HI DIMI...That seems like a report that one might find in the "Camel Nuts Gazzette." Can we be sure that BBC did not violate copywrite laws?

Sure thingie. I'm sure they wouldn't mind at all. But..just in case don't mention me as a sourse, who knows, I might get deported or somethin'..heh

L'Menexe,
Just a few things:
1. Was the United States'presence in Europe the only notable by-product of the war?
2. The United States attention to foreign policy prior to both World Wars was to remain within the Western Hemisphere (hence the activity in Latin America).
3. The last time I remember, an integral portion of Nazi Germany's DEVELOPMENT was a result of dire economic depression. Rather than creating a wartime economy, Roosevelt mobilized the public sector to provide relief for unemployment.
4. If you know anything about the United States and war, you'll be led to believe the country is best suited to build up, mobilize, and then fight a war. This is directly contingent on the strategic positioning of the country. The countries of Europe never enjoyed such a luxury and became more easily invaded as a result. This led to a concurrent agenda of activities. Russia had to defend, build up resources, conscript troops, and develop technology. America did all this except defending national territory.

An excellent article depicting reality in Chechnya.

An Angry Chechen Becomes Rebel With a Cause
Caucasus: Populace's bitterness toward Russians
underscores why Moscow is no closer to defeating
separatists. One worker joins insurgents to seek revenge.

By MAYERBEK NUNAYEV, ROBYN DIXON, Special to The Times
SHALI, Russia--He is a 31-year-old former oil refinery worker who grew up in Shali, a town in Chechnya that tried to stay out of the Chechen war. He was a "peaceful, normal guy" who decided not to fight with the rebels against the Russian
army.

But Rasul, who gives only his first name, has become a killer who sleeps in the woods by day and shoots at Russian soldiers by night.
Meanwhile, the people of this dusty, ragged town, which surrendered to the Russians without a shot of resistance in November, feel embittered and betrayed after enduring rocket attacks and the random, drunken violence of the occupying army.
Nearly nine months into its ongoing war with separatist rebels in Chechnya, Russia has failed to win the hearts and minds of the people, or even their grudging respect. Nor has it stopped angry young men from joining the rebels to fight the
Russians in a cause that seems hopeless.

The Russian commander in the North Caucasus, Col. Gen. Gennady Troshev, announced Sunday that Russian troops would stop bomb and rocket attacks on Chechnya, and declared that "the war, as such, is over." A "reasonable" number of Russian units will remain stationed in the republic, he said, without enumerating how many.

In the 1994-96 war that Russia fought to crush Chechen separatists, Russian authorities repeatedly announced an end to their bombing, but the airstrikes continued.
Troshev said he reached an agreement on ending the
airstrikes at a meeting in the town of Tsentoroi with the Moscow-appointed administrator of Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov.
However, Kadyrov does not control the rebel fighters, and Troshev admitted that it could take another six months to a year to stabilize the situation and defeat the rebels. He estimated that 1,500 rebels remain in the republic.

'I Am Not a Religious Fanatic,' Rasul Says. The bitterness of Rasul and others from Shali, 21 miles southeast of the Chechen capital, Grozny, helps to explain why Russia is no closer to defeating the separatists.

"I'm not a religious fanatic who wants to go to heaven killing as many Russians as possible. I'm not fighting for money either. I have my own reason," said Rasul, sitting in a ruined house one recent night when he found himself trapped in Grozny.

"The Russians killed a person who was very close to me," he said, "and they left me no choice but to take up arms and avenge her death. You can't win a war when you are up against people like me."
A few minutes earlier, as he sat on the ruins of a broken wall outdoors, a group of Russian soldiers thundered past on an armored personnel carrier, raising dust. Watching with red, wary eyes, the fighter spat in the APC's wake and suggested that indoors might be safer.
Usually, Rasul said, he joins about 10 other rebels nightly to infiltrate Grozny, attack some of the vulnerable Russian soldiers at the military posts and checkpoints there, then disappear into the dark.

"It is no problem at all to get into Grozny," he said. "You just walk around the checkpoints. There are about 100 of them in town. Even if you have something bulky like ammunition or machine guns, you can always put it in a car and just pay your way in. Ten dollars opens any gate for you."
Rasul claimed that there are many other bands like his. It takes two hours for his group to get into the city, a few minutes to attack some soldiers, half an hour to fade away and hide, and two more hours to leave, he said.

"We make their life hell. They must not be allowed to feel comfortable at any time during the night," he said.

The Chechen guerrilla campaign is taking its toll on Russian morale, with the casualty figures in the war climbing steadily even as Moscow claims to be near victory.

"I know what I want, and I am not afraid to die," Rasul said. "The Russian soldiers don't know why they are here, and they are afraid to die. Russia will never prevail."

In Shali, a town of about 60,000 including many refugees, roadside stalls sell cakes, bread, cigarettes, and soft drinks of doubtful color. Barefoot children scuttle in the dust. Men dressed in dark, shabby clothes squat on their heels, chewing sunflower seeds and spitting out the shells, discussing the latest bad news.

Soldiers Blamed for Civilian Deaths
Alibek Dakhayev, 43, a farmer, emerged from his house wearing his old black mourning suit, its elbows shiny from use. The house was full of people who had come to offer condolences for the death of his older brother Ali, 51. Ali, buried a day earlier, was not shot or bombed by the enemy. Soldiers on an armored personnel carrier ran into his cart at the local market, where he had come to sell a calf, killing him and seriously injuring his 16-year-old daughter.

"They were dead drunk, so drunk that the unarmed
Chechen men who were there at the market disarmed them, and were about to shoot them then and there, when the town elders intervened and prevented the lynching," Dakhayev said angrily.

The Russian military authorities in Shali later paid the family 1,000 rubles, or about $36, for the funeral. "You get run over by an APC and nobody is held responsible. The federal price for this outrage is 1,000 rubles," Dakhayev said.
Others in Shali tell similar stories. Early in May, said trader Lyoma Aliyev, 45, an armored personnel carrier with drunken Russian soldiers aboard rammed into some civilian cars in the center of town, killing one woman and injuring several people. "We still see many drunk Russians driving like mad around the town," Dakhayev asserted. "I guess they are so tense and scared that they have to drink all the time."

Presence of Military Doesn't Ensure Safety

Ilman Kadyrov, 43, a forester, stood tossing grain to his chickens under a hazelnut tree near his house and explained why Shali surrendered to the Russians last fall without putting up a fight.

"We thought they would bring law and peace with the armor of their tanks," he said. "We wanted to keep the town intact and save the lives of our families. But they are randomly killing us as if we are cockroaches and don't deserve to live." At 1 p.m. on Jan. 10, he said, the Russian military fired three missiles at Shali after a group of about 50 rebel fighters had entered it. The center of the town was destroyed, and 248 civilians were killed, he said. Rockets hit the town Feb. 6 and again May 3, killing a total of seven more people, he said.

Rasul did not fight with the rebels in the 1994-96 war, and he had no plans to join up when the conflict resumed last fall. Now he claims that there are plenty of other civilian men joining the rebel forces because of their anger at the Russian
military.

"The Russians can't win over the population because they treat them all like enemies, and hate only breeds hate," he said.
* * *
Special correspondent Nunayev reported from Shali and Grozny, and Times staff writer Dixon reported from Moscow. Sergei L. Loiko of The Times' Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.

Igor,

Get off that crap about the so called slave market. The slave market is the invention of Moscow and is run by FSB to discredit the Chechens. You can show that documentary non stop 24 hours in every western capital and no one will pay attention in the materialistic world of today where the only concern is how to make money and survive in this dog eat dog world.

Djuma Namangani you are a misinformed fool.

Igor I think theres something we agree on. I mean come on the Russian government is running some kind of slave market to discredit the chechens. Sounds like a bunch of bunk to me. Just another wacky conspiracy theory.

Gonzo they have freed hundreds of people who were slaves and have testified to that fact that they were bought and sold at the market.I have posted many articles when the people were freed.

OK now I am confused, Igor I agree with you. I don't think Moscow is running a slave market. However I am not saying one doesn't exist. It sad to know things like that still exist in this day and age.

The Chechens are running it along with kidnapping thousands and drug dealing.

Toppling Milosevic: The Carrot Instead of the Stick
26 June 2000

Summary

Governments in both the United States and Europe have suddenly signaled shifts in their stances towards Yugoslavia. Washington has suggested that rifts can be mended if Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic departs and the European Union has said that trade might resume as long as the Belgrade government doesn't get the revenues. A year after the war for Kosovo ended, the West is searching for ways to recast its strategy in the Balkans, even if means finding compromise with a leader it only recently reviled.

Analysis

It has now been a year since the war in Kosovo ended and two important trial balloons were floated last week, designed to create some room for maneuver. The Clinton administration has floated a plausibly deniable idea for giving Milosevic de facto amnesty if he leaves Yugoslavia, and the European Union announced it would create a "White List" of Yugoslav companies allowed to trade with the EU as exceptions to the general embargo.

Having failed to overthrow Milosevic with the help of the opposition, the West is now trying to generate a palace coup, providing Milosevic with incentives to leave and other members of the regime with incentives to push him out. Giving Milosevic a kind of amnesty is not a very palatable strategy, but changing geopolitical realities are forcing the United States to search for an exit strategy from Kosovo in particular, and the Balkans in general.

Overthrowing Milosevic was built into the rationale for last year's war. The United States and its NATO allies claimed that the war had to be waged for moral reasons. The United States and NATO charged that Yugoslavia was engaged in deliberate and horrendous crimes in Kosovo, described as the worst in Europe since Hitler. Therefore, the war had two goals: to expel Yugoslav forces from Kosovo, putting a halt to the atrocities and destroying the Milosevic regime by bringing those responsible for these crimes to justice. It was assumed, without much analysis, that defeat in Kosovo would inevitably topple the Milosevic government.

As in Iraq, nothing of the sort has happened. There were never more than two ways to topple Milosevic and neither depended on hauling war criminals to the Hague. One realistic option was the scenario Germany had pursued in World War II, invading via Hungary, allowing NATO to occupy Serbia, drive to Belgrade and dig the Yugoslav leader out. NATO had neither the forces in place nor the stomach for a full-scale war. Again, as with Iraq, it was easy to draw arrows on a map. It was much more difficult to deploy, supply and execute. The second realistic option was pursuing a political campaign of destabilizing the regime by supporting its opponents. This was certainly attempted and it also failed.

The failure to dislodge Milosevic has been rooted in several causes. Perhaps the most important was that the war was genuinely popular in Serbia. There was a consensus that Kosovo was an integral and critical part of Serbia. More important, Serbs believed that they were being deliberately victimized by NATO. They believed-and still believe-that the claims of mass murder were deliberate fabrications by the Albanians and the West to justify the war. Every day Serbs saw themselves as innocent victims of massive international aggression, generating both defiance and pride.

After the war, Milosevic was not personally all that popular; he was regarded by many as a bungler. However, whatever doubts the Serbs may have had, they had much graver doubts about his opposition. Milosevic may have been a bungler, but he was certainly a patriot. His opponents were seen as, at best, taking advantage of Serbia's plight to enhance their position. At worst, they were seen as agents of NATO, seeking to finish what the bombers had begun. Thus, NATO's post-war strategy was doomed by its very nature.

What has unfolded since has been a year of gridlock. In Kosovo, the occupation has become increasingly difficult. NATO forces are caught between the ambitions of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and a growing willingness among Serbs to take risks. NATO troops are, in a way, hostage to the political intentions of bitter enemies.

But the gridlock in the Balkans has encountered the dynamics of a dramatically evolving global set of geopolitics. Partly because of the war in Kosovo, relations between the United States and Russia, as well as China, deteriorated. Most important, the United States faced a potential military challenge by China over Taiwan. As tension in the Taiwan Strait rose and fell, it has become increasingly apparent to U.S. policy makers that the current global disposition of U.S. forces makes little sense; occupying Kosovo, Bosnia, and patrolling the Persian Gulf makes a rapid and decisive intervention in the strait difficult. As well, the new government in Russia is in part a reaction to Russia's treatment at the hands of the West. With President Vladimir Putin skillfully splitting Europe from the U.S. over the issue of missile defenses, it would be helpful to reach a settlement in the Balkans.

The United States clearly needs to withdraw from the Balkans. But finding a way out means negotiating with Belgrade; the problem is negotiating as long as Milosevic is in power. It is the same problem that exists with Saddam Hussein. If your opponent is an immoral monster, what do you do when you can't destroy him? You can't ignore him and you can't negotiate with him. It was in this context that the Clinton administration floated an idea in the New York Times earlier this week.

The idea was simple: the Clinton administration would be willing to forgo a war crimes trial for Milosevic if he stepped down and left the country. To sweeten the deal, the administration would allow Milosevic to keep his fortune. It was floated in such a way that the administration could immediately deny it. The article had three intended audiences. The first, of course, was Milosevic. The second was the human rights apparatus, ranging from the Hague tribunal to Amnesty International. The administration wanted to test, with plausible deniability built in, how nasty the response would be from that quarter and whether it could be managed. The response from this quarter appears manageable.

The third audience, and by far the most important, is the set of powerful figures inside of the Milosevic regime. What they see is that United States is no longer committed to the destruction of the regime. It is interesting to note that at about the same time that the administration floated its trial balloon, the European Union announced the creation of a "White List" of Yugoslav firms that would be allowed to trade with the EU, as long as revenues don't go to the government in Belgrade. This is a critical signal: the union now prepared to make distinctions between good Yugoslav businesses and bad ones -- good members of the Yugoslav elite and bad.

All in all, this is an attractive offer to the Yugoslav government, basically saying that if it is rid of Milosevic, the regime can be purified and readmitted to Europe. A deal along these lines may not, however, be particularly attractive to Milosevic. The example of Pinochet rests before him. How can he be sure that some country or other won't extradite him and put him on trial while he is passing through London some day? Milosevic may not buy it.

But the United States is trying to create an opportunity that Milosevic can't resist. Other members of the regime can see an opportunity to save themselves and end the country's isolation. It also plays well to the Serb public who have no great love of Milosevic but resist the West dictating their internal politics. A move against Milosevic from within would now essentially be a palace coup, perhaps originating in the army. It is also reasonable to believe that more intimate discussions between intermediaries and Serbian elites will be aimed at getting Milosevic to buy into the deal on a personal level.

Where that leaves Kosovo is anyone's guess. It is impossible to imagine a quick return to Serbian sovereignty -- and it is impossible to imagine any Serb politician prepared to formally abandon claims to a Serbian province. There is also the question of the KLA. Who will control the former rebels? We expect a reconstituted peacekeeping force, heavily European but including Russians in a leading role. That would allow the U.S. to draw down its presence, while placating Moscow. Such a bargain would also remove Kosovo as a potential presidential campaign issue in the United States.

Of course Milosevic is fully aware of the importance of his quiet departure. Knowing that, he will extract everything he can and perhaps seek more than Washington can give him. Washington and NATO will want to do everything informally, maintaining the myth that they are not dealing with Milosevic; in the wake of the Pinochet affair, Milosevic would be a fool to settle for that. The deal may founder as a result unless his friends in Belgrade decide to push Milosevic out. Launching that sort of thinking in Belgrade was what last week's maneuvers were all about

FALSE REMEDY
The remedy on this "over-reliance" is a massive increase in international governance over the sale of natural resources, and a reduction in national sovereignty. The report proposes the following five remedies:

Diversify the economy away from dependence upon primary commodities.
Read; let us decide your economic policies.
Secondly, make looting rebels unpopular by transparently using the revenue from primary commodity exports to fund effective basic services such as primary education and rural health clinics.
Let us decide how you spend your money.
Third, enlisting the international community to make it more difficult for rebel groups to sell diamonds and other commodities which they loot.
Let us decide to whom you sell.
Fourth, generate rapid growth to counter the effects of low income and economic decline.
I said, let us decide your economic policies.
Fifth, provide credible guarantees to protect minorities in societies where a single ethnic group dominates by entrenching their rights into a national constitution.
Now that you have let us play with your economy, let us decide your political arrangements.
This is a rationale for a new imperialism, which can be sold on the most humanitarian grounds. While it was clear that the Gulf War was about Western control of oil, all future wars over resources can be justified because it is for the people. Who can be callous enough to argue against that?

"""Get off that crap about the so called slave market. The slave market is the invention of Moscow and is run by FSB to discredit the Chechens."""

______________________________
ohh! That Illinois crack must be good! But you obviously haven't tried Afgan hashish yet! I've tried some and a minute after I was so damn sure that FSB and General Troshev himself wanted to sell me to dumbfucked *urka in exchange for some dancing lessons!

..ya freakin' board clown, go catch up with Barney's, maybe you'll find a bullshetting pig like yourself there, who'd believe your moronic hypothesis.

Russia accuses U.S. of seeking first-strike capability




By JUDITH INGRAM, Associated Press

MOSCOW (June 23, 2000 11:32 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com ) - Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev rejected U.S. assurances about the American missile defense shield, claiming that the planned program was intended to give the United States the ability to strike first and destroy whatever missiles Russia launched in response.

In an interview published Friday, Sergeyev said that some U.S. officials had the "delusion" that the missile defense shield and future arms control agreements would allow the United States "to destroy Russia's strategic nuclear potential by a pre-emptive strike and interception of the remaining Russian missiles and warheads."

The United States has insisted the missile shield would pose no threat to Russia. Instead, proponents say it is necessary to protect the United States against attacks by countries such as North Korea and Iran, which could potentially develop nuclear arms capability within the next five years.

Russia adamantly opposes the system, saying it would undermine the foundation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed that the United States, NATO and Russia develop a joint missile defense system as an alternative, but he has yet to offer technical details.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is planning a test of the proposed system on July 7 with a planned interception of a missile over the Pacific Ocean. Even if it fails, Defense Secretary William Cohen has said he might recommend development of a system.

Sergeyev heaped scorn on the U.S. arguments.

"The true reasons for the missile shield deployment are not in alleged threats from rogue nations," he said in the interview with the Independent Military Review.

"Apparently, some people in the United States have been trying to obtain strategic domination by achieving a technological edge over the rest of the world and creating exclusive conditions of invulnerability, thus implementing . . . 'Fortress America.' "

Sergeyev said that the system, which is supposed to include radars, spy satellites and a limited number of missiles, could be beefed up easily with the addition of more missiles.

Its location in Alaska would allow the United States to intercept Russian missiles launched from any area of Russia or from Russian submarines, he warned.

"Such a comprehensive defense system will be primarily aimed against the deterrent potential of the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China. Experts from the Russian Defense Ministry have no doubt about that," he said.

U.S. and Russian military officials are to continue talks on the missile shield and other defense issues on Saturday in Solnechnogorsk, outside Moscow. The delegations will be headed by Gen. Valery Manilov, first deputy chief of the Russian General Staff, and Edward Warner III, U.S. assistant secretary of defense for strategy and threat reduction.

The two sides will discuss a range of military issues, including the U.S. proposal to amend the ABM treaty and Putin's proposal for a joint European missile defense, officials said.

The west controls the oil? Why am I paying $1.97 a gallon.