From: covici@ccs.covici.com (John Covici)
Reply-To: covici@ccs.covici.com
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: News 07/24/92
Date: 26 Jul 92 21:0:20 GMT
Organization: Covici Computer Systems

U.N. an advertiser
   for U.S., says Saddam
   
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
denounced the U.N. as ``America's
advertising agency,'' in a defiant speech
commemorating the 1968 coup which brought
the Ba'ath Party to power in Iraq.
Hussein attacked the leaders of Saudi
Arabia and Kuwait, declaring, ``What is
needed is a jihad to purge the Arab
nation of these treacherous leaders who
have become a shameful burden on our
region.'' He called Great Britain a
``partner in crime'' with the United States
in trying to recolonize Iraq. 
   Oman and Bahrain, two members of the
coalition in the war against Iraq, and
Jordan, sent messages of congratulations
to Hussein. 
   Despite increasing threats from U.S.
officials, Iraq indicated on July 18 that
it will not give in to demands from the
U.N. Security Council that U.N. weapons
inspectors be allowed to search the
Ministry of Agriculture. ``We will not
back down and let the stray dogs
desecrate the ministry building,'' said
Agriculture Minister Abdul-Wahab Mahmoud
al-Sabbagh, according to Reuters. 
   Iraq insists that the ministry is a
civilian installation and dismisses the
inspection as an insult, an infringement
of sovereignty, and a U.S.-inspired
attempt to prevent any lifting of the
trade sanctions imposed after its August
1990 invasion of Kuwait. 

   Mitterrand feeling the
   heat on Maastricht Treaty
   
French President Franc@alois
Mitterrand defended the Maastricht Treaty
for European Union with ``passion'' in
comments on Bastille Day on July 14,
which indicates the ``rising political
temperatures in France,'' the London
{Financial Times} reported. While polls
are showing majority support for the
treaty, French opinion is ``very
volatile,'' and there is concern in
pro-Maastricht circles that the
referendum, set for Sept. 20, could be
``misused'' to vote against the unpopular
Mitterrand, the paper warned. 
   Former French Defense Minister
Jean-Pierre Cheve@agnement, meanwhile, has
resigned from the French Socialist Party
executive bureau, and has created his own
movement against Maastricht, which will
be launched in August. Maastricht
represents ``the triumph of the bankers,
high interest rates, and recession,'' he
charged. He warned that the French
Socialist Party was being converted into
a ``local version of the U.S. Democratic
Party,'' and that, from here on, ``I am
going to express myself as a citizen and
not as a leader of the Socialist Party.'' 
   Mitterrand, who recently was met
with a wave of protest actions by
truckers and farmers, admitted that ``the
likelihood of an explosion is increasing
little by little'' in France's big-city
suburbs. The latest outbreak of rioting
occurred in Epinay-sous-Severt, southeast
of Paris. Mitterrand described the
reality in such suburbs as ``a world akin
to a concentration camp.'' The government
is taking measures to deal with the
situation, he said, but it would take
``years to see the results.'' 

   Rabin peace deal 
   aimed at Jordan 
   
A ``deal is being cooked up between
Israel, the Palestinians, and Jordan
whereby Jordan is brought into the
security orbit of Israel,'' a Middle East
specialist recently told {EIR.} 
   The deal would reportedly designate
Jordan's borders with other Arab states
as the security borders of Israel. The
deal would mandate Jordan to agree not to
allow its territory or airspace to be
used for attacks on Israel, and restrict
the types of weapons Jordan can possess. 
   ``The deal would require a lot of
money, like the Camp David agreement that
cost the U.S. taxpayer $4 billion of aid
to Israel a year as well as $2 billion
for Egypt,'' the specialist said. Israel
would only give up land in an autonomy
agreement in return for financial
compensation which ``could cost billions.''
The deal would not include a Palestinian
state or any right of return.
Palestinians living in camps outside the
Occupied Territories, such as in Lebanon
or Jordan, would be given Jordanian
passports and financial compensation and
told to live somewhere else. 
   The deal would freeze out Syria,
putting the ``territorial question over
the horizon.'' 
   PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat told a
scientific gathering in Cairo on July 11
that he saw no reason for optimism
despite Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin's efforts to speed up the so-called
peace process. Arafat noted that Rabin's
language has changed since his election.
``I say to Rabin, your political language
has changed after the elections from that
before the polls. Rabin [has now] said he
would not withdraw from occupied lands
without holding a public referendum.... I
don't see Rabin as different from [former
Prime Minister Yitzhak] Shamir.
Unfortunately, some of our Arab brothers
have slipped and welcomed him.'' 
   Rabin has suspended new construction
contracts for housing in the Occupied
Territories in preparation for the
arrival in Israel of U.S. Secretary of
State James Baker on July 20. 

   Schmidt: U.S. lacks economy
   for superpower role
   
The morose state of the U.S. economy
provides no basis for any ``new world
order'' as proposed by President Bush,
former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt
said in a lecture at the European
Chairmen's Symposium held in
Rottach-Egern, Germany July 11. 
   Schmidt said that the project of a
new world order cannot be taken that
seriously outside the United States, as
it has been designed by Bush mainly for
domestic purposes. The main obstacle to a
stable world economy and political order,
next to the ``floating constellation of
forces'' that has emerged from the
collapse of the East bloc, is the bad
condition of the U.S. economy. 
   ``America is not in the situation to
lead the world.... The United States is
highly vulnerable, without the Americans
themselves noticing it,'' Schmidt said. 
   Schmidt's assessment was echoed by
the Swiss daily {Tagesanzeiger} on July
14, which said that the U.S. economy is
too weak to provide any muscle to United
States foreign policy. 

   Officials say
   `Jihad' a myth
   
The ``Jihad'' in Bosnia is a myth,
according to Bosnian leaders interviewed
by the Madrid, Spain daily {El Pai@aus} on
July 18. 
   Tarik Haberic, an Islamic scholar
who is a member of the leadership of the
Bosnian Liberal Party, said, ``To be a
Muslim in Bosnia does not correspond to
any real category. It is a pretext to
justify aggression against an entire
people.... There is no chance that
fundamentalism could take off here. I
expect the same help from the Muslim
countries that Sudan, Mauritania, or
Palestine have gotten: nothing. The only
help I hope for, is the conscience of
western Europe.'' 
   Prof. Mohamed Filipovic, president
of the Muslim Bosnian Party, said, ``The
word Muslim is false, as it does not
correspond to historical reality; it
recognizes a false nationality. I do not
believe in fundamentalism. What we
inherited from the Ottoman Empire boils
down to material culture: architecture
and art. We Muslims never identified with
other states, Turkey for example, and
never wanted to create a state alone.
When the nationalist movement arose in
the 1830s, for example, the Muslims
expressed their wish to live together
with the Serbs and Croatians in Bosnia.'' 

   Egypt announces harsh
   measures against radicals
   
Egyptian authorities have announced
a series of harsh measures in response to
an offensive of the radical Islamic
``Gamaat'' party in Upper Egypt, the French
daily {Libe@aaration} reported on July
17. The measures include extension of the
death penalty to such crimes as attacks
on churches, resisting police by force,
and establishing contacts with foreign
powers to foment attacks. Harsh punitive
measures have also been decreed for other
criminal acts, and the Interior Ministry
has said it will build four new prisons
in the desert. 
   There is controversy over the means
now being adopted, {Libe@aaration} wrote,
but there is a broad consensus on the
necessity for the eradication of
extremism, especially after the recent
murder of Egyptian writer Faruq Foda. 
   Also critical, is the magnitude of
the conflicts in the region of Assiout,
Upper Egypt. According to official
statistics, 25 people have died in the
past two months in clashes, and several
dozen have been wounded. Four thousand
anti-riot police have been moved into the
region but, despite 1,000 arrests and
detentions and a cease-fire in certain
villages, order has still not been
reestablished. The authorities have found
large amounts of arms, grenades, assault
rifles, and other weaponry. 
   Meanwhile, Gamaat has also taken
effective control of entire suburban
areas in Egypt's capital city of Cairo.
Fears of an ``Algeria-like'' situation are
growing in Egypt, the paper reported. 

   Freemasonry targets
   Russia for expansion
   
Jean-Robert Ragache, head of the
French ``Grand Orient'' lodge of
Freemasonry, and Jacques Orifes, a top
French Freemason, recently traveled to
Russia to discuss how Freemasonry could
expand in post-communist Russia, the
Italian daily {Corriere della Sera}
reported on July 14. ``Will we have a
Russian P-2? It's not to be excluded,''
the paper asked, referring to the P-2
freemasonic lodge in Italy which has been
involved in the destabilization of
several Italian governments. 
   The two Freemasons were invited, the
paper revealed, by Pavel Voshchanov, a
friend of Russian President Boris
Yeltsin, who took them to a secret
location at a dacha outside Moscow where
they met with intellectuals and
journalists from {Komsomolskaya Pravda}
newspaper, and with the editors of the
``Vjesti'' television show. 
   {Corriere} reported that the
requests from Russians to become members
of Freemasonry are growing. The names
of the so-called ``first level'' recruits
are being kept secret, in pursuance of
the traditional practice of Freemasonry,
but one prominent ``second level'' member
is Georgi Arbatov of the U.S.A.-Canada
Institute, who played a central role in
concocting the ``LaRouche ordered the
killing of Olof Palme'' big lie in 1986. 

   JAPAN
has launched a quiet
diplomatic effort to limit Moscow's arms
sales to Beijing, the July 14 {Washington
Post} reported. Japan is said to be
telling Moscow that upsetting the
military balance in Asia by strengthening
China with high-tech conventional
weaponry will damage its chances for
economic aid. 

   AN IRANIAN
crackdown on dissidents
was condemned by 230 British Members of
Parliament from all parties, who signed a
statement protesting an Iranian air raid
in April on a resistance base inside Iraq
and called for a U.N. oil and arms
embargo on Iran, Reuters reported July
15. The regime is even more brutal ``than
the Khomeini regime,'' Win Griffiths, one
of the petition organizers, said. 

   PERSIAN GULF
nations should form a
defense alliance on the model of NATO,
Adm. Raynor Taylor, commander of U.S.
naval forces in the Gulf, has urged,
newspapers in Abu Dhabi reported July 13.
He suggested naming the alliance GULFO.
Taylor said the U.S. wanted to avoid
scaling back forces too fast. ``We don't
want to leave a vacuum,'' he said.

   KUWAIT
and the U.S. backed a failed
coup attempt in Sudan on July 2, {Africa
Analysis,} a London-based bulletin,
reported. The attempt involved former
President Ja'afer Nimeiri. Azhari Mustafa
Banaga, an intelligence officer in the
Sudanese Army, was reported killed, and
Gen. Ahmed Al Mehena, a former military
attache@aa, and Abbas Madani, interior
minister under Nimeiri, were arrested. 

   POPE JOHN PAUL II
is
recovering normally after major surgery
to remove a benign tumor from his colon
on July 15, doctors and Vatican officials
reported. 

July 19 (EIRNS)--JOHN SMITH TO
REPLACE KINNOCK. The British Labour Party
yesterday selected John Smith, a Highland
Scot, as its leader, to replace Neal
Kinnock, who resigned after losing the
general elections to Prime Minister John
Major's Tory Party this past April. Smith
was the shadow chancellor of the
exchequer (finance minister) and drafted
Labour's economic program, which is more
neo-liberal and less pro-labor than it
has been in the past. 

Virginia aid to dependent
   children faces deep cuts
   
A ``carrot-and-stick'' program that
targets destitute parents of
schoolchildren is now in operation in
Virginia. The pilot project, called
Virginia Incentives To Advance Learning
(VITAL), will pay an additional $30 per
month to those families receiving Aid to
Dependent Children (ADC) if their
children do well in school; and, using
existing statutes, the program will allow
courts to eliminate a parent's entire
portion of the family's ADC allowance if
a child is chronically truant. An average
family allowance is $291 per month for a
single parent with two children. 
   The program spends $600,000 to track
children, whose families will benefit or
suffer by their behavior. It is beginning
in selected communities chosen by the
state government. DeAnn Lineberry of the
state Department of Social Services told
{EIR} that the penalty provision is not
new, but is being used for the first
time. 
   The {Washington Times} quoted the
program's main legislative backer,
Delegate Steve Martin 
(R-Chesterfield), that ``without
sanctions there will be no incentives to
keep [students] in school.'' Delegate
William P. Robinson, Norfolk Democrat and
chairman of the House black caucus,
denounced the pilot project as
``draconian, regressive and racist.''
State Sen. Mark Earley, (R-Chesapeake),
told the {Times}: ``We need to stop
subsidizing irresponsibility.'' 

   Bush fears secrets inside
   Iraq agriculture ministry
   
There is a special reason that
George Bush is so desperate to get into
the Agriculture Ministry in Iraq:
``Iraq-gate'' documents are located
there, a highly informed Middle East
expert told {EIR} recently. ``Bush's main
policy toward Iraq is to step up funding
and support for covert operations against
Saddam,'' the source said. ``However,
there is one `wild card' in the Baghdad
situation, which is this Ministry of
Agriculture. You know why he's so
concerned about that? Remember, the aid
to Iraq in the 1989-1990 period was
agriculture-food help, and all the
documents on the U.S.-Iraqi deals were
channelled through the Ministry of
Agriculture.  Bush is desperate to get
his hands on what is in there.  If it was
the Ministry of Health, he wouldn't care
less.  It all has nothing to do with
chemical weapons plans.'' 

   Gephardt opponent blasts
   health care `cost containment' 
   
Leif Johnson, LaRouche Democratic
candidate for Congress in Missouri's
3rd C.D., charged that the new ``Health
Care Cost Containment and Reform Act of
1992,'' introduced by Missouri Rep. Dick
Gephardt, will reduce health care for
millions of Americans. ``This bill would
put all health providers, whether they
accept federal, private insurance, state,
or private payment, under federal `cost
containment' controls,'' Mr. Johnson said
in a July 16 statement. 
   ``My opponent's new bill would cap
health costs at the yearly percentage
growth of the Gross Domestic Product. In
this depression, that imposes an overall
reduction in health funds, which will
reduce health care for a great number of
Americans, particularly those with fixed
or low incomes,'' said Johnson, who is
Gephardt's only active opponent in the
Aug. 4 Democratic primary election. 
   ``Gephardt's co-sponsor, Rep. Pete
Stark (D-Calif.), admits this would
reduce health care expenditures by $250
billion by the year 2000.'' 
   Johnson declared, ``On June 25,
Gephardt told reporters, `Cost
containment is the linchpin of health
care reform.' I say the good health of
every American is the linchpin of health
care reform. People, not dollars or the
federal bureaucracy, come
first--always.'' 

   Supreme Court upholds
   FDA ban on abortion pill
   
In a brief three paragraphs, the
U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 to uphold
the Food and Drug Administration's ban on
RU-486, the chemical abortifacient that
was first legalized in France. The ruling
defeats the abortion lobby's attempt to
test the legality of the federal laws
that prohibit the import of RU-486 for
personal use. On June 29, Leona Benten,
29, traveled to England to purchase the
drug, and returned to the U.S. to abort her
baby. Her trip was paid for by the Center
for Reproductive Law and Policy, which is
also providing her attorneys. Abortion
rights fanatic Lawrence Lader alerted the
FDA of the intention to bring the drug
into the country. Benten and her
attorneys then moved with a planned
lawsuit when Customs confiscated the drug
at JFK International Airport. 
   The FDA allows the use of
non-approved drugs for research and when
an individual is terminally ill or no
cure exists for a serious illness. But
Benten and her attorneys argued this
``discretionary'' policy should include
exceptions for the personal use of RU-486
as an abortifacient. The FDA argued the
point that the only reason RU-486 is not
approved is because its manufacturer,
French pharmaceutical firm Roussel-Uclaf,
has refused to conduct the necessary
safety tests on the drug in the U.S. 
   Justices Harry A. Blackmun and John
Paul Stevens dissented on the grounds
that the government's interest in
protecting Benten by avoiding a health
risk associated with the pills was not
sufficient reason to create an undue
burden to Benten's ``right'' to abortion. 
   The Center for Reproductive Law and
Policy reported that Rep. Patricia
Schroeder (D-Colo.) planned to introduce
a bill in Congress to try to obtain the
pills for Benten. 

   ADL held `minstrel show,'
   charges black employee
   
``Black Worker at the ADL Charges
League with Racism,'' was the headline of
an article in the June 20 issue of the
New York {Amsterdam News}. The article
comes in the wake of an ADL report
released in mid-June, entitled ``Black
Demagogues and the Rise of
Anti-Semitism,'' which attacks numerous
African-American leaders, including
Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan
and {Amsterdam News} publisher Wilbert
Tatum. 
   The front-page article continued:
``A black female employee at the
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) accused the
organization of being racially
insensitive and overzealous in its
pursuit of anti-Semitic behavior. 
   ``Cheryl Hamilton, a fundraiser
assistant, asserts that the ADL allowed a
modern minstrel show to occur during the
Fashion Accessories Torch of Liberty
ceremonies last November. `I was
shocked,' Hamilton told the {Amsterdam
News} in a telephone interview.... `I
missed some of the performance,' she
said, `but I was there when the lights
changed and the dancers--blonde and
blue-eyed teenagers--were suddenly
transformed into black-face modern
minstrels. Then, to add insult to injury,
they passed out white gloves to members
of the audience. I refused to take one
and admonished the waiter, `Don't you
know this is a minstrel show?' I asked
him. `So what?' he replied.
   ``Hamilton, 31, has been employed at
ADL as a temporary secretary for six
months and reports hearing all sorts of
racist remarks and innuendos from the
white employees and supervisors. `I find
it very strange that an organization so
on guard for bigotry does not practice
what it preaches,' she said.'' 

   Neo-Confederates still
   attacking United States
   
The July 19 issue of the {Washington
Times}'s {Insight} magazine gave
prominent coverage to the
``neo-Confederates'' who are still
fighting for ``the principles of 1860.''
{Insight} cited the fact that three
presidential candidates are from the
South, adding, ``In a year of widespread
voter anger, intellectual partisans of
the Confederacy think they detect a wider
audience for their views.'' 
   Ludwig von Mises Institute head
Llewellyn Rockwell, a leading proponent
of reviving the Confederate Constitution,
compared Abraham Lincoln's fight for
equality to Stalin, according to
{Insight}: ``Lincoln philosophically
incorporated the Declaration of
Independence, with its statement that all
men are created equal, into the
Constitution, which made equality `the
idea of the state,' says Llewellyn
Rockwell.... After idealizing equality,
`Stalin is the next stop down the
line.'... We should celebrate the
diversity of human nature.'|'' 
   Rockwell also told {Insight}, ``I
think there is a cultural war coming up.
We're in a race war right now.'' 
   Thomas Fleming, editor of
{Chronicles} magazine, told {Insight}:
``The thing I like about the South'' is
its similarity to the Middle Ages, which
were ``gritty and dirty with people
fighting for what they believed in on a
day-to-day level. The thing I love about
medieval politics was that it was people
in the street rioting day-to-day.'' 

   Judge Hoeveler `moved' by
   Noriega sentencing statement
   
Federal Judge William Hoeveler of
Miami, who sentenced Panamanian Gen.
Manuel Noriega to 40 years in prison,
told the July 19 Ft. Lauderdale {Sun
Sentinel} that he was touched by
Noriega's sentencing speech on July 10. 
   During the seven-month trial,
Hoeveler had forbidden the defense to
mention the invasion of Panama or present
any ``political'' evidence, including the
general's information about the
drugs-for-weapons operations carried out
by White House operatives in Central
America, which Noriega had vigorously
opposed. His gag order preordained
Noriega's conviction. Even at the
sentencing, Hoeveler upheld prosecutors'
objections and forbade Noriega to talk
about some U.S. covert operations. 
   ``Whatever happened outside the four
corners of this courtroom is somebody
else's burden, not mine,'' he told the
{Sun Sentinel} ``I always have difficulty
with sentencing,'' added Hoeveler. ``I
always do, but I suffered more with this
one than I usually do,'' he said. ``I
sometimes wonder who we are to judge what
happens to the lives of others.'' 

   AL GORE,
as a congressman in 1979,
co-sponsored a resolution making April
27-May 1 ``Appropriate Technology Week''
which proclaims: ``We need to spend less
capital, provide more jobs by creating
more labor intensive technology.'' 

   AN FOIA SUIT
brought against the
Boston U.S. Attorney's office by The
LaRouche Campaign's 1984 treasurer Edward
Spannaus went to trial on July 15 in a
highly unusual move. The suit, brought
before Judge Robert Keeton seeks
documents concerning then-U.S. Attorney
William Weld's contacts with government
and private agencies including NBC and
the Anti-Defamation League during
1983-84. Of 5,000 FOIA cases, only a
handful have ever gone to trial. 

   UTAH'S
Supreme Court on July 17
again denied the appeal of William
Andrews, a black man scheduled to be
executed on July 30 for murders which he
did not commit. The only recourse now is
for his sentence to be commuted by the
Utah Board of Pardons.

   ROCHELLE ASCHER
filed a
petition before the U.S. Supreme Court on
July 16 to overturn her 1989 conviction
on trumped-up charges of ``securities
violations'' in Virginia. Ascher, who is
currently serving a 10-year sentence, was
originally sentenced to 86 years as part
of the ``get LaRouche'' effort. 

   AN EXTRADITION REQUEST
by the U.S. to
Nigeria for an accused drug dealer has
been rejected by a Nigerian court,
according to a wire from the News Agency
of Nigeria. Magistrate Sam Adelana,
quoted by NAN, said on July 18: ``A
fugitive offender can only be surrendered
when the magistrate was satisfied that a
{prima facie} case had been made against
him, but could not be surrendered when it
appeared that the trial would be
prejudiced.'' 

Trade 
   
Ontario official urges 
   an end to NAFTA talks 
   
Ontario Prime Minister Bob Rae
called Canadian Prime Minister Brian
Mulroney recently to urge him to take
Canada out of the Mexico-U.S.-Canada free
trade talks, and keep Canada out of a
North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA). 
   The July 15 Toronto {Globe and Mail}
quoted Rae on Mulroney, ``He wasn't going
to react on the phone'' to the proposal. 
   Rae made the same proposal to the
Ontario Provincial Legislature. Making
note of trade harassment from the U.S.
side, he said, ``Canada cannot stay at the
NAFTA negotiating table while these
American actions continue.'' 
   Meanwhile, columnist Jeffrey Simpson
wrote in Quebec's {Le Devoir} on July 15,
``Very soon, Mulroney will suffer another
headache.... The source won't be the
constitutional crisis but the free-trade
accords between Canada, the U.S., and
Mexico.'' Canadian polls (excluding
Quebec) show that two out of three
Canadians are against free trade. 
   According to sources in Ottawa,
reported {Le Devoir,} George Bush wants
signing ceremonies in Mexico City and
Niagara Falls before the U.S. election.
But for Mulroney, it wouldn't be a plus.
The constitutional crisis, the recession,
the unpopular Goods and Services Tax--7%
on almost everthing--the already low
popularity of his Conservative Party, and
now NAFTA, make any ostentatious show
around the accord very bad politics for
the Canadian prime minister. 

   Food 
   
Astronauts to enjoy 
   irradiated steaks 
   
Irradiated steaks will be back on
the astronauts' menu soon, after 50
pounds of rib-eye steaks,
irradiation-sterilized at the Vindicator
plant in Mulberry, Florida, are tested
for microbial content and then sent to
NASA's Johnson Space Center. The steaks
are cooked, sealed in laminated silver
pouches, and then irradiated to sterilize
them, giving them an indefinite shelf
life without refrigeration. 
   The Apollo astronauts ate irradiated
food, and preferred irradiated steaks
because they could be cooked to suit the
individual astronaut's taste, and then
processed without killing the taste.
According to a NASA dietician, other ways
of processing meat to ensure that it is
not contaminated--heat processing, for
example--made the meat taste like ``dog
food.'' 
   ``If it's safe for people up there,
how about now here on Earth?'' Sam
Whitney, president of Vindicator, asked. 

   Energy 
   
Iranian minister hits 
   European `greenhouse' tax 
   
Iranian Petroleum Minister
Gholamreza Aghazadeh blasted the European
Community's proposed ``greenhouse'' tax
on carbon products and oil, warning that
it would seriously affect expansion plans
of the oil-producing countries, in an
address to the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC) ministerial
energy seminar in Solstrand, Norway on
July 1-2. 
   If implemented, and the
environmental lobby is in a full-scale
mobilization to make sure it is, he said,
the measure will impose a $3 ``greenhouse''
tax on a barrel of oil in 1993, with that
rising to $10 by the year 2000. According
to the Opecna news agency, Aghazadeh said
that this tax would endanger ``our
economic development and that of our
future generations.'' 
   He pointed out that the tax placed
the greatest part of the burden on oil
and gas producers and ignored the
differences in carbon dioxide reduction
costs for different countries. 
   He also said that there was no
scientific certainty as to whether CO@s2
or water vapor was the cause of global
warming. He said that the extent of such
warming over the next 100 years, or its
impact on various parts of the world, also
remained in doubt. ``Making specific
policy decisions on the basis of such
incomplete information, demonstrates
overriding political considerations and
pressures on certain states versus its
scientific aspects,'' he warned.

   Space Technology 
   
A 400-meter optical 
   telescope planned 
   
An astonishing plan for an
Earth-based optical imaging
interferometer has been supported by an
National Science Foundation statement of
intent to provide half of the needed
$10.5 million funding. The planned
telescope is called the CHARA Array,
taking its name from the Center for High
Angular Resolution Astronomy at Georgia
State University in Atlanta, which
reported the plans and an NSF award of
initial funding (about $0.5 million) on
July 6. 
   The CHARA Array is projected to have
the light-gathering power of a single
mirror with a diameter of 400 meters. For
comparison, the largest telescope planned
heretofore, using four eight-meter
mirrors in combination, is the equivalent
of a single 16-meter telescope. This is
the Very Large Telescope planned by the
European Southern Observatory to be
complete in 1998 at a much higher price.
The Palomar telescope has a four-meter
mirror. 
   The resolving power of CHARA is
projected to be 150 times that of an
ideally functioning Hubble Space
Telescope. It is supposed to be
operational at a remote site in the
southwestern United States by late 1995. 
   It will be the most powerful
interferometric array operating in the
civilian sector--powerful enough to
detect planets around other stars and
monitor the progress of baseball games on
the Moon. Today, a lunar crater has to be
a mile in diameter before the best
telescope can see it. 
   The design calls for: 1) seven
optical-infrared telescopes arrayed in a
``Y'' to permit interferometry; 2)
adaptive optics--the mirrors are
deformable and high-speed sensors change
their shape as the diffraction of the
atmosphere changes, a technological
spin-off of Strategic Defense Initiative
program; and 3) reconstructive imaging to
make images from the interferometric
information. 

   Demographics
   
Africa entering an 
   `era of depopulation' 
   
``Africa is definitely entering an
era of depopulation,'' an African medical
doctor who works in Nigeria told {EIR}
July 16. ``From Zaire to the East African
coast down to Tanzania, AIDS is
everywhere. It is common knowledge.''
According to the World Health
Organization, AIDS is mostly confined to
cities in Africa, but this source
corroborated other first-hand reports
that AIDS has long been rampant in rural
areas. ``AIDS has wiped out entire towns,
entire villages, throughout Uganda and
Zaire. And nothing is being done about it
at all.'' 
   Since Nigeria implemented an
International Monetary Fund ``structural
adjustment program'' in 1986, health
services in rural areas have collapsed,
the African doctor told {EIR.} Some 65%
of the Nigerian population lives in the
countryside. The services ``have been
withdrawn,'' he said. Clinics have simply
closed down. 
   The biggest killers in Nigeria
remain yellow fever, drug-resistant types
of malaria, and cholera, he said. Yellow
fever and cholera wipe out entire
villages at a time, with a village
averaging about 1,000 people. 
   If health services are disappearing
in Nigeria, it is worse for the rest of
Africa, he added. Nigeria has 60% of the
doctors on the continent. 

   Environmentalism
   
Indian writer charges 
   `ozone hole' is a hoax 
   
Environmentalist hoaxes like that
around chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and the
``ozone hole'' are part of a program of
``technological apartheid'' against the
developing world, argued Indian writer
N.C. Menon in a {Hindustan Times} feature
on July 15. 
   ``It has been argued that the
environmental movement was created and
financed to this day by some of the
leading families in America and Europe
that control many of the giant
corporations.'' The motivation of the big
corporations in supporting ``aggressive
environmentalism'' is seen in ``the
campaign that was launched to ban CFCs on
the specious ground that they destroyed
the ozone layer. Horrendous stories were
spread about the thousands of deaths by
skin cancer resulting from the
destruction of the ozone layer.'' This is
all a fraud: ``The villain in CFCs is
known to be chlorine. But evaporating
seawater contains 600 million tons of
chlorine per year.... In comparison, the
chlorine in CFCs is only 0.75 tons a
year.'' 
   But ``the determined and
well-financed campaign'' is pushed, Menon
wrote, with the aim of banning CFCs, and
thereby driving Third World chemical
producers ``out of business, since they do
not have the resources and resource
capabilities to produce alternatives to
CFCs.'' 

   Development Policy
   
Science and technology are
   the most powerful tools
   
Science and technology are the most
powerful tools to solve the problems of
economic deprivation and deteriorating
environment, Dr. Subroto, secretary
general of the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC), told the 1992
Hania World Dialogue conference in Crete
on July 17. 
   Subroto maintained that aid through
loans had resulted in a reversed flow of
resources from the South to the North.
``Only through the development of a strong
indigenous base for science and
technology will the South be able to
solve its development and environmental
problems,'' he said, the OPEC news agency
Opecna reported. 
   Subroto emphasized that ``it is time
to revise our entrenched tolerance of the
economic imbalance between the rich and
the poor, which has dominated life
through much of this violent century.
Indeed, such imbalances seem increasingly
untenable in a borderless world.'' He
warned that the end of the Cold War
should not be allowed to give way to a
form of class war which would be more
ferocious and prolonged. 

   SEN. CONNIE MACK
(R-Fla.) wrote a
commentary in the July 16 {Wall Street
Journal} suggesting that ``the veil of
secrecy'' over International Monetary Fund
programs ``be lifted to allow for greater
accountability.... When the IMF agrees to
fund a given country, the country must
sign a letter of intent outlining the
economic policies it must follow to
receive the aid. Letters of intent are
seldom published; they are, in effect,
secret economic treaties, not subject to
review even by the legislatures of the
major IMF donors.'' 

   LITHUANIA
is facing drought
conditions, Minister of Agriculture
Rimvydas Survila reported at a cabinet
meeting July 8. The harvest of most crops
is expected to be 40-60% below last year.
Rainfall is only 5-20% the normal rate. 

   IRAQ
has announced that it is filing
suit against the Swiss-based Bank for
International Settlements for refusing to
release $350 million in Iraqi assets. 

   THE CONCORDE
aircraft reached
250,000 hours of supersonic flight time
in early July, more supersonic hours than
all western air forces combined. The
plane was built by British Aerospace and
Ae@aarospatiale of France, and first entered
service 15 years ago. But it is starting
to show its age: Since 1989, the top
section of the aircraft's rudder has
disintegrated three times during
supersonic flight. In each case, the
aircraft was able to land safely. 

   SANCTIONS
against South Korea are
likely after three days of talks with the
United States on shipping broke up
without progress on ``the key issues'' of
``liberalizing the Korean trucking and
rail industries and ending Korean
restrictions on transportation
middlemen,'' according to the {Journal of
Commerce.} The Federal Maritime
Commission has moved ``a step closer to
retaliating against South Korea for
prohibiting foreign freight forwarders
and consolidators from doing business in
that country.'' 


----
         John Covici
          covici@ccs.covici.com

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