-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- The Politics of China Bomb Blasts in China Linked to Rural Revolt CHINA has been hit by a wave of mysterious bomb blasts killing 31 people and injuring more than 100. Police have been quick to blame the explosions on individual criminals or would-be suicides. But although there is no sign that the blasts are connected, human-rights activists have linked them to growing discontent among China's laid-off workers, migrant labourers and hard-pressed peasant farmers. Violent protests are common in rural China as farmers demonstrate against local abuses of power, including illegal taxes and levies, confiscation of property and the issuing of IOUs instead of cash for crops bought by the state. Two of the blasts occurred in the southern Hunan province, scene of several large demonstrations this year reported to have involving thousands of angry farmers and hundreds of troops. Last week a blast tore through a market yards from Hunan's Yizhang county government offices, killing nine and wounding 65. Hospital sources said nails had been found in the victims. On Jan 17, an explosion injured 37 on a bus in Hunan's capital, Changsha. Police said they were looking for a farmer seen running from the scene, but could not say if the bombing had been deliberately timed. Four days earlier an explosion in a litter bin near a bus stop in Zhuhai, just across the border from the Portuguese enclave of Macao, injured four. In the bloodiest incident, on Jan 6, a bomb killed 19 passengers on a bus in the north-eastern province of Liaoning. Police said a man was planning to rob passengers after stunning them with the explosion. Last Friday police held a youth in Shenzen, on the border with Hong Kong, after a tip that he was planning to blow up a bus. The local state newspaper, the Special Zone Daily, said a bomb was found on him, and safely detonated nearby. The man was trying to commit suicide, the paper said. Information about rural protests is tightly controlled by the Chinese authorities. However, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China, has claimed that the blasts are linked to rising tension and social unrest. The London Telegraph, Feb. 2, 1999 Impeached POTUS Video Tapes Roll as Lewinsky Questioned for 6 Hours "Nothing new": that is, the President is still guilty as hell MONICA LEWINSKY was questioned for six hours on camera yesterday, the first time President Clinton's former lover has been captured talking about perjury and obstruction in the sex and cover-up scandal. Impeachment lawyers subjected her to the interrogation in the Presidential Suite of the Mayflower hotel in Washington. The big question, which prosecutors and defence will contest fiercely in the impeachment Senate trial, is whether the deposition should be broadcast. This would give Americans the opportunity at last to judge Mr Clinton from testimony taped by the woman who knows most about his guilt or innocence. Details of what the 25-year-old former White House trainee said are secret but are likely to leak quickly. The video and transcripts will be available for senators to view today. Miss Lewinsky testified 22 times last year to a grand jury and transcripts were published by Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel. But no one except the jurors - certainly not the senators deciding the President's future - has been able to look at her and judge her truthfulness since the Oval Office sex scandal broke in January last year. The questioning was led by Congressman Ed Bryant, who struck up a rapport with Miss Lewinsky at an informal meeting a week ago. He skirted details of her sexual contact with the President and focused primarily on who coached her - and how - before she filed a false affidavit in Paula Jones's sexual harassment suit against Mr Clinton. Prosecutors also want to bring out the extent and intensity of the search for a job for Miss Lewinsky by Vernon Jordan, the President's friend. They played down expectations, although they need something dramatic if they are to reverse the strong tide toward acquittal. Congressman Bill McCollum said: "I don't want anybody to think there's some big bombshell." Miss Lewinksy is expected to clear up contradictions in testimony, particularly over calls made by Betty Currie, the President's secretary, to arrange to collect gifts and hide them. Mr Bryant's questioning took four hours. Then Cheryl Mills and Nicole Seligman, of the White House defence team, used less than half their allotted four hours encouraging Miss Lewinsky to expand on her earlier statement: "No one ever told me to lie." The London Telegraph, Feb. 2, 1999 Sydney Futures Exchange SFE To Trade on Screen Joint venture with Computershare & Agtex The Sydney Futures Exchange has formed a joint venture with Computershare, an information technology provider, and Agtex Australia, an agricultural services group, in efforts to establish an electronic trading market for physical commodities, to be known as the Commodities Exchange of Australia. Traders and farmers welcomed the move. In a separate development, however, many traders expressed concern about a delay in the SFE's planned switch from open outcry pit-trading to fully electronic trading. The exchange said last week it had pushed back the date of the switch from March to October 1. Members blamed bugs in the SFE's new system for the delay. The switch should be made after Sycom IV, the SFE's upgraded Windows NT screen-based trading platform, is installed in June. Members are concerned the delay will add to pressures in preparing for the switch to year 2000-compliant systems. Some have said they would not accept any new systems after the third quarter of 1999 and probably not until after the first quarter of 2000. But the SFE said the planned October 1 conversion to fully screen-based trading, falling between the September contracts' roll-over period and a public holiday, would cause minimal impact. The exchange said last week its planned CXA would be fully electronic, initially providing spot and forward markets for grains, pulses, oilseeds and other agricultural products. A feasibility study would be completed by the end of March and a launch date announced shortly thereafter, it said. The new market, which would eventually operate through the internet, would also seek to create markets for non-agricultural commodities and explore opportunities to establish markets off-shore, said Les Hosking, SFE chief executive. He added that the new exchange would promote transparency in transactions involving rural commodities, and help farmers and buyers gauge supply and demand more accurately. "This will reduce costs and the exposure growers or consumers will have to not getting the right price," he said. Most traders of rural commodities rely on offshore markets or the SFE's futures contracts as the only public pricing mechanisms available to assess the market. A centralised exchange for physical commodities would encourage price transparency and transaction security. Guarantees of financial performance and settlement by the SFE Clearing House, which is backed by a $150m guarantee fund, would help to eliminate counterparty risk, he said. Throughout the extreme volatility of the Asian crisis, the exchange's clearing house performed without fault or incident, Mr Hosking added. Computershare would develop and operate an electronic trading platform for the new exchange, while Agtex would provide marketing services and co-ordinate the exchange's relationship with bulk handlers. The SFE is also continuing talks with the Australian Stock Exchange on a merger proposal. An initial merger agreement should be ready by July, members said. The ASX demutualised last year and listed on its own boards in a highly successful compliance listing. The Financial Times, Feb. 2, 1999 Single Currency Euro Surpasses Dollar in International Bond Issues For the moment, a dual currency world The euro has pushed the dollar into second place in international bond markets in its first month of trading. Since its launch, the euro has been the currency of choice for half of all new international bond issues, with a value equivalent of $69.3bn. The dollar took 40 per cent ($55.7bn) of the total. Analysts have warned that the euro's share of international borrowing would probably fall back, but the challenge to the dollar's supremacy would not fade away. "If you judge by the bond markets, we are now in a dual currency world," said Simon Meadows, global head of debt syndication at CSFB. The next most popular currency was sterling with a share of less than five per cent. The Japanese yen barely registered, according to data from Capital Data BondWare. The euro was also more popular than its 'legacy' currencies used to be. The proportion of bonds issued in all eleven euro "legacy" currencies ran at between 30 and 35 per cent in recent years. The euro has capitalised on the enthusiasm of European pension and insurance funds for new types of bond, including offerings from European companies. Dozens of assets managers, including Credit Suisse Asset Management and Rothschild Asset Management, have launched dedicated funds for euro-denominated corporate bonds. A number of European companies, such as Olivetti, the Italian telecoms firm; Energie, the Austrian utility; Carrefour, the French supermarket chain; Abbey National, the British bank, and Benetton, the Italian fashion company, have either issued bonds in euros in the last three weeks or plan to do so. "If you look at who has borrowed in euros it goes right across the spectrum from banks and companies to governments," said Roger Bates, head of the Deutsche Bank's Emu project team in London. However, bankers say that the euro's share of the international debt markets is likely to drop slightly to take account of the fact that many borrowers wanted to make a splash in the currency's first month of existence. "A lot of borrowers wanted to be the first to establish a new benchmark and attract publicity," said David Munves, credit market strategist at Lehman brothers. "However, the euro has at the very least achieved parity with the US dollar in the bond markets." The euro's popularity has been aided by the recent weakness of the US dollar against the Japanese yen owing to the widening US current account deficit and the rise in Japanese bond yields. The Financial Times, Feb. 2, 1999 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! 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