Roger ROMAIN
a/conseiller communal
B6180 COURCELLES
sites web : http://www1.brutele.be/users/r.romain/Sommario.html
http://www1.brutele.be/users/r.romain/enbref.html
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
----- Original Message -----
From: "Coordinamento Romano per la Jugoslavia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "crj" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2000 12:05 PM
Subject: Est europeo: Polonia, Ucraina
POLONIA: finalmente democrazia! Tagliati i fondi al giornale indipendente
"Rivista ecologista delle Brigate Verdi" per aver scritto la verita' sulla
guerra d'aggressione della NATO in Jugoslavia. Una
petizione da firmare.
UCRAINA: reportage speciale dell'International Action Center - con un
"colpo di Stato morbido" il presidente Kuchma, sostenuto dagli USA, cerca di
sbarazzarsi del Parlamento. Segue le orme di Eltsin?
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2000 08:39:24 -0800
From: Peter Bein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: "STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN!" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Help Polish Green Brigades
STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
Friends, please sign the petition at
http://www.most.org.pl/zb/gbnfos.htm
Background below. Thank you.
Piotr Bein
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
=================================================
February 1, 2000
Vancouver/Canada and Cracow/Poland
Polish "Green Brigades" need help Grassroot publications denied government
funding
Withdrawing public funds from a country's leading independent magazine does
not contribute to freedom of information. For publishing alternative
information on NATO war in Yugoslavia, depleted uranium weapons, and the
hypocrisy of some European Greens re human rights in Kosovo, the "Green
Brigades Ecologist Magazine", a Polish environmental bi-weekly, received a
death sentence from the government-run fund for the protection of the
environment. Well-read "Dzikie Zycie", "Kropla" and many other small,
independent publications shared a similar fate.
Andrzej Zwawa, the chief editor of the Green Brigades Publishing House is
trying to rescue the magazine, despite government decision. He issued a
petition to the government in Polish and English, which supporters can sign
on the Internet at http://www.most.org.pl/zb/gbnfos.htm.
The punishment was dealt under the pretext of withdrawing funds from small
publications. With a circulation of only 1,000 copies every 2 weeks, Polish
"Green Brigades" serves as an information exchange forum for the country's
environment and community movement, as well as the general public. The
bi-weekly appears on the Internet, where it enjoys far greater readership.
The staff, facilities and equipment are basic. Often 3-5 people work on
less than adequate computers in a cramped space, equivalent to half the area
of a plushy office in the government or its fund.
All texts in "Green Brigades" come from volunteer authors, who are
proponents and opponents of diverse religions, political and military
alliances, organizations, ideas and worldviews. Although an unfair 1998
article in respectable "Polityka" weekly unfairly labeled it "sectarian",
the environmental bi-weekly remains one of Poland's few non-bigoted
publications. Access to the records of the granting decision was denied, but
well-informed sources maintain that the commission refused the funding
because texts of "...anarchists, leftists, opponents of bombing of
Yugoslavia by NATO..." have appeared in the condemned publications.
The grassroots activists wonder how much influence sectarian hysteria
exerts on the funding decisions. A recent book by two Catholic clergy,
professors Slipko and Zwolinski, titled "Rozdroza ekologii" (cross-roads of
ecology) manipulates original statements of environmentalists to make them
look sectarian and dangerous to society. According to the professors in
cassocks, vegetarianism is a religion, and Greenpeace "...have no idea what
is really harmful and hazardous for the environment. while promoting
technologies that are lethal for the environment." Using the book as court
evidence, the mayor of Bielsko, the seat of "Dzikie Zycie", refused city
funding for this publication.
Zwawa's bi-weekly featured numerous authors from Western Europe and North
America on topics ranging from deep ecology, through deforestation, organic
farming, agrotourism and global climate change, to the use of depleted
uranium weapons in Yugoslavia. "Green Brigades" held an interview with Niaz
Dorry of Greenpeace USA, the 1998 "Time" magazine 'Hero of the Planet'. It
also presented: the North American solar aquatic method of treating sewage;
a community sustainability project downtown Vancouver, British Columbia; the
controversy over Makah whale hunt off the coast of Washington state; the
clear-cutting of old-growth rainforests in Canada; the risks from
marine aquaculture and overfishing worldwide; the struggle of American
Indians to retain their lands; the warming up of Alaska; and many other
topics.
The articles presented to the Polish reader international organizations,
such as Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Norwegian
Environmental Protection Agency, Sierra Club, Western Canada Wilderness
Committee, Friends of Clayoquot Sound, Raincoast Conservation Society,
Forest Action Network, People's Action for Threatened Habitat, Raging
Grannies, Eco-Cafe, American Association for the Advancement of Science,
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Global Climate Coalition, US
National Fisheries Service, US National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, Georgia Strait Alliance, Makah Tribal Council, Worldwatch
Institute, International Whaling Commission, World Council of Whalers,
Fisheries and Oceans Canada, American Ocean Campaign, Canadian Museum of
Nature, Ocean Voice International, Harvard Medical School - Health and
Global Environment Centre, Ecological Action Centre in Halifax, Hatfield
Marine Sciences Centre, and many other.
Sample articles (in Polish) can be viewed on the web at:
http://www.most.org.pl/zb/zb/131/morze1.htm (marine life)
http://www.most.org.pl/zb/zb/131/morze2.htm (interview with Niaz Dorry)
http://www.most.org.pl/zb/zb/131/wieloryb.htm (whale hunts)
http://www.most.org.pl/zb/zb/133/nato.htm (NATO, militarism)
http://www.most.org.pl/zb/zb/133/prezenta.htm (European Union politics)
http://www.most.org.pl/zb/zb/133/nowoczes.htm (eco-philosophy)
http://www.most.org.pl/zb/zb/135 (eco-philosophy)
http://www.most.org.pl/zb/zb/139/military.htm (militarism)
http://www.most.org.pl/zb/zb/140/klimat.htm (climate change)
http://www.most.org.pl/zb/zb/141/euroscep.htm (European Union politics)
http://www.most.org.pl/zb/zb/141/dzikie.htm (deforestation)
http://www.most.org.pl/zb/zb/142/dzikie.htm (deforestation)
http://www.most.org.pl/zb/zb/143/military.htm (depleted uranium weapons)
http://www.most.org.pl/zb/zb/143/nato.htm (NATO controversy)
http://www.most.org.pl/zb/zb/144/nato.htm (European Greens and NATO)
http://www.most.org.pl/zb/zb/145/zwierze.htm#schronisko (animal rights)
Contact information:
Andrzej Zwawa, chief editor of "Zielone Brygady"
Wydawnictwo "Zielone Brygady" (Green Brigades Publishing House)
Slawkowska 12/24, PL 31-014 Krak�w, Poland
telephone: +4812 422 2147, or 422 2264, or 429 5332 extension 30
fax: +4812 429 5332 extension 26 or 22
SMS: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.most.org.pl/zb
Piotr Bein, contributing author
Vancouver, Canada
telephone and fax: +604 228 9437
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
______________________________________________________________________
INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER SPECIAL REPORT
IS US BEHIND 'QUIET COUP' IN UKRAINE?
Ramsey Clark, IAC Protest Move to Set Up Presidential Dictatorship
KIEV, Ukraine--US officials and Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma are
collaborating in an effort to break up Ukraine's parliament and concentrate
power in the president's hands, Ukrainian opposition leaders told
International Action Center representatives last week.
IAC members Larissa Kritskaya and Bill Doares were in Kiev to attend a
hearing of the International Peoples Tribunal on NATO War Crimes in
Yugoslavia (English translation; see accompanying dispatch). It appears that
Washington's goal is to bring Ukraine into NATO and to smash parliamentary
resistance to the privatization of land and other measures demanded by the
International Monetary Fund.
This former Soviet republic now has two rival parliaments in the wake of an
attempt by Kuchma to illegally oust parliament speaker Oleksandr Tkachenko
and deputy speaker Adam Martynyuk. The two have accused Kuchma of falsifying
the results of last November's presidential election. Their charges were
borne out by European Union electoral observers.
GORE AND KUCHMA--PARTNERS IN CRIME The regime's action came on the heels of
a private meeting in Washington between Kuchma and US vice president Al
Gore. Kuchma was first elected in 1996 with considerable support from the
CIA-linked Soros Foundation.
To engineer Tkachenko and Martynyuk's removal, rightwing Verkhovnye Rada
(parliament) deputies and their allies held an extralegal gathering in a
nongovernment building Jan. 21 at the same time as an official Rada session
was in progress. The unconstitutional gathering voted to oust Tkachenko and
Martynyuk and replace them with Kuchma allies and to abolish the basic
democratic right of parliamentary immunity. It also named a new head of the
central bank.
Tkachenko and Martynyuk were not invited to the session or told of the
charges against them. The only record of the vote and attendance at the
rightwing gathering is the claims of its organizers. Previous attempts to
remove Tkachenko and Martynyuk by constitutional means had failed.
As of this writing, Tkachenko is refusing to leave his office. His phone
and fax have been disconnected and state television is refusing to air his
statements. His official security has been removed and he is being guarded
by Communist, Socialist and Peasant Party deputies.
Tkachenko is a member of the Peasant Party and Martynyuk is in the
Communist Party. The confrontation may come to a head Feb. 1 when the Rada
is scheduled to reconvene after winter recess.
"There has been considerable pressure to forcibly Westernize Ukraine,"
speaker Tkachenko told the IAC. "The presidential election was determined by
force and now the president wants to use force against parliament. He is
trying to create an artificial majority in order to concentrate power in his
hands. Our constitution has been violated at every step."
Kuchma's ultimate aim is to abolish the existing single-chamber Rada where
many "reforms" demanded by US bankers and Kuchma's wealthy allies have been
blocked. He wants to replace it with a smaller, two-chamber body with an
upper chamber comprising regional governors appointed by himself. To achieve
this, he has ordered a "popular referendum" that will presumably be as
controlled as last year's presidential election.
WALL STREET RULES With nearly 50 million people, Ukraine is the
second-largest former Soviet republic. It was one of the USSR's most
productive agricultural and industrial regions. Today, like other former
Soviet republics, it has been devastated by "economic restructuring"
dictated by the International Monetary Fund. Since the fall of the USSR,
Ukraine's industrial production has dropped 70 percent. Its population has
fallen by 2 million in just the past two
years. The old-age pension is $13 a month and millions of workers are not
being paid. While hunger stalks many regions, one-third of the state budget
goes in interest payments to Western banks. The country's debt has risen 30
times since Kuchma took office in 1996.
The Kuchma regime has tried to create a fascist-like atmosphere by
exploiting divisions similar to those used to break up Yugoslavia. It has
whipped up Ukrainian nationalism on an anti-Russian basis (one- quarter of
the population is Russian). Soviet-era books have been burned in public
squares and opposition activists attacked by fascist gangs. The regime's
alleged nationalism does not stop Wall Street from dictating its economic
policy. It has agreed to raise food and fuel prices, rents and gas and
electricity rates on a schedule dictated by the International Monetary Fund.
"It is obvious that the United States has designed the Ukraine's political
landscape," Oleg Grachev, Kiev regional secretary of the Communist Party of
Ukraine (KPU), told Kritskaya and Doares.
"You cannot speak about injustice and electoral falsification in this
country without speaking of the domination of the International Monetary
Fund."
MARKED BALLOTS AND HAND GREANDES KPU general secretary Petro Simonenko, who
calls for Ukraine to withdraw from the IMF, was the runner-up in November's
presidential election. He got an official 38 percent of the vote. The KPU
brought evidence of marked ballots, ballot-box stuffing and vote-buying to
Ukraine's criminal court but was told such matters were outside the court's
jurisdiction. In the first round of the presidential election, Progressive
Socialist Party candidate Natalia Vitorienko, who also condemns the IMF,
was injured by a hand grenade tossed into a rally she was addressing.
"Kuchma is trying to make a coup to gain absolute power," said Ukraine
Socialist Party leader Pavel Moroz. "He is acting on behalf of powerful
private groups that support him. Since Kuchma came to office, Ukraine has
gotten poorer but his friends have gotten rich.
They now want to get even richer by selling shares in land and grabbing
control of basic industries like steel, petrochemicals and even oil and gas,
which is now forbidden to be privatized."
On Jan. 29, workers across Ukraine marched to protest the IMF- Kuchma
program and to demand unpaid back wages. Jan. 29 is the anniversary of the
1918 uprising by Kiev's Arsenal workers that was drowned in blood by the
Western-backed regime that then ruled Ukraine. The opposition has called
for mass demonstrations outside parliament on Feb. 1 in support of Tkachenko
and Martynyuk.
Former US attorney general and IAC founder Ramsey Clark sent letters of
protest to president Kuchma and the Rada.
An IAC statement said, "Like the war against Yugoslavia, the attempted
presidential coup in Ukraine is part of the NATO-Pentagon drive to the east,
which carries great danger for all humanity. The US corporate media, which
so obediently repeated Pentagon-State Department lies about Kosovo, appears
to have imposed an information blockade on the events in Ukraine and US
involvement there. We must break that blockade. The democratic forces in
Ukraine deserve the support of antiwar and justice-loving people in this
country and around the world."
Letters of support can be faxed to Deputy V.N. Romashenko at 011 380 44 293
2792 or 011 380 44 229 7228.
---
February 1, 2000 UPDATE on
INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER SPECIAL REPORT:
IS US BEHIND 'QUIET COUP' IN UKRAINE?
February 1, 2000--As of this writing, Tkachenko is refusing to leave his
office. His phone and fax have been disconnected and state television is
refusing to air his statements. His official security has
been removed and he is being guarded by Communist, Socialist and Peasant
Party deputies.
Tkachenko is a member of the Peasant Party and Martynyuk is in the
Communist Party. The rightwing pro-U.S. bloc is continuing to boycott Rada
meetings in an attempt to give Kuchma an excuse to dissolve the body. On
Feb. 1, thousands of pro-Tkachenko demonstrators gathered outside the Rada
building to show their support for the sitting parliament. A reported 600
rightists gathered outside Ukraine House, where the pro-IMF, pro-NATO bloc
was meeting.
INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER SPECIAL REPORT:
IS US BEHIND 'QUIET COUP' IN UKRAINE?
Ramsey Clark, IAC Protest Move to Set Up Presidential Dictatorship
January 30, 2000--KIEV, Ukraine--US officials and Ukrainian president
Leonid Kuchma are collaborating in an effort to break up Ukraine's
parliament and concentrate power in the president's hands, Ukrainian
opposition leaders told International Action Center representatives last
week. IAC members Larissa Kritskaya and Bill Doares were in Kiev to attend a
hearing of the International Peoples Tribunal on NATO War Crimes in
Yugoslavia (English translation; see
accompanying dispatch). It appears that Washington's goal is to bring
Ukraine into NATO and to smash parliamentary resistance to the privatization
of land and other measures demanded by the
International Monetary Fund.
This former Soviet republic now has two rival parliaments in the wake of an
attempt by Kuchma to illegally oust parliament speaker Oleksandr Tkachenko
and deputy speaker Adam Martynyuk. The two have accused Kuchma of falsifying
the results of last November's presidential election. Their charges were
borne out by European Union electoral observers.
GORE AND KUCHMA--PARTNERS IN CRIME The regime's
action came on the heels of a private meeting in Washington between Kuchma
and US vice president Al Gore. Kuchma was first elected in 1996 with
considerable support from the CIA-linked Soros Foundation.
To engineer Tkachenko and Martynyuk's removal, rightwing Verkhovnye Rada
(parliament) deputies and their allies held an extralegal gathering in a
nongovernment building Jan. 21 at the same time as an official Rada session
was in progress. The unconstitutional gathering voted to oust Tkachenko and
Martynyuk and replace them with Kuchma allies and to abolish the basic
democratic right of parliamentary immunity. It also named a new head of the
central bank.
Tkachenko and Martynyuk were not invited to the session or told of the
charges against them. The only record of the vote and attendance at the
rightwing gathering is the claims of its organizers. Previous attempts to
remove Tkachenko and Martynyuk by constitutional means had failed.
As of this writing, Tkachenko is refusing to leave his office. His phone
and fax have been disconnected and state television is refusing to air his
statements. His official security has been removed and he is being guarded
by Communist, Socialist and Peasant Party deputies.
Tkachenko is a member of the Peasant Party and Martynyuk is in the
Communist Party. The confrontation may come to a head Feb. 1 when the Rada
is scheduled to reconvene after winter recess.
"There has been considerable pressure to forcibly Westernize Ukraine,"
speaker Tkachenko told the IAC. "The presidential election was determined by
force and now the president wants to use force against parliament. He is
trying to create an artificial majority in order to concentrate power in his
hands. Our constitution has been violated at every step."
Kuchma's ultimate aim is to abolish the existing single-chamber Rada where
many "reforms" demanded by US bankers and Kuchma's wealthy allies have been
blocked. He wants to replace it with a smaller, two-chamber body with an
upper chamber comprising regional governors appointed by himself. To achieve
this, he has ordered a "popular referendum" that will presumably be as
controlled as last year's presidential election.
WALL STREET RULES With nearly 50 million people, Ukraine is the
second-largest former Soviet republic. It was one of the USSR's most
productive agricultural and industrial regions. Today, like other former
Soviet republics, it has been devastated by "economic restructuring"
dictated by the International Monetary Fund. Since the fall of the USSR,
Ukraine's industrial production has dropped 70 percent. Its population has
fallen by 2 million in just the past two
years. The old-age pension is $13 a month and millions of workers are not
being paid. While hunger stalks many regions, one-third of the state budget
goes in interest payments to Western banks. The country's debt has risen 30
times since Kuchma took office in 1996.
The Kuchma regime has tried to create a fascist-like atmosphere by
exploiting divisions similar to those used to break up Yugoslavia. It has
whipped up Ukrainian nationalism on an anti-Russian basis (one- quarter of
the population is Russian). Soviet-era books have been burned in public
squares and opposition activists attacked by fascist gangs. The regime's
alleged nationalism does not stop Wall Street from dictating its economic
policy. It has agreed to raise food and fuel
prices, rents and gas and electricity rates on a schedule dictated by the
International Monetary Fund.
"It is obvious that the United States has designed the Ukraine's political
landscape," Oleg Grachev, Kiev regional secretary of the Communist Party of
Ukraine (KPU), told Kritskaya and Doares.
"You cannot speak about injustice and electoral falsification in this
country without speaking of the domination of the International Monetary
Fund."
MARKED BALLOTS AND HAND GREANDES KPU general secretary Petro Simonenko, who
calls for Ukraine to withdraw from the IMF, was the runner-up in November's
presidential election. He got an official 38 percent of the vote. The KPU
brought evidence of marked ballots, ballot-box stuffing and vote-buying to
Ukraine's criminal court but was told such matters were outside the court's
jurisdiction. In the first round of the presidential election, Progressive
Socialist Party candidate Natalia Vitorienko, who also condemns the IMF, was
injured by a hand grenade tossed into a rally she was addressing.
"Kuchma is trying to make a coup to gain absolute power," said Ukraine
Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz. "He is acting on behalf of powerful
private groups that support him. Since Kuchma came to office, Ukraine has
gotten poorer but his friends have gotten rich. They now want to get even
richer by selling shares in land and grabbing control of basic industries
like steel, petrochemicals and even oil and gas, which is now forbidden to
be privatized."
On Jan. 29, workers across Ukraine marched to protest the IMF- Kuchma
program and to demand unpaid back wages. Jan. 29 is the anniversary of the
1918 uprising by Kiev's Arsenal workers that was drowned in blood by the
Western-backed regime that then ruled Ukraine.
Former US attorney general and IAC founder Ramsey Clark sent letters of
protest to president Kuchma and the Rada.
An IAC statement said, "Like the war against Yugoslavia, the attempted
presidential coup in Ukraine is part of the NATO-Pentagon drive to the east,
which carries great danger for all humanity. The US corporate media, which
so obediently repeated Pentagon-State Department lies about Kosovo, appears
to have imposed an information blockade on the events in Ukraine and US
involvement there. We must break that blockade. The democratic forces in
Ukraine deserve the support of antiwar and justice-loving people in this
country and around the world."
Letters of support can be faxed to Deputy V.N. Romashenko at 011
380 44 293 2792 or 011 380 44 229 7228.
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
** NO COPYRIGHT ! **
------------------------------------------------------------
