Russian Speaker: NATO Won't Benefit Georgian People [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?prd_id=160msg_id=2307359startrow=21date=2002-03-26do_alert=0 2002-03-26 RUSSIAN SPEAKER: NATO HARDLY TO BRING ANY BENEFITS TO GEORGIA ST.PETERSBURG, MARCH 26, RIA NOVOSTI - Russian Parliament Speaker Gennady Seleznyov was quite explicit as to NATO being unable to benefit the Georgian people when he commented at a St.Petersburg session of the CIS inter-parliamentary assembly on Georgia's military cooperation with the United States. All recent international parliamentary meetings were marked by Georgian representatives criticizing Russia and Russian peace-keepers in Abkhazia, said the Speaker. Meanwhile, Georgia is accusing Moscow of supporting this self-proclaimed republic of Abkhazia, once integrated in Georgia. We have not heard however a single statement about what the Georgian leadership and parliament are doing to consolidate the statehood, to prevent the break-up of the country, to step up economic development and do away with unemployment and poverty, said the Speaker. Seleznyov believes that the Georgian authorities are seeking an external foe for distracting public opinion from internal problems. NATO will hardly benefit the Georgian people - this policy has no future, said Seleznyov. __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy Awards® http://movies.yahoo.com/ --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Of Nukes, Maneuvers And Stubborn Perceptions [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- http://www.russiajournal.com/weekly/article.shtml?ad=5945 The Russia Journal MARCH 22-28, 2002 Vol.5, No.10 (153) Of nukes, maneuvers and stubborn perceptions By GORDON M. HAHN / The Russia Journal -U.S. nuclear weapons target some 2,000 sites in Russia. Others are the targets of British and French nuclear arms. American troops are now being stationed across the C.I.S. as of now only in four states: Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. NATO member Turkey is ethnically close to Azerbaijan, and some leaders in Baku have called for a NATO presence in their country. -All of this heightens the effect of another recent event. Last week, NATO conducted military maneuvers near Russias borders. Besides NATO members, the exercise, Strong Resolve 2002, involved Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden, Austria, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. The scenario envisioned an enemy attack on NATO from the north and a simultaneous invasion of a Central European NATO member state. Unless Latvia the only northern state besides Russia not included in the exercise is regarded as a potential enemy of the very alliance it is about to join and, unless Belarus is considered a potential invader, the only possible enemy in this scenario is Russia. With the next Russian-American summit two months away, the West has still failed to squarely face the fundamental and by now decade-old questions undermining its relationship with Russia. Which side has greater capabilities, the West or Russia? If the tables were turned, how would U.S. decision-makers, as rational actors, respond to the overwhelming countervailing capabilities Russia perceives and encounters from the West? The news that the United States has included Russia on a list of countries to be targeted by American nuclear weapons along with China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya has sent shock waves through political elites here and across the Big Pond. On the one hand, this news is not surprising; on another, it is shocking, raising serious doubts about the ability of Western bureaucracies to overcome old habits. It has been known for a long time that Russia was not de-targeted by the United States after the Cold War. That Russia has preserved such status might be regarded an achievement of sorts: It has retained one trait that marked its superpower greatness. The cycle in which the United States annually rediscovers that the Cold War is over and promises to develop a new relationship with Russia is more striking. This is news because it spectacularly debunks a fashionable argument made by U.S. officials and analysts. Russia should not be so disturbed by Americas nuclear arsenal, the argument goes, because the United States is not unsettled by British or French nuclear warheads and vice versa. Friends do not begrudge friends defense capabilities. Unfortunately, this formula leaves out the most important variables: U.S. weapons are not zeroed in on London or Paris, nor are British and French nuclear projectiles aimed at Washington. To understand Russian reaction to the Wests military posture, we should consider a concise statement made by George Shultz, who served as secretary of state during Ronald Reagans presidency. In regards to the fundamental principle that should inform national security decision-making, he noted that states design policy not on the basis of the intentions of other states, but on the basis of their capabilities. Repeat this to yourself, several times if need be, and then take a gander at the world through the security calculus of the Kremlin or, say, from Arbatskaya Ploshchad, where Russias General Staff divines defense policy. U.S. nuclear weapons target some 2,000 sites in Russia. Others are the targets of British and French nuclear arms. American troops are now being stationed across the C.I.S. as of now only in four states: Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. NATO member Turkey is ethnically close to Azerbaijan, and some leaders in Baku have called for a NATO presence in their country. A high-ranking delegation of U.S. officers recently visited Armenia to discuss stepping up military cooperation. The U.S.-Georgian operation in the Pankisi Gorge will target only Taliban and al-Qaida forces, giving Chechen terrorists a pass. Later this year, the three former Soviet Baltic republics, along with as many as four other countries near Russias western borders, will join NATO, already the most powerful military machine in history. All of this heightens the effect of another recent event. Last week, NATO conducted military maneuvers near Russias borders. Besides NATO members, the exercise, Strong Resolve 2002, involved Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden, Austria, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. The scenario envisioned an enemy attack on NATO from the north and a simultaneous
A Quiet Night In NATO-Occupied FYROM [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- http://www.mia.com.mk/ang/glavnavest/lastvest.asp?vest=\Refresh1\933-2403.htm Macedonian Information Agency March 27, 2002 SITUATION IN CRISIS REGIONS It was relatively peaceful in Kumanovo-Lipkovo crisis region overnight, while Tuesday evening at about 19h, a group of armed persons, threw a hand grenade towards the police checkpoint on the road between the villages of Aracinovo and Nikustak, and opened a fire upon the Macedonian security forces The Macedonian police responded to the attack and the perpetrators escaped. According to army sources, in the village of Nikustak, Matejce, Vaksince and Ropaljce, series of 20 sporadic and four rifle shots were registered Tuesday afternoon. The ethnically mixed police forces are scheduled to enter the village of Slupcane on Wednesday. It is relatively calm without any shootouts Wednesday morning in Tetovo region. No shots were registered after midnight in Tetovo or its surrounding. According to the Department of Interior, some firings were registered Tuesday evening, coming from the Elementary School Bratsko Migeni and from the Cetinska Street. __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy Awards® http://movies.yahoo.com/ --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
FYROM: Terrorist Chief Elected Head Of 'Coordinative Council' [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- http://www.balkanreport.com/strana.asp?id=460 [A brief background piece on Ali Ahmeti follows] Balkan Report 3/25/2002 Ali Ahmeti Elected President Of Coordinative Council All Kosovo dailies today report on the appointment of Ali Ahmeti, the former political leader of the NLA, as the president of the Co-ordination Council of the Albanians in Macedonia, in a meeting held yesterday in Tetova. A communiqué issued by the Council said that Ahmetis unanimous election proved the unity of the Macedonian Albanians to develop and promote democratic values as a factor of stability and integration of Macedonia into the Euro-Atlantic structures. In other news, Koha Ditore reports that despite NATO calls for Macedonian Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski to disband the special Lions police unit created during the crisis, Boskovski announced on Saturday that this unit is a regular police unit. The minister was speaking at a ceremony marking the completion of a three-month training course in Manastir for members of this unit. His announcement follows international criticism that Lions are an illegitimate police unit. ---Human Rights Watch: Dear Mr. Ahmeti by Rick Rozoff August 1, 2001 Human Rights Watch, whose interests and positions so closely (suspiciously if you like) parallel those of the United States State Department, politely requests that the political leader of the self-styled National Liberation Army in Macedonia, the lifelong separatist extremist Ali Ahmeti, abide by international humanitarian law. (The Human Rights Watch appeal is appended below.) Though, contrary to the title of the missive, the letter in fact requests that both sides in the conflict - the legitimate, legally-elected government, and the armed insurgency launched from Kosovo and Albania - respect Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions pertaining to what Human Rights Watch characterizes as internal armed conflicts. In keeping with HRW's stated policy of 'deferring judgment' on the legitimacy of said internal armed conflicts, its spokeperson, Holly Cartner, fully equates the aggressor and the victim; the legally-constituted authority, which is not accused of either provoking or even creating any pretext for the armed uprising, and the crime syndicate-linked and -funded racial terrorists. In the interim between the deferential letter from Ms. Carter to Mr. Ahmeti almost three months ago and now, Ahmeti and his pan-Albanian mercenaries have unleashed a full-scale insurrection throughout the nation, ethnically cleansing dozens of villages and contributing to the displacement of - by some estimates - over 120,000 civilians, a sizeable percentage of Macedonia's two million people. Human Rights Watch has kept a low profile since on this issue, except for reports on alleged mistreatment of ethnic Albanians and Western press personnel. When an organization like HRW advances its concerns from those affecting non-combatants in internal armed conflicts to the mistreatment, real or fancied, of insurgents - which is certainly impending - then it crosses the threshold of supposed impartiality into treating the belligerents as equal parties to the conflict, and thus internationalizes what in truth is a matter of internal criminal law enforcement. That HRW has at least left the door open for such a prospect is evident by Cartner's following up her reference to the Geneva Conventions by her revealing invocation of the fundamental principle[s] of the laws of war. Who is Dear Mr. Ahmeti? Holly Cartner, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia Division, has kept a close enough eye on the Balkans over the past years to know who she was so respectfully writing to. For anyone not familiar with Mr. Ahmeti, whose history suggests someone anything but dear, he possesses, to employ an expression familiar to the American if not the Albanian underworld, a rap sheet as long as his arm. Regarding his recent activties, in addition to waging war against the sovereign nation of Macedonia and its civilian population from his base in Prizren in Kosovo, Ahmeti reportedly found time to appear on an Australian radio broadcast and announce the launching of a Liberation Army of Chameria in Northern Greece, claiming he already had fighters and weapons in place there. When questioned about this, the latest plan for his decades' old project for a Greater Albania, he denied it - but then Ahmeti has denied a number of things in his lifetime. Had he been asked about his clandestine meeting with American OSCE representative Robert Frowick in mid-May of this year - a meeting held in Ahmeti's headquarters in Kosovo with Macedonian ethnic Albanian political leaders, and cabinet ministers, Arben Xhaferi and Imer Imeri - he might well have denied that also, except that Frowick himself didn't deny that it occurred. In a feature in the London
RE: FYROM: Terrorist Chief Elected Head Of 'Coordinative Council' [WWW.STOPNATO.
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- It should be clear to all that the 'saintly' Albanians are permitted nd encouraged to kill and dispossess whomsoever they wish - until Uncle Sam is directly affected. Whilst those 'evil Serbs' deserve all they get. Some egs from this week's press: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/World BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - A Serbian court Tuesday sentenced a former Bosnian interior minister to three months in jail for running a business in Serbia with forged documents, a news agency reported..Alija Delimustafic, who headed the ministry in charge of police when the Bosnian war broke out in 1992, had pleaded guilty to the crime. When released, he is expected to be extradited to Bosnia, where he is wanted on separate charges of organized crime, the independent news agency Beta reported...He was arrested by Serbian police in January, and reports about Delimustafic's true identity triggered outrage as many Serbs blame him for the killings of dozens of Yugoslav army soldiers killed by Bosnian police in 1992 as they were withdrawing from the newly independent Bosnia...The Belgrade court did not deal with Delimustafic's role in the war and handed him the minimal prison term for falsifying personal documents, a crime that carries a prison term of up to five years.' Harsh Serbian justice against an 'innocent' Bosnian Muslim 'freedom fighting leader' 'Five Bosnians _ four of whom survived the Srebrenica massacre _ killed in traffic accident Hirkic and her sons survived the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre in which up to 8,000 men were killed by Bosnian Serb troops.' Numbers up again. Bosnian Muslim men have now become women. US Embassy Reopens in Sarajevo Mon Mar 25, 5:49 PM ET 'The embassy shut down amid fears last week that al-Qaida terrorists were planning a major attack on Americans in Bosnia. It was closed to the public Wednesday and shut down entirely on Friday.' They magically appeared after the war in order to pick on the 'freedom loving' Americans who are protecting their Muslim brethren. Ungrateful lot! 'SFOR to scour Bosnia for illegal weapons during cranked-up Operation Harvest By Ivana Avramovic, Bosnia bureau European edition, Tuesday, March 26, 2002 SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina - Troops will check every attic, basement, cave, barn, dark corner and car trunk to find illegal weapons still abundant six years after the end of the war, the Stabilization Forces' top commander said during a news conference Friday.' Disarmed the KLA too © 2002 Stars and Stripes http:www.SignOnSanDiego.com 'Shootout among former rebels in Macedonia leaves at last two dead, several wounded TETOVO, Macedonia - Overnight clashes between rival ethnic Albanian rebel factions in Macedonia left at least two militants dead and several others wounded, a NATO spokesman said Tuesday.' Must have been started by the Serbs and their lackies, the Macedonians. Assessing the Effects of NATO's Air Strikes Three Years on By Jolyon Naegele 'It was the 15 January 1999 massacre by Serb forces of 45 Albanian inhabitants of the Kosovo village of Racak that so incensed the international community and paved the way to launching the air strikes. Racak resident Faik Limani lost three grown sons in the massacre, leaving him with seven fatherless grandchildren. After the air strikes ended, Limani praised the bravery of William Walker, the Kosovo mission chief of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Walker laid the blame squarely on Belgrade on a visit to Racak the day after the massacre. If Walker had not come here and had not seen the bodies, it would have been just another forgotten massacre, Limani said. The world would have known nothing of what had happened here, and NATO would not have intervened. NATO saved us. Without NATO, we would have all been exterminated. The lives of my three sons are the price we have paid for freedom. After all, only freedom is worth what we went through. The air strikes also unleashed a massive wave of violence by the Serb forces in Kosovo directed at the province's ethnic Albanian inhabitants -- 800,000 of whom fled under duress to neighboring Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, and beyond...A new Albanian nationalist spirit, free of fear of Serb repression, occurred in Kosovo almost overnight.Gjakova greets the UCK,Pristina greets the UCK,Gjilan greets the UCK,All Drenica is talking about the UCK,UCK from hill to hill, The UCK is shedding blood. The refrain of this war-time Albanian pop song, titled The UCK Greets Kosovo and sung by Bekim Ibrahimi and the group Korabi, could be heard on sidewalks and in marketplaces across Kosovo, an audible warning to all Serbs that what they had called the cradle of Serb civilization for generations was Serb land no more...An initial post-conflict wave of murders -- 400 in the first six months after NATO's arrival, with one-third of the victims Serb,
Re: Columnist Eric Margolis [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- But Nancy, Margolis is a vegan! And he would never countenance the sending of chickens to Afghanistan. Still, you may be right. At the same time we prevail upon antiwar.com to blacklist Margolis, maybe we can get them to stop posting Pat Buchanan and Justin Raimondo. Surely there are people on the Left (and not Chomskyites, Trotskyites, social democrats, anarchists, world socialists, libertarian socialists, third-way Marxists, progressives and Blairites) who are making the same points on Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on. Better yet, maybe some of them are vegans. How about Alexander Cockburn? Or does he work for the CIA? Another idea: Being an unrepentant ovolacto vegetarian (yes, I do drink milk: mea culpa), I think my writing should be posted before any of those other guys. After all, who needs ideas, when you have the right political loyalties (and diet)? Steve - Original Message - From: Nancy Hey To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2002 10:15 PM Subject: Re: Columnist Eric Margolis [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---" Other people are making the same points he is on Afghanistan, Iraq and so forth; there's no need to provide this enemy of ours with more exposure and authority than his contacts in the intelligence community have already succeeded in doing. Respectfully, Rick " My sentiments exactly! How can we get Antiwar.com to see this point? peacefully yours, Nancy Hey mart-remote wrote: Well said Rick. Please, let's not give this bastard any more exposure than he already gets, or even the thinest veneer of credibilty. Margolis is a CIA-KLA terrorist who happens to use a typewriter to kill people. His words do not belong on this list. One slight correction. He is with the Toronto Sun, not the Toronto Star. mart == Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 22:25:32 -0800 (PST) From: Rick Rozoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Cowboy Prez rides to rescue? - Columnist Eric Margolis [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Dear Friends, For anyone not already acquainted with the fact, Eric Margolis is a Western disinformation agent who boasts, inter alia, of smuggling rockets into the Afghan mujahedin in the 1980s and possessing a host of intelligence contacts, including with the CIA. A quick Google search with the words "Eric Margolis socialism" will demonstrate with whom we're dealing. There is nothing remotely enlightened or progressive about this individual, notwithstanding the fact that his columns, from the very establishment Toronto Star where he is the official foreign correspondent, have been crossposted and linked on several US 'progressive' sites fairly regularly of late. In fact, the only time he criticizes Western militarism, aside from goading it into being more aggressive (e.g. "Stopping Europe's New Nazis" and "Serbia Needs Moral Cleansing"), is when one of his presumed co-religionists is under fire. As such he operates on a personal, and hardly political or principled, agenda. Other people are making the same points he is on Afghanistan, Iraq and so forth; there's no need to provide this enemy of ours with more exposure and authority than his contacts in the intelligence community have already succeeded in doing. Respectfully, Rick Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy Awards®--- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Brazil questions 9-11-CFR freaks out [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
---
BRAZIL QUESTIONS SEPT 11 STORY; THE CFR FREAKS OUT
Posted By: Rosalinda
Date: Wednesday, 20 March 2002, 10:52 p.m.
[Source: Folha OnLine, Sept 14; "Anti-Americanism in Brazil,"
by Kenneth Maxwell, in Spring 2002 issue (#9),
{Correspondence: An International Review of Culture and Society}
on CFR website] SEPT. 11 ATTACKS MAY HAVE BEEN CARRIED OUT
BY THE "AMERICAN RIGHTWING" SEEKING WORLD DOMINATION,
IN A "REICHSTAG FIRE" REPLAY,
BRAZILIAN ECONOMIST CELSO FURTADO WARNED right after the attacks. Furtado is one of Brazil's most famous economists,
and a close buddy of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso
(they roomed together in Paris for awhile in the 1970's). {Folha OnLine} published its interview with Furtado on Sept. 14. Furtado's argument was angrily cited in a recent piece
by the Council on Foreign Relation's Kenneth Maxwell. Furtado told {Folha} that one hypothesis, which many will come to,
is that behind the attacks were "very-well organized people of the American Right.
To organize an operation of this breadth, with this fantastic synchronization...
leads one to think of someone within the United States,
an internal organization." The American Right wants the world to return to a new Cold War,
and could use Sept. 11 to accomplish that.
A Cold War against "undefined social movements,
[and] against marginalized countries." If they prevail, this will mean that the United States
will go for the Free Trade Accord of the Americas,
and "there will not be the least space for Latin America
to develop on its own." Furtado told {Folha} he did not foresee
a Third World War developing, but rather a "hardline policy
with respect to Third World countries," which will provoke
new types of conflict and "generalized terrorism,"
in which the "grievous situation" suffered today by Africa,
which has been totally marginalized, could spread throughout the world. The situation would be much worse, if the attacks were planned
by the American Right, and not extremist Islamic groups,
he commented. A domestic enemy would have to be very powerful. "The fact that something like this could arise within the United States,
with the power and the resources which they have,
could be a very big challenge to humanity.
This would reproduce the Reichstag [Fire], in Germany,
which created Hitler. The Parliament was burned by the Right,
which blamed the Left." [Source: as cited above] KENNETH MAXWELL, DIRECTOR OF THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS'
LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES, GOES AFTER BRAZIL AS "ANTI-AMERICAN,"
and not onboard the U.S.' post-Sept. 11 plans. Maxwell's nasty article, published in the just-released issue
of the CFR's semi-annual publication, {Correspondence},
on the theme, "The World Terrorism: What the U.S. Media Missed,"
reflects the hysteria growing in Anglo-American circles over the
danger that Brazil might break with their globalization empire. Maxwell claims Brazilians such as Celso Furtado are
"blaming the victim," when Furtado "suggested in one of Brazil's
most influential newspapers that...a more plausible explanation...
for this disaster was a provocation carried out
by the American far right to justify a takeover,"
in an act comparable "to the burning of the Reichstag in 1933
and the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany." Some in the U.S. argued that the U.S. Ambassador to Brazil
should have been recalled for consultations,
after President Fernando Henrique Cardoso told the French
Assembly
in mid-October that "barbarism is not only the cowardliness
of terrorism, but also the intolerance or the imposition
of unilateral policies on a global scale." The U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela was recalled,
when its "populist" President Hugo Chavez said
"much the same thing," he wrote. Maxwell lumps what Furtado and Cardoso said,
as of a piece with the crazed remarks
of psycho Liberation Theology guru Leonardo Boff,
that he was sorry that only one plane,
and not 25 such planes, hit the Pentagon. And he complains that polls showed that 79% of Brazilian "unequivocally" opposed
any U.S. military attack against countries that hosted those responsible
for Sept. 11 attacks, and 78% opposed any Brazilian military participation in any U.S. armed response. "So much for Hemispheric solidarity.
And remember that this is not Saudi Arabia
--mullahs do not set the cultural tone here," Maxwell writes.
---
ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST
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NEWS ON CONGO 040: GLAC: The Congo in danger [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- This didn't reach the list on 24.03; I'm trying again now, 26.03.02. - RM NEWS ON CONGO 040: GLAC: The Congo in danger [Posted: 24.03.02] NOTE: On websites with information on the DR Congo and for some contact addresses, see endnote last in this posting. INTRO NOTE: Below follows, in my translation from the French, a recent message from GRANDS-LACS CONFIDENTIEL (GLAC), Canada, a spe- cial edition of its regular bulletins, published on 23 March and posted to the CONGOTRIBUNE mailing list (address see endnote) today 24.03: ATTENTION: CONGO EN DANGER. The original message cited in this special edition had the date 23 January 2002. In the DR Congo, then called Zaire, an uprising against the Mobutu dictatorship which had oppressed and fleeced the people in favour of imperialism since 35 years back, started in late 1996 and was victorious on 17.05.1997, when the pre- sent state, the Democratic Republic of Congo, was founded. The liberation struggle was led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who also became the first president of the DRC. The DR Congo from the start set itself the goal of freeing the country from imperialist exploitation and building up an actually democratic form of government in it, thereby also setting up an example for all of Africa and for simi- larly exploited countries elsewhere. Because of this, the US and other imperialists instigated a war of aggression against that country on 02.08.1998 by three neighbouring states, a war which so far, directly or indirectly, has cost the lives of over 3,000,000 people and which still continues. One-half of the DR Congo today is under foreign occupation. The people in the whole country continues to suffer enormously. It very much needs the support of the people in all other countries. After the foul murder of L-D Kabila on 16.01.2001, his son, Joseph Kabila, was installed as president; a government led by J. Kabila has continued the struggle against the aggres- sion since then. Since some weeks back now, a conference is being held in Sun City, South Africa, in which attempts by the imperia- lists to gain control over the whole of the DR Congo by so- called peaceful means are confronted by the strivings of the Congolese people and the country's lawful government to retain the independence of the DRC. The UN Security Council on 19.03 by its Resolution 1399 (2002) condemned the recent military seizure by the aggres- sors, in flagrant violation of the present armistice, of the city of Moliro in the south-east of the DR Congo, and demanded the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the forces of the so-called RCD-Goma, one of the agres- sors' puppets, from that city. End of intro note [QUOTE - in translation:] GRANDS-LACS CONFIDENTIEL Founded on 13 January 1999 SPECIAL EDITION 23 March 2002 ATTENTION - ATTENTION - ATTENTION To the attention of: - The President of the Democratic Republic of Congo - Congolese present at the Intercongolese Dialogue at Sun City, South Africa - The United Nations organization - Member countries of the European Union - All human-rights organizations - The African Union - The press Bujumbura (Burundi), 23 January 2002 Troops of mercenaries specially recruited by Rwanda and Ugan- da [aggressor countries which are now, together with Burundi, occupying approximately half of the DR Congo, at the instiga- tion of the US and other imperialists - RM] are stationed in the military camps in Bujumbura for transit to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they are to prepare for staging a final assault for conquering the copper-producing city of Lu- bumbashi, capital of the Katanga province. Well-informed sources in the Burundian capital have disclosed that more than 15,000 mercenaries recruited in Somalia are stationed in the military camps in Bujumbura (Gakumbu, Ngaga, Muha) in transit to Muliro (in the north of Katanga) at Lake Tanganyika. At the time when GLAC received this message, a contingent of these Somalian mercenaries had already continued to the Congolese front. A the time of our publishing this information, our sources have said that the remaining contingent of the Somalian mer- cenaries were still at Bujumbura late in the evening. At the time of writing, these troups reportedly are on their way towards Katanga. According to the same sources, Great Britain, supported by certain other Western countries, does not believe in the ongoing dialogue at Sun City and fears that a success of this dialogue would be detrimental to the alliances which it has signed with Western multi-national companies for control- ling the Congo. Paul Kagame [strongman of Rwanda - RM] on his part is encou- raging such an option as would permit him to conquer the Ka- tanga, the mining heart of the Congo. If Katanga were conquered, a march on Kinshasa would be only a question of days. All this comes only days after the Angolan defence minister's declaration in which he
UNITE! Info #166en: 1/8 The ozone hole terror hoax [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- This didn't reach the list on 20.03; I'm trying again now, 26.03.02. - RM UNITE! Info #166en: 1/8 The ozone hole terror hoax [Posted: 20.03.02] Note / Anmerkung / Note / Nota / Anmärkning: On the UNITE! / VEREINIGT EUCH! / UNISSEZ-VOUS! / ¡UNIOS! / FÖRENA ER! Info en/de/fr/es/se series: See information on the last page / Siehe Information auf der letzten Seite / Verrez information à la dernière page / Ver información en la última página / Se information på sista sidan INTRO NOTE: In #136en of this series, 'A mail to Thomas Gold, Cc others', of 16.09.2000, 12 scientific megahoaxes of today were listed as being quite serious attacks on the people in all countries by the main reactionaries in the world, intended at all costs to preserve the international capitalist and imperialist system of oppression and exploitation a little longer. I in that Info announced as a programme of mine to investi- gate further, as well as I could, in the respective cases: A: What are the main actual facts of the matter B: Who are perpetrating the hoax, and since when C: Why is the hoax being perpetrated D: What damage does the hoax, as propagandized and acted on, cause to the vast majority of people on earth E: How can and must the hoax be combated. The rather recent #165en, 'The big greenhouse hoax (1)' (in 4 parts, 22.02.02), was a result of one part of this program- me, and so is the present Info. One immediate reason for its being written and sent now is the spilling-over of part of a debate on some newsgroups concerning the questions touched on in Info #165en into the questions pertaining to a supposed manmade ozone hole. On a discussion under Re: Ozone hole?, which the writer hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] had showed me was going on, I commented briefly, and on 08.03 got some replies from Paul F. Dietz [EMAIL PROTECTED] and David Bell wraith7@mb. sympatico.ca, arguing i.a.: [Paul F. Dietz:] I used to be skeptical of CFCs affecting the ozone layer. But the theory that anthropogenic halocarbons are respon- sible for the ozone hole has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt. To believe otherwise these days is on par with be- lieving the earth is flat..., and later in reply to my question, what was the evidence for this, a reference, by both writers, to the website: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/ozone-depletion/. This is a FAQ in 4 parts on this matter by Robert Parson, University of Colorado, USA, last updated in 1997, which ap- parently has been quoted quite often in debates. I've now studied this site, which turns out to be another of the swindle kind (by whose fault more precisely, I cannot tell), a relatively advanced and also in part informative such. I've gained some more knowledge on the purported ozone depletion also by looking up the sites: The Science and Environmental Policy Project (S. Fred Singer and others, USA): www.sepp.org (with articles on the subject from 1989 to 1998), a 1994 article by Robert J. Bidinotto, Ozone Depletion: http://www.vix.com/objectivism/Writing/RobertBidinotto/ OzoneDepletion.html, and the homepages of, among others, The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the TOMS satellite and the Swedish meteo- rological institute, SMHI - the last-mentioned has some data, both from as far back as the 1950s and, not least, some quite recent ones, which in my judgement contribute importantly to- wards refuting the ozone hole hoax. Like all other offi- cial organs (of the richer states at least), the SMHI too (of course) propagandistically supports that same hoax. Also, the 1992 book by Maduro and Schauerhammer, USA: The Holes in the Ozone Scare, from which most of my earlier knowledge or supposed knowledge on the subject has stemmed (though I - of course - didn't and don't agree with the poli- tical line advocated in it), still very much is to be recom- mended, in my opinion, and I shall quote extensively from it. (One proposition advanced by that book as one of several ma- jor arguments against the scare, later criticized both by Parson and by Bidinotto [see above], in fact obviously is false - its saying that natural amounts of chlorine in the stratosphere must always be much bigger than any resulting from breakdown of CFCs, supposedly a manmade factor adding to the always occuring natural processes which destroy ozone. But this question, as will be seen, has very little relevance anyway.) The scientific questions concerning the ozone layer in the atmosphere, possible changes in it and possible effects of such changes on human life make up a whole which is more com- plicated than the one concerning possible climate change, for instance. And the covering-up and confusion-mongering, by the main reactionaries, in connection with this big ozone hole hoax, is even more massive than that connected with their pa- rallel (and in part
UNITE! Info #166en: 2/8 The ozone hole terror hoax [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- UNITE! Info #166en: 2/8 The ozone hole terror hoax [Posted: 20.03.02] [Continued from part 1/8] 04. THE RULING WAR CRIMINALS' EXTREME HURRY TO ENFORCE CFC BANS IN 1987-1995 Against that hurry, above all by the main forces of US impe- rialism at that time but also by others, rather many scien- tists protested. The fact that obviously, some political rea- sons or other lay behind it was publicly pointed out by some of them too, for instance by S. Fred Singer. He wrote, con- cerning one conference, the political activity in connection with it and the enormously harmful effects of the bans de- cided on (see www.sepp.org): My Adventures in the Ozone Layer by S. Fred Singer National Review, June 1989 The 123-nation Conference to Save the Ozone Layer, held in London in March 1989, ended with a whimper. The developing nations, principally China and India, were quite unconvinced by the evidence and unwilling to go along with the European Community and the United States in rushing to phase out completely the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other widely used che- micals. It seems they know better. It is rumored that Mrs. Thatcher was converted into a global ozone fan by Sir Crispin Tickell, the diplomat turned eco-freak. Lord knows who the President Bush has been listening to, but he deserves better advice. Now it's on to a European conference in the Hague to which Maggie and George have not been invited --tsk, tsk-- and then a follow-up to London in Helsinki in May. All this after the 1985 Vienna Convention, the Montreal Protocol (Sept 1987), Geneva, Toronto, and who knows how many other international gabfests in between. Who can keep track of them? Norway's Prime Minister Mrs. Gro Harlem Brundtland hardly spends time in Oslo anymore. My word! When do these people ever govern? The hyperactivity this creates in the agencies, main- ly in the State Department and EPA, has to be seen to be believed. The congressional Government Accounting Office would have done an investigation and totaled up the thousands of hours and the huge resources spent on this issue -- except for the fact that Con- gress and its staffs are just as involved. As the Hill folks try to outdo the Administration and the feds dream up new initiatives, things are building up to a fever pitch -- spurred on by lurid stories in the media about the imminent danger. Arctic Ozone is Poised for a Fall scream the headlines. Skin Cancer is on the Rise! Is it all hype? Or is it a hoax? And is the hysteria for real? As we'll see later, the scientific basis for the much-touted ozone crisis may be evaporating-- leaving the new breed of geo-eco-politicians high and dry. ... I am not against CFC control at all; but look at the poor state of the scientific evidence. The case against CFCs is based on a theory of ozone depletion, plausible but quite incomplete-- and certainly not reliable in its quantitative predictions. ... And substituting for CFCs is no simple matter. A New York Times report of March 7, 1989 talks about the disadvantages of the CFC substitutes. They may be toxic, flammable, and corrosive; and they certainly won't work as well. They'll reduce the energy effici- ency of appliances such as refrigerators, and they'll deteriorate, requiring frequent replacement. Nor is this all; about $135 billion of equipment use CFCs in the U.S. alone, and much of this equipment will have to be replaced or modified to work well with the CFC substitutes. Eventually that will in- volve 100 million home refrigerators, the air-condi- tioners in 90 million cars, and the central air-con- ditioning plants in 100,000 large buildings. Good luck! The total costs haven't really been added up yet. These are some of the costs we are now trying to im- pose on the developing countries who can ill afford them. Sanctions through a new U.N. agency seem to be out -- at least for the time being. But trade bar- riers can accomplish the same results and won't make us beloved. One can hear already the charge of en- vironmental imperialism from third-world countries accusing the West of protecting its pocket books as well as its fair skins. Keep in mind that olive- skinned and dark-skinned people are not very suscep- tible to skin tumors caused by solar ultraviolet rays. Of course, if we in
UNITE! Info #166en: 3/8 The ozone hole terror hoax [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- UNITE! Info #166en: 3/8 The ozone hole terror hoax [Posted: 20.03.02] [Continued from part 2/8] 06. A BRIEF LOOK AT SOME RECENT SWEDISH OZONE LEVEL DATA, AND AT SOME OLDER ONES TOO - LAYER NOW THICKER THAN IN MANY YEARS BEFORE Over Sweden, as over other countries rather far away from the equator, ozone levels vary quite considerably, from day to day even, and in particular with the seasons. And there are some - smaller but important - periodic year-to-year varia- tions too. More on this under points 08 and 11 below. Normally, the ozone layer at our latitudes is at its thick- est in the spring...Typical levels for March and April over Sweden are between 350 and 450 DU, SMHI, the meteorological instiute here, says at its homepage (in Swedish, which I'm translating here). The thickness of the ozone layer is mea- sured in Dobson Units (DU - for a definition, see under point 08 below). I assume that in other seasons of the year, ozone levels over this country often fall to under 300 DU, and that an annual mean for Sweden may be something like 330 DU. Thus, there are seasonal variations of sometimes over 30 per- cent. These SMHI informations tally with those in Maduro's and Schauerhammer's 1992 book: ...in northern latitudes the thickness of the ozone layer is almost 500 dobson units in March (spring), dropping down to less than 300 dobson units by Octo- ber (fall) - a depletion of 40 percent on the average each year. In contrast, in the tropics (close to the equator), the thickness of the ozone layer is 220 to 250 dobson units and shows little change on a seaso- nal basis. Parson's 1997 FAQ shows ozone levels and their seasonal va- riations over St. Petersburg (at 60 degrees North, approxima- tely the same as mid-Sweden) in a simliar way: Location Column thickness, Dobson Units Jan Apr Jul Oct St. Petersburg, Russia (60º N) 360 425 345 300 Now some recent or relatively recent data reported by the SMHI are quite interesting - concerning the question of whether there in the last few decades may have have been some more important trend of global ozone depletion (one conside- rably larger, say, than 3 percent per decade) or not: Generally speaking (the SMHI said recently at its homepage) the ozone layer over the northern hemi- sphere has been much thicker, during the years 2000 and 2001, than in many years before. In the latest few weeks (up until 15.03.2002) the ozone layer over Sweden has been relatively thick. On 2 March, a level of 556.7 DU was measured over Norr- köping (which is at 58 degrees North) and a some- what lower one over Vindeln (at 64 degrees N). Solar activity is likely to remain high this year too but is expected to decrease the next year. (Meaning that ozone production, which is caused by the sun's UV radiation, will still be large too for a while, over the globe as a whole, and later de- crease. See also under point 11 below.) The QBO (a quasi-biennial oscillation of the winds blowing from the tropical regions, which have the highest ozone production, to higher latitudes; the ozone transport due to these winds is at its biggest in periods with some 26 months in between) will change its phase rather soon, and this means that ozone levels will decrease in the coming winter and spring. (More on the QBO too under point 11 below.) And under Old News, the SMHI says, in a report from March 2001: OZONE ALL-TIME HIGH In Norrköping, on 23 February 2001 a new absolute maximum record for measurements since 1988 was noted, at 574 DU. The old all-time high was from 9 April 1988 and was 521 DU. A considerable increase! ... In Uppsala (at 60 degrees N, thus quite similar to Norrköping) the level was measured at 536 DU in April 1961, which was an all-time high for the mea- surements at that station, between 1951 and 1966. At Vindeln, the all-time high since 1991 is 535 DU. Probably there too, the level was higher on 23 Febru- ary this year (2001). So, not only was the ozone layer over the northern hemisphere much thicker, in 2000-2001, than in many years before. (How many years, the SMHI didn't say.) There even was an all- time high (574 DU), on one day in 2001, not only considerably above the previous one measured by the same station, at Norr- köping, in 1988, its starting year (521 DU), but also consi- derably above the all-time high (536 DU) reported way back in 1961 by the Uppsala station, which operated between 1951 and 1966. And that quite recent level too, from 2 March
UNITE! Info #166en: 4/8 The ozone hole terror hoax [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- UNITE! Info #166en: 4/8 The ozone hole terror hoax [Posted: 20.03.02] [Continued from part 3/8] 09. ULTRAVIOLET (UV) RADIATION AND ITS INTERACTION WITH OZONE That part of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation which is of interest in this context is shown in the table below. All of this radiation, of different wavelengths, of course is being emitted by the sun. Type of radiation Wavelengths (1 nm = 0.000,000,001 m) [infrared (heat) radiation 700 nm - 1 mm] visible light 400 nm - 700 nm ultraviolet A radiation (UV-A) 320 nm - 400 nm ultraviolet B radiation (UV-B) 280 nm - 320 nm ultraviolet C radiation (UV-C) 40 nm - 280 nm [X-rays0.01 nm - 40 nm] These various types of radiation, all coming from the sun, are filtered out in various ways and to various extents by the atmosphere, so that only certain proportions of the radi- ation of the respective types reach the ground. Visible light accounts for less than 1 percent of all the energy emitted as radiation by the sun towards the earth, but it's hardly filtered away at all by the atmosphere. Almost 100 percent if it (the 400-700 nm wavelengths) reaches the ground, which is probably why human (and most animal) eyes have evolved to perceive precisely these wavelengths. Ultraviolet waves (UV-A, UV-B and UV-C) comprise 5 percent of the total energy from solar radiation that reaches Earth, and infrared waves comprise 40 percent of it. Neither ozone nor, for instance, ordinary oxygen (O2) filter out any important amounts of UV-A, so almost 100 percent of this radiation too reaches the ground. The amount of UV-A that reaches the ground is 100 times as large as the amount of UV-B that does this. UV-A causes skin tans (to various individual degrees) in white-skinned people, as does UV-B too. UV-A, which is not absorbed by ozone, is not usually thought to be especially dangerous, says Parson. He however notes too, as do Maduro and Schauerhammer, a possiblity, sug- gested by some scientists, that one particular kind of skin cancers, called malignant melanoma, might be caused by UV-A. These melanoma have been on the rise, in some coun- tries, since the 1940s; they are infrequent but, in contrast to other skin cancers, sometimes fatal. They clearly are not caused by UV-B, and my sources, from 1992-97, agreed that there was then no certainty at all about what did cause them. Of UV-C, only very small amounts reach the earth's surface. Practically all of it is filtered out by oxygen, O2, in the atmosphere, some of it (the wavelengths below 240 nm), as seen above, breaking up some of these oxygen molecules in the stratosphere and in particular at its region some 30-35 km up, thus forming ozone. (Most of) UV-C, that's ozone-produ- cing stuff. UV-B is the biologically most active and important, both in a positive sense and a negative one, of the ultraviolet radia- tion types. Most of the incoming UV-B is filtered out by ozone (O3) and also by ordinary oxygen (O2) before it reaches the surface. So it's in relation to UV-B that the ozone layer has its most important shielding function. Ozone absorbs very strongly in the ultraviolet region bet- ween about 3,300 and 2,200 Å, (or 330 to 220 nm; Å or Ång- ström is a unit often used earlier; 1 Å = 10^-10 m) the strongest absorption being at a wavelength of about 2,500 Å (250 nm) where it is extremely intense, Dobson wrote in 1968 (as quoted in 1992). That is, ozone absorbs UV radiation best at a somewhat grea- ter wavelength, 250 nm, than the ones which create it; these are from 240 nm and downwards. In connection with this, Par- son asks one question and answers it: If the ozone is lost, won't the UV light just pene- trate deeper into the atmosphere and make more ozone? This does happen to some extent - it's called 'self- healing' - and has the effect of moving ozone from the upper to the lower stratosphere. Recall that ozone is *created* by UV with wavelengths less than 240 nm, but functions by *absorbing* UV with wave- lengths greater than 240 nm. The peak of the ozone absorption band is at ~250 nm, and the cross-section falls off at shorter wave- lengths. The O2 and O3 absorption bands do overlap, though, and UV radiation between 200 and 240 nm has a good chance of being absorbed by *either* O2 or O3. [Rowland and Molina 1975] (Below 200 nm the O2 ab- sorption cross-section increases dramatically, and O3 absorption is insignificant in comparison.) Since there is some overlap, a decrease in ozone does lead to a small increase in absorption by O2. This is a weak feedback, however, and it does not compensate for the ozone destroyed.
Re: Site Mayi-Mayi [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- This didn't reach the list on 22.03; I'm trying again now, 26.03.02. - RM An important piece of information, petokraka; thank you for this! I shall pass it on to others. The forgotten aggression against the DR Congo, which has so far cost over 2 million lives since it started in August 1998, is one important thing for all anti-imperialists to combat. The Mayi-Mayi, fighting the US-etc-instigated aggressors in the east, are a valiant lot. Certainly they need all the international support they can get, and some more too. Rolf M. At 23:28 2002-03-11 -0500, you wrote: In a message dated 06/03/02 20:10:19 Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Subj:[AfricaT] communiqué Date:06/03/02 20:10:19 Eastern Standard Time From:mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-to:mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] To:mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent from the Internet A la presse A tous les patriotes congolais A tous les amis du peuple congolais. Nous vous annonçons l'existence du site http://www.congo-mai-mai.net Sur ce site vous trouverez tous les communiqués, la présentation, l'historique et les autres informations concernant les Maï Maï. Comme vous savez les Maï Maï résistent contre l'agression, l'occupation et le pillage de nos territoires par les armées du Rwanda, de l'Ouganda et du Burundi. Puisque les ennemis du peuple congolais essaient de semer la confusion, nous trouvons qu'il est important que nous puissions nous adresser directement au public. Vous trouverez sur ce site entre autres le procès-verbal de la réunion tenu à Gabarone la semaine passée où les représentants des Maï Maï au Dialogue inter-congolais ont été désigné. Ce procès-verbal est très utile pour chacun qui veut voir clair dans la définition des Maï Maï et dans la question qui sont les vrai et les faux Maï Maï. En dehors des informations sur les Maï Maï vous trouverez aussi une rubrique Tribune. Vous pouvez vous inscrire sur la lettre de nouvelles qui vous informera une fois par semaine des nouveautés sur notre site. Vous pouvez aussi participer à notre forum. Pour ces deux inscriptions, il suffit de lire l'information dans la rubrique mailingliste. PATRIOTES RESISTANTS MAI - MAI ( PAREMA ) Pour la défense des intérêt du peuple, nous résistons. Pour la cause juste, nous vaincrons --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
UNITE! Info #166en: 6/8 The ozone hole terror hoax [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- UNITE! Info #166en: 6/8 The ozone hole terror hoax [Posted: 20.03.02] [Continued from part 5/8] 15. WHY HAVE ALL DEPLETION TREND DATA AFTER 1998 VANISHED INTO A BIG BLACK HOLE? If you search the Internet World Wide Web for articles with ozone depletion propaganda, you'll find that there are a large number of such from all the years up until 1998; then they suddenly practically cease altogether. The reason for this is of course that this big lie with each passing year has come even more into conflict with reality. An ozone depletion trend of, say, 3 percent per decade, which there perhaps was in the 1980s, according to the CFC depletion propagandists such as the WMO, would continue and would, if anything, be bigger, not smaller, in the 1990s, and in the next two decades too. Thus there in 2000 would be some 6 percent (at least) less global ozone than in 1980. To ascertain quite clearly, in 2000 or today, whether there had (has) in fact been a decrease of that order over the past 20 years or so perhaps still is not all that easy, because of those quite large natural variations which there are. But the silence, since some three years back, by the react- tionary propgandists, on any long term global ozone deple- tion trend, is very telling anyway. No international data on this are being shown any more. What has continued, after 1989, is more or less only pro- paganda concerning that local phenomenon, the Antarctic ozone hole, and (of course) such of the cruder kind, just by scare statements with hardly any attempts at supporting them. The fact that the ozone layer, at least over the northern hemisphere, has been unusually thick in recent years (2000- 2001) and apparently still is today, hasn't helped the de- pletion propagandists either, of course. This fact of course to a large extent is due to that maximum, one of the bigger kind too, in sunspots which there was/is around the year 2001 (if I understand things correctly). And the QBO too seems to make for high ozone levels at higher latitudes at present. (See under point 11 above.) This is a temporary phenomenon. But also in the following years, when the number of sunspots will decrease, for in- stance (reaching a new minimum around 2007), and the QBO will change phase (this is predicted already for the next winter, with a change back some 26 months after that again), the CFCs (etc) ozone depletion hoax will continue to come more and more into conflict with the observed facts. Unfortunately, the ruling imperialist war criminals already have managed to enforce their anti-industrial and genocidal bans against these vital substances, propagandistically jus- tified by this hoax, and since it's they who still have practically all the political power and practically all the international propaganda resources too, it will be quite dif- ficult for the people in the world to get these bans revoked - as long as these conditions remain as they are. Here's a little about how global ozone depletion propagan- da has developed after 1998: The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), for instance - the main scientific such propagandist in recent years - publishes press releases on various questions; the latest, #671, was on 07.03.2002. On ozone, in the most recent years including 1998, there were only two: Firstly, WMO #619, on 01.10.1998. It was headlined Record Ozone depletion in the Antarctic (on this subject, see point zz below) and had the following few lines on ozone levels elsewhere: Relatively higher ozone dominated over the middle latitudes - only 3 to 7% less than the pre-ozone-hole averages. Maximum values of 430 to 480 m atm-cm [the same as 430-480 DU - RM] appeared usually over the ocean area in the sector separating the Antarctic from New-Zealand and Australia., and further: WMO is responsible for the international co-ordina- tion of the atmospheric science and systematic obser- vations in support of the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer. 'As the authoritative scientific voice on atmospheric issues within the United Nations family, WMO will continue to provide up to date information on the status of the ozone layer' said Professor Obasi [Secretary-General of WMO]. And secondly, WMO #652, on 15.09.2000, on the occasion of the International Day for Preservation of the Ozone Layer (there even is a such, 16 September, decided on by the UN!). It was headlined, in familiar fashion: Unprecedented rate of ozone loss measured one to two weeks earlier over and near Antarctica, but did not breathe a word about ozone levels elsewhere. No later WMO press release has done this either. This should be contrasted to those estimates by the WMO it- self of future ozone depletion, in its 1998 Ozone Report No. 44, which were quoted under point 14 above,
UNITE! Info #166en: 7/8 The ozone hole terror hoax [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- UNITE! Info #166en: 7/8 The ozone hole terror hoax [Posted: 20.03.02] [Continued from part 6/8] 17. THE ANTARCTIC OZONE HOLE, A FAKE THREAT As said under point 08 above, over the higher latitudes (more precisely, over what the WMO calls the midlatitudes, bet- ween 25º and 60º or so), the annual mean level of ozone is somewhat higher than over the tropics, 300 DU over the USA and some 330 DU over Sweden, for instance, compared to 220- 250 DU close to the equator, and seasonal variations there are quite large, in contrast to over the tropics, where the ozone layer thickness always remains at those 220-250 DU. The ozone layer over Sweden is at its thickest in the spring (March-May in the northern hemisphere), between 350 and 450 DU then, says the SMHI (see point 06 above), and in late au- tumn often thins out to below 300 DU. Day-to-day variations are even larger, with for instance that all-time high of 574 DU over mid-Sweden (58º N) on 23 February 2001, the recent reading of 557 DU on 2 March 2002 too, both considerably above the former all-time high of 536 DU in April 1961, and also the all-time low over Sweden at only 194 DU on 30 Novem- ber 1999. It's mainly transport of ozone with the winds from the tro- pics that accounts for these large variations. Equally large, and sometimes even larger, variations in the thickness of the ozone layer there are over the Arctic and the Antarctic regions (at latitudes higher than some 70º N respectively 70ºS). In these regions close to the respective Poles, there are particular meteorlogical vortices, approxi- mately circular or elliptical currents which at some points in the seasons may more or less prevent the influx of ozone- rich air from the lower latitudes. The vortex over the Ant- arctic is much stronger than that over the Arctic, which is impeded by chains of mountains. Over the Arctic, the ozone layer varies between some 480 DU in the (northern) spring and some 260 DU in the autumn, as already measured by Dobson back in the 1950s. The correspon- ding seasonal dip in the level of ozone over the Antarctic, which occurs in the southern spring, in September-October each year, is much deeper than the Arctic one. A table by Parson (whose data I shall complement a little in the below) shows approximately how deep it was in the years 1956-1997: [QUOTE:] Halley Bay Antarctic Ozone Data Mean October ozone column thickness, Dobson Units, as measured at the British Antarctic Survey station at Halley Bay (Latitude 76 south, Longitude 26 west) 1956 321 1971 299 1986 248 1957 330 1972 304 1987 163 1958 314 1973 289 1988 232 1959 311 1974 274 1989 164 1960 301 1975 308 1990 179 1961 317 1976 283 1991 155 1962 332 1977 251 1992 142 1963 309 1978 284 1993 111 1964 318 1979 261 1994 124 1965 281 1980 227 1995 129 1966 316 1981 237 1996 139 1967 323 1982 234 1997 139 1968 301 1983 210 1969 282 1984 201 1970 282 1985 196 Data from J. D. Shanklin, British Antarctic Survey, personal communications, 1993-95. [END OF QUOTE] As is seen, from approximately the late 1970s on and up to the early 1990s, there was a tendency for the September-October dip to get deeper year by year, and up until 1997 at least, it stayed at a level considerably lower than the mean one of pre- vious years. The difference between that level and the earlier mean one is what the ozone depletion propagandists are cal- ling the Antarctic ozone hole. Parson writes too that There is no question that the ozone layer over antarctica has thin- ned dramatically over the past 15 years and that: The antarctic ozone hole, discussed in detail in Part III [of the 1997 'FAQ'], falls far outside this range of natural variation [the one of seasonal such else- where - RM]. Mean October ozone at Halley Bay on the Antarctic coast was 117 DU in 1993, down from 321 DU in 1956. On whether an Antarctic October ozone level mean of 117 DU (or 111 DU - see table) actually does fall far outside the range of earlier natural variation or not, see further below. The term ozone hole, for this greater depth of the Septem- ber-October level dip, of course is a propagandistic one. More precisely, the WMO defines as an Antarctic ozone hole a region over which there, during a certain seasonal period, is less than 50% of the ozone which there there was on the average over the same region, during the same seasonal period, in a number of years which the WMO takes as the norm, those
UNITE! Info #166en: 8/8 The ozone hole terror hoax [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- UNITE! Info #166en: 8/8 The ozone hole terror hoax [Posted: 20.03.02] [Continued from part 7/8] 18. THE ANTARCTIC OZONE HOLE'S FORGOTTEN PAST, AND DOES IT HAVE A FUTURE? (ctd.) [Maduro and Schauerhammer, 1992, ctd.:] The Rigaud-Leroy paper, which appeared in the Novem- ber 1990 issue of *Annales Geophysicae*, reports on the scientists' search through old ozone records from the French Antarctic Observatory going back to 1958. Rigaud and Leroy discovered that ozone levels took a precipitous decline at the beginning of 1958's au- stral spring, August and September, and reached va- lues as low as 110 dobson units - the lowest values ever recorded in Antarctica! [Later, in 1993 and also in 1998 and 1999, as low or even somewhat lower mini- ma were recorded: 111 (a monthly mean), 90 respecti- vely 92 DU, as seen in the table above, respectively, will be seen below. - RM] These data were recorded and published in the scientific literature in the 1960s, but had not been examined recently. Figures for the Antarctic ozone hole in years later than 1997 which would be directly comparable to the ones in the table (above) by Parson I've not been able to find. Here are some more or less scattered data: NASA, 06.10.1999, New Antarctic Ozone Data Released, i.a.: A NASA satellite has shown that the area of ozone depletion over the Antarctic -- the well-known ozone 'hole' -- is a bit less in 1999 than it was last year. ... the size of the region of depleted Antarc- tic ozone... extended to a record 10.5 million square miles on Sept 19,1998. [A new way, then, of recko- ning - by the area of the 'hole'. - RM] In this image obtained on October 3, 1999 the size of the Antarctic ozone hole is smaller than it was at the same time last year. ... The ozone levels are expected to decrease over the next two weeks. The lowest amount of total-column ozone recorded to date this year was 92 Dobson Units on Oct. 1. In contrast, ozone levels of 90 Dobson Units were observed at one point last year. ... [An absolute minimum, recorded on one day, for in- stance, no doubt can be considerably below a monthly mean. That goes for the 1958 minimum too. - RM] Globally, the ozone layer averages approximately 300 Dobson Units... In contrast, during the annual Ant- arctic ozone 'hole,' the amount of ozone in the ozone 'hole' is about 100 Dobson Units... In this report too, then, the NASA treats that austral spring dip as a phenomenon which is constant over the years, not maintaining for instance that it would be deepening. The WMO, in contrast to its having ceased completely, after 1998, to say anything about global ozone levels or any trend in these levels in its press releases (it quite often had some scare stories in them in the years before), did continue to interest itself in ozone over one region, and one region only, later too - that over the Antarctic. In 2000 and 2001, it published two whole series of particular bi-weekly WMO Antarctic Ozone Bulletins on this, not on the situation there during the whole year but only on the more exciting periods, August to December, with eight issues each year. Not in a single one of these Bulletins is any ozone level reported as measured in Dobson Units. Thus their data cannot be directly compared to those in the 1956-1997 table above. Mentioned instead were seasonal ozone levels as percentages of a norm, which was (somewhat unprecisely) defined as the average austral spring level in the years 1964-1976 - and which thus *can* be compared, approximately at least, to the values in that table (although these are from only one parti- cular station) - and the hole was also sometimes characte- rized, in these Bulletins, by its area in km² or by the total loss of ozone in megatons. Such data I shall pass over here, when quoting a few passages from the issues: WMO Antarctic Ozone Bulletin #1/2000, issued on 11 August 2000: ...In the coming weeks, as the sun rises over Ant- arctica, chemical ozone loss can be expected to oc- cur, comparable to, or perhaps greater than previous years. Prevailing meteorological conditions in the stratosphere, particularly during the Austral Spring, will strongly influence the extent and intensity of ozone loss... WMO Antarctic Ozone Bulletin #3/2000, 07.09.2000: The chemically primed vortex region has now begun the ozone loss process in earnest, and with an inten- sity exceeding all previous years. However, prevai- ling meteorological conditions in the
One in Seven Americans Say They Can't Get Needed Healthcare [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
Title: Message HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/430474_print Medscape.com To view the article with Web enhancements, go to: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/430474 One in Seven Americans Say They Can't Get Needed Healthcare Introduction WASHINGTON (Reuters Health) Mar 21 - More than 41 million Americans -- one in seven -- had trouble getting medical care or had to delay care in 2001, mostly because of cost, according to study results released on Thursday. The Washington, DC-based nonprofit Center for Studying Health System Change surveyed a representative 60,000 Americans by telephone about access to healthcare in each of the last several years. Results were extrapolated to the US population. The survey began in late 1996, as the economy began a record surge, with low unemployment and declining uninsured. Even so, the Center found that more people, whether they had insurance or not, said in 2001 that they could not get care at all, or when they needed it, compared with 1997. In 1997, 5.2% said that they had gone without needed care in the past year; by 2001, it was 5.8%. That means 16 million people were unable to get care when needed, said the Center. The number of those who delayed care, another 26 million, stayed steady over each of the survey years. "This is a surprising and somewhat ominous result given the context of the times," said Paul Ginsburg, an economist and president of the Center, noting that he would have expected to see an improvement in access and fewer delays during the economic boom. And now, with the recession, "there's real concern that we could have some significant declines in access," he told Reuters Health. Getting care was most difficult for the uninsured, or those with low incomes or in poor health. In 2001, the uninsured were three times as likely to not get care. Slightly more than 15% of the uninsured delayed care, compared with 8.6% of the insured. More than a quarter of those who were uninsured and in poor health said that they could not get needed care. Of those who could not get care or delayed it, 62% cited cost as the reason. It was the dominant worry for 90% or more of the uninsured and for half of those with insurance. They did not elaborate on what those costs were. One potential explanation: Employers began asking workers to share more of their premiums, said Susan Pisano, a spokeswoman for the American Association of Health Plans. Of the remainder, 13.2% said that they could not get care or delayed it because their plan would not pay for a service. It is not clear whether that was perception or reality, said Ginsburg. Pisano said that some employers were offering less comprehensive benefits than in the past, so fewer services were covered. Another 13% said that a doctor or hospital would not accept their insurance. Again, said Ginsburg, there is no clear explanation. Some providers are contracting with fewer insurers, and others are too overwhelmed to take new patients. Changes in employer-sponsored plans also mean that a favorite doctor or hospital could be dropped from the patient's network, explained Pisano. A whopping 32.6% said that they could not get an appointment soon enough in 2001 compared with 22.9% in 1997. Ginsburg called that a "shocking" increase, noting that it provides "evidence that there is an imbalance between demand and supply of physician services." Both Pisano and Ginsburg said that the appointment logjam might be because people have more direct access to specialists now, flooding those practices. In a bright spot, children's access increased over the survey period, possibly due to extended coverage offered by the State Children's Health Insurance Program, created in 1997. The big picture, said Pisano, is that "very clearly, access and affordability are the number one issues right now." Those issues "demand a response from policymakers," she said. --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Headlines on 27.mart [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
Title: Message HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- The Milosevic trial: Damning admissions by former British LP leader Lord Ashdown (by Paul Mitchell)http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/mar2002/ashd-m27_prn.shtml"My brother's trial will go to pieces" (by Sergei Yugov)http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/03/26/27173.htmlBalkan Meltdown (by Christopher Deliso)http://www.antiwar.com/orig/deliso38.htmlDisappearance of Last Yugoslavia: Controlled Split (by Aleksandar Ciric)http://www.aimpress.ch/dyn/trae/archive/data/200203/20326-003-trae-beo.htmReview: "Punch Judy in Belgrade" (by J. Israel G. Szamuely)http://emperors-clothes.com/satire/puncha.htmCroatian food giant opens plant in Serbiahttp://www.hina.hr/nws-bin/genews.cgi?TOP=ehotNID=ehot/gospodarstvo/H3257276.4yaNetherlands supports reforms in Serbiahttp://www.serbia.sr.gov.yu/cgi-bin/printpage.cgi?filename=/news/2002-03/26/323332.html --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
News, 27.3.2002, 16:00 UTC [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- English Service News 27th March, 2002, 16:00 UTC English Service News --- Today's highlight on DW-WORLD: Off To A Bad Start The summit of Arab League leaders has opened in Beirut with a row. The Palestinian delegation walked out in protest at Lebanon's failure to air Yasser Arafat's summit speech. To read this article on the DW-WORLD website, just click on the internet address below: http://dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1430_A_485336_1_A,00.html -- Arab League summit in disarry The summit of 22 Arab League states in Beirut has been thrown into disarry, after the Palestinian delegation walked out to protest the failure to show Yasser Arafat's summit speech via satellite link. Farouq al-Kaddoumi, head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's political department, said the signal from Qatar's al-Jazeera television had been deliberately blocked by Lebanese President Emile Lahoud. The United Arab Emirates in solidarity with the Palestinians downgraded its delegation. The row over the Palestinian leader's address, which was eventually broadcast by al-Jazeera, overshadowed the land-for-peace proposal made by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. The prince asked the summit to back his plan for normal ties with Israel in return for an Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab land and the creation of a Palestinian state. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad countered the Saudi proposal with a call for Arab states to back the Palestinian uprising by severing any ties with Israel, a thinly veiled dig at Egypt and Jordan, the only Arab countries to sign peace treaties with the Jewish state. Both President Mubarek of Egypt and Jordan's Prince Abdullah are not attending the summit, having sent only representatives. 5 dead and 30 missing after a dry dock gate in Dubai collapses At least 5 people were killed and 31 others are missing and feared dead after a gate collapsed at a dry dock in Dubai, flooding one of the world's biggest ship repair facilities in minutes. A shipping source said there were about 500 workers and four ships inside the dry dock when the gate broke, which had been undergoing repairs since Monday. The authorities have shut down the facility, allowing in only journalists working for the official government media and they have ordered Dubai hospital officials not to talk to the press. Before the gag order, a security official said that about 150 injured had been taken to hospitals with minor injuries. Eight dead, 30 wounded in French shooting spree Robert Durn a 33 year old unemployed and homeless man of Yugoslav origin went on a shooting rampage at a town council meeting in Nanterres, northwest Paris, early this morning, killing eight and wounding 30, 14 seriously. Police said they had arrested Durn, after he calmly sprayed bullets at some 40 people from the visitors gallery at the conclusion of a late-night city council meeting. His motive at this time remains unclear. Police said Durn, who has a valid gun licence as an amateur marksman, used three guns -- two Glock automatic handguns and a .357 magnum Smith Wesson. French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin raced to the scene, both denouncing the massacre as an act of madness. EU also imposes tariffs on steel imports The European Union has announced a package of tariffs intended to protect European steel producers from an expected surge in imports. The EU decided to impose tariffs of between 14.9 and 26 percent on all steel coming into Europe that is above last year's level, which was 5.7 million tonnes. The Europeans are worried that steel originally destined for the US market from Asia and Russia could be re-directed to Europe. Meanwhile, China has joined Europe, Japan and South Korea in filing a formal complaint against the US tariffs with the World Trade Organization in Geneva. More warning strikes in Germany For a third consecutive day, thousands of German engineering workers again staged one hour long warning strikes on Wednesday to back contract demands. IG Metall, the country's second largest union representing 2.8 million members has demanded a 6.5 percent wage increase for this year. The employers are offering 2 percent annually for this and next year. The strikes are bad news for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder who faces a difficult battle to win the federal election in September as the Social Democrats and trade unions are traditional allies. The Employers in the eastern state of Saxony on Wednesday morning withdrew an application to the labour courts that would have challenged the warning strikes. The employers
PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT CREEPS TOWARD RATIFICATION [WWW.STOPNATO.O
Title: Message HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT CREEPS TOWARD RATIFICATION Despite heavy U.S. opposition, the first permanent global criminal court is only four nations shy of becoming a reality, according to Reuters. ( http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storyu=/nm/20020327/pl_nm/un_court_ratifications_dc_2 ) As of Wednesday, 139 countries have signed a 1998 treaty to establish the International Criminal Court and 56 of them have ratified it. A total of 60 ratifications by national legislatures is needed for the tribunal to be established. "We're creeping very close to the 60 ratifications needed," U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters. In "Reasonable Doubt: The Case Against the Proposed International Criminal Court," ( http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-311.html ) Foreign Policy Analyst Gary T. Dempsey explains that "the court threatens to diminish America's sovereignty, produce arbitrary and highly politicized 'justice,' and grow into a jurisdictional leviathan." --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Re: Columnist Eric Margolis [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- I suggest it is time for these exchanges to stop. The problem with margolis is not how we may/ may not disagree with him, but his official contacts for whom he distributes disinformation. It's no coincidence he's based in Canada. --- Stephen Gowans [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- But Nancy, Margolis is a vegan! And he would never countenance the sending of chickens to Afghanistan. Still, you may be right. At the same time we prevail upon antiwar.com to blacklist Margolis, maybe we can get them to stop posting Pat Buchanan and Justin Raimondo. Surely there are people on the Left (and not Chomskyites, Trotskyites, social democrats, anarchists, world socialists, libertarian socialists, third-way Marxists, progressives and Blairites) who are making the same points on Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on. Better yet, maybe some of them are vegans. How about Alexander Cockburn? Or does he work for the CIA? Another idea: Being an unrepentant ovolacto vegetarian (yes, I do drink milk: mea culpa), I think my writing should be posted before any of those other guys. After all, who needs ideas, when you have the right political loyalties (and diet)? Steve - Original Message - From: Nancy Hey To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2002 10:15 PM Subject: Re: Columnist Eric Margolis [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Other people are making the same points he is on Afghanistan, Iraq and so forth; there's no need to provide this enemy of ours with more exposure and authority than his contacts in the intelligence community have already succeeded in doing. Respectfully, Rick My sentiments exactly! How can we get Antiwar.com to see this point? peacefully yours, Nancy Hey mart-remote wrote: Well said Rick. Please, let's not give this bastard any more exposure than he already gets, or even the thinest veneer of credibilty. Margolis is a CIA-KLA terrorist who happens to use a typewriter to kill people. His words do not belong on this list. One slight correction. He is with the Toronto Sun, not the Toronto Star. mart == Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 22:25:32 -0800 (PST) From: Rick Rozoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Cowboy Prez rides to rescue? - Columnist Eric Margolis [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Dear Friends, For anyone not already acquainted with the fact, Eric Margolis is a Western disinformation agent who boasts, inter alia, of smuggling rockets into the Afghan mujahedin in the 1980s and possessing a host of intelligence contacts, including with the CIA. A quick Google search with the words Eric Margolis socialism will demonstrate with whom we're dealing. There is nothing remotely enlightened or progressive about this individual, notwithstanding the fact that his columns, from the very establishment Toronto Star where he is the official foreign correspondent, have been crossposted and linked on several US 'progressive' sites fairly regularly of late. In fact, the only time he criticizes Western militarism, aside from goading it into being more aggressive (e.g. Stopping Europe's New Nazis and Serbia Needs Moral Cleansing), is when one of his presumed co-religionists is under fire. As such he operates on a personal, and hardly political or principled, agenda. Other people are making the same points he is on Afghanistan, Iraq and so forth; there's no need to provide this enemy of ours with more exposure and authority than his contacts in the intelligence community have already succeeded in doing. Respectfully, Rick Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy Awards® --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy Awards® http://movies.yahoo.com/ --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register
Herak case analysis at my web site [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Dear colleagues, I just posted extensive analysis on the infamous Herak case on my web site www.srpska-mreza.com I divided the text into three HTML pages: http://www.srpska-mreza.com/library/facts/Herak1.html http://www.srpska-mreza.com/library/facts/Herak2.html http://www.srpska-mreza.com/library/facts/Herak3.html The above collection gives a full analysis of the Herak case. The case was instrumental in demonization of the Serbian people in recent wars. The case was also a precursor to other injustices done to the Serbs in the Hague. Please, find time to read it. More on the scandalous (and bloody) circus known as the Hague tribunal can be found at: http://www.srpska-mreza.com/library/facts/hague.html Regards, Petar __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy AwardsR http://movies.yahoo.com/ --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Milosevic setback [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- AFP. 27 March 2002. Milosevic gets new setback in his anti-trial campaign. STRASBOURG -- Slobodan Milosevic was dealt another setback in his bid for freedom on Wednesday when Europe's top human rights court refused to hear his case. The ruling appears to end the former Yugoslav president's bid to have his historic war crimes trial in The Hague, which could put him behind bars for the rest of his life, overturned outright. The European Court of Human Rights said Milosevic's petition to have the trial thrown out was inadmissible because he had failed to exhaust his legal options in the Netherlands. The 60-year-old former Serb leader first filed suit in a Dutch court last year after his surprise arrest and extradition from Belgrade, which turned him over to the UN war crimes tribunal. He claimed that his arrest in Belgrade, his detention in a prison outside The Hague and the trial itself were all illegal, and that he should be allowed to walk free. The Netherlands court rejected his claim, and Milosevic took his case on to the Dutch court of appeal. He then withdrew that appeal and went directly to the European court, which since 1959 has ruled on violations of the European convention on human rights signed after World War II. But the European court ruled on Wednesday that Milosevic had failed to use up his options in the Netherlands legal system, and that it therefore could not accept his petition. It said in a brief statement that his suit had to be dismissed in its entirety for non-exhaustion of domestic remedies. Milosevic and his supporters have repeatedly blasted his prosecution as a show trial, claiming he is being made a scapegoat to cover up NATO crimes committed in 1999 in the Kosovo war. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
The Canadian Connection [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Of course, it's well known the CIA recruits heavily from the ranks of Canadian journalists, there being too few American journalists from which to choose, and the CIA having too few connections in the US, and Canadian journalists having a far greater reach than any of their counterparts in the US or Britain or France. Why, with the circulation of Margolis's paper reaching upwards of 30,000, (though most of the readers never read Margolis's column, the horoscope, Toronto Maple Leafs stats, and the Sunshine girl having infinitely more appeal) and his potential exposure on this listserve to the mind boggling number of 118, the CIA has chosen well. With a reach like that, who knows what damage he could do. Yes, indeed, Richard, it is no coincidence he, like me, is based in Canada. But I must run. A meeting awaits with my fellow Canadians to plot the spread of more disinformation through our widely read newspapers. - Original Message - From: Richard Roper [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 11:30 AM Subject: Re: Columnist Eric Margolis [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- I suggest it is time for these exchanges to stop. The problem with margolis is not how we may/ may not disagree with him, but his official contacts for whom he distributes disinformation. It's no coincidence he's based in Canada. --- Stephen Gowans [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- But Nancy, Margolis is a vegan! And he would never countenance the sending of chickens to Afghanistan. Still, you may be right. At the same time we prevail upon antiwar.com to blacklist Margolis, maybe we can get them to stop posting Pat Buchanan and Justin Raimondo. Surely there are people on the Left (and not Chomskyites, Trotskyites, social democrats, anarchists, world socialists, libertarian socialists, third-way Marxists, progressives and Blairites) who are making the same points on Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on. Better yet, maybe some of them are vegans. How about Alexander Cockburn? Or does he work for the CIA? Another idea: Being an unrepentant ovolacto vegetarian (yes, I do drink milk: mea culpa), I think my writing should be posted before any of those other guys. After all, who needs ideas, when you have the right political loyalties (and diet)? Steve - Original Message - From: Nancy Hey To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2002 10:15 PM Subject: Re: Columnist Eric Margolis [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Other people are making the same points he is on Afghanistan, Iraq and so forth; there's no need to provide this enemy of ours with more exposure and authority than his contacts in the intelligence community have already succeeded in doing. Respectfully, Rick My sentiments exactly! How can we get Antiwar.com to see this point? peacefully yours, Nancy Hey mart-remote wrote: Well said Rick. Please, let's not give this bastard any more exposure than he already gets, or even the thinest veneer of credibilty. Margolis is a CIA-KLA terrorist who happens to use a typewriter to kill people. His words do not belong on this list. One slight correction. He is with the Toronto Sun, not the Toronto Star. mart == Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 22:25:32 -0800 (PST) From: Rick Rozoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Cowboy Prez rides to rescue? - Columnist Eric Margolis [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Dear Friends, For anyone not already acquainted with the fact, Eric Margolis is a Western disinformation agent who boasts, inter alia, of smuggling rockets into the Afghan mujahedin in the 1980s and possessing a host of intelligence contacts, including with the CIA. A quick Google search with the words Eric Margolis socialism will demonstrate with whom we're dealing. There is nothing remotely enlightened or progressive about this individual, notwithstanding the fact that his columns, from the very establishment Toronto Star where he is the official foreign correspondent, have been crossposted and linked on several US 'progressive' sites fairly regularly of late. In fact, the only time he criticizes Western militarism, aside from goading it into being more aggressive (e.g. Stopping Europe's New Nazis and Serbia Needs Moral Cleansing), is when one of his presumed co-religionists is under fire. As such he operates on a personal, and hardly political or principled,
Serbian gov't adopts UN tribunal rules [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- AP. 27 March 2002. Serbian Gov't Adopts UN Tribunal Rules. BELGRADE -- Faced with a U.S. deadline to hand over war crimes suspects, Serbia's government on Wednesday defied a high court ruling and adopted a U.N. tribunal's rules allowing such extraditions. Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica and his followers have opposed extraditions to the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, saying they are illegal and demanding that a special domestic law be adopted to let Serbia hand over suspects. The government's defiant move comes a day after Yugoslavia's constitutional court, dominated by [so-called] Serbian nationalists, ruled that the tribunal's statute cannot be applied in Serbia. The U.S. Congress gave Yugoslavia until March 31 to cooperate with the court or risk losing $120 million in financial assistance. Acting on a similar deadline last year, the Serbian government arrested former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who is now on trial in The Hague for atrocities his forces committed in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia in the 1990s. Serbian Justice Minister Vladan Batic said the Serbian government decided to adopt The Hague's statute after months of fruitless legal debates and wrangling between political factions. The government move indicates that it is ready to arrest and extradite at least some of 15 Serb war crimes suspects living in the republic and sought by The Hague. Batic said that he doesn't believe March 31 is the final deadline because the Serbian government has fulfilled two other conditions set by the United States -- releasing all ethnic Albanian prisoners from Serbian jails and severing formal ties with the Bosnian Serb military. Among the suspects sought by the tribunal are the world's top war crimes fugitives, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his wartime military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic. Mladic is known to be hiding in Serbia; Karadzic's whereabouts are unknown. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
NOBEL PRIZEWINNER COMPARES ISRAELI POLICY TO AUSCHWITZ [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
Title: Message HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- NOBEL PRIZEWINNER COMPARES ISRAELI POLICY TO AUSCHWITZ The Portuguese Nobel prizewinner for Literature, Jose Saramago, has made declarations attacking the Israeli policy in the occupied territories. His comments are hotly disputed by Tel Aviv. On a visit to Israel, Jose Saramago declared to Portuguese radio station Antenna 1, that It must be said that in Palestine, there is a crime which we can stop. We may compare it with what happened at Auschwitz. He added that only by visiting the territory and seeing first-hand the repressive policy adopted by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian civilians, could the injustice of the situation be understood. He reported that he had seen an ambulance carrying a pregnant Palestinian woman stopped at the border. She was refused entry and the baby was delivered in the vehicle. Others have not been so lucky. In one incident, in October 2001, a pregnant Palestinian woman was left dying in the street near a checkpoint which had refused her entry, with the Israeli soldiers standing around laughing and jeering at one less terrorist being born. Saramago is a member of an eight-person commission sent by the International Writers Parliament, to assess the situation. He is accompanied by Nigerian Nobel prizewinner, Wole Soyinka, Christian Salmon, Juan Goytisolo, Bei Dao, Breyten Breytenbach, Vincenzo Consolo and Russel Banks. A spokesperson from the Israeli Foreign Ministry accused Jose Saramago of total blindness and a surprising historical amnesia, pointing out that the plight of the Palestinians is the responsibility of their leaders, who refuse to accept Israels offers of peace (while colonies are illegally being built on the lands stolen from the Palestinians by Israel). Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ruhttp://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/03/27/27199.html --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
IRAQ, WAR AND PROPAGANDA .....John Pilger [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
Title: Message HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- IRAQ, WAR AND PROPAGANDA "The promised attack on Iraq will test free journalism as never before," warns John Pilger, long a harsh critic of U.S. policy against Iraq. (From JohnPilger.com; World Assoc. for Christian Comm; OJR) http://pilger.carlton.com/print/100275 --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Re: The Canadian Connection [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Hello Stephen, Excuse my language, but what's your problem? You don't need to be very smart to know how many subscriber the list have. Just visiting the list homepage, http://www.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO. So what? Since when quantity is synonimous of quality? On Margolis: I currently receive two or three emails a week from different sources containing articles written by this individual. Most of them from people with no knowledge whatsoever on his background. And I don't live in Toronto. As per the "118", never underestimate the capabilities of the 'forward to'. Take it easy, mate From: Stephen Gowans [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 13:39:28 -0500 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: The Canadian Connection [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Of course, it's well known the CIA recruits heavily from the ranks of Canadian journalists, there being too few American journalists from which to choose, and the CIA having too few connections in the US, and Canadian journalists having a far greater reach than any of their counterparts in the US or Britain or France. Why, with the circulation of Margolis's paper reaching upwards of 30,000, (though most of the readers never read Margolis's column, the horoscope, Toronto Maple Leafs stats, and the Sunshine girl having infinitely more appeal) and his potential exposure on this listserve to the mind boggling number of 118, the CIA has chosen well. With a reach like that, who knows what damage he could do. Yes, indeed, Richard, it is no coincidence he, like me, is based in Canada. But I must run. A meeting awaits with my fellow Canadians to plot the spread of more disinformation through our widely read newspapers. - Original Message - From: Richard Roper [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 11:30 AM Subject: Re: Columnist Eric Margolis [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- I suggest it is time for these exchanges to stop. The problem with margolis is not how we may/ may not disagree with him, but his "official" contacts for whom he distributes disinformation. It's no coincidence he's based in Canada. --- Stephen Gowans [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- But Nancy, Margolis is a vegan! And he would never countenance the sending of chickens to Afghanistan. Still, you may be right. At the same time we prevail upon antiwar.com to blacklist Margolis, maybe we can get them to stop posting Pat Buchanan and Justin Raimondo. Surely there are people on the Left (and not Chomskyites, Trotskyites, social democrats, anarchists, world socialists, libertarian socialists, third-way Marxists, progressives and Blairites) who are making the same points on Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on. Better yet, maybe some of them are vegans. How about Alexander Cockburn? Or does he work for the CIA? Another idea: Being an unrepentant ovolacto vegetarian (yes, I do drink milk: mea culpa), I think my writing should be posted before any of those other guys. After all, who needs ideas, when you have the right political loyalties (and diet)? Steve - Original Message - From: Nancy Hey To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2002 10:15 PM Subject: Re: Columnist Eric Margolis [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- " Other people are making the same points he is on Afghanistan, Iraq and so forth; there's no need to provide this enemy of ours with more exposure and authority than his contacts in the intelligence community have already succeeded in doing. Respectfully, Rick " My sentiments exactly! How can we get Antiwar.com to see this point? peacefully yours, Nancy Hey mart-remote wrote: Well said Rick. Please, let's not give this bastard any more exposure than he already gets, or even the thinest veneer of credibilty. Margolis is a CIA-KLA terrorist who happens to use a typewriter to kill people. His words do not belong on this list. One slight correction. He is with the Toronto Sun, not the Toronto Star. mart == Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 22:25:32 -0800 (PST) From: Rick Rozoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Cowboy Prez rides to rescue? - Columnist Eric Margolis [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Dear Friends, For anyone not already acquainted with the fact, Eric Margolis is a Western disinformation agent who boasts, inter alia, of smuggling rockets into the Afghan mujahedin in the 1980s and possessing a host of intelligence contacts, including with the CIA. A quick Google search with
Yugoslavia Contaminated BY Uranium Dust [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- BBC News Wednesday, 27 March, 2002, 13:11 GMT Yugoslavia contaminated by DU dust The United Nations has found widespread low-level contamination of depleted uranium in Yugoslavia, three years after extensive bombing by Nato. UN scientists said that the levels do not pose a direct threat to human health but there are concerns about a potential risk of contamination of water sources by the ammunition tips made out of depleted uranium. [No threat to human health unless people drink the water, that is.] They expressed surprise that depleted uranium dust was still found in the air, two years after the conflict had ended. The UN urged the Yugoslav authorities to fence off and monitor the affected sites. __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy Awards® http://movies.yahoo.com/ --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
WSWS: War danger grows on Korean peninsula [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org WSWS : News Analysis : Asia : Korea War danger grows on Korean peninsula By James Conachy27 March 2002 Back to screen version | Send this link by email | Email the author Tensions between the US and North Korea are at their worst since 1994, when the Clinton administration threatened military strikes if Pyongyang did not shut down its nuclear power plants. On January 31, Bush included North Korea in his axis of evil and made further accusations during his February East Asia visit that it possessed weapons of mass destruction. This month, in response to the leaked Pentagon report proposing the use of nuclear weapons in a war on the Korean peninsula, North Korea issued threats of its own. The most serious was a thinly-veiled warning that Pyongyang may, in self-defence, abandon the weapons control agreements it entered into in 1994 and 1998. The North Korean foreign ministry declared on March 13: Under the present situation where nuclear lunatics have taken office in the White House, we are compelled to examine all agreements with the US. In case the US plan turns out to be true, the DPKR [North Korea] will have no choice but to take a substantial counter-measure against it, not bound to any DPKR-US agreement. In 1994, facing the threat of US attack, the Pyongyang regime agreed to close its reactors, which were capable of producing plutonium, in exchange for the US, Japan and South Korea financing the construction of light-water nuclear plants and supplying the North with alternative fuel in the interim. In late 1998, again under military pressure, the North agreed to suspend testing a long-range missile allegedly able to reach the US west coast. Despite this record of submission to Washingtons demands, the Bush White House is insisting that North Korea, an economically crippled nation of just 23 million people, remains one the greatest military challenges to the US. While it has made a verbal gesture of being prepared to enter into talks, the Bush administration has stressed it will demand Pyongyang reduce the size of its conventional armed forces and allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to enter its military and research facilities. The US demands are an open provocation. While the Pyongyang regime is being told to unilaterally disarm, Washington threatens it with nuclear weapons, has 37,000 troops permanently stationed in the South and supplies the South Korean military with state-of-the-art hardware. On March 21, the largest military exercise ever held on the peninsula began, involving over 50,000 US troops, including some based in Japan, and most of the 650,000-strong South Korean armed forces. The exercises scenario is a war with the North. Pyongyang has labeled it a rehearsal for a nuclear holocaust. The Bush administrations aim is to push the North into taking defensive measures, which can then be presented as evidence of assembling weapons of mass destruction and used as the pretext for military strikes. The groundwork for this has been laid already. On March 19, the White House, in response to the Norths reaction to the Pentagon report, announced it could no longer certify to the US Congress that Pyongyang was abiding by the 1994 agreement. In glaring contrast, an official involved in monitoring the agreement told the Washington Post: As far as we can see, it has been fulfilled. We challenge anybody who wants to make us believe that the North Koreans didnt stick to the bargain. The commander of American forces in South Korea, General Thomas Schwartz, testified to the US Senate earlier this month that North Korea had honoured the 1998 missile agreement and said there were no indicators Pyongyang was participating in any kind of terrorist activity. Driving Bushs Korea policy is unstated opposition to the South Korean governments sunshine policya series of steps toward a political settlement with the North over the past three years, a process encouraged by China in particular. South Koreas rapprochement with the North seeks to enable far greater economic exploitation of the markets and resources of both China and the former territories of the Soviet Union. Transport routes from the South, through the North and China to Russias trans-Siberian railway, could transform it into a significant trade hub between north-east Asia and the European Union (EU). Russia has made major investments to upgrade the rail line, which could move freight across Eurasia at least 10 days faster than by sea. Oil and gas piped from Central Asia and Russia to China and South Korea could be profitably exported on to Japan, one of the worlds biggest importers of energy. As a London Financial Times correspondent noted on March 18: Seoul believes that its location, sandwiched between Japan, the worlds second largest
(Milan) Panic: from biker to front man for CIA: and Gelbard... from diplomat to
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Return-Path: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Received: from orion.neiu.edu ([207.241.96.10]) by mta07-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.27 201-229-121-127-20010626) with ESMTP id [EMAIL PROTECTED] for [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Wed, 27 Mar 2002 22:27:14 + Received: from discovery.neiu.edu (discovery.neiu.edu [66.99.13.30]) by orion.neiu.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id QAA05916 for [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Wed, 27 Mar 2002 16:19:55 -0600 (CST) Received: from neiu.edu ([66.99.15.52]) by discovery.neiu.edu (NAVGW 2.5.1.12) with SMTP id M2002032716184506739 ; Wed, 27 Mar 2002 16:18:53 -0600 Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 16:26:06 -0800 From: john_peter maher [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: (Milan) Panic: from biker to front man for CIA: and Gelbard... from diplomat to dip into the public till -- The Sicilian Mafia is more honorable References: 000901c1d5b4$aac06690$bb32e30c@mvp Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="63C4771B06D7EC025FB22D9E" excerpt from How to defeat Serbia. Foreign Affairs. July/August 1994.By David Gompert. A Reply by J. P. Maher. Summer 1994. After Nixon-Kissinger established diplomatic relations with red China the ex-Secretary of State became a millionaire through his investments in Chinese business. This is par for the course, not something Henry invented. After the Nixon presidency he opened up shop as Kissinger Associates. Congressman Henry C. Gonzales of Texas, chairman of the House Banking Committee, has long been looking into the web connecting Kissinger Associates, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, The National Bank of Georgia, and the BCCI (with its shady links to the CIA and the oil sheikdoms). Both these banks are implicated in the Iran-Iraq scams that built up Sadam Hussein. Other messy affairs are the Yugoslav Ljubljanska Banka, which was implicated in money laundering, and the Yugo auto company and its arms producing parent firm Zavodi Crvena Zastava (Red Flag Factories). Gonzales has turned up plenty of dirt on Baker, Kissinger and his minions Eagleburger, Scowcroft et al. who have misled the American public on scores of dubious affairs. Their ethical behavior is deplorable In their arrogance such public servants passing through the lobbyists revolving doors boast: ... we [Kissinger Associates] are not in the habit of giving free advice. Gonzales sagely concludes: The National Bank of Georgia therefore must have been a client of Kissinger Associates. Winston Churchill, quoted by Gonzales, saw the same moral abyss in the Mother of Parliaments: Ministers have come under obligations to great interests; and it can be presumed or alleged that their votes or speeches have been corrupt. Gonzales quotes a fair appraisal of the sleaziness of our former ambassador to Yugoslavia Eagleburger, his mentor Kissinger, and a big cast of stars (e.g. Canadian ex-premier Pierre Trudeau), penned by their crony defense industry Gordon Adams, referring to weapons exports: You cant just drive over there. If you want to get into the foreign government, youve got to get into the American government. Eagleburger gets pensions from such firms; George Bush gave him a midnight appointment to the post of Secretary of State, probably to entitle him to another pension. Julius Caesar became a rich man with his conquest of Gaul, robbing treasure and selling a million Celtic men, women and children into slavery. In not so distant times the way to a commission in the British Army was to buy it. A military commission was a license to plunder. I think £3,000 was the price in the early nineteenth century. (One hundred pounds was a good annual salary a century ago.) These are the guys who talk about defeating the Serbs. Whose side do you want to be on? I close with a quotation from one American diplomat worthy of the title, who wrote something as true about the New World Order as it was about previous editions: The Great War began in the Balkans, yet its origin in the hearts of unscrupulous autocrats whose ruthless ambition knew neither justice nor limit; who counted the subjection of a free people merely as the first move in the game to commercial and political supremacy, and in the end to dominate the world. Serbia was only a pawn, to be swept aside as the first obstacle in the path of world conquest. MVP wrote: ICN Pharmaceuticals, Inc. News Release CONTACT: Media, Peter Murphy, 714-545-0100, ext. 3213, or Investors, Joe Schepers, 212-754-4422, both of ICN Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ICN Pharmaceuticals Appoints Gelbard to Head International Efforts COSTA MESA,
FT: Arms on Korean security talks agenda [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- ASIA-PACIFIC: Arms on Korean security talks agenda Financial Times; Mar 26, 2002By ANDREW WARD South Korea's talks with the North next month will cover all security issues, including weapons of mass destruction, Seoul said yesterday. President Kim Dae-jung said he would send an envoy to Communist North Korea in an attempt to break a five-month deadlock. "The talks will be very broad, covering all security issues. We hope it will break the stalemate," said an official at the presidential Blue House. Any negotiations about arms would mark a breakthrough in efforts to reduce tensions on the Korean peninsula, one of the most heavily militarised regions in the world. Recent contact between the two countries has been limited to issues such as aid, cross-border investment and reunification of families. Lim Dong-won, the president's adviser on security and unification issues, is scheduled to meet counterparts in Pyongyang during the first week in April. "I will give our view on weapons and missiles," he told reporters yesterday. Analysts said North Korea's agreement to accept Seoul's request for fresh talks signalled a de-coupling of inter-Korean engagement from Pyongyang's more hostile relations with the US, South Korea's military ally. "North Korea has traditionally taken the same approach towards Seoul and Washington because it saw them as one and the same enemy, but it seems to have realised that one is more friendly than the other," said a European diplomat in Seoul. A divide has opened between President George W. Bush's hardline approach to North Korea, which he named in his "axis of evil" rogue states speech, and Mr Kim, whose "sunshine" policy of reconciliation involves a softer approach to Pyongyang. Next month's talks represent one of Mr Kim's final chances to secure lasting benefits from his engagement policy before he leaves office after December's presidential election. For isolated and poverty-stricken North Korea it could be a last opportunity to win aid and political concessions from Seoul if a less sympathetic president replaced Mr Kim. The talks were agreed at a time of growing concern about the potential for fresh crisis. Last week, Mr Lim himself said the conditions were developing for a repeat of the 1994 crisis, when the US was close to launching air strikes against Pyongyang following the discovery of its atomic weapons programme. There was speculation in Seoul that Mr Lim could invite Kim Yong-nam - North Korea's second in command after Kim Jong-il - to attend June's World Cup soccer finals in South Korea. He could also press for Kim Jong-il to fulfil his promise to visit Seoul in return for Kim Dae-jung's historic trip to Pyongyang two years ago. --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Peru: Bombing in Peru Sends Message to Bush - Stratfor [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- ___ S T R A T F O R THE GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE COMPANY http://www.stratfor.com ___ 21 March 2002 THE GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT - FULL TEXT FOR MEMBERS ONLY ___ Bombing in Peru Sends Message to Bush Summary A bombing in Lima, Peru, just days before a summit between Andean leaders and U.S. President George W. Bush was likely the work of Peruvian insurgent group Shining Path. The incident may have been meant to warn the United States about deepening its military involvement in the region. The move could easily backfire, however, because Andean leaders may be more willing to support a larger U.S. military presence following the violence. Analysis A car bomb exploded at 10:45 p.m. local time on March 20, less than 100 meters from the U.S. Embassy in Lima, Peru. The explosion came less than three days before U.S. President George W. Bush is due to arrive in Lima for a 17-hour meeting with the vice president of Ecuador and the presidents of Peru and Bolivia. No one has taken credit for the bombing yet, but Peruvian and U.S. officials in Lima believe the leftist insurgent group Shining Path was probably responsible. With the Bush administration preparing to expand the U.S. military presence in Colombia and other Andean countries, it is possible the bomb was intended as a message that U.S. citizens and assets will become political targets if Washington deepens its engagement in the Andean region's war against drugs and insurgents. The incident will intensify discussion at the Andean summit over ways to crack down on the growing links between insurgent groups and the drug trade. Rather than dissuade Washington from becoming more involved in the region, the bombing could in fact solidify support among Andean and U.S. leaders for greater and more immediate engagement in Colombia and neighboring countries. Nine people were killed and more than 40 injured when a car packed with 110 pounds of explosives blew up. A group of policemen had become suspicious and were attempting to evacuate the area when the detonation occurred, Peru's Interior Minister Fernando Rospigliosi said March 21. The explosion rocked Lima's El Polo commercial center, destroying nearby shops and cars. The U.S. Embassy, located across a wide street from the commercial center, was not damaged. The resurgent Maoist group Shining Path is the most likely suspect behind the bombing. Shining Path and another leftist group, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, were together responsible for an estimated 30,000 deaths and $25 billion in financial losses in Peru between 1980 and the mid-1990s, after which Shining Path was almost completely wiped out. However, the group has been forging a comeback during the past two years. It is building its revival on the back of the drug trade, adopting a growth model used successfully by Colombia's largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In fact Peruvian, Colombian and U.S. officials believe Shining Path has established links with Colombian drug traffickers trying to increase coca and poppy cultivation in Peru and that Shining Path and the FARC have developed links with each other as well. This model fits Shining Path like a glove. What remains of the group operates primarily in remote areas of Peru where central government authority is least prevalent -- a situation conducive for the cultivation and trafficking of coca and poppy plants. As Shining Path's involvement in the drug trade has grown, so too have the number of violent conflicts with the government. In what could have been a foreshadowing of the March 20 bombing, officials from the government's anti-terrorism unit captured two Shining Path members last November who had architectural plans in their possession. The arrests led local officials to allege that Shining Path was planning to bomb the U.S. Embassy. Local officials immediately pointed to Shining Path as the top suspect in the latest incident. Hector John Caro, a former chief of Peru's anti-terrorism police, told Reuters the car bombing has all the markings of Shining Path's near-constant attacks of a decade ago. Though there are other potential suspects -- ranging from professional drug traffickers to groups or individuals embittered against the United States over Washington's treatment of now-imprisoned Peruvian spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos -- none has a stronger combination of motivation and capability than Shining Path. STRATFOR wrote Feb. 6 that Shining Path's resurgence likely will lead to an increase in rural and urban terrorist
RE: The Canadian Connection [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Stephan, for the second time, I see your point. What I don't see is why this was turned into mudslinging contest. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't recall anyone ever personally attacking you. So, what prompted you to attack Rick and Mart? Fill me in on the details if I missed something? Everything else you wrote on the subject of Margolis I'm in agreement with. There is disformation of a much more insidious quality sent to this list daily. I'm sure most members are capable of dissecting fact from fiction, the good from the bad. On the other hand, Rick and Mart do provide helpful insight into must of what's sent. For someone like myself -- poli/cri/tically active for a meagre three years and as such supseptible to misinterpreting information or not recognizing subtle spin or propaganda -- I'm indebted to them for their analysis. So, lets drop the subject and get back to business. By prolonging it we are merely stirring up animosity and that's not what we need, is it now? David O.Q Stephen Gowans wrote: Relax. That wasn't a jab at the size of the list, not a comment on quality versus quantity (though quality without reach could hardly subserve the listserve's presumed goals of stopping NATO.) Instead, it was an attempt to put this tiresome subject in perspective. Posting Margolis on a listerserve of 118 subscribers isn't going to amount to a hill of beans, no matter what the power of forward to is, even if those subscribers are too dull to recognize misinformation, as some of the more frequently seen names on this list seem to suppose. In the exchanges on this issue, not once has anyone replied to my arguments. Instead, the same old charge is repeated, But Margolis has an unsavory background. We shouldn't suppose he's one of us. He's an imposter. Who cares what Margolis background is? Margolis's colleague Peter Worthington has long been a bete noire of mine, but he wrote a wonderful exposure of the Racak massacre hoax, and yes, while others have written better exposures, Worthington's was probably read by more than anyone else's, and he writes for the Toronto Sun with its picayune circulation. Yes, ANTINATO is a listserve of superb quality, the best I know of, but I'd venture to guess that the asshole Worthington has done more to make large numbers of people ask questions about NATO policy vis-vis the Balkans than anyone on this list has. You take your allies where you can find them. Or you surround yourself with others who see the world in exactly the same way on every issue, and squander your energies on the margins, feeding delusions that you're making a difference. - Original Message - From: Francisco Javier Bernal To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 4:05 PM Subject: Re: The Canadian Connection [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Hello Stephen, Excuse my language, but what's your problem? You don't need to be very smart to know how many subscriber the list have. Just visiting the list homepage, http://www.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO. So what? Since when quantity is synonimous of quality? On Margolis: I currently receive two or three emails a week from different sources containing articles written by this individual. Most of them from people with no knowledge whatsoever on his background. And I don't live in Toronto. As per the 118, never underestimate the capabilities of the 'forward to'. Take it easy, mate From: Stephen Gowans [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 13:39:28 -0500 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: The Canadian Connection [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Of course, it's well known the CIA recruits heavily from the ranks of Canadian journalists, there being too few American journalists from which to choose, and the CIA having too few connections in the US, and Canadian journalists having a far greater reach than any of their counterparts in the US or Britain or France. Why, with the circulation of Margolis's paper reaching upwards of 30,000, (though most of the readers never read Margolis's column, the horoscope, Toronto Maple Leafs stats, and the Sunshine girl having infinitely more appeal) and his potential exposure on this listserve to the mind boggling number of 118, the CIA has chosen well. With a reach like that, who knows what damage he could do. Yes, indeed, Richard, it is no coincidence he, like me, is based in Canada. But I must run. A meeting awaits with my fellow Canadians to plot the spread of more disinformation through our widely read newspapers. - Original Message - From: Richard Roper [EMAIL
Re: The Canadian Connection [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Relax. That wasnt a jab at the size of the list, not a comment on quality versus quantity (though quality without reach could hardly subserve the listserves presumed goals of stopping NATO.) Instead, it was an attempt to put this tiresome subject in perspective. Posting Margolis on a listerserve of 118 subscribers isnt going to amount to a hill of beans, no matter what the power of "forward to" is, even if those subscribers are too dull to recognize misinformation, as some of the more frequently seen names on this list seem to suppose. In the exchanges on this issue, not once has anyone replied to my arguments. Instead, the same old charge is repeated, "But Margolis has an unsavory background. We shouldnt suppose hes one of us. Hes an imposter." Who cares what Margolis background is? Margoliss colleague Peter Worthington has long been a bete noire of mine, but he wrote a wonderful exposure of the Racak massacre hoax, and yes, while others have written better exposures, Worthingtons was probably read by more than anyone elses, and he writes for the Toronto Sun with its picayune circulation. Yes, ANTINATO is a listserve of superb quality, the best I know of, but Id venture to guess that the asshole Worthington has done more to make large numbers of people ask questions about NATO policy vis-vis the Balkans than anyone on this list has. You take your allies where you can find them. Or you surround yourself with others who see the world in exactly the same way on every issue, and squander your energies on the margins, feeding delusions that you're making a difference. - Original Message - From: Francisco Javier Bernal To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 4:05 PM Subject: Re: The Canadian Connection [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Hello Stephen, Excuse my language, but what's your problem? You don't need to be very smart to know how many subscriber the list have. Just visiting the list homepage, http://www.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO. So what? Since when quantity is synonimous of quality? On Margolis: I currently receive two or three emails a week from different sources containing articles written by this individual. Most of them from people with no knowledge whatsoever on his background. And I don't live in Toronto. As per the "118", never underestimate the capabilities of the 'forward to'. Take it easy, mate From: Stephen Gowans [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 13:39:28 -0500 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: The Canadian Connection [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Of course, it's well known the CIA recruits heavily from the ranks of Canadian journalists, there being too few American journalists from which to choose, and the CIA having too few connections in the US, and Canadian journalists having a far greater reach than any of their counterparts in the US or Britain or France. Why, with the circulation of Margolis's paper reaching upwards of 30,000, (though most of the readers never read Margolis's column, the horoscope, Toronto Maple Leafs stats, and the Sunshine girl having infinitely more appeal) and his potential exposure on this listserve to the mind boggling number of 118, the CIA has chosen well. With a reach like that, who knows what damage he could do. Yes, indeed, Richard, it is no coincidence he, like me, is based in Canada. But I must run. A meeting awaits with my fellow Canadians to plot the spread of more disinformation through our widely read newspapers. - Original Message - From: Richard Roper [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 11:30 AM Subject: Re: Columnist Eric Margolis [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- I suggest it is time for these exchanges to stop. The problem with margolis is not how we may/ may not disagree with him, but his "official" contacts for whom he distributes disinformation. It's no coincidence he's based in Canada. --- Stephen Gowans [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- But Nancy, Margolis is a vegan! And he would never countenance the sending of chickens to Afghanistan. Still, you may be right. At the same time we prevail upon antiwar.com to blacklist Margolis, maybe we can get them to stop posting Pat Buchanan and Justin Raimondo. Surely there are people on the Left (and not Chomskyites, Trotskyites, social democrats, anarchists, world socialists, libertarian socialists, third-way Marxists, progressives and Blairites) who are making the same points on Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on. Better yet, maybe
Arab Summit Lies in Ruins as Arafat is Fenced In [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
Title: Message HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Published on Wednesday, March 27, 2002 in the lndependent/UK Arab Summit Lies in Ruins as Arafat is Fenced In by Robert Fisk in Beirut Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, threw Yasser Arafat into the valley of humiliation last night, banning his visit to the Beirut Arab summit in the face of feeble American protests. "Unfortunately, the conditions are not yet ripe for Chairman Arafat's departure for Beirut" Mr Sharon said after two Palestinians set off a bomb at an Israeli checkpoint in Jerusalem. Later, two military observers from an international force stationed at Hebron in the West Bank were shot and killed while driving down a Jewish settlers' road, apparently by Palestinian gunmen. The two victims, believed initially to be Norwegian, were the first members of this unarmed force, set up in 1997 to help ease tensions after the partition of Hebron into Israeli and Palestinian zones, to be killed. Another observer was slightly wounded in the ambush. President George Bush, who has urged Mr Sharon to allow the Palestinian leader to travel to Beirut to endorse a watered-down version of a UN resolution demanding the return of Israeli occupied land for peace, let Mr Sharon off the hook. Mr Bush's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said: "The President's position is simple and clear. We're dealing with a sovereign [Israeli] government. Governments have the right to make determinations [sic]''. Mr Arafat, could, perhaps talk to Arab leaders via a video-link although he would appear a prisoner of the Israelis on any screen in Beirut. But the Arabs have already seen the trap. And if anyone can smell a rat, Hosni Mubarak can. When the Egyptian President decided last night he would not attend the summit, the word was out. Stay away. Yasser Arafat even if the Israelis were generous enough to allow him to travel to Lebanon at the 11th hour was told by his cronies to remain in his office in Ramallah. Colonel Gaddafi would not come. Nor would Saddam Hussein. Not even the ruler of the United Arab Emirates deigned to come. Nor the Emir of Qatar. They call this an Arab summit? In truth, it is a tragedy. For symbolism, one might glance at the ruins of the Holiday Inn. Punched into Irish lace by a hundred shell holes during the civil war, its gaunt facade has been covered by a 500ft advertisement hoarding depicting the far more ancient ancient Roman ruins of Baalbek. "Vivre le Liban," it says. Long live Lebanon. But the summit is dead. The Americans wanted the Arab kings and presidents to endorse Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's Heath Robinson "peace plan", a vague and ambiguous proposal of "land for peace" which is itself a watered-down version of UN Security Council Resolution 242, the famous or infamous tract that demanded Israeli withdrawal from Arab territory captured in the 1967 Middle East war in return for the security of all states in the area, including Israel. But the Saudis did not want to talk about Palestinian refugees tens of thousands of whom languish in mud and filth scarcely four miles from the summit conference hotel in Beirut nor about the occupied Syrian Golan Heights which President Bashar Assad of Syria, wants to hear about. The latest version of the Saudi proposals concentrates on compensating refugees, which few of them would accept. Nor would the Lebanese, the hosts of this ghost summit, who would like the 250,000 Palestinians on their land to go home wherever "home" might be. So what hope of peace in the rain-squalled streets of Beirut last night? Well, Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general is coming. Javier Solana, Europe's best known and least eloquent statesman is here. Indeed, the non-Arabs seemed to be more important than the Arab rulers who have chosen to come to the city in which Mr Arafat and his Israeli nemesis, Ariel Sharon, together helped to ruin in 1982. Mr Solana was talking last night about a "ray of hope" but the Arabs could not see it. Even if the great and most corrupt of potentates managed to come to Lebanon, they would only have been able to accept the most amorphous of Saudi "peace" plans. Indeed, by mid-morning, the best on offer a new version of the Abdullah proposal was an "end to conflict" with Israel. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of peace and security for either Jew or Arab. Many Palestinians believed for Mr Arafat to accept Israel's "permission" to attend would
U.N. Finds Uranium Toxins From NATO Arms in Serbia [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- U.N. Finds Uranium Toxins From NATO Arms in Serbia http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storyu=/nm/20020327/sc_nm/yugosla via_uranium_dc_1 Wed Mar 27,10:26 AM ET GENEVA (Reuters) - U.N. scientists said Wednesday they found widespread traces of depleted uranium from NATO munitions at five sites in Serbia and Montenegro but the level of contamination posed no immediate health threat. But they warned authorities to take precautions, particularly before allowing development projects, such as house building, on the sites because of the risk of stirring up potentially toxic soil and dust. There is no health risk at the moment, but we do not know if there could be one if you make major soil removals, team leader Pekka Haavisto told a news conference. The team organized by the U.N. Environment Program went to six areas in the two republics that once formed part of Yugoslavia and found widespread but low-level contamination by depleted uranium at five. Depleted uranium is used to harden the tips of tank-busting shells fired by NATO during its mid-1990s Bosnia action and again during the air war to drive Serbian forces out of Kosovo. The study concludes that the DU sites studied do not present immediate radioactive or toxic risks for the environment or human health, UNEP said in a statement, adding the findings were in line with a similar report last year on Kosovo. The two reports were ordered after a number of soldiers who served in NATO forces in Kosovo and Bosnia contracted leukemia, stirring fears that exposure to depleted uranium may have been the cause. The link has been consistently denied by the World Health Organization, which says levels of depleted uranium in the munitions were not high enough to cause cancer. Lower degrees of exposure have been tied to other health problems, including kidney disease. Although it was not directly part of the study, UNEP noted in the report that the WHO had also found no evidence to link depleted uranium to chromosome changes reported by Montenegro in six people who carried out decontamination work at its site. TRACES IN AIR Haavisto said that there were 11 sites in Serbia where NATO was known or believed to have fired DU-coated munitions, and the team chose the five most representative. There was only one such site in Montenegro. A site is an area of some 100 square yards around the spot where depleted uranium munitions struck a target. Traces of depleted uranium were found in soil samples and in the air, but there was no sign of any contamination of the water supplies, UNEP said. The lack of any trace in the water could be due to the fact that uranium in the soil had not yet permeated deep enough to reach the water table, and there was a need for vigilance, Haavisto told a news conference to present the findings. Haavisto said that drinking water should be tested once a year, adding the team had been surprised at finding depleted uranium in air samples more than two years after the end of the Yugoslav conflict. Copyright C 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Copyright C 2002 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved http://www.yahoo.com --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
U.N. Finds Uranium Toxins From NATO Arms in Serbia [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- U.N. Finds Uranium Toxins From NATO Arms in Serbia http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storyu=/nm/20020327/sc_nm/yugoslavia_uranium_dc_1 Wed Mar 27,10:26 AM ET GENEVA (Reuters) - U.N. scientists said Wednesday they found widespread traces of depleted uranium from NATO munitions at five sites in Serbia and Montenegro but the level of contamination posed no immediate health threat. But they warned authorities to take precautions, particularly before allowing development projects, such as house building, on the sites because of the risk of stirring up potentially toxic soil and dust. There is no health risk at the moment, but we do not know if there could be one if you make major soil removals, team leader Pekka Haavisto told a news conference. The team organized by the U.N. Environment Program went to six areas in the two republics that once formed part of Yugoslavia and found widespread but low-level contamination by depleted uranium at five. Depleted uranium is used to harden the tips of tank-busting shells fired by NATO during its mid-1990s Bosnia action and again during the air war to drive Serbian forces out of Kosovo. The study concludes that the DU sites studied do not present immediate radioactive or toxic risks for the environment or human health, UNEP said in a statement, adding the findings were in line with a similar report last year on Kosovo. The two reports were ordered after a number of soldiers who served in NATO forces in Kosovo and Bosnia contracted leukemia, stirring fears that exposure to depleted uranium may have been the cause. The link has been consistently denied by the World Health Organization, which says levels of depleted uranium in the munitions were not high enough to cause cancer. Lower degrees of exposure have been tied to other health problems, including kidney disease. Although it was not directly part of the study, UNEP noted in the report that the WHO had also found no evidence to link depleted uranium to chromosome changes reported by Montenegro in six people who carried out decontamination work at its site. TRACES IN AIR Haavisto said that there were 11 sites in Serbia where NATO was known or believed to have fired DU-coated munitions, and the team chose the five most representative. There was only one such site in Montenegro. A site is an area of some 100 square yards around the spot where depleted uranium munitions struck a target. Traces of depleted uranium were found in soil samples and in the air, but there was no sign of any contamination of the water supplies, UNEP said. The lack of any trace in the water could be due to the fact that uranium in the soil had not yet permeated deep enough to reach the water table, and there was a need for vigilance, Haavisto told a news conference to present the findings. Haavisto said that drinking water should be tested once a year, adding the team had been surprised at finding depleted uranium in air samples more than two years after the end of the Yugoslav conflict. Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2002 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved http://www.yahoo.com = Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace. Weekly peace walks around Lake Merritt in Oakland. Starts ends at the colonnade between Grand Lakeshore Avenues, 3 P.M., every Sunday. Info: (510)763-8712, [EMAIL PROTECTED] or http://www.webwm.com/LMNOP __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy Awards® http://movies.yahoo.com/ --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Guardian: 1947 row on size of nuclear deterrent [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- 1947 row on size of nuclear deterrent Public record office Cabinet told to acquire stockpile of 1,000 atom bombs by building one a day Owen BowcottWednesday March 27, 2002The Guardian The post-war Labour government was privately urged to build atom bombs at the rate of one a day so the UK could accumulate a stockpile of one thousand by 1957 that would be sufficient to destroy the Soviet Union, according to public record office files released today. Documents, many marked top secret, expose a row in Whitehall over the size of the atomic weapons programme and the hasty calculations to set the UK's nuclear deterrent. According to letters from Viscount Portal of Hungerford at the Ministry of Supply, in November 1945 (following the dropping by the US of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) the Cabinet initially agreed to construct bombs at the rate of 15 a year - although, due to the difficulty of processing the requisite plutonium, production could not begin until 1952 at the earliest. In fact the UK exploded its first test bomb in October 1952, while the Soviet Union had exploded one in October 1949. Until the UK test the weapons programme was not publicly admitted - although in private Ernest Bevin, when foreign secretary, reportedly told his officials (after he had been humiliated by the US): "We have got to have this thing over here whatever it costs, and with a bloody union jack flying on top of it". In 1947 the defence research policy committee questioned the target set for the number of bombs needed. Using arguments by Sir Henry Tizard, a senior scientific adviser, the committee, a forerunner of the modern atomic energy authority, called for a rapid escalation. "For atomic weapons to be a useful deterrent," the committee's report said, "we must hold a stock of the order of 1,000 of such bombs, and we must have the means of delivering them immediately on the outbreak of war. "We have no reliable figures on the cost or time factor involved in the manufacture and storage of atomic bombs. A very rough estimate based on published American figures is that, with government backing, manufacture at the rate of one per day could start in about five years from now." An infuriated Lord Portal commented in a note to the Air Ministry: "These estimates were included in the report without referring to the Ministry of Supply [which was responsible for building them]." In a letter to Air Marshal Lord Tedder at the Air Ministry, Lord Portal expressed alarm. He wrote, "I am interested to learn how Tizard obtained his figure of 1,000 bombs; but what concerns me is to know whether the chiefs of staff accept that figure, because if they do ... the question arises whether the task with which I am at present charged should be multiplied by a factor of 24 ... or [be] abandoned, because it's entirely inadequate for the need it is supposed to meet." Sir Henry Tizard's figures were predicated on "a war beginning during the period 1957-62", and his calculation of 1,000 bombs to destroy an enemy presumably referred to the Soviet Union, although no foreign power was mentioned. On August 30 1947, Lord Tedder wrote back: "I understand that Tizard regards the figure of 1,000 as a reasonable estimate of what would be required to constitute a valuable deterrent to war. "This figure is based on the home defence committee's conclusion that some 25 would be required to knock out this country. The geographical area we have in mind is some forty times the size of the UK, and 25x40=1,000. Tizard claims no strategic basis for this, but argues this mathematical approach provides a near enough approximation." Either Sir Henry Tizard or another civil servant had written a short note by hand pointing out that 1,000 warheads would not require a bomb each day, merely for production to be doubled every year from 1952. If 15 were to be built in that year and the number doubled until 1957, then 945 would have been built. Lord Portal, however, dismissed this estimate of the UK's productive capacity as "grossly inflated", observing: "It seems to me that it would be very long time indeed before production at anything like this rate could be achieved". Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Daily Telegraph: Quayle wanted me liquidated, says ex-premier (New Zealand) [WWW
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Quayle wanted me liquidated, says ex-premierBy Paul Chapman in Wellington(Filed: 27/03/2002) NEW Zealand's former Prime Minister David Lange claimed last night that the former American vice-president Dan Quayle had threatened to have him "liquidated" following Wellington's ban on nuclear weapons. Dan Quayle The claim was described as "preposterous" by an American diplomat based in Australasia at the time. In 1984 Mr Lange's Labour Party won a snap general election with its controversial anti-nuclear policy, which barred nuclear weapons and nuclear-powered vessels from New Zealand territory - a ban which remains on the statute books. Mr Lange, 59, said New Zealand had come under huge pressure from the Americans to rescind it. "There were personal pressures. There were veiled threats. There were specific threats. There were threats made to other countries," Mr Lange said in an interview with Television New Zealand. "It was announced to the Australian cabinet at one stage that I had to be liquidated." The remark was allegedly made in 1989 during a visit to Australia by Mr Quayle, who was vice-president in the administration of George Bush senior. "I inquired of our security sources and I was told that I shouldn't regard it as a credible threat because the vice-president wasn't regarded as credible," Mr Lange said. Mr Lange's comments astounded Richard Teare, a former American ambassador to Wellington who was in Canberra at the time of Mr Quayle's visit. "It's preposterous. I'm hearing it for the first time today," Mr Teare said. "I've never heard it in New Zealand, nor from Lange, nor am I aware that he's ever written about it or spoken about such a thing before now." Mr Lange, who resigned as prime minister in August 1989 after his government was torn apart by internal strife over economic policy, made his comments on the eve of a visit to Washington by Helen Clark. Miss Clark is the first Labour prime minister to meet an American president at the White House since 1975. The anti-nuclear policy continues to be regarded as an "irritant", according to sources in Washington. But the uneasy relationship between the countries has eased somewhat after New Zealand committed its elite SAS troops to the war on terrorism in Afghanistan. --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^ wnz27.jpeg
Stratfor: Crisis Looming Between U.S., Russia [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Crisis Looming Between U.S., Russia Summary CIA Director George Tenet recently singled out Russia as a massive contributor to the spread of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Despite the cooperation Moscow has given to Washington's anti-terrorism campaign, the Bush administration is putting the Russian government on notice. A severe crisis between the two sides may now be forming. Analysis While speaking to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee March 19, CIA Director George Tenet singled out Russia as the first choice of proliferant states seeking the most advanced technology and training for weapons of mass destruction, Agence France- Presse reported. Tenet added that Russian sales of technology and expertise applicable to chemical, biological and nuclear weapons were a major source of funds for commercial and defense industries and military research and development. Tenet's statement -- coming in the wake of a recent Pentagon report naming seven countries, including Russia, as potential nuclear targets -- was a bombshell. It places responsibility for the spread of Russian weapons of mass destruction squarely on the shoulders of the government in Moscow and sets the stage for a coming confrontation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. STRATFOR has previously said that a new doctrine is emerging within the Bush administration that is based on the following logic: Al Qaeda is not dead and is dedicated to further attacks on the United States. It has demonstrated the desire to obtain chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, which represent a threat to millions of American citizens. The United States must therefore both destroy al Qaeda and eliminate any stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons that could find their way into the group's hands. The fact that most of these stockpiles belong to sovereign nations like Syria, Pakistan and Russia complicates the problem for Washington but does not change the Bush administration's policy. If anything, ending the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) actually takes priority over destroying the al Qaeda network. Terrorist networks can be badly hurt, but it is incredibly difficult to destroy them completely. WMD stockpiles, plus the accompanying facilities and skilled personnel, are finite and are harder to regenerate than a terrorist network. Now the director of the CIA has named Russia as the key source of WMD proliferation. Tenet stopped just short of explicitly placing the blame on the Russian government, but at the same time, he also did not blame rogue elements in the Russian security services or mafia syndicates. This would have given Putin a certain amount of deniability and raised the potential for Russia to work with the United States -- like it did in the early 1990s -- on decommissioning weapons of mass destruction. Instead, Tenet delivered a blunt message to Putin: the United States believes that WMD proliferation is official Russian policy. The government in Moscow must either immediately halt this policy or face the consequences. Gone is any residual U.S. gratitude for Russian cooperation during the early phases of the war in Afghanistan. The Bush administration is maintaining that the threat posed to the United States is so great that any and all other considerations -- including diplomatic niceties -- must take a backseat. This represents the beginning of a severe crisis between the United States and Russia. Putin must weigh his choices very carefully. If he accepts U.S. demands and subordinates Russian foreign policy to Washington again, he acknowledges that his country has effectively become subservient to the United States. This not only would be a bitter pill to swallow but also would feed nationalist political and military elements within Russia that currently challenge Putin's agenda. The president has managed these groups so far, but a gesture of appeasement on this scale would inflame the passions of even the most pro-Western Russians. However, if Putin does not accept U.S. demands, he faces the distinct possibility of attacks on Russian weapons facilities and the potential elimination of his country's nuclear capability. Such an outcome could very easily spark a coup in Russia, which Putin would probably not survive. Even if he did manage to stay in power, Putin's plan to rebuild Russia through economic integration with Europe and closer short-term ties to the United States would be destroyed. And in the worst-case -- but still quite likely -- scenario, Russia would respond by launching a nuclear attack on the United States. We are not yet at the point of crisis. The Bush administration went public in order to put more pressure on Putin, likely after getting few results from private consultations. Putin is in the process of feeling out American resolve.
Re (anti-NATO) UNITE! Info #166en: 3/8 , 4;8, 5/8, 6/8, etc,, etc, ad infinit
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Fueling the Fire of Imperial Warfare [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- [Does anybody know who owns the oil industry in US?... Bill Howard] [Hour by hour news analysis... http://www.egroups.com/group/Communist-Internet ] [Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] . . - Original Message - From: Comit por la Nueva Colombia [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 12:52 AM Subject: [activistcolombia] US military fuel buying suggests new war(s) Reuters. 26 March 2002. U.S. Military Fuel Buying Surges for Mideast Bases. NEW YORK -- The U.S. military, the world's largest purchaser of petroleum, is buying oil at rates not seen since the Persian Gulf War as it apparently seeks to fuel the Bush administration's fight against terrorism. The Pentagon has tendered for some 7.4 million barrels of fuel above and beyond normal contracts for its Mideast bases over the past three months, according to the Department of Defense (DOD). This mimics emergency buys made after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 and dwarfs supplemental purchases during the NATO air wars against Serbia in 1999. The U.S. military's big appetite for oil, which has underpinned strong petroleum prices in recent weeks, has intensified speculation that the United States may broaden its fight against terrorism beyond Afghanistan, possibly to Iraq, as tensions continue to boil in the region. Officials at the DOD's fuel-buying wing, the Defense Energy Support Center (DESC), declined to comment on the reason for the extraordinary fuel buys, but said supplemental tenders are generally to compensate for supply shortfalls due to higher-than-expected military consumption. To the extent that we need more fuel than we planned for under our normal contracts, we issue supplemental solicitations, said one DESC official. The most recent tender for 5.6 million barrels of jet fuel, issued in late February, was labeled urgent and compelling -- a tag that signifies the delivery contract for the fuel must be signed within 45 days of issue. The 7.4 million barrels in supplemental tenders call mostly for jet fighter fuel to be delivered to bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Israel, Japan, and the island of Diego Garcia, during the course of this year. The volume of the supplemental tenders, which amounts to about five days of commercial and private jet fuel consumption in the United States, adds up to more than 8 percent of the DOD's worldwide bulk fuel purchases during the year 2000, and is 40 percent higher than worldwide supplemental purchases during 2001. It falls short of two supplemental tenders issued by the military in 1990 for sorties over Baghdad, which amounted to 8.1 million barrels, but dwarfs a series of supplemental buys made in 1999 during the U.S.-led NATO air war against Serbia -- the last time the U.S. was engaged in significant fighting -- which amounted to roughly 1.5 million barrels. = ___ Ramon Acevedo Comit por la Nueva Colombia (415) 821-6545 [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy Awards http://movies.yahoo.com/ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- FREE COLLEGE MONEY CLICK HERE to search 600,000 scholarships! http://us.click.yahoo.com/iZp8OC/4m7CAA/ySSFAA/6ZOolB/TM -~- To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
RE: The Canadian Connection [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Agreed. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Stephan, for the second time, I see your point. What I don't see is why this was turned into mudslinging contest. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't recall anyone ever personally attacking you. So, what prompted you to attack Rick and Mart? Fill me in on the details if I missed something? Everything else you wrote on the subject of Margolis I'm in agreement with. There is disformation of a much more insidious quality sent to this list daily. I'm sure most members are capable of dissecting fact from fiction, the good from the bad. On the other hand, Rick and Mart do provide helpful insight into must of what's sent. For someone like myself -- poli/cri/tically active for a meagre three years and as such supseptible to misinterpreting information or not recognizing subtle spin or propaganda -- I'm indebted to them for their analysis. So, lets drop the subject and get back to business. By prolonging it we are merely stirring up animosity and that's not what we need, is it now? David O.Q Stephen Gowans wrote: Relax. That wasn't a jab at the size of the list, not a comment on quality versus quantity (though quality without reach could hardly subserve the listserve's presumed goals of stopping NATO.) Instead, it was an attempt to put this tiresome subject in perspective. Posting Margolis on a listerserve of 118 subscribers isn't going to amount to a hill of beans, no matter what the power of forward to is, even if those subscribers are too dull to recognize misinformation, as some of the more frequently seen names on this list seem to suppose. In the exchanges on this issue, not once has anyone replied to my arguments. Instead, the same old charge is repeated, But Margolis has an unsavory background. We shouldn't suppose he's one of us. He's an imposter. Who cares what Margolis background is? Margolis's colleague Peter Worthington has long been a bete noire of mine, but he wrote a wonderful exposure of the Racak massacre hoax, and yes, while others have written better exposures, Worthington's was probably read by more than anyone else's, and he writes for the Toronto Sun with its picayune circulation. Yes, ANTINATO is a listserve of superb quality, the best I know of, but I'd venture to guess that the asshole Worthington has done more to make large numbers of people ask questions about NATO policy vis-vis the Balkans than anyone on this list has. You take your allies where you can find them. Or you surround yourself with others who see the world in exactly the same way on every issue, and squander your energies on the margins, feeding delusions that you're making a difference. - Original Message - From: Francisco Javier Bernal To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 4:05 PM Subject: Re: The Canadian Connection [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Hello Stephen, Excuse my language, but what's your problem? You don't need to be very smart to know how many subscriber the list have. Just visiting the list homepage, http://www.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO. So what? Since when quantity is synonimous of quality? On Margolis: I currently receive two or three emails a week from different sources containing articles written by this individual. Most of them from people with no knowledge whatsoever on his background. And I don't live in Toronto. As per the 118, never underestimate the capabilities of the 'forward to'. Take it easy, mate From: Stephen Gowans [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 13:39:28 -0500 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: The Canadian Connection [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- Of course, it's well known the CIA recruits heavily from the ranks of Canadian journalists, there being too few American journalists from which to choose, and the CIA having too few connections in the US, and Canadian journalists having a far greater reach than any of their counterparts in the US or Britain or France. Why, with the circulation of Margolis's paper reaching upwards of 30,000, (though most of the readers never read Margolis's column, the horoscope, Toronto Maple Leafs stats, and the Sunshine girl having infinitely more appeal) and his potential exposure on this listserve to the mind boggling number of 118, the CIA has chosen well. With a reach like that, who knows what damage he could do. Yes, indeed, Richard, it is no coincidence he, like me, is based in Canada. But I must run. A meeting awaits with my fellow Canadians to
Iraqi Journalists protest War Threat [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- [Hour by hour news analysis... http://www.egroups.com/group/Communist-Internet ] [Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] . .Iraqi Journalists Hold Anti-US Rally. Several hundred Iraqi journalists on Tuesday held a rally in front of the Iraqi Journalists Union (IJU) to protest against possible U.S. military attacks against Baghdad, the state-run Iraq TV reported. Several hundred Iraqi journalists on Tuesday held a rally in front of the Iraqi Journalists Union (IJU) to protest against possible U.S. military attacks against Baghdad, the state-run Iraq TV reported. Mohammad Abd Mehdi, first deputy secretary of the IJU, delivered a speech at the rally and called on the Arab summit, due to open on Wednesday in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, to support the Palestinian intifada (uprising) against Israel and reject U.S. military action against the Iraqi people. The protest came ahead of the two-day Arab summit and Arab leaders are widely expected to adopt a Saudi peace initiative, which offers full Arab normalization of ties with Israel in exchange for the latter's withdrawal from the Arab lands it occupied in the 1967 Mideast war. The summit is also likely to voice opposition to any possible U. S. military intervention against Iraq, as Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa has said that the summit will oppose U.S. military action against Baghdad. U.S. President George W. Bush has branded Iraq as part of an axis of evil and strongly warned that Iraq may become the next target of the U.S.-led war on terror. However, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, during his Mideast tour earlier this month, received little support for any U.S. campaign against Iraq in the face of surging violence between the Palestinians and Israel. --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
3rd Meeting of the Balkan Anti-NATO Center (BAN-c) [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- [Hour by hour news analysis... http://www.egroups.com/group/Communist-Internet ] [Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] . . - Original Message - From: SolidNet [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 11:17 AM Subject: CP of Greece, 3rd Meeting of the Balkan Anti-NATO Center (BAN-c) http://www.solidnet.org News, documents and calls for action from communist and workers' parties. The items are the responsibility of the authors. Join the mailing list: info/subscribe/unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] . = CP of Greece, 3rd Meeting of the Balkan Anti-NATO Center (BAN-c) From: Communist Party of Greece, Wed, 27 Mar 2002 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , http://www.kke.gr 3rd Meeting of the Balkan Anti-NATO Center (BAN-c) *Next appointments: the NATO meeting in Prague, November 2002 and the EU summit in Thessalonica, June 2003 The 3rd Meeting of Balkan Anti-NATO Center (BAN-c) was held on 23-24 of March in Thessalonica, with subject Three years after the bombings, the war continues in the Balkans: The policy of NATO and EU. The BAN-c was established on March 2000. It is a platform composed by parties, organizations and movements from the Balkan countries, which struggle against NATO, for peace, friendship and cooperation among the Balkan People. The aim of the meeting was the coordination of actions among the movements of the Balkans against the policies and the actions of imperialism in the region, against the policy of NATO and EU and the confinement of the democratic rights and civil freedoms, which is being promoted in the name of confronting terrorism. Present were representatives of parties and movements from Albania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Cyprus, FYROM, Greece, Romania and Turkey. Various personalities (mayors, town councilors, trade unionists, university professors, MPs etc) also attended the meeting. Also, youth organizations from Greece (Communist Youth of Greece KNE, youth of DIKKI, Youth Action for Peace, All Students' Movement PKS, Youth Secretariat of PAME, students unions etc), Cyprus (EDON), Turkey (Youth of the CP) and Bulgaria (Socialist Youth Union) participated in the meeting, holding a special youth session as well. In the meeting were discussed the preparations for the demonstrations during the EU summit that will take place in June 2003 in Thessalonica , supporting the appeal that has already been released by the initiative group Action-Thessalonica 2003. It was also agreed to participate in the anti-NATO demonstrations in Prague (November 2002) during the NATO meeting. The youth session decided, among other initiatives, to organize the 2nd Balkan Anti-NATO Youth Camp this July in Thessalonica. The parties and movements that participated released an Appeal to the People of Balkans under the title No to NATO - Prague November 2002, militant response to the EU summit - Thessalonica June 2003 Info by International Section of CPG *End* --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
US Using NATO To Control Europe [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,675197,00.html Bush comes to shove Nato was being counted out a few months ago. Now the US is using it to control the new Europe Simon Tisdall Thursday March 28, 2002 The Guardian While Britain and other member states ponderously plod towards agreement on the EU's eastern enlargement, the Bush administration is steaming full speed ahead with the reunification of Europe - under US auspices, on US terms, and primarily for US purposes. This worrying extension of American power and influence is happening almost without debate in western European capitals, under the noses of leaders in France and Germany preoccupied with elections and of others, in Britain, Italy and Spain, too willing to do Washington's bidding. Yet the US plan, now being pursued by high-level envoys, has enormous political, military and commercial implications. Such US expansionism across Europe, proceeding in tandem with its equally unabashed move into central Asia, may represent the true dawning, after a decade of false starts, of the age of the solo superpower. It is probably irreversible. And it poses fundamental questions for European integrationists and nation-staters alike. The chosen vehicle for this grand American putsch, this new, US-orchestrated concert of Europe, is the traditionally US-led Nato alliance; the catalyst was September 11; and the crunch will come at next November's heads-of-government Nato summit in Prague. Up to seven eastern European countries - Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania will be invited to join Nato in Prague. Others such as Croatia, Macedonia and Albania will remain in line, hoping their turn will come soon. Yet others, such as Ukraine and Georgia, will edge closer. And if all that were not enough, Russia itself will by then in all probability have been drawn into a sort of associate membership, too. At that point, Nato could girdle the entire northern hemisphere. In other words, a post-cold-war transformation that is both amazing and permanent is in prospect right across Europe. Once security and military ties are formalised, US economic investment, aid, arms and trade deals will surely follow. Speaking in Bucharest this week, at a Nato meeting entitled The Spring of New Allies, the US deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, told 10 Nato aspirants that we're looking to the widest possible accession in November. In a message sent to the meeting, President George Bush made his objective unambiguously clear: In Prague our nations will take a historic step toward removing the last divisions of Europe. In London, and Paris, and Berlin, however, at this salient juncture in the continent's affairs, the silence is palpable and telling. For this is principally a US gig, American-driven and American-organised, with EU countries mostly tagging on behind. It almost did not happen. Nato's post-cold-war role has been the subject of fierce debate. US-European rows over the Kosovo campaign, defence budgets and the EU's rapid reaction force made matters worse. When the alliance was effectively sidelined after September 11 as the US largely went it alone militarily in Afghanistan, it looked like curtains for the iron-curtain-era partnership. But as the dust settled in New York and Washington, the Bush administration started looking for ways, in radically altered circumstances, to make Nato the effective instrument of a now more assertive and single-minded US global policy. In theory, the aspiration was already in place. Bush vowed in Warsaw in June last year to assure freedom and security for all of Europe's democracies, from the Baltics to the Black sea. But now, the US has found new uses for Nato - and expansion is key. The US, as ever, primarily seeks to bolster Nato to bolster its own security - which it now believes to be under unprecedented threat. Thus bringing in new members to assist the war against terrorism is suddenly much more attractive. This applies in particular to Bulgaria and Romania, on Nato's southern flank. Both are already providing bases for US forces flying into Afghanistan and peacekeepers in Kabul and the Balkans. And neither appears to blanch (unlike Nato member Turkey) at the prospect of new wars across the Black sea in Iraq or even in Iran or the Caucasus. As Solomon Pasi, Bulgaria's foreign minister, candidly said this week, the two countries are making the best use of this tragic opportunity. The Bush administration clearly sees an opportunity, only vaguely glimpsed by a befogged, dawdling EU, to advance its security, commercial and energy interests in eastern Europe and beyond. To this end Nato appears destined to become a far more political organisation than in the past with the criteria for membership emphasising such issues as adherence to democratic governance more than military capability. This rapid, biggest-ever
Re: The Canadian Connection [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- on 28/3/02 12:38, [EMAIL PROTECTED] at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... The line You take your allies where you can find them. is opportunist, for Margolis is no ally. If a political pundit occasionally contributes to the rectifying of a wrong, it doesn't make him an ally, he has merely served some use in the struggle. That's what Rick is upset about, because you appeared to give Margolis too much credit. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, but that doesn't mean it is running. ... Very nice wording and very thoughtful Heather! Thanks indeed! When the finger was pointing at the moon the idiot was looking at the finger. Chinese proverb Cheers -- G. R. --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
Lament: US On War Footing With Dissent [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2002/0328/3369916682OP28BROWNE.html The Irish Times March 28, 2002 US on war footing to deal with dissent By Harry Browne -But the constraints are paltry and alternatives to US power are fading from view. US forces are now in more than 130 countries: newly-stretched across oil-and-gas-rich central Asia; in combat in the Philippines despite opposition from (mere) Filipinos. A week is a long time in politics - it's a cliche universally acknowledged. So when figures from the US administration talk about a military posture which could last for decades, you can take it that they're not just underlining the world-historical importance of their anti-terrorist actions; they're also putting them into a timescale that in political argot is like saying forever. It's less a forecast, or even a threat, than it is an article of faith, a promise of endless empire. Yes, empire, though there's nothing particularly evil about US designs upon the world. It's entirely true, indeed, to say that US politics contains a significant isolationist streak. (George Bush himself ran against the Clinton record of overstretching the military.) So why is the US now intently pursuing what its war-planners call full spectrum dominance? Perhaps because it can. Indeed, it's hard to imagine an armed government, free of powerful state enemies, backed by capitalist interests and handed a political opportunity by terrorist murderers, that wouldn't behave as America is doing - building up troops, bases and bombs around the world, cajoling and threatening those who might oppose it. In some sense, the US, for all its strategic planning, has had global greatness thrust upon it. The US does face some constraints: a botched raid near Kandahar, soon after the Afghan bombing started nearly six months ago, reminded its generals of the political preference to use proxy fighters where possible. And while US leaders don't feel compelled to confine war to al-Qaeda and its alleged allies, other countries may demur. Then there's the need for carrots to go with sticks: the US surprised everyone, including Mr Bush himself, with last week's increase in its development-aid budget (while maintaining its right to define development). But the constraints are paltry and alternatives to US power are fading from view. US forces are now in more than 130 countries: newly-stretched across oil-and-gas-rich central Asia; in combat in the Philippines despite opposition from (mere) Filipinos. Such are the imperial assumptions about Latin America that Sinn Féin is made to answer for alleged activities in Colombia to a US congressional committee. (To which Sinn Fein's most appropriate, though unlikely response, is: None of your friggin' business. What are you doing in Colombia?) From Ireland to Israel - in places where the US has minimal military presence - politics is conducted by US special envoys. The UN, meanwhile, has the status of a glorified aid agency: on hand to help thousands of Afghan civilians when an earthquake strikes; powerless to protect thousands more of them when the US daisycutters explode. AROUND here some liberals are inclined to compare today's US policy favourably with that of the Cold War. It's a blinkered view. Not only is the US now less constrained, militarily and politically, internationally and domestically, but in the new era it has also blithely carried on punishing those who resisted the hottest of its Cold War policies. Cuba suffers under a US embargo; Nicaragua, brutally impoverished in spite of its capitulation, saw the US blatantly interfering in an election just months ago; Vietnam only escaped US trade isolation two decades after its military victory and only when it was clearly ready to contribute its share of Asia's sweatshop labour for US multinationals; Iran and North Korea are threatened with the axis of evil label. And the US holds tight to its nuclear weapons, planning new uses for them, preparing a so-called shield to expand its options against the enemies it might choose to attack. Ireland, it is argued, is bound to support the US with our historic links and all the Irish and Irish-American victims of the September atrocity. But look beyond the understandable sentiment: how does the fact that emigrants like my grandparents eked out existence in New York tenements rather than in Irish cottages confer special political virtue on America? And why should Irish deaths at the hands of America's enemies confer privileged status on America's war? Eighty-six years ago, the founders of this State looked at a world where innocent young men, Irishmen among them, were fighting in the cause of an empire, though the fight was couched in euphemism about civilisation and freedom. And on Easter Monday 1916, Connolly, Pearse and the rest stabbed the empire in the back. Maybe, copious lines of political descent
'Ethnic time-bomb ticking in Georgia' [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --- AFP. 28 March 2002. Russian army pullout sets Georgia's ethnic time-bomb ticking. AKHALKALAKI -- A Russian army base on a clifftop overlooking this town is earmarked for closure, a Soviet relic in an independent, pro-Western Georgia keen to join NATO and host US troops on its soil. But the local people, mostly ethnic Armenians, have different ideas. If the Russians leave then there will be a war. That is 100 percent sure, said Agop, a money-changer in the town's bazaar. The base, inherited by Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed, is one of four on Georgian soil which Moscow undertook to shut down under the terms of a deal signed in Istanbul three years ago. That process has been fraught with problems. So far Russia has withdrawn from only two of the bases and horsetrading is continuing on a timetable for total withdrawal of the Russian troops. But when, as the Georgian government insists they must, the Russians pull out from Akhalkalaki, many warn it could lift the lid on ethnic tensions that have been simmering beneath the surface here for a century. I'll say this, it's an explosive situation, said one Georgian official who did not want to be named. It's one of those ethnic time-bombs left behind from the Soviet Union. Akhalkalaki, cut off from the rest of Georgia by a mountain range, depends on the base for its economic survival, so much so that the Russian ruble, not the Georgian lari, is the main local currency. There is no industry in the town, and the wages paid to the 1,500 local people who work at the base are the only reliable income most families get. The Russian servicmen also bring in goods and money. For this town the Russian base is like oxygen. If you close it there will be nothing here, said Ashot, another money-changer. On the face of it, the problems facing Akhalkalaki once the Russians pull out are purely economic. In reality they run much deeper. Ethnic Armenians make up some 96 percent of the town's 12,000 population, many having fled to southern Georgia from the Ottoman Empire's progroms against Armenians at the start of the 20th century. They trust the Russian garrison to defend them from Turkey, whose northern border is just 35 kilometres (20 miles) away and which they still fear. They have no such faith in the Georgian military doing the job when the Russians are gone. For us the Russians mean peace. They are our guarantee of security, said Nurik Deboyan, deputy head of the Akhalkalaki town council. What will happen if the Russians leave? We have to consider that even today (Turkey) has not acknowledged the genocide. That means there is something there, doesn't it? Further fuelling the tension, local people fear that the so-called Meskhetian Turks, deported from their homes in the region by Stalin, will be invited to resettle there by the Georgian government, displacing the Armenian population. The government in Armenia is sufficiently concerned about its countrymen in Akhalkalaki to have raised the issue several times with the Georgian government. Rolf Ekeus, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe's High Commissioner on National Minorities, visited the town in February to hear local people's concerns. In response to this pressure, the Georgian government has promised a programme of investment to create new jobs in the town after the Russian army withdraws. We are taking measures so that the removal of the Russian base is as painless as possible, said Teimuraz Mosiashvili, Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze's representative in the region. In Akhalkalaki's muddy bazaar, few people believe him. Instead, in the febrile atmosphere of fear and mistrust that prevails here, people are turning their suspicions on the Georgian government. Shevardnadze wants to get the Russians out of here and put a Turkish military base in their place, said Misha Seropyan, a young unemployed man. We don't want that. We're all Armenians here. One trader added: We get on well with the Georgians, but there are a few people high up in the Georgian government who are doing everything they can so that Armenians do not live here any more. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews --- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^
