarmament laws will ever stop such creatures. (Washington, D.C.
should be a peaceful paradise if "gun control" laws work. But instead
that city has one of our highest murder rates -- isn't that curious?)
I, too, hope the next time some nut takes it into his head to shoot an
innocent child, he encounters me first. One of two things will then
happen: 1) I will die, instead of an innocent child. Good trade; or 2)
Being well-armed and trained in the use of the weapons which our
Founding Fathers considered it our right and duty to own and carry (in
order to protect their legacy of freedom against inevitable creeping
tyranny) I will down the outlaw. An even better trade.
If someone attacks a helpless child while you're nearby, will you have
the weapon and the training to stop them? (You'll dial 9-1-1, won't you?
Average waiting time in Los Angeles today after dialing 9-1-1 is 20
minutes.) If the attack occurs in a school, will the nearby adults be
helpless to save that child's life, due to victim disarmament laws
you've supported?
In either case, are you sure God will have mercy on your soul, after you
have knowingly betrayed our heritage of freedom, condemning the innocent
to die without defense?
Unlike you, I do not hope you die because of your misguided faith in an
armed, omnipotent state -- the same foolhardy faith that led many
well-meaning Jews, Slavs, and Gypsies to stand by and watch their
children gassed to death in Europe in the 1940s because they had
foolishly "obeyed the law" and turned in their weapons, leaving only the
army and the police with arms, while decent men had no recourse but to
pray "that the Americans come with their Garand rifles in time to save
us."
Quite to the contrary, as a member of the unorganized militia (as are
all adult, able-bodied Americans), I would still use my weapons to
defend your rights, your property, and the safety of your family, even
after you have condemned me, vilified me, and voted to strip me of my
God-given right to self-defense.
This does not make me a great man. It merely makes me a man.
What your opposite stance makes you, I'm not sure. Do I take it you
oppose the existence or use of all firearms? Do you then believe our
fathers, uncles, and grandfathers were wrong to hit those beaches in
Normandy and Iwo Jima (yes, the names of some of my relatives are on the
granite memorials), carrying these bullet-spewing machines which you
hate? You would have preferred to leave things as they were in 1943,
with millions condemned to fascist slavery?
And what about today in Littleton, Colorado? Would you have condemned
the police to enter that building without firearms? Or do you actually
believe that firearms are fine, so long as they're only in the
possession of government agents ... as was the case under Stalin in
1931, under Hitler in 1942, under Mao in 1955, under Pol Pot in 1971?
My, you must be very proud of those "militant freaks" who put your
doctrines into effect, murdering 10 million in the Ukraine, 8 million in
Germany and the Nazi empire, more millions in China, and (the piker!) a
mere few hundred thousand in Cambodia.
Continue on your present course. You seem to be in the majority. So,
with luck, you may yet survive -- at least briefly -- to live under just
such a regime, yourself.
* * * * *
Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the
Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $21.95 plus $3 shipping
($6 UPS; $2 shipping each additional copy) through Mountain Media, P.O.
Box 4422, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127-4422. The 500-page trade paperback may
also be ordered via web site
http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html, or at 1-800-244-2224.
Credit cards accepted; volume discounts available.
Vin Suprynowicz, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. -- John
Hay, 1872
The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us
not get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts
ceases to discriminate between good and evil. He becomes a slave in body
and soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don't adjust!
Revolt against the reality! -- Mordechai Anielewicz, Warsaw, 1943
The Libertarian, April 21, 1999
Der Fuhrer Invades Yugoslavia
Tony Blair Says NATO Preparing to Send in Ground Troops
Time to buy stock in bodybag companies
TONY BLAIR signalled a stepping-up of the Balkans conflict last night by
confirming that Nato was preparing to send ground troops into Kosovo
before Slobodan Milosevic had been defeated.
Before flying to Washington for talks with President Clinton before this
weekend's Nato summit, Mr Blair indicated that troops would go in as
soon as Serb resistance had been sufficiently diminished. He also warned
Belgrade that Nato would defend Montenegro against Serb aggression, amid
growing fears that the Kosovo conflict is spreading. Nato said Serb
artillery had shelled sites in Albania, 200 Serb troops had crossed the
Albanian border, another 200 to 300 had entered a UN demilitarised zone
on the border with Croatia and uniformed troops were said to be carrying
out killings in Montenegro.
Mr Blair's remarks were seen by MPs as the clearest indication yet that
he is preparing public opinion for the deployment of ground forces
before a political settlement has been reached with Milosevic. Downing
Street officials refused to go into the details of preparations for an
invasion. But they indicated that Nato's policy was shifting. The Prime
Minister's spokesman hinted that troops were likely to be deployed when
there was no longer "organised armed resistance" and the Serb army was
withdrawing.
But Mr Blair received a warning from Russian television that the Serbs
would continue to resist and could fight a prolonged guerrilla war.
Andre Cherkasov, for the Russian station NTV, asked Mr Blair whether the
Government and British society were prepared for serious casualties
among servicemen. Mr Cherkasov said: "These people know how to fight,
these people know how to lead a guerrilla war on their own territory."
Mr Blair confirmed that Nato was still opposed to a full-scale invasion
against opposition from an "undegraded, undiminished Serb military
machine". But MPs detected a significant change of tone. The key issue
for Nato leaders is the extent to which Serb forces will have to be
ground down by the bombing before allied forces go in. Javier Solana,
the Nato Secretary-General, indicated that the bombing would have to
continue for some time.
It was originally envisaged that Nato forces would be deployed to
safeguard the return of the refugees after a peace deal had been signed.
But there is a growing realisation that an agreement with Milosevic may
be impossible. George Robertson, the Defence Secretary, said: "We are
determined that an international military force will deploy in Kosovo
once the air strikes have done their job, so that the Kosovo people can
return to their homes."
Mr Clinton is expected to back Mr Blair's call for Nato to prepare for a
ground offensive. The White House spokesman said last night that the
President would support updating a contingency plan for invasion.
Diplomatic sources in Washington said that, just as Mr Clinton had been
happy for hawkish Republican senators to leap ahead and prepare the
American people for the use of ground troops, so his cabinet would be
pleased if Nato leaders such as Mr Blair and Jacques Chirac took a lead.
But they may encounter resistance from Nato members such as Italy and
Greece, which have expressed doubts about the air campaign.
The London Telegraph, April 22, 1999
War is Peace
NATO is Outdated
Time for European-based U.S. troops to go home
Let us pause for a moment, as the great and good gather in Washington to
mark the 50th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation,
with Kosovo top of their agenda. Let us look back to the world as it was
when Nato was born.
It was a moment of extraordinary tension in Europe. In February 1948,
Jan Masaryk, the Czech foreign minister, was assassinated in Prague, as
part of a communist coup. It was a brutal demonstration of Stalin's
determination to impose communist rule throughout the area of Soviet
occupation.
There were real fears that both France and Italy might fall to communist
rule as well, and Washington was actively planning for military
intervention if they did so. In June that year, the Soviet blockade of
Berlin began, and the allied airlift was launched to keep the western
part of that city alive.
In April, 1949, Nato was founded. And in September, the USSR detonated
its first atomic device.
It was, in short, the start of the cold war for real, and a very
explosive start, too.
How the world has changed. Today, the Russian threat is of collapse,
rather than aggression. The country is bankrupt. And Moscow's miserable
failure to suppress the revolt of Chechnya in its own backyard suggests
that it could scarcely mount a serious conventional onslaught on anyone
else if it wanted to.
Of course, Russia still has a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons, and that
threat is unpredictable: no one knows if the weapons remain under
adequate control or even if they remain operable.
Democracy in western Europe is thoroughly established. The communists
have reinvented themselves as good social democrats, not just in the
west, but in central Europe.
The Czech Republic has joined Nato, along with Poland and Hungary. Their
negotiations to join the European Union are well under way. All the
former Soviet satellites are eager to join the western club.
And a thoroughly democratic, unified, federal Germany - with all the
confusion and indecision that implies - has just celebrated the return
of its parliament to Berlin.
With the one glaring exception of former Yugoslavia, it is a fairly
reassuring scenario. But the Nato leaders will undoubtedly be obsessed
with the exception. Thanks to their ill-considered intervention in
Kosovo, and the bombing campaign they have launched, they will be
urgently attempting to close ranks, and find a way of bringing that
undeclared war to a rapid conclusion.
What they will not be thinking about is the question that is going
begging: Is Nato itself past its sell-by date?
It is no doubt a disloyal question to ask at this moment. Perhaps it is
too late. It was asked back in 1991, when the Warsaw Pact was wound up,
and the Soviet Union imploded. But it was rapidly dismissed as an
irrelevance. After all, most of the old enemies wanted to join. And if
it wasn't broke, why fix it?
The trouble is that the conflict in Kosovo, and the terrible human
tragedy which has been unleashed there, does not just raise questions
about Nato's tactics. It revives questions about the very structure and
purpose of the organisation.
Every important success achieved by the alliance in its 50 years was won
without a shot being fired in anger. But now the first shots have been
fired, and the cracks are starting to emerge.
Nato's success was precisely as a weapon of deterrence, as one side of a
military standoff which actually guaranteed the peace. The combination
of strategic and conventional capacity ensured that neither side dared
disturb the peace in Europe.
Today the alliance boasts massive military capacity without any
countervailing balance. It is a mighty weapon, without an obvious role.
The temptation is to use it, even if it is inappropriate.
In Kosovo, that has happened. Awesome technological equipment,
represented by US-led air power, has been used as a hammer to crack the
nut of a horrible, localised, medieval war. It not only appears to be
failing, it actually seems to have made matters worse.
In an articulate and persuasive new study of the transatlantic
relationship*, Elizabeth Pond, former Christian Science Monitor
correspondent in Moscow and Bonn, says Nato emerged from the cold war
"with glory and perplexity". Its victory should have put it out of
business. In the event, it was the Europeans, from both east and west,
who decided (back in 1991) that Nato was "the only possible instrument"
to keep the US engaged in Europe.
One reason, she argues, was the danger of "imperial recidivism" in
Russia. Another was the "conspicuous preference. . . for American
security leadership over the alternatives of German leadership, or no
leadership". The third was the belief, because of the atrocities in
former Yugoslavia, of the need for "credible force - which only the
Americans could provide - to constrain local bullies on the peripheries
of Europe".
All those reasons for preserving Nato can be queried today. As far as
Russia is concerned, the threat of an unpredictable response, such as
some crazed nationalist threatening to use its nuclear weapons, is more
likely because of the alienation caused by Nato's continued existence,
and enlargement. The alliance may be seen as a benevolent force among
its member states. But many outsiders suspect its motives, and not just
in Russia.
As for maintaining a credible force to deal with the likes of Slobodan
Milosevic, it is questionable whether the sort of force the US brings to
Nato is relevant. It is becoming increasingly clear that his vicious
militia can only be stopped on the ground. But that is precisely the
sort of war Bill Clinton wants to avoid at all costs.
But what about the desire to preserve American security leadership in
Europe? There lies the nub. Perhaps the time has finally come for the
Europeans to resume security leadership on their own continent.
The US did not want to be involved in Kosovo. It is, thank goodness, a
reluctant sheriff on the world stage. If Nato had not existed, and had
not offered the option of a massive US-led bombing campaign, then the
Europeans would have been forced to tackle Milosevic with more modest,
and possibly more effective, means.
As for the Europeans, they continue to hide behind US security skirts.
They did not even attempt to solve Kosovo alone, because they have ceded
"security leadership" to Washington. The brave words of Tony Blair and
Jacques Chirac at St Malo, promoting a new effort at building a European
defence identity, are likely to remain so much hot air as long as they
rely on US leadership in Nato.
The alliance should be replaced by a genuinely European defence
initiative, which would finally allow the US troops on the European
continent to go home. It is ridiculous to suggest that the US will
remain bound to Europe only if it has soldiers on the spot. The two-way
economic ties of investment and trade are now so great - in spite of
silly squabbles over bananas and the like - that the two sides of the
Atlantic are condemned to ever closer co-operation.
If both sides can eventually realise that, it may be the one positive
lesson to emerge from the present sorry story in Kosovo.
* The Rebirth of Europe, by Elizabeth Pond, Brookings Institution Press,
price $26.95.
The Financial Times, April 22, 1999
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
