LordLikePissInMyMouth,
Ok I guess I am egotistical you sorry asss little pricck!

>>>LordLikePissInMyMouth,
I'M GLAD YOU LIKE IT AS ANY ETHNIC PERVERT WOULD.LOL
Ok I guess I am egotistical you sorry asss little pricck!
I SEE IT PAYS TO HAVE MIRRORS AT HOME.
YA INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING PISSSLURP CUMFACE! ROFL

Heard back from the Chechen rebel commanders regarding the kidnapped HOMO 5, ie., Queen AllAM, Sweetcheeks Bacon, Stinky Bernstein, Urinal Laser and Dung Brains Abfoola. My counter offer to their ransom demands has been approved.

With next week being International Camel Week in the Muslim world the rebel commanders are taking the HOMO 5 on tour throughout the middle east and Afganistan. To build up moral amongst Islamic FunderMENTAList, all male camels and smelly handlers will get their sexual needs fulfilled by the HOMO 5. Following that the Chechan rebels have a plan, approved by ALLAH personally. This plan calls for the HOMO 5, (as a piece offering no not peace) to be delivered to the Russian forces in Chechnya. When the young Russian conscripts are all lined up, pants down awaiting that special treatment only the HOMO 5 can provide bang....a bomb laden rental truck, driven by muslim women of course, will detonate killing hundreds of poor, young, pants down soliders. After which the HOMO 5 will be martered and sent to that big HOMO PARLOR in the sky where they will apply their talents to both ALLAH and Mohammed for enternity.

To save the lives of the Russian soliders I have notified the proper Russian authorities of this plan. They indicated that they will place the HOMO 5 under house arrest, Hmmmmm, and will later decide how they can best utilize the special talents of the HOMO 5. I will keep you further informed as information becomes available to me.

>>>What purpose did Arkans Tigers serve during these conflicts?
SEARCHED FOR YOUR AOL ARSCHLOCH.LOL
>>>Yet through all of this you would stop the destabilization of the balkan nations, stop a corrupt regime (debatable)from gaining control of the whole area!
ROFL.
YA JYM_JAMMED DUMB BELL! YESSS, SLOBO ATTACKED ACROSS INT BORDERS.LOL
SAD YOU WEREN'T IN PLACE OF THAT TEACHING SOUL, SHOT RECENTLY BY A LOCAL BETTERTHANYOU..OR..MAYBE..HE WAS A DUMBFAGGARY PROFESSOR LIKE YOU.LOL
>>>What I try to do is read the news from both sides of the fence and and come up with some deductive reasoning,
WITH A FENCE PLANK HALFWAY UP YOUR HAIRY_FURRY ASSSSHOLE TO INSTILL DEDUCTIVE REASONING..A NOVEL APPROACH, CONGRATS. LOL
YA LEAVENED SCHEISS.

By betterthanyou ( - 155.163.223.114) on Thursday, June 22, 2000 - 08:06 pm:

Kim,
Now not to argue with you do you really percieve the west as bad? Does my lifestyle/your lifestyle directly effect
these small countries with corrupt governments? We have it pretty good and I hope and maybe you do to that they
could free and happy lives like us. Let's say you had power to stop the slaughter of inocent women and children
(debatable), "the shooting of young children", even though you would be labled as the bad guy, even though inocent
people would killed. Yet through all of this you would stop the destabilization of the balkan nations, stop a
corrupt regime (debatable)from gaining control of the whole area! I hope this didn't come out wrong because I hold
your opinion in the highest of regards, just asking...
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++======

Whether the "West" is "bad" would depend on your perspective wouldn't it. Some of us in the west are beginning to realise that our way of life is only sustainable at the expense of the rest of the world.The rest of the world is starting to fight back!!! This won't change by us installing "democratic governments" or forcing capitalism IMF-style down their throats.

If the main incentive in yugo was to save the poor civilians(as we were led to believe), why aren't we intervening in Etheopia/Eritrea? and other conlicts. The killings in East Timor have been going on for decades, why are the UN only now intervening? Because it is politically expedient:
Public opinion re Yugo-/falling leads in the polls.Monica L./Whitewater-gate,etc.
There are military and economic incentives- a base in the Balkans?in the Philipines? Investment in oil pipe lines, mines,arms sales.
Oh for pete's sake read Igor's post why don't you!
(If only 10% of what he is posting is true,we have been well and truly led up the garden path by our noses!!)

Kim

Hey enjoyed last nights discussion! It was good to see some debate here for a change!
When I said we needed some new faces, I neglected to say I am selective and prefer intelligent conversation to the sewerage running through some of the more recent posts.
You know who you are!

Kim

>>> to the sewerage running through some of the more recent posts.
..AND CARRYING BETTER_THAN_YOU ON ITS WAAAAAVES..

>>>I hope this didn't come out wrong
because I hold your opinion in the highest of regards, just asking...
ALL ABDUMBASSES NEED CORRECTIVE GUIDANCE.

Putin Nabs Another Oligarch
2345 GMT, 000622
In the aftermath of the global media eruption surrounding the arrest of Russian tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky, the Russian administration has targeted another oligarch. On June 21 the Moscow prosecutor’s office brought charges against one of the world’s largest producers of nickel, platinum and palladium, the Norilsk Nickel Company, owned by Vladimir Potanin. Russian President Vladimir Putin, it seems, was not daunted by the criticism over Gusinsky’s arrest and is using the legal system to engage in a war against the oligarchs.

In the past week, Putin and his administration have weathered accusations from media, Western governments, Jewish organizations and Russia’s top businessmen that Gusinsky’s arrest was politically motivated and unjustified. Gusinsky, the owner of an independent media company, is charged with embezzling $10 million of state funds during a privatization deal. Potanin is similarly charged with illegally profiting from deals made during the mass privatization of state property under former President Boris Yeltsin.

The move not only proves that Putin will methodically attempt to prevent each oligarch from enhancing his personal wealth to the detriment of the national economy, but he will do it legally. By undoing Yeltsin’s privatizations, Putin is setting the framework to both reclaim for state use the revenue and taxes from lucrative national industries and establish the strength of the legal system. Meanwhile, he will cripple the oligarchs’ political and economic power in Russia.

In the mid 1990s, Yeltsin tried to implement Western-style economic reform at break-neck speed while campaigning for the presidential election. In order to do both, while trying to pump quick cash into the economy, Yeltsin permitted the oligarchs, who were then bankers, to loan money to the government in exchange for massively undervalued shares in the major state-owned companies such as Gazprom, LUKoil, Sibneft and Sidanco.

Both parties knew the government would default on repayments to the oligarchs, which it did, leaving a few men with control of the country’s entire industrial base. Thus, companies were privatized, and Yeltsin earned the votes of the wealthy, powerful and often-corrupt Russian businessmen.

Now, however, Putin is challenged with truly reforming the economy, which requires that he root out the source of the corruption and begin again, rather than glossing over the top layer as Yeltsin did. Russia’s lagging economy relies on the revenues from a few primary industries, such as oil, gas and metals. For instance, Potanin’s Norilsk Nickel currently produces about 2 percent of Russia’s GDP, but it is valued at lower than market price.

In 1997 Potanin’s Uneximbank bought 38 percent of the shares in Norilsk Nickel for $170 million, which was estimated to be far below the market value, according to the Moscow Times. The prosecutor’s office charged Norilsk Nickel, Uneximbank, the State Property Ministry, the Finance Ministry, the State Property Fund and three other holdings for involvement in illegal privatizations. Initially, the Moscow Arbitration Court refused the charges on a technicality, but encouraged the prosecutor’s office to resubmit them when they were revised.

The case against Potanin is likely to establish a precedent for the reversal of Yeltsin-era privatizations. And if it does, it will create a legal basis for Putin’s Kremlin to systematically push the oligarchs out and nationalize many more of Russia’s major industries. As it turns out, the 17 business-owners who officially protested Gusinsky’s arrest were right to be worried.

Why War-Crime Probe of KLA Spells Trouble
The tribunal that indicted Milosevic for Kosovo crimes is now investigating his former foes. It could mean red faces for NATO

The U.S. may have anointed the Kosovo Liberation Army as the White Knights of the Kosovo war, but war crimes prosecutors aren't convinced — and that could put NATO on a dangerous collision course with the men it installed in power in the breakaway province. The Hague Tribunal, which last year indicted President Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes, announced Tuesday that it is currently investigating five cases of atrocities against Serbs allegedly committed by members of the KLA. And observers believe that if charges are pursued, they may involve some of the now-disbanded movement's senior leaders, who currently occupy key positions in the U.N.-supervised administration of Kosovo.
Kosovo analysts have long sensed the hand of the KLA in a continuing campaign of violence against the territory's remaining Serbs, and tensions between the organization and NATO have reached their highest point since the war following the discovery, two weeks ago, of massive arms caches in the Drenica valley, a KLA stronghold. Although the former guerrilla movement's leaders have denied any knowledge of the caches, which would be in violation of undertakings to hand their weapons over to NATO, it's unlikely that large amounts of weapons would have been stockpiled without a green light from some quarter of the KLA leadership. The movement has never accepted the limits the international community has sought to impose on their aspirations, and vowed to press on for independence and confederation with Albania rather than the multi-ethnic autonomous enclave favored by the West.

War-crimes prosecutions could bring NATO-Kosovar relations to a breaking point, because they'd oblige the peacekeeping force to arrest suspects that the current Kosovar Albanian leadership may be reluctant to hand over. A bomb threat called in last week at a hotel used by officials of the international community was seen by some as a warning from former KLA elements to NATO to back off, following the discovery of the arms caches. Now, Washington and its allies may be set to learn the hard way that while Kosovo had no shortage of bad guys and innocent victims, the "good guys" may have been miscast

The Berlin Tribunal

by Diana Johnstone (6-21-00)
www.tenc.net [emperors-clothes]

Last June 3, two tribunals reached opposite conclusions concerning accusations of war crimes brought against NATO for its 1999 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. In The Hague, Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor at the "International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia" (ICTY), created by the UN Security Council at the initiative of the United States, announced that she saw no grounds even to open an inquiry. NATO made "some mistakes", she acknowledged. But Ms Del Ponte was "very satisfied" that there had been no deliberate targeting of civilians during NATO's bombing campaign.

No wonder. Indicting NATO would have meant biting the hand that feeds this Tribunal, whose former presiding judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald once described Madeleine Albright as its "mother". It was hardly conceivable that the ICTY would allow itself to get too interested in crimes committed by the NATO powers who provide it with funding, equipment and investigators... not to mention its basic political agenda, which is to justify the diplomatic isolation of Serbian leaders by labeling them as "indicted war criminals".

In Berlin, on the same day, another Tribunal concluded a far more serious examination of the charges against NATO. This unofficial "European Tribunal" was genuinely independent of all the governments involved in the 1999 war. In contrast to The Hague, the conclusions were based on several public hearings (already published in two illustrated volumes*), precise references to international law, detailed presentation and analysis of the relevant facts and finally the direct testimony of six victims who came from Yugoslavia to recount their experience as civilian targets under the 78-day rain of NATO bombs and missiles.

The Berlin Tribunal was presided by a distinguished Hamburg University professor of international law, Dr. Norman Paech, who insisted that the verdict would be based on strictly legal criteria. And indeed the deliberations of this European Tribunal in Berlin, supported by over sixty peace, civic and human rights groups, stuck very strictly to the subject of the NATO war against Yugoslavia, to the exclusion of other political issues (in contrast to the similar Tribunal organized by the International Action Center in New York on June 10, which chose to link issues). Berlin's proximity to Eastern Europe was reflected in the composition of the panel of jurists, who had come from Austria, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Belarus, the Czech Republic, Russia and Macedonia.

The long and detailed indictment, presented by lawyer Ulrich Dost, was divided into two main sections: first, responsibility for deliberately preparing the war against Yugoslavia to the exclusion of peaceful negotiated solutions to the Kosovo problem, and second, violations of international law in the conduct of the war. The former East German ambassador to Belgrade, Ralph Hartmann, a genuine expert on the region, presented a recapitulation of key events and statements that clearly demonstrated the major responsibility of the Federal Republic of Germany in preparing the war, both by actively encouraging armed ethnic Albanian separatists and by pushing other NATO allies toward military intervention.

Retired Bundeswehr General Heinz Loquai, who served as German military observer at the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) headquarters in Vienna, contributed a damning report on how the German Defense Ministry itself invented "Operation Horseshoe", the supposed Serbian plan to expel the Albanian population from Kosovo, which was "revealed" by Defense Minister Scharping in April 1999 to justify the bombing as it began to lose public support. Hartmann and Loquai are among the authors of a growing number of German books which are devastating in their refutation of NATO claims. Indeed, if certain German media and the German government bear major international responsibility for initiating the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991, by the same token German critics of the process are perhaps the best informed and most thorough in their denunciations.

Such a "people's tribunal", like the Russell Tribunal formed to condemn the U.S. war in Vietnam, obviously has no power to carry out a sentence. Its verdict is purely moral, and serves to point up two things: the existence of flagrant violations of the law, and the absence of any existing institutional recourse. It does not settle but rather raises a number of questions.

The verdict, as expected, found the top officials of NATO and its member states guilty of having committed an aggression in violation of all the relevant treaties and international agreements, from the United Nations Charter to the NATO Treaty itself, as well as numerous conventions. Far from being legitimately "humanitarian", NATO's intervention ignored and blocked Belgrade's various compromise offers and dramatically worsened an already difficult situation, causing a sharp increase in the number of victims.

Such a verdict is similar to the finding of a "truth commission", and shows at least that a prima facie case exists against NATO. A careful examination of the Berlin results, as well as those of other "people's tribunals", is enough to expose the uselessness of Ms Del Ponte's ICTY when it comes to establishing the facts, let alone justice.

The Berlin Tribunal pinpointed an important treaty violation scarcely mentioned in other NATO countries: by sending its warplanes to bomb Yugoslavia, the Federal Republic of German was in flagrant violation of the so-called "4 plus 2" treaty of 1990 by which Moscow consented to the unification of the two German states. By that Treaty, the German government undertook a solemn commitment that "never again would war emanate from German territory" and that Germany's military engagements would remain strictly within the norms of the United Nations Charter.

The Berlin Tribunal condemned not only Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, defense minister Rudolf Scharping and foreign minister Joschka Fischer, but also all the members of the Bundestag who had voted in favor of a military engagement that clearly violated the Federal Republic's international engagements.

The Tribunal expressed concern at the role played by the war against Yugoslavia in the formulation of NATO's new "strategic concept", whose significance "extends far beyond the Balkans and across Eurasia as a model for a future world military order". To prevent such military globalization, the Tribunal said it was imperative to pursue examination of the preconditions, objectives and consequences of the war against Yugoslavia and to draw attention to its eventual geostrategic implications.

On the matter of civilian targets, the Berlin Tribunal cited statements from various NATO officials and military officers proving that the choice of civilian targets was indeed part of the "third stage" of a strategy aimed at putting pressure on the civilian population to rise up against its own government, a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions. Moreover, the use of such weapons as depleted uranium and cluster bombs clearly endangered the civilian population, both during and after the actual bombing, and constituted a particularly grave violation of international humanitarian law.

About 600 people attended the two-day proceedings in the handsome Protestant Church of the Holy Cross in the Kreuzberg section of Berlin, whose pastor Jürgen Quandt in his welcoming speech rejected the concept of "just" war.

The Berlin Tribunal condemned the deliberate destruction of the Belgrade studios of Radio Television Serbia (RTS) not only as an attack against a civilian installation, but also as an assault on freedom of information. The purpose was to deprive not only the Yugoslavs but also audiences around the world of the pictures and information concerning the bombing broadcast by RTS. Whether or not that information was "objective" was irrelevant, the verdict stated, since the same could be said of information broadcast by NATO media.

This condemnation of the bombing of RTS was echoed a few days later by Amnesty International which, accusing NATO of war crimes, specifically cited the deliberate bombing of the Belgrade television studies, which killed 16 employees -- a flagrant crime which failed to interest Ms Del Ponte.

In conclusion, the Tribunal presided by Dr. Paech emphasized the need to pursue the search for truth. The underlying problems in the Balkans remain serious and unresolved.

"It is imperative for the public to be informed not only of the physical and material damage, but also of the psychological wounds inflicted ... This war must not be the model for a new world order. We must finally make it clear to politicians and the military that neither human rights nor civilization are to be saved by war, that war must no longer be used as a political instrument."
* The two volumes are published by Schkeuditzer Buchverlag, Badeweg 1, 04435 Schkeuditz, Federal Republic of Germany. Wolfgang Richter, Elmar Schmaehling, Eckart Spoo (editors), (1) _Die Wahrheit über den NATO-Krieg gegen Jugoslawien_. (2) _Die deutsche Verantwortung für den NATO-Krieg gegen Jugoslawien_.

Fred there will be elections late this year in Yugoslavia.

A Serious Case of Mistaken Identity
The U.S. is not the 'indispensable nation,' as a growing WWII mythology would suggest.


By BENJAMIN SCHWARZ


Each June, Americans rightfully honor the bravery and sacrifice of the men who invaded Normandy in 1944. Recently, however, this celebration has too often lapsed into a solipsistic and deeply flawed revision of the U.S. role in World War II, which leads to equally self-congratulatory but far more dangerous conclusions about America's purpose in the world today. If Americans are to get a more balanced view of their history and their global role, we should remember another June anniversary: today, the 59th anniversary of Germany's invasion of Russia.
A national mythology has emerged that in 1941 the United States, appalled by the horrific policies of the Nazis, deliberately embarked on a crusade to rid the world of Hitler and to stop the Holocaust. D-Day was, according to this version of events, the decisive point in the "Good War," when American troops, piously aware of the noble cause for which they fought, began the military operations that defeated Nazi Germany. Having beat Hitler and made possible a better world, the United States remains to this day what Secretary of State Madeleine Albright declares "the indispensable nation."
Some reminders are in order.
First, of course, such a view slights the anti-Japanese dimension of the U.S. war, which was the real reason the United States had gone to war in the first place. Nazi Germany declared war on the United States in accord with its treaty with Japan; only then did the U.S. declare that Germany was its enemy too. For most Americans, the purpose of the war remained to exact revenge on the Japanese.
Second, stopping the mass murder of the Jews didn't figure in any way in either American war aims or conduct. As for American soldiers and sailors, they fought the war, as historian and critic Paul Fussell declares, "in an ideological vacuum." The war was "about your military unit and your loyalty to it." Plainly put, they fought the war to end it so that they could go home, a point of view entirely reasonable and even courageous, but hardly high-minded.
As far as the U.S. contribution to defeating the Nazis goes, even though Time magazine anointed Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower as "The Man Who Defeated Hitler," if any one man deserves that label, it's Soviet Army Marshal G.K. Zhukov, or possibly Josef Stalin. The main scene of the Nazis' defeat wasn't Normandy or anywhere else Americans fought, but rather the Eastern Front, where the conflict was the most terrible war fought in history. It claimed 50 million Soviet civilian deaths and 29 million Soviet military casualties. But more to the point, Americans should recall that about 88% of all German casualties fell in the war with Russia.
Until the Normandy invasion--from June 1941 to June 1944--almost the whole of the Nazi war machine was concentrated in the East; and even two months after D-Day, well over half the German army was still fighting the Soviets. Military historians date the war's turning point two years before D-Day when, at Stalingrad, the Soviets eradicated 50 divisions from the Axis order of battle, or nearly one year before when, at the Battle of Kursk, the Red Army smashed the Wehrmacht's strategic tank force, breaking the Nazis' capacity for large-scale attack. And it was the Red Army that liberated Auschwitz and bore down on Hitler's bunker.
The moral narcissism that characterizes recent American discussion of our role in World War II breeds within too many of our statesmen a smug and reckless pride. After all, the thinking goes, if history has shown the United States to be so virtuous, then any that oppose us must be evil.
Today, Americans need not honor the Russian dead as we do our own, but we should give credit where credit is due, and we must not make exaggerated claims for ourselves. In contemplating how our WWII role influences our conduct in the contemporary world, Americans should remember that self-righteousness is bad enough, but when it springs largely from a self-serving mythology, it is insufferable.

- - -

Benjamin Schwarz Is the Literary Editor of the Atlantic Monthly
http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20000622/t000059162.html

Gonzo that last post is for you.