By the way Kim did you know that George Szamuely is a regular contributor to www.antiwar.com ?

Ohaya, Kisako!
Mornin', Mum!
0737 edt
==
the old 'political' SC was allegedly shut down due
to threats of legal action....leading to a
'speaker's corner' without the freakshow _haters_
[it aint supposed to be political; well, mostly]
and the USC.
ask mad, mad marie/ISA/St. Tony whose fault that
was...
==
subsequently came 'world news and views', owned by
Mr Toyman. the 'freakshow haters' had moved right
in; i was impersonated there a few times by St.
Tony before i knew the place existed.
i'm not sure how it came about, but within 24 hrs
Toyman became the sole USC moderator, and shut
down 'news and views'. he must've been fed up.

Toyman is, determinedly, a 'Yankee-hater'. no
further comment.

unfortunately, the demise of 'news and views'
means USC gets a more intense dose of those CREEPS

...and sister, they've been laying it on _thick_.

best of...
=====
{+3sk}

No the moderators had their powers taken away because of constant whining by Tazhole Pipo and a bunch of Americans.We told them what would happen and now you see the result.If I were still moderating all of that •••• would have been zapped alrerady

Leonid Parfyonov's open letter to NTV General Director Yevgeny Kiselyov
No score for this post April 9 2001, 4:21 PM

Published in Kommersant-Daily April 7


Yevgeny, I had better address you in writing since I lost my voice in my heated debate with Maximovskaya (Marianna Maximovskaya - NTV correspondent) on April 3.

I can no longer be in a position of a person whose decisions are made for him. How you selected members for the conciliatory commission reminded me of the last time I saw the procedure of "electing" members of the (Communist) party bureau. To your list, Sorokina (NTV anchorwoman) proposed Mitkova, to which you said: "No need for that."

For the first time in 8 years at NTV, the proposal to appoint that person to some commission was rejected, all the more so, in the presence of Tatiana Mitkova. Our young correspondents swallowed that but kept mum, and that means they have no chances of growing up. I have no other choice.

It is not even interesting to me if you are burning the entire village to the last house on someone's orders as you leave, or whether you are acting independently. You are directing things towards a "mask show" (a power takeover of the editorial offices by secret services) at Ostankino, and you are provoking this in every way you can. You are holding people as cannon fodder, the young journalists are your hostages because they do not know any other life except being tied to the umbilical cord of Itogi, and this means that what you are doing is nothing but corruption of minors.

On our eighth floor from where we can see the NTV flag flying, there is no longer freedom, nor speech. I no longer have the strength to listen to your sermons in the correspondents' room - those ten minutes of hatred, and I cannot avoid attending them until I resign.

Consider this open letter my resignation, and I shall send you a formal letter of resignation by fax. From television I have no where to go: I am going nowhere. I am prepared to comment this open letter only on the air of our NTV channel.

Leonid Parfyonov.

I followed Mr. Volk's invitation and ... what did I find? - A brass band of mental facility escapee-e-e-e-e-s;o) with varying stages of schizophrenia.
Antranik cries "Jesus!" like an Arab terrorist maniac cries "Allah!" - no difference.
Ann Frankenstein. I wonder, if he/she had read that "Modern Prometheus", anyways, the difference is big, - if that one was a tragedy, this one is a side-splitting chimpanzee from some sea-port opium den, full of "allamericans".
Etc.. (Pardonnez mois for breaking one of the Commandments;o))

A small amount of sad-funny fun will not hurt, I guess, so get ready:
Food shop customers scurry for cover at the cries "Allah! Allah!", thinking of yet another Palestinian pyromaniac about to go off. But it was a family of "Russian" Jews, - a lost hubby and was calling his wife out loud by her Russian first name - Alla.

Reading Mr. Volk's "Despair: Israel's ultimate weapon" of April 9 2001 at 4:14 PM was fun. I wonder, if he, actually, believes that.
The moral generally is: "It is hard to look for a black cat in a dark room, especially, if the cat is not there."
P.S. Still contemplating, whether to respond to it ... ;o)

to all the jews on this board...

Happy Passover!

Lets all pray for the well being of the American service men held against there will in China.

May God bless.

Lets hope the Americans are put on trial for spying Muh ahahahaha

Open letter from VGRTK chairman Oleg Dobrodeyev to Yevgeny Kiselyov
No score for this post April 9 2001, 5:54 PM

Oleg Dobrodeyev, Chairman of the All-Russia State TV and Radio Company (VGRTK) and one of the founders of the NTV television channel, sent an open letter to Yevgeny Kiselyov, which has been published in the Izvestia daily on April 9.

"Yevgeny,

Open letters are becoming a hackneyed genre, but there is no other way, since you avoid contacts and public discussion about a catastrophe, which the company you and I established, has approached. You and your hysterical inner circle gag your subordinates, you refused to take part in a program of Vladimir Pozner (IRT TV journalist), though Pozner agreed to do everything so that your participation would not interfere with your work in your own "Itogi" program.

But we were to have it out long ago, and now maybe it is a bit too late. A talk with you was expected from me two years ago, when Gusinsky, Malashenko and yourself began pressing me out of the company. Young people, whom NTV had brought to real journalism, demanded explanations from me, when I was leaving in January last year.

You must remember that evening in the Ostankino TV studio, the journalists' room packed to capacity and that insincere statement I made to calm people down - Lisa Listova and Yevgeny Revenko (both NTV journalists) and other young and hot young people rushed about the corridors trying to organize a protest action, to protest against my leaving and your appointment.

I simply left, for I cared for the company's reputation and for the fate of the people working in it. Therefore I decided to address you only now that you have lain down at stake what already belongs not only to you and Gusinsky - the fate of the people whom you turned into ardent revolutionaries and who are losing their profession.

You chose "independent" NTV as the main line of your defense. You and I know well that at the outset it was not only Gusinsky's but also the Kremlin's company. A broadcasting license was procured for us by Borodin (the then Kremlin property chief) and Tarpishchev (a coach of Russia's national tennis team and a friend of Ex-President Boris Yeltsin). I represented the company at all the closed-circle meetings in the presidential administration, and many PR moves of Yeltsin's team during and after the 1996 elections had been conceived in the Ostankino TV studio. Moreover, many Yeltsin's radio addresses to the nation in the summer of 1997 had been written by NTV journalists.

I remember well the astonishment of Vladimir Kulistikov (at that time he was one of the NTV top managers, but later he left the NTV channel and headed the RIA-Novosti news agency), whom you and I took along with us from the Liberty radio station in the fall of 1996. "Well, you guys are flying high, kicking the gates of the Kremlin Spassky tower open," he said then.

The moral capital of the channel, accumulated by Yelena Masyuk and Vladimir Luskanov (I heard you ordered to remove their portraits after they went over to the RTR channel), by Ilya Kanavin, Sasha Khararov (NTV correspondents) and others, was being actively transformed into real capital by participation in the Kremlin actions during the first Chechen military campaign, plus those numerous credits provided by the state-controlled Gazprom company.

Watching your "Itogi" program, provincial bosses faultlessly sensed the Kremlin's line. We served the powers that be, but Gusinsky at some moment began to think that he himself was power, and then problems began to arise, which were always solved by one and the same method - with the help of the information company.

First blood was spilt in August 1997, when Gusinsky demanded that we should get even with those who prevented him from enjoying what seemed to be a sweet pie of the Svyazinvest company. It was then that I began I for the first time to think how to save the company's face in the conditions of the increasing interest of the main stockholder in information weapons.

It looks like you thought about something altogether different - how to make this interest meet your own ends. But the worst thing - and you and Gusinsky mentioned this just in passing - was the second Chechen war.

This is how it was: at first there was the stockholders' demand that a neutral, objectivist position be greatly toughened, and then, as usual, a demand to come to terms with the authorities. That did happen occasionally. But this time not the interests of the oligarchs but people's lives were behind it. And each of us made his choice. As a result, I left and you remained.

I am writing this letter under the impression of the two last night telecasts. They were the funeral of information TV journalism, and this is a real threat to NTV.

I will never return to NTV, but think about the other people. Rallies with calls for saving a team and for unity could have made sense if all those taking part in the rallies had a common fate and a common future. But future is not only a time but also a space category. One man will be taken in the master's plane or yacht to welcome remote lands, while the others will remain at the site of a fire which had been set for the sake of this prospect. And we both know who that man is."

QUIT USC over at http://network54.com/Hide/Forum/87453 now.ALL welcome no spam no punks

Hi It's me!!!!

I just came to make my monthly check of this board.
Less of "FaridHOMOud" and more of Kim Arx and ChornyVolk...

God bless you!!

America’s global embrace

G.I. Joe is now Big Brother,and his eyes
and ears are everywhere. The U.S. Navy's EP-3 has been used to capture military and government communications along the Chinese coast.


By Michael Moran
MSNBC

April 6 — When a Chinese fighter jet collided with an American spy plane over the South China Sea on Sunday, it exposed more than the raw nerves of two wary giants. The drama of this aerial collision underscores an important and little-known post-Cold War reality: America’s surveillance network has grown so vast and formidable that in some respects it is feared as much as U.S. weaponry itself.

THE EP-3 MISSIONS out of Kadena Air Base in Japan are an important piece of this worldwide network. The Kadena squadron has focused on China since 1993 and, in recent months, close encounters with Chinese air force interceptors had been increasing.
Like Air Force RC-135s and Army Predator drones in other regions, the EP-3s capture military and government communications along the Chinese coastline and help assess the sophistication of radar used by Chinese missile units, ships and warplanes. The EP-3 is only one small component of the U.S. intelligence effort directed at China.
“The methods by which the U.S. can eavesdrop on Chinese communications range to use of undersea platforms - like submarines - to a variety of antenna systems on the ground up to satellites up to 24,000 miles in space,” says Jeffrey T. Richelson, an intelligence historian who has written extensively about U.S. eavesdropping capabilities. “Overall, it’s a multibillion-dollar effort, and China is a major target.”


NEW WORLD, NEW ORDERS
But China is hardly the sole target. The U.S. military now possesses a mammoth network of new satellites, eavesdropping stations, radar and listening posts around the world. The United States also has begun to build new capabilities in South America, South Asia and Africa.
Today, one could throw a dart at a map of the world and it would likely land within a few hundred miles of a quietly established U.S. intelligence-gathering operation.
Aegis cruisers like the USS Cowpens give the Navy control of the battlefield information environment in the open ocean. Closer to shore, they are like floating spy posts, capable of tracking rival military activities deep inland.

Even discounting the satellites flying overhead, these bases, along with the aircraft, warships and submarines operating from them, have extended the eyes and ears of America into every corner of the globe in a way that not only unsettles America’s foes, but often its allies as well. A few examples of these little-known facilities:

- Ascension Island, a British territory in the South Atlantic that may be the remotest place on Earth, is home to a control station for U.S. global positioning satellites.
- Botswana, in southern Africa, serves as a base for an Air Force Technical Applications Center charged with monitoring seismic data for signs of nuclear tests or other large events. Similar stations can also be found in Ivory Coast, Paraguay, Thailand, Brazil, the Central African Republic and Argentina.
Anti-drug radar sites are based in Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Bermuda, Peru, and, of course, Colombia.
Ethiopia is home to a small U.S. Army intelligence unit in the city of Asmara, and neighboring Eritrea — which fought a war against Ethiopia only a year ago — is reportedly the site of another American intelligence base.
China itself, astoundingly enough, hosts bases outfitted by the United States. Under the terms of an agreement signed during the Cold War, when China and the U.S. shared a common enemy in the Soviet Union, Washington established two listening posts on China’s border with Russia. They are manned by Chinese personnel required to share intellligence with Washington.


And the list goes on. In Greenland, an Air Force Space Command base; in the Marshall Islands, Army missile ranges; in Pakistan and Peru, anti-drug intelligence posts. All this is in addition to core intelligence operations that grew up around high-profile American bases in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia.

OVERWHELMING ADVANTAGES
Not all of these new facilities are dedicated to gathering intelligence on foreign governments. Today, the United States is forced to deal with what former CIA Director James Woolsey has called “a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes,” including terrorism and drug trafficking, weapons proliferation and even economic espionage.
A U.S. Army Predator drone at a Hungarian air base. The unmanned vehicles were used to spy on Yugoslav battlefield formations in the Kosovo war.

Regardless of their day-to-day missions, what these facilities have in common is the ability to collect signals intelligence, or SIGINT in the jargon of the trade. This not only allows America to eavesdrop on drug traffickers, foreign military forces or corporate board meetings, if it so chooses; SIGINT also is the essential technology for using precision weapons to target rival command bunkers, communications units and headquarters buildings.
“SIGINT let us listen to (Yugoslav) commanders and target them directly,” said a U.S. Navy officer who served on an Aegis cruiser during the Kosovo war. “In some cases, we literally heard their last words before impact.”
The tremendous advantage this gives American forces has become an obsession in Europe, which felt humiliated by the superior performance of U.S. warplanes in the Kosovo war. The insecurity it has caused among even America’s closest NATO allies is part of what is driving Europe to develop its own, independent intelligence-gathering capabilities.

NEW CHALLENGES



What technology gives, however, it may eventually take away. For some time now, SIGINT experts have known of a crisis on the horizon in the form of fiber optic technology, the digital form of communications that might ultimately render many of America’s far-flung listening posts far less effective.
“Whereas any signal transmitted through the air can be intercepted by a properly placed antenna, acquiring fiber optic signals would require tapping the cable, ” wrote Richelson in an essay for Jane’s Intelligence Review last year. “How effectively and efficiently that can be done is not clear.”
The 1998 Indian nuclear weapons tests, a major embarrassment to the U.S. intelligence community, managed to proceed undetected in part because that nation’s military and political planning took place over fiber optic lines.
The U.S. military is already adapting. In 1999, Congress authorized modifications to one of the new Seawolf-class attack submarines, the USS Jimmy Carter, to enable it to tap into underwater fiber optic cables. The cost of the conversion: some $600 million.
This may be money well spent. In recent years, China has been among the world’s leading purchasers of fiber optics — a technology approved for export to Beijing back in the Reagan administration. In the long term, fiber optics may make the kind of eavesdropping conducted by lumbering aircraft like the EP-3 virtually useless.
On Friday, China announced a ban on “unauthorized” construction of fiber-optic networks domestically, showing its communist leadership is as concerned about the implications for its internal snooping as America is about foreign intelligence. For now, enough information is transmitted the old way to keep America’s eyes and ears pricked up. Eventually, though, all these far-flung resources will have to find new ways to snoop on an increasingly sophisticated world.


Michael Moran is senior producer, special reports at MSNBC. Reporting by NBC’s Robert Windrem, and research from Bill Arkin, an independent military analyst, contributed to this report.

Schroeder Ducks NTV Row, Defections Hurt Turner Bid

MOSCOW, Apr 10, 2001 -- (Reuters) NTV staff's hopes of support from German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder faded on Tuesday, as defections from the embattled independent network risked undermining a white knight bid by CNN founder Ted Turner.

In an early morning radio call-in, Schroeder tactfully sidestepped direct criticism of his host, President Vladimir Putin, over last week's contested takeover of Russia's only independent national television network NTV.

"My understanding of a free press is that you have to separate property on one side and an understanding of journalism on the other," Schroeder said through a translator on Echo Moskvy, a sister radio to NTV.

"I have always understood that journalism is the freedom, the democratic freedom, of a country and in that I agree with the president," he added.

Schroeder, who discussed NTV with Putin on Monday, then said Russia needed media to "inform the people and monitor the authorities". But his comments fell short of the direct pressure on Putin NTV staff had hoped for.

Putin, who on Monday broke a week-long silence on the case, pledged himself to free speech but said he could not intervene in a purely commercial dispute that a court should resolve.

"As far as expressing one's opinion is concerned, freedom of the press etc, then it must be guaranteed," Putin said in a television interview broadcast late on Monday.

"But it can only be guaranteed under one condition: the creation of acceptable economic conditions for a free press."

State-dominated gas giant Gazprom ousted NTV founder and key aides in a boardroom coup branded illegal by the network's staff. Thousands have protested against the takeover in the biggest street protests of Putin's presidency.

Moscow's Arbitration Court on Tuesday set a May 10 date to hear a legal challenge to the contested shareholder meeting, NTV spokesman Dmitry Ostalsky said. A dispute over management changes ordered by Gazprom will be debated a week later.

NTV's journalists and liberals have painted the station's fate as a litmus test of freedom of speech under Putin, a former KGB spy and domestic intelligence service chief.

STREAM OF DEFECTIONS FROM NTV

After presenting a united front at the start of the protest, defections from the channel have begun to increase. The Washington Post said that could undermine Turner's bid to buy into the troubled channel and maintain its independence.

"If this thing blows up in the next two weeks, then there really isn't anything to buy," the paper quoted Turner spokesman Brian Faw as saying.

The Financial Times reported that Australian-born media baron Rupert Murdoch has rebuffed attempts to draw him into bidding for NTV. Gazprom was unavailable for comment.

Top news presenter Tatyana Mitkova and commentator Leonid Parfyonov, who resigned at the weekend, were followed on Monday by 22 other journalists, said NTV's Internet web site ntv.ru.

A presenter of NTV's criminal affairs program, whose 20-strong staff quit en masse, said live on air that he and the others could not find a "common language" with NTV's leadership.

Putin cast NTV's bosses in a bad light, noting that Russian prosecutors wanted to extradite NTV founder Vladimir Gusinsky from Spain on fraud allegations. Gusinsky says the charges are part of a political campaign to seize his media outlets.

NTV's Ostalsky accused Putin of telling lies "on a scale worthy of Goebbels" about the debts of Gusinsky's media empire, a reference to the Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels