-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 Invades Yugoslavia World Unimpressed with NATO's Humanitarian Mission "We love humanity. That's why we bomb it." BUENOS AIRES - It is thousands of miles from Belgrade and there is not a Serb in sight. But Gonzalo Etcheberry is passing a wall on a busy street here spray-painted with the words, ''Yankee, out of the Balkans.'' He did not write the slogan, but he couldn't agree more. ''Your bombs in Yugoslavia are from the side of America that I can't stand,'' said Mr. Etcheberry, a 21-year-old medical student wearing a black Pearl Jam T-shirt. ''I hate it when the U.S. plays judge and God.'' Such feelings are common in Argentina - and in many other parts of the world far from the conflict over Kosovo. As the NATO air offensive against Serb-controlled Yugoslavia concludes its eighth week and such blunders as the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and strikes on Kosovo refugees make headlines worldwide, alliance planes are inflicting collateral damage of another kind - damage to the organization's international reputation. And Uncle Sam, NATO's dominant power, is bearing the brunt of public anger. Here in Argentina, one of Washington's closest Latin American allies, a poll last week showed that 64 percent of the populace opposes the air campaign. More respondents had a negative opinion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization than of President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia. In Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and other regions with little direct interest in the conflict, opposition to the bombing is surfacing in statements by elected officials, in newspaper editorials, opinion polls, public protests, Internet banter and street graffiti. Increasingly, there is little subtlety to the NATO-bashing. ''NATO is blindly bombing Yugoslavia,'' Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India said in a fiery political speech last week. ''There is a dance of destruction going on there. Thousands of people rendered homeless. And the United Nations is a mute witness to all this. Is NATO's work to prevent war or to fuel one?'' In the view of analysts here and elsewhere, the backlash shows that Washington's portrayal of the conflict as a humanitarian mission is being superseded by lingering anti-Western feelings in countries with bad memories of U.S. intervention and European colonialism. While the plight of the Kosovo refugees has evoked widespread sympathy, with many countries offering support to the relief effort, there is also growing criticism that NATO was too quick to abandon diplomacy for war. The mistaken bombings of civilians and of the Chinese Embassy have intensified those feelings, foreign policy analysts say. ''Milosevic has been able to successfully evoke the powerful message that he is defending his homeland and that he's the underdog facing Yankee might,'' said Jerrold Post, director of the political psychology program at George Washington University in Washington. ''And that is striking a chord internationally.'' Even in some countries that have shown support for the allies, doubts are surfacing. In Japan, for example, the bombing of the embassy - coupled with vivid television images of scattered civilian corpses after other NATO mistakes - seems to have cooled any enthusiasm for Japanese participation in the Kosovo conflict. Opposition appears to be growing fastest in the developing world. Since the end of the Cold War, many poor countries grudgingly have come to accept the United States as an economic model and leader. At the same time, many analysts say, the war has so graphically underlined the U.S. status as the sole superpower that it has sparked resentment. Such feelings have been exacerbated by the impression that the United States and NATO have largely ignored the United Nations and international opinion in launching the air campaign. Skepticism is becoming widespread and varied. In the Middle East, where the West was widely criticized for failing to come to the immediate aid of Muslims during the war in Bosnia this decade, few Arab voices defend NATO's efforts to protect the largely Muslim Kosovo Albanians. For many Arabs, though, the bombings have evoked disturbing parallels with the continuing U.S.-led air campaign against Iraq, whose population, subject to economic sanctions, is the object of widespread sympathy in the Arab world. A Jordan Times columnist, Rami Khouri, wrote last week that the United States and Britain have now made the ''perpetual bombing of a weak and defenseless target'' something routine. In Africa, ''most ordinary people are too busy with the struggle of day-to-day life'' to focus closely on Kosovo, ''and there has been feeling that it's white folks' business,'' said Babacar Toure, publisher of the Sud daily newspaper in Dakar, Senegal. But media accounts of errant bombs have prompted debate among intellectuals, he said, notably on the way NATO has sidelined the United Nations and its African secretary-general, Kofi Annan. In the Philippines, one of Washington's closest allies in Asia, protesters have been marching daily in opposition to a plan for military exercises with the United States. The war is striking a particularly bitter note in Latin America, where Washington's past support of repressive governments has left a legacy of suspicion about its motives. Political opposition movements are using the war to their advantage, linking ''Yankee bullying'' in the Balkans to market-oriented economic reforms favored by Washington in the region. For now, at least, mounting opposition to the war does not appear to translate into widespread anger at all things American. In Argentina, for instance, recent polls by Gallup Argentina for the newspaper La Nacion showed that while 64 percent of Argentines oppose the war in Yugoslavia and 30 percent have a negative view of NATO, 56 percent said they still have a favorable view of the United States. International Herald Tribune, May 19, 1999 Information SuperSpyWay U.S. Uses "Key Escrow" to Steal Secrets "We don't care if they spy on citizens. But dammit, they're stealing from our companies." European plans for controlling encryption software are nothing to do with law enforcement and everything to do with U.S. industrial espionage, according to a report released by the European Parliament on Friday. The working document for the Scientific and Technological Options Assessment panel said the United States has tried to persuade European Union countries to adopt its key escrow or key recovery policies -- allowing backdoor access to encryption programs -- saying this was necessary to read messages exchanged by criminals. But the report details how the UKUSA alliance -- made up of the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand -- has used its secret Echelon global spying network to intercept confidential company communications and give them to favored competitors. Thomson S.A., located in Paris, and Airbus Industrie, based in Blagnac Cedex, France, are said to have lost contracts as a result of information passed to rivals. "The U.S. government misled states in the EU and [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] about the true intention of its policy," the report adds. "Between 1993 and 1997 police representatives were not involved in the NSA [National Security Agency]-led policy-making process for key recovery. Despite this, during the same period the U.S. government repeatedly presented its policy as being motivated by the stated needs of law-enforcement agencies." The document went on to detail how the agencies specifically studied Internet data. Apart from scanning all international communications lines -- using 120 satellites, microwave listening stations, and an adapted submarine -- it said they stored and analyzed Usenet discussions. "In the U.K., the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency maintains a 1-terabyte database containing the previous 90 days of Usenet messages." The "NSA employs computer 'bots' (robots) to collect data of interest," the report adds. "For example, a New York website known as JYA.COM offers extensive information on cryptography and government communications interception activities. Records of access to the site show that every morning it is visited by a bot from NSA's National Computer Security Center, which looks for new files and makes copies of any that it finds." According to a former employee, NSA had by 1995 installed "sniffer" software to collect traffic at nine major Internet exchange points. The report offered evidence that a leading U.S. Internet and telecommunications company had contracted with the NSA to develop software to capture Internet data of interest, and that deals had been struck with Microsoft, Lotus, and Netscape to alter their products for foreign use. "There can't be any doubt any longer that there's an economic imperative to these policies," said Simon Davies, director of Privacy International. "We have been lied to for years. But it will be up to companies like Airbus to take legal action to force a definition of national security in the context of the European Union. Then we can establish a legal framework and appeals process." Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported on Monday that the U.K. government had agreed to take key escrow "off the agenda" and had accepted industry proposals for a "largely voluntary program of co-operation with the security services". Government officials could not confirm the report. But Caspar Bowden, director of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, questioned how far any compromise would go. "Will they persist with statutory licensing [of trusted third parties]and criminal legislation on decryption warrants?" he asked. The New York Times, May 18, 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! 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