Peace &
nonviolence
•
Greenpeace
activists protest the Star Wars
test
Greenpeace activists
yesterday broke into a US air force base in California
and sent a vessel into an off-limits military zone in
the Pacific in an attempt to thwart a key test of a
new missile defence system scheduled for early this
morning. The environmental pressure group said the
proposed $60bn national missile defence (NMD) scheme
would undermine existing disarmament treaties and
"provide additional justification to Russia and China
to retain their existing nuclear
arsenals...
•
Stop
Star Wars - Greenpeace
campaign
Five arguments and a letter you can sign!
•
Five
and a half utopia - a challenging piece on desired
worlds.
Steven Weinber who received the Nobel Prize in physics
in 1979 writes about the technological utopia, the
civilised egalitarian capitalist utopia, the
free-market utopia, the best-and-the-brighest utopia,
the religious utopia, the green utopia.
•
A
people's initiative for peace between India and
Pakistan
"The peace-makers believe that when Indians and
Pakistanis unite to insist that their governments
talk, find a way out of the Kashmir imbroglio, and
allow their people to visit the other country without
restrictions," writes Beena Sarwar, "the governments
can no longer pretend that their people want war. Even
now, many people clearly don't, as any Indian or
Pakistani who has crossed the border will
testify.
•
Plugged
into Protest? E-activists rally on the Web, but can
they build a movement?
"The movement exploding now is an amalgamation of
many, many smaller groups and campaigns that are close
to people's hearts that are building bridges to other
groups," she explains. "The movement is strongest when
people feel rooted in a community that is comfortable
to them. And it is from that strong base that you can
do the most effective alliance- and
coalition-building."
Armament and the
new Cold War
•
China
will counter US NBD 'Son of Star Wars' project
"China cannot sit idly by
and watch its means for self-defence being weakened
and even deprived of in any form," Beijing's top arms
control official, Sha Zukang, told the Guardian, in a
reference to America's national missile defence (NMD)
project, which was being tested early today. The
official People's Daily newspaper weighed in
yesterday, denouncing the "hegemonic arrogance of the
US".
•
Circles
in the US want the missile test to fail - and it
did
Senior officials in the state department, the Pentagon
and the White House itself are opposed to a planned
$60bn missile defence system and are privately hoping
that a crucial test planned for late tonight will end
in failure.
•
Missile
flop boosts
protests
The failure has provided useful ammunition for
opponents of the scheme who see it as an unnecessary
escalation of nuclear capabilities promoted for bogus
reasons by the military-industrial complex. It has
also been hinted that President Bill Clinton is far
from displeased with the flop because it allows him
room to defer support for a missile defence system
about which he has always been lukewarm.
•
Why
China sees the US as a military
rival
Defense experts say that the US and China are likely
to become rivals than allies in the coming years. The
US sees itself as "the indispensable nation" as
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright put it recently,
guardian of stability in the Asia-Pacific region. But
as Beijing begins transforming its remarkable economic
growth into military might, the potential rises for
clashes between the two on issues ranging from US
alliances in Asia to global weapons sales. Chinese
officials, for example, were indignant yesterday when
Israel, prompted by the US, scrapped a $250 million
radar sale to China.
•
Clinton's
ballistic defence is
false
Clinton's Missile
Defense System Is Against A False Threat,
Technologically Unfeasible, An Unwarranted Investment,
And Could Spark A Nuclear Arms Race. Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright said Sunday that President
Clinton will consider four criteria -- "the threat,
the technology, the cost and what it does to the
overall American security" -- in deciding whether to
move forward with development of a national missile
defense system. If that were true, the president would
have scrapped the plan long before now.
Globalization -
imperialism
•
The
Jubilee 2000 Coalition
A debt-free start for billions. The international
campaign: 7 Million children die each year as a result
of the debt crisis. 3702616 children have died since
the start of the year 2000. Find out how you can break
the deadly chains of debt.
The Balkans and
Kosovo/a -
•
Who
is going to clean up Serbia and the
Danube?
A year later, the Serbian portion of the Danube,
between Bulgaria and Hungary, remains impassable.
Debris from a half-dozen shattered bridges continues
to clog the waterway, crippling commerce in countries
both up and downstream. More troubling--and
potentially longer-lasting--are the toxic residues
from NATO's high-altitude assault on Serbia's
industrial infrastructure. Hidden in the Danube
riverbed and lingering in its wetlands, these
pollutants have the potential to affect the health and
well-being of 85 million Europeans and their
descendants in the Danube Basin for decades to come.
By its nature war is destructive, but when the war is
over the destruction should end.
•
Increased
tension in Yugoslavia, where is Milosevic
heading?
Despite the downward spiral in Milosevic's popularity
since the NATO bombardment, the opposition appears to
stand little chance of victory in a direct election
against the president. Polls indicate Milosevic's
rating is currently only 14 per cent. Serbian Renewal
Movement leader Vuk Draskovic, however, scores only 6
per cent and Zoran Djindjic, leader of the Democratic
Party, 3 per cent. The official believes Milosevic's
triumph in direct presidential elections would
persuade the United States' government to renew
official contacts with Belgrade. He said the Milosevic
government has information indicating opinion in
Washington increasingly favours discreet, but direct
links to the Yugoslav president.
•
Yugoslavia
is dead, says Montenegro's
president
Montenegro's pro-western president, Milo Djukanovic,
took another step towards independence for his
fledgling nation yesterday by claiming that Yugoslavia
no longer exists because the Yugoslav president,
Slobodan Milosevic, has opted for its destruction to
preserve power and avoid war crimes charges filed
against him.
•
Voters'
registration for Kosovo elections -
absurd?
``If the international community succeeds in
organizing the return of the Serbs, guaranteeing their
safety, we will change our minds,'' Milovic added.
``For now, we have absolutely no security in Kosovo,
nor are we able to move around. Under those
conditions, any election would be absurd.''
•
A
refreshing look at Montenegro and Serbia's conflict -
and the international "community"'s
role
It looks like NATO will soon be renewing its war
against Serbia. Montenegro will provide the
justification. NATO is playing the same game in
Montenegro that it played in Kosovo. For at least two
years now, the United States &endash; and to a lesser
extent the European Union &endash; has been urging
Montenegro's President Milo Djukanovic to secede from
Yugoslavia. Money has poured in, along with promises
of speedy integration into the institutions of the
West. Montenegro got the D-Mark as its currency, while
the Italians promised to look the other way at the
smuggling that was going on.
Was NATO's bombing
OK?
•
Civilian
death in the NATO air
campaign
The Human Rights
Watch report from February 2000
•
Amnesty's
report on NATO's bombings
•
The
Hague Tribunal's argument for not undertaking an
investigation of NATO's bombing
•
Perhaps
NATO lost more during the bombing than we have been
told?
In a story headlined "NATO Covering Up Own Losses,"
the Russian Agency of Political News (APN) reported on
Apr. 29 that NATO had lost over 400 troops, and over
60 aircraft during its 79-day war with Serbia. The
estimates reportedly based on Russian government
figures, have been hushed up in the West by the New
World Order lapdog media. These are the highest
figures so far of NATO's human casualties to emerge
from the post-war post-mortems. We may believe them or
treat them as propaganda.
Kosovo/a - the
forgotten background
•
Articles
written about Kosovo when it was not
famous
A compilation of articles from Financial Times,
Associated Press, BBC, New York Times, from 1981
onwards. Facts you didn't hear about when NATO started
bombing...
•
The
forgotten background to the Serb/Albanian
conflict
Ananalysis, by FAIR
- Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting - of early media
coverage and including David Binder's article from
1982.
What was the truth
then? What is it today? The role of the
media
•
What
the media made up of Kosovo and NATOs
bombing
For instance, why did CBS never mention the Amnesty
report on NATO war crimes? Or what the media knew
about the Rambouillet but didn't tell...
•
CNN
and Psychological Warfare
Operations...
Military personnel from the Fourth Psychological
Operations Group based at Fort Bragg, in North
Carolina, have until recently been working in CNN's hq
in Atlanta. CNN is up in arms about our report in the
last issue of CounterPunch concerning the findings of
the Dutch journalist, Abe de Vries about the presence
of US Army personnel at CNN, owned by Time-Warner. De
Vries reported that a handful of military personnel
from the Third Psychological Operations Battalion,
part of the airmobile Fourth Psychological Operations
Group based at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, had
worked in CNN's hq in Atlanta.
Russia and the US
as a world order problem
•
Putin's
recipe for a strong
Russia
When Vladimir Putin
arrives at the annual summit of the Group of Eight
leading industrial country in Okinawa next week, his
silent agenda will be a plea for confidence in his
sweeping vision of Russia's future, spelled out in a
comprehensive State of the Nation address last
Saturday. But it may not prove so easy to embrace Mr.
Putin's blueprint. On one hand, it is the most
decisively liberal economic plan to appear in Russia
since the collapse of the USSR. On the other, it may
be a thinly veiled recipe for authoritarian revival in
a country that has known little else for a
millennium.
•
Another
massacre in Columbia as its army prepares to receive
US miliary aid package
"How many times do killings committed by the security
forces or their paramilitary allies have to be
denounced before the Colombian government brings the
perpetrators to justice?" asked Amnesty International
as six men were killed and 63 families of La
Unión have began to flee their homes. See also
the New
York Times report of July 14.
•
30
countries have illegal spy stations - more on the
Echelon system
France, Germany, Switzerland, Holland and Denmark have
built eavesdropping networks, as have Russia and
China. From Spain to northern Denmark, Europe is
dotted with illegal satellite monitoring stations.
France, where they launched their own legal inquiry
into Echelon with great fanfare, possesses a global
network of spy satellites and listening stations,
dubbed "Frenchelon". Denmark's intelligence service
has turned Aflandshage, a former Cold War spy base on
beaches near Copenhagen, into a modern satellite spy
station. A second base planned at a northern site
would be larger than many in the British-American
network. Sweden and Norway are talking about following
suit.
•
The
US takes steps to develop nuclear weapon for fighting,
not for deterrence
- says the very respected Retired Navy Rear Admiral
Eugene J. Carroll Jr., Vice President of the Center
for Defense Information in Washington.
•
US
expands its nuclear targettting
worldwide
Even as it talks to Moscow about arms treaties new and
old, Washington is accused of aiming warheads at 20%
more foreign sites. Senior American military officers
insist that current nuclear policy prevents them
shrinking the US nuclear arsenal to fewer than 2,000
to 2,500 strategic weapons - and that going lower
would threaten national security. Their calculations
are buried in the nation's strategic war plan and
ultimately linked to presidential guidance.
•
The
secrets of more American nuclear
madness
The world is supposed to be safer than it was. No big
enemy, only one super-power, the capitalist conversion
of Russia, the absorption of China into world trade,
an overarching nuclear détente. Bestriding the
globe unchallenged, the United States can surely be
trusted with its peace. It should be so. Many people
perhaps think it is so. But two glimpses of reality
show us it isn't so. These exposures seem important to
register.
Humanism, human
rights and "humanitarian" intervention
•
Aids
now kills two million a year in Africa
alone
In Africa as a whole, Aids now kills 2m people a year
- 10 times more than war. But 4m were newly infected
with HIV last year alone and, without treatment, are
expected to die within 10 to 15 years. Aids experts
fear that what is happening in Africa may be only a
rehearsal for what could follow in Asia. China and
India between them account for 36% of the world's
population. and large numbers of people there are
already infected.
•
Aids:
Welcome to the land of the
dying
With rampant Aids and without western drugs, Africa
has lost all hope: South Africa hosted a summit last
weekend. Malita Maxwell has Aids. But so does just
about everybody else in the women's ward of Chiradzulu
hospital, with its busted air conditioner, smell of
old, sweet urine and greasy mattresses covered in
bright green plastic.
•
An
insider's view of the Hague
Tribunal
Witnesses are attacked on ideological grounds. Anyone
who calls into question the policies of the leading
NATO states (even, or especially, when they colluded
with Milosevic's regime in the early 1990s) is
denounced and hectored at as "extremist." Western
academics appearing as expert witnesses have been
subject to personal abuse as well as intrusive
inquiries into their personal lives by the
Prosecution's allies in the NATO intelligence
services. The intention seems to be to intimidate
anyone not sharing the Prosecution's purpose and to
warn off others from giving evidence. The refusal to
contemplate the idea that even individual NATO
servicemen may have committed acts liable under the
Tribunal's charter vitiates its impartial
character.
World future,
sustainability and strategy
•
Economic
globalism has
failed
The time has come to write the obituary of globalism
as an economic doctrine that purports to bring
progress and development to international society.It
has failed. The special UN General Assembly session in
Geneva last week concluded that poverty, inequality
and insecurity have increased in the world since
globalism was launched. The number of people living in
absolute poverty has increased from a billion five
years ago to 1.2 billion today. Word of this rise in
poverty is not a claim put forward by globalism's
critics. It is the conclusion of a collaborative
report prepared by the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development and the United Nations
itself.
•
Cold
facts about global
warming
Those inclined to tout the potential benefits of
global warming would do well to take a look at the
news items about the frightening weather in southern
Europe last week. It is possible -- not easy, but
possible -- to mount an international effort to cut
the emissions of greenhouse gases to an extent that
would ward off a global catastrophe. It's possible.
But there is not a lot of time left.
•
The
World Disaster Report
2000
The death toll from infectious diseases (such as AIDS,
malaria, respiratory diseases and diarrhoea) is 160
times greater than the number killed in last year's
natural disasters including the massive earthquakes in
Turkey, floods in Venezuela and cyclones in India. And
the situation is getting worse.
WIRE Editor
Jan Oberg with TFF
Associates
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