From: covici@ccs.covici.com (John Covici)
Reply-To: covici@ccs.covici.com
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: News 09/11/92
Date: 13 Sep 92 19:5:38 GMT
Organization: Covici Computer Systems

Schiller Institute 
   visits Ukraine, Russia 
   
A delegation of the Schiller
Institute was in Kiev, Ukraine, Aug.
26-29, the week of the first anniversary
of Ukraine's declaration of independence.
Ukrainian political activists and
journalists, many of whom are preoccupied
with the growing pressure from Russia to
remain in the ruble economic zone and the
Russia-dominated political space, and who
remember bitterly George Bush's summer
1991 exhortations for Ukraine to be loyal
to Mikhail Gorbachov and not seek
independence at all, were very attentive
to in-depth reports on the institute's
work and on the U.S. presidential
campaign of Lyndon LaRouche and his
running mate, Rev. James Bevel. 
   Rachel Douglas of the Schiller
Institute (U.S.A.) and Karl-Michael Vitt
of the Schiller Institute in Germany
taped interviews with the English and the
German foreign broadcast services of
Radio Ukraine, as well as a joint
interview for broadcast inside Ukraine.
They gave interviews to two newspapers,
which are expected to publish them soon. 
   During a stay in Moscow the week
before, the Schiller Institute team was
interviewed by a major weekly and had
private meetings. Interest in the
LaRouche case among Moscow human rights
circles is high. In the latest issue of
{Svobodnoye Slovo,} newspaper of the
Democratic Union, well-known dissident
Valeriya Novodvorskaya illustrated what
she called the ``criminality'' of politics
as practiced by George Bush, as follows:
``There, Lyndon LaRouche, who spoke up in
the United States on behalf of eastern
Europe, Russia, and the Third World, which
are condemned by his compatriots and by
the International Monetary Fund to
poverty and bankruptcy, was not
understood. As a result, he got 15 years.
Supposedly for non-payment of taxes.'' 

   World Council of Churches 
   boosts population control
   
The World Council of Churches (WCC)
is taking a leading role in organizing
religious and church groups behind
population-control policies, according to
the magazine {People and the Planet,} a
publication jointly sponsored by the
International Planned Parenthood
Federation, the International Union for
the Conservation of Nature, and the
United Nations Fund for Population
Activities. The magazine is supported by
contributions from numerous
conservation and ecology groups. 
   Because of the WCC, ``population
became a central talking point'' among
religious and church leaders at the Earth
Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June, the
magazine writes. ``The WCC, which is
mainly made up of Protestant and Orthodox
churches, came out most strongly on the
need for population policies.  In a
pre-summit meeting held in one of Rio's
most impoverished neighborhoods, bringing
together 176 global church
representatives, the WCC argued that
couples should have more choice of birth
control methods.'' 
   According to WCC General Secretary
Emilio Castro, ``While the Catholic
Church is against the methodology of
using artificial birth control to
decrease population growth, the WCC
believes that the responsibility of
choosing the methodology belongs to the
couple.''  This position will help
promote what the group calls ``the right
to reproductive freedom.'' 
     {People and the Planet} contrasts
this view with that of the Vatican, as
expressed by Angelo Cardinal Sodano at the
Earth Summit: ``To apply methods which
are not in accord with the true nature of
man actually ends up by causing tragic
harm....'' 

   P.R.C. criticizes U.S.
   sale of F-16 to Taiwan
   
Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen
said that the ``U.S. government should be
held accountable for any serious
consequences'' of its decision to sell
150 F-16s to Taiwan, in what the BBC
called the ``most strongly worded Chinese
attack on the U.S. in years.'' Qian was
speaking at a press conference in Jakarta
on Sept. 3, where he was attending the
summit of the Non-Aligned Movement. 
   Qian Qichen said that the
Bush-approved U.S.-Taiwan deal violates
U.S. commitments made years back. 
Government spokesmen said that the deal
``will create tension in the now peaceful
Taiwan straits.'' 
     In Beijing, Vice Foreign Minister
Liu Huaqiu summoned U.S. Ambassador J.
Stapleton Roy to the Foreign Ministry to
lodge the ``strongest protest'' over
Bush's announcement that the U.S. would
sell the planes to Taiwan. ``The Chinese
side is shocked and outraged by this
decision and will have no choice but to
make a strong reaction,'' Liu said.
``This will lead to a major retrogression
in Chinese-U.S. relations and will
inevitably cause a negative impact on
Chinese-U.S. cooperation in the U.N. and
other organizations.'' Liu said that
China would withdraw from the arms
control talks of the ``Permanent Five''
Security Council members unless the
United States reconsidered its deal. Liu
called the sale a ``flagrant sabotage''
of China's efforts to seek peaceful
reunification with Taiwan. 
     Bush himself helped negotiate, 10
years ago, the agreement signed by the
United States and China to restrict U.S.
arms sales to Taiwan and eventually phase
them out. 

   Bosnian President: West
   betrayed its principles 
   
``The West's lack of political will
is ... surprising us unpleasantly,''
President Alija Izetbegovic told
{Newsweek} magazine in an interview
published on Aug. 31. ``The West betrayed
its own principles. It is fortunate that
the West didn't hesitate as much as it is
doing now at the beginning of the Second
World War. We would have Nazi rule in the
world,'' he said. 
   The interview was conducted afer
peace talks in London. Izetbegovic said
the talks had been disappointing, but
that ``certain progress has been
achieved.'' ``Our region is not a priority
for the United States,'' Izetbegovic said.
``The evil of which we are victims is, in
a way, of European origin. It is an
unhappy mixture of fascism and socialism,
born in Europe.'' 
   The policy of the West also came
under sharp criticism by Slovenian writer
Slavoj Zizek, in the Aug. 28 issue of the
British newspaper the {Guardian}:
``President Izetbegovic has paid for his
trust in the West, and for playing a
civilized game, with the total
destruction of his country. When Western
promises proved void, and the Serbians
attacked, the West assumed the posture of
an observer appalled at the outburst of
`primitive Balkan passions.'... There is
nothing self-generated about these ethnic
conflicts, the West was from the very
beginning included. Carrington, Baker,
Hurd, Genscher ... the West is thoroughly
responsible. For France and Great
Britain, the disintegration of Yugoslavia
resuscitated the phantom of the Fourth
Reich, perturbing the delicate balance of
European politics....
   ``The proper subject for analysis is
really the hysterical split that
characterises the attitude of the West:
the uncanny antagonism between its
`official' politics of preventing ethnic
cleansing, and its true desire to allow
the Serbs to finish their work.'' 

   Russia protests 
   riots in Germany
   
A declaration of the Russian Foreign
Ministry expressing ``grave concern''
over the neo-Nazi riots in Germany
arrived in Bonn on Sept. 4, emphasizing
that these riots pose a serious threat to
the lives and the well-being of Russians
in eastern Germany, and thereby, to
Russo-German relations. 
     The Foreign Ministry de@aamarche is
the first official Russian statement
since the riots began, in Rostock and
other east German cities, about two weeks
before. Two Russian soldiers luckily
escaped a dangerous situation which
developed when a neo-Nazi mob blocked
their jeep. 
     This has been the only recent
incident made known so far, but during
past periods of neo-Nazi
provocation--last autumn and in early
1990--attacks on Russian installations in
eastern Germany were recorded. Against the
background of visibly hardening positions
in Moscow, such provocations provide a
good opportunity for those who want to
damage or ruin Russo-German relations. 

   De Klerk asks for
   meeting with Mandela
   
South African President F.W. de
Klerk called on Sept. 9 for an emergency
meeting with African National Congress
(ANC) leader Nelson Mandela, as the
country threatens to go up in flames
following violence in the Ciskei
bantustan on Sept. 7. ``It is not
possible to negotiate constitutional
issues before the question of violence
has been dealt with,'' he said.
``Negotiations must be on the leadership
level. We must focus on the priority of
bringing this violence to an end.'' 
   The ANC said that while its
leadership would study de Klerk's
proposal, ``at face value, it seems that
the government is offering more of the
same.'' 
   The Anglo-Americans are calling for
an increased role for the United Nations
in South Africa. The London {Financial
Times} on Sept. 9 editorialized that the
Ciskei massacre ``underlines the need for
a speedy implementation of the [U.N.]
Security Council's plan for a U.N.
observer team.'' 
   South African newspapers are warning
of the country degenerating into another
Yugoslavia. Saying some ANC and
government figures appeared to have lost
faith in a peaceful settlement, the
{Johannesburg Star} said in an editorial:
``We cannot countenance this option,
because its inevitable flipside is
war.... It is to choose the Yugoslavian
path.'' 
   The Pretoria government issued
a memorandum on Sept. 9 calling for
U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
and the U.N. Security Council ``to
demand that the ANC/Communist Party
alliance abandons any further provocative
actions which put at risk the lives of
innocent South Africans.'' Botha asked
Boutros-Ghali to consider sending a
representative as soon as possible. 

   U.N. SANCTIONS
against Libya have
caused 150 civilian deaths, according to
a Libyan document submitted to the
Non-Aligned nations summit in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Libya has charged that the deaths
occurred among patients who could not be
treated because of a lack of medical
supplies or because they had to be
transported overland for treatment in
Egypt or Tunisia. 

   THE POLISH
government is acting like
the pre-1989 communist regime, in the
eyes of many Poles and especially in the
eyes of striking workers, wrote the
German daily {Berliner Zeitung} on Sept.
3. Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka is being
backed by the Solidarnosc movement in her
policy against the strikers. 

   COLOMBIAN
colonel Jaime Rami@aarez
Go@aamez was posthumously promoted to the
rank of general, at a ceremony on Sept. 2
in Bogota@aa. Rami@aarez had been top
official in the national police and a
dedicated anti-drug fighter. He was
assassinated by the drug mob in 1986. The
police, the Defense Ministry, and the
government recognized that Rami@aarez was
killed in the line of duty, and was
therefore entitled to a promotion.

   SERBIAN DICTATOR
Slobodan
Milosevic's Socialist Party and the
Serbian Radical Party have vowed to force
a vote of no confidence against Milan
Panic, the prime minister of
``Yugoslavia,'' who is a U.S. citizen.
The rift between Milosevic and Panic
reportedly widened after the peace
conference in London at the end of
August. 

   THE GUATEMALAN
Catholic
Church, which is dominated by the
``Theology of Liberation,'' issued an
apology for evangelizing the country, and
promised to promote the language and
religious practices of the indigenous
Mayans, in a pastoral letter issued on
Aug. 31. We ``humbly acknowledge the
mistakes made over these past 500 years
and ask for forgiveness of our indigenous
brothers,'' the letter states. 


Carnes confirmed by
   Senate, Gore ducked vote
   The Senate confirmed the appointment
of Alabama Assistant Attorney General
Edward Carnes to the bench of the 11th
Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 8.
Carnes wrote Alabama's death penalty
laws, which, among other things, allow
judges to impose the death penalty
even if the jury votes a life sentence. There are 500
death row inmates in the three-state
circuit, out of 2,500 in the country. 
   Carnes's major liberal support came
from the Southern Poverty Law Center's
Morris Dees, whose credentials as a
``civil rights leader'' were questioned
by Southern Christian Leadership
Conference President Rev. Joseph Lowery.
Dees, in an interview with the {New York
Times}, viciously shot back: ``The civil
rights community of which a lot of these
guys speak died when Dr. King died.'' 
   A recent profile of Carnes in the
{Times} stated that he ``has earned the
gratitude of White House and Justice
Department officials by rounding up
support for restrictions on {habeas
corpus}'' which were contained in the
Bush administration's crime bill. Carnes
has brought many state attorneys general
into support for the Bush-Rehnquist
proposals to effectively deny federal
{habeas} proceedings to state prisoners,
especially in capital cases. Some 31
state attorneys general supported his
nomination. 
   During a June 1991 appearance before
the House Judiciary Committee, a Justice
Department spokesman presented a
statistical study of capital cases
prepared by Carnes, in support of the
administration's argument that federal
courts should not interfere with state
executions by hearing constitutional
claims presented in {habeas }petitions.
   Despite his liberal aura, Tennessee
Sen. Al Gore ducked the vote, so as not
to embarrass his pro-death penalty
running mate, Bill Clinton. On Sept. 8,
Gore's office told {EIR}, ``We are
taking no position on the Carnes
nomination.'' 

   Times defends I.F. Stone 
   from KGB revelations 
   
Herb Romerstein, a former Soviet
expert for the U.S. Information Agency,
has gotten into a surprisingly heated
brawl with the editors of the {New York
Times} over their defense of the late
I.F. Stone from charges that he was a KGB
agent. In a letter published in the Aug.
31 issue, Romerstein detailed his
discussions with former KGB officials,
including Gen. Oleg Kalugin, in which
they revealed that a prominent American
journalist (whom one KGB officer
identified by name as Stone) had been on
the KGB's payroll during the 1950s and
again in the 1960s. When Romerstein
revealed Stone's KGB ties in an article
in the June 6, 1992 issue of {Human
Events,} the {Times} responded with an
Aug. 13 editorial attacking Romerstein
and Accuracy in Media head Reed Irvine
for spreading ``repugnant'' and
``grotesque'' disinformation. In an
accompanying letter to the {Times},
Irvine assailed the daily for
``canonizing'' Stone in an editorial,
three signed articles, and a 1,750-word
obituary when he died earlier this year. 
   Apart from his pro-Moscow track
record, Stone was a long-time
LaRouche-hater, who finished his long,
ignoble career by penning a book-length
assault against Plato, in which he argued
that Socrates deserved to die for his
supposed crimes against Athenian
democracy. 

   Report documents U.S. 
   family's disappearance 
   
``New Realities of the American
Family,'' a new report by the Population
Reference Bureau in Washington, reveals
the total change of the pattern of U.S.
families in the past 30 years. The
report, by demographer Carol De Vita,
states that the once-dominant
single-income, two-parent U.S. family is
a thing of the past, describing only one
in five families. About 36% of U.S.
families are married couples with
children, but a large proportion of these
are step-families. A full third of all
Americans are part of step-families, and
this will rise to one in two by the year
2000, the report states. 
   The average age at first marriage is
now the highest in a century: 26.3 years
for men and 24.1 for women. The marriage
rate fell almost 30% between 1970 and
1990, and the divorce rate increased 40%.
Over 50% of mothers with preschool
children worked outside the home in 1991,
compared with 20% in 1960. Now, 25% of
all births are to unmarried women,
compared to 20% in 1960. Nearly one in
eight families is headed by a single
parent, who is five times more likely to
be a woman, and therefore, more
impoverished. The percentage of children
living with a single parent, 25%, has
doubled since 1970 and tripled since
1960. 

   Article on Palme hit 
   filed in FOIA suit 
   
A copy of the recent article in
the Swedish journal {Journalisten}
exposing the Stasi disinformation
campaign to pin the assassination of
Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme on
Lyndon LaRouche was filed on Sept. 4 in a
pending Freedom of Information Act suit.
The FOIA suit was filed two years ago by
LaRouche associate and onetime
co-defendant Michele Steinberg in order
to force the FBI and Justice Department
to release their files on the Feb. 28,
1986 assassination. 
   In the legal papers, Steinberg
attached the {Journalisten} article, ``He
Laid Wrong Tracks Concerning the Palme
Murder,'' by Herbert Brehmer, and she
said that it ``provides dramatic
confirmation of the assertions made by
plaintiff and her associates that the
efforts to link her and her associates,
including Lyndon LaRouche, to the Palme
assassination, were a Soviet-run
disinformation campaign.'' Steinberg has
previously argued that the FBI's claim of
``national security'' in order to
withhold many of the Palme documents was
simply being used to prevent disclosure
of the FBI's involvement in this
Soviet-run disinformation campaign, as
part of the effort to imprison LaRouche.
The judge in the case recently ordered
the FBI to submit the withheld documents
to him so that he can examine them in his
chambers. 

   Tenth anniversary 
    of Gosch kidnap noted 
   
CBS News nationally aired an
interview with child sex abuse victim
Paul Bonacci on Sept. 4, as part of a
report on the 10th anniversary of the
kidnaping of Johnny Gosch, which took
place on Labor Day weekend. The
kidnaping of 12-year-old Johnny Gosch
from his Des Moines, Iowa paper route
set off a campaign to advertise the
disappearance of children by putting
their photos on milk cartons. A second
Des Moines boy was also kidnaped shortly
after. Paul Bonacci's attorney John
DeCamp has shown that these kidnapings are
being done by a Satanic child sex abuse
ring based out of Omaha, Nebraska, and
involving prominent figures throughout
the U.S. 
   Interviewed by CBS, Gosch's mother
said she thought the kidnaping was a
part of a ``conspiracy'' to use him for
``prostitution or pornography.'' The
report then commented that this theory
centers around a Nebraska prison inmate
who claims to have been part of the
kidnapping team, referring to Paul
Bonacci. CBS remarked that his
information is considered unreliable
because he is said to be mentally ill.
Bonacci, in fact, suffers multiple
personality disorder as a result of years
of abuse and torture by the Omaha ring. 
   In June 1991, the CBS News program
``48 Hours'' made a strenuous effort to
debunk the allegations of another
victim-witness, Alisha Owen, when it ran a
lying account of her perjury trial,
during the jury deliberations. Owen was
convicted of perjury--as was Bonacci--for
refusing to recant her testimony. 

   Virginia's `Bloody Mary' 
   ranks high in executions 
   
The Sept. 2 issue of the
{Washington Post} ran a front-page
feature on Virginia Attorney General Mary
Sue Terry's escalating the pace of
executions to one per month, putting the
state fourth for executing the most
people in the last 10 years (15), behind
Texas, Florida, and Louisiana. 
   An accompanying chart on all 49
death row inmates gives their names, and
facts surrounding their convictions.
Author Sue Anne Pressley quoted several
of them, and underscored that ``killing
them, years later, after keeping them
isolated and dehumanized, is just as
brutal as the crimes they committed. It
does not take into account their remorse
or rehabilitation.'' Each one hopes that
his execution will cause the death
penalty to be outlawed, she said. 
   Willie Leroy Jones, scheduled to be
executed Sept. 15, is quoted: ``My
friends here, it's going to hurt them
when I go. People can say what they want,
but I live with a bunch of human beings
on death row.'' 
   Terry, who has gubernatorial
ambitions for next year, announced two
more killings: Charles Sylvester Stamper,
a 39-year-old African-American, is to be
executed on Oct. 28, and Timothy Dale
Bunch, a white 33-year-old, is to be
executed Dec. 10. Sources say that Terry
will announce another two executions
before the end of the year. 

   Gore is a `glazed-eyed 
   environmental ideologue' 
   
Sen. Al Gore is characterized as
``a glazed-eyed, environmental
ideologue'' by syndicated columnist Mona
Charen in her Sept. 2 column. She
reviewed a few of the statments in Gore's
book {Earth in the Balance} and showed
that it was filled with ``one scientific
whopper after another.'' She pointed out
that there is no consensus about what is
causing the ozone hole. Some scientists
note that the ozone layer had thickened
during the 1960s and that current
thinning may be natural fluctuations in
the atmosphere or be caused by sunspot
activity. 
   On the issue of global warming,
Charen quoted Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, former
chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission
and former governor of Washington. Dr.
Ray's book-length expose@aa {Trashing the
Planet} shows that all of man's air
pollution since the industrial revolution
does not begin to equal the material
``spewed into the air from just three
volcanoes: Krakatoa in 1883, Mount Katmai
in 1912, and Hekla in 1947.'' 

   BUSH BIO BOOSTED
in Quayle's
back yard. Georgia Irey, a LaRouche
Democrat with a daily radio program in
Dan Quayle's hometown of Huntington,
Indiana, recently interviewed Anton
Chaitkin, co-author of {EIR'}s {George
Bush: the Unauthorized Biography.} 

   ROSS PEROT
neglected to say,
once again, whether he was a presidential
candidate or not in his Sept. 2 {New York
Times} editorial section commentary,
entitled ``How Stupid Do They Think We
Are?'' Perot says that he is on the
ballot in 48 states and will soon be on
the ballot in all 50 states. Speaking
about his following, he wrote: ``Their
goal is to influence every congressional
race, as well as the presidential race,
and they are active in every state. At
their request, I am actively supporting
them....'' 

   IRWIN SUALL,
the
Anti-Defamation League's ``Fact-Finding''
director, lost his composure after being
briefed on the revelations that the Stasi
invented the lie that Lyndon LaRouche was
to blame for the assassination of Olof
Palme. Suall's division of the ADL played
a major role in spreading the lying
``facts'' throughout the United States. 

   CLARK CLIFFORD,
the
85-year-old Washington powerbroker, is at
risk for a fatal heart attack if forced
to go to trial in New York, rather than
Washington, according to court papers
submitted by Virginia cardiologist Albert
A. Del Negro on Sept. 1. Clifford is
under indictment in the Bank of Commerce
and Credit International case. 

   C-SPAN
broadcast a forum on
the book {The Holes in the Ozone Scare}
on Sept. 3. The forum, which took place
on Sept. 2 during the International Space
Conference in Washington, featured the
book's co-author Rogelio Maduro, and
Marjorie Hecht, editor of {21st Century
Science & Technology} magazine which
published the book. 
Germany
   
Bonn policies will 
   ruin the economy
   
The chief executive of the German
federation of medium-sized businesses,
Dieter Haerthe, charged on Sept. 2 that
the German government's policies are
ruining the economy. ``The government
keeps on demanding better performance
[from industry] without creating the
necessary policy framework. That in the
end will break the economy's back,'' he
said. 
   Haerthe said that instead of working
with industry to develop sound financial
and economic policies, the government
produced ``a constant flow of half-baked
ideas,'' like the low-interest, tax-free
``German bond,'' or the forcing of
non-investing, high-wage earners to buy
government bonds to support the economy
in the East. 
   Haerthe said that German Chancellor
Helmut Kohl thinks Germany's
{Mittelstand} of around 300,000
medium-sized companies is good only for
paying taxes and ``listening to his
sermons.'' 
   Haerthe's comments echoed those of
Heinrich Weiss, who recently resigned as
head of the BDI industry federation,
charging that Kohl had lost touch with
the business community. 

   Labor
   
Polish government
   escalates crackdown
   
Acting in line with International
Monetary Fund (IMF) demands, the Polish
government is cracking down on labor
protests, forcing the management of the
Tychy FSM auto-making plant to
threaten 2,400 of the 7,000 workers
employed there with layoffs. This would
affect most of those 3,000 workers who
continued the strike at the plant--even
after the government told them to call it
off and used riot police against workers
in late August. The strike wave has been
in opposition to IMF austerity demands
and to plans to close down large chunks of
Polish industry, mining, manufacturing,
and agriculture. 
   On Aug. 31, the Tychy FSM management
presented a list of the first 400
workers, including 64 strike leaders, who
will be fired. This is approximately all
of the organized strike membership which
the Solidarnosc 80 union, the catalyst of
the strike, has at the plant. Solidarnosc
80 has so far been the only one of six
dissident unions to protest the firing
policy and to endorse a continuation of
the strike. The other unions are thinking
about calling off the strike and playing
by the government's austerity rules in
order to save ``their'' workers' jobs. 
   A government deadline to the
striking coal miners at the Rozbark mine
in Silesia, and to strikers at the Ursus
agricultural machinery 
plant in Warsaw, which expired Aug. 31,
passed without any concessions from the
workers. These two plants are the ones
expecting government-threatened mass
layoffs affecting several thousand
workers, in retaliation for the strike. 

   Agriculture
   
China attempting 
   green `revolution' 
   
China is attempting to revolutionize
agriculture, including importing more
superior varieties of crops to get ``quick
results'' in higher yield and quality of
food production, the Aug. 24 {China
Daily} reported. 
   The Chinese population, content with
sufficient, even low-quality, grain as
recently as the early 1980s, is now
demanding fruit, vegetables, and meat as
well as high-quality rice. China,
however, is not able to meet the demands.
Farmers' incomes, which average about
$130 per year, have gone down relative
to those of the urban population since the
mid-1980s. Since farmers make up 80% of
China's population, if this stagnation
continues it will be impossible to move
China out of its current status as a
nation with one of the lowest standards
of living in the world. 
   More efficient agriculture and
diversification are also essential to
absorb China's massive ``surplus rural
labor force,'' which is at least 100
million people. The unsolved problems of
transporting agricultural products to
markets and the deliberate impoverishment
of scientists and technicians, which has
kept Chinese agriculture very backward,
must be dealt with if China is to
increase its production, the paper
admitted. 

   Economic Austerity
   
IMF program will boost
   joblessness in Egypt
   
Intensified austerity measures
agreed upon with the International
Monetary Fund will render 40% of the
Egyptian people jobless by the year 1997,
increasing national unemployment to 6
million, economic experts reported. 
   The government in Cairo announced
that it will now go ahead with the
privatization of 76 state-owned companies
which was negotiated with the IMF in May
1991. This means that about 400,000
industrial workers will be
fired--affecting, for example, 15% of the
work force in the chemical industry and
about the same percentage in the
construction sector. 
   Additional problems have to be faced
by the Egyptian economy, because other Arab
states, especially the sheikhdoms of
the
Persian Gulf, are sending Egyptian
guest workers home, replacing them with
much cheaper labor from Asian countries. 

   `Shock Therapy'
   
Ukraine again rejects
   IMF austerity program
   
The government of Ukraine again
officially rejected International
Monetary Fund (IMF) shock therapy
policies, in an Aug. 31 press conference
in Kiev. Ukrainian Minister of the
Economy Valentin Symonenko, who this
summer assumed office after his pro-IMF
predecessor, Volodomyr Lanovoy, was
dumped, announced that ``an immediate
transition to the market economy is
unrealistic, as the Russian experience
demonstrates.'' 
   Asked for his reaction to IMF
statements that unless Ukraine adopts the
course being followed by acting Russian
Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, it will
receive no credits, Symonenko replied:
``There are global differences between
what we are doing and what the IMF is
suggesting. We do not need radical shock
therapy. Instead, we need slow,
evolutionary reform.'' 
   Unfortunately, the Ukrainian
government, while rejecting radical IMF
``reforms,'' has not broken with the IMF
program. Symonenko announced that he will
present a package to the 
Parliament on Sept. 16 which will keep
the industrial sector intact, but submit
it to gradual, controlled privatization. 
   Symonenko also said that he has
issued a decree, which will take effect
on Sept. 5, for the issuance of a
30,000-ruble bank account for every
Ukrainian adult citizen, whereby they can
only use the account to purchase state
property. Symonenko has been given
sweeping powers to implement his economic
program by decree, which, as seen in this
special bank account case, he does not
hesitate to exercise. 

   Infrastructure
   
Volvo head urges private
   bank to speed investment 
   
Volvo chairman P.G. Gyllenhammar and
other industrial leaders of the European
Round Table Group have grown weary of
waiting for governments to invest in
necessary improvements in European
infrastructure, according to the business
paper {Dagens Industri} on Aug. 28. The
group planned to propose measures at
a press conference in Paris on Sept.
14 to lure
the private business sector to invest in
roads, railroads, harbors, and
telecommunications system. A
special bank for infrastructural
investments should be established, with
loans covered by risk insurance and state
guarantees. 
   The proposal sheds additional light
on Gyllenhammar's sudden public criticism
of the Maastricht Treaty for European
Union. 
   The group estimates a European need
of infrastructure investments of over 200
billion deutschemarks ($140 billion) for
the coming years. It claims that
governments will simply not have the
capital to invest, because of the clause
in the Maastricht agreement which
sets an upper
limit for state debt of 60% of Gross
National Product. With Belgium's state
debt at 129%, Italy's at 100%, and
Holland's at 80%, the governments of the
European Community will instead be forced
to reduce expenditures than make larger
investments. 
   The group also claims that a
coherent policy and long-term perspective
for Europe as a whole are key to building
enough confidence among private
investors. The mobile telecommunication 
system of the Scandinavian countries and
the high-speed trains of Germany and
France demonstrate such a need,
according to Gyllenhammar. ``Europe may
have lost a leading position in the world
market by such `lone wolf' strategies,''
the group wrote in its invitation for the
Paris press conference. 

   Medicine
   
Anti-AIDS drug Kemron
   reevaluated by U.S.
   
The anti-AIDS drug Kemron, developed
in Africa, is getting a second look by
the U.S. medical establishment, the Aug.
21 {Detroit Free Press} reported. Kemron
is a form of low-dose alpha interferon,
which is derived from a chemical the body
makes to fight infections. 
   The drug's developer, Kenyan
researcher Davy Koech, has issued a new
report summarizing what he called
breakthroughs in the treatment of 2,500
African patients, which is the basis of a
reevaluation of the drug by federal AIDS
officials. The National Medical
Association, a group of black physicians,
has called for more federal studies of
the drug, based on its endorsement by the
Nation of Islam. 
   The {Free Press} noted that Koech and the
Nation of Islam's health minister, Dr. Abdul
Alim Muhammad, ``don't agree on
everything. But they believe low-dose
human alpha interferon works, and that
arrogance and politics have stalled its
development.'' Koech said that the initial
negative evaluations of Kemron by the
U.S. National Institutes of Health were
caused by U.S. drug firms, which
``have a huge financial stake in the
treatment of AIDS.'' 

   SOMALIA
is facing famine far worse
than anybody had anticipated, stated U.N.
coordinator for Somalia Mohammed Sahnoun
Sept. 3. He said that U.N. personnel in
Somalia had made ``dramatic discoveries,''
finding many people in villages who were
simply staying in their homes ``patiently
waiting to die.'' 

   SOME 75 MILLION
people (1.5% of the
world population) are now ``uprooted'' in
the greatest mass migration in world
history, the U.N. Development Program
reported in its July 1992 report. Of
these, at least 18 million have fled
across national borders, and 23 million
are displaced in their own countries. 

   UKRAINE
may not be selling the
Varyag-class aircraft carrier to China,
the Taipei-based {Free China Journal}
reported Aug. 28, in contrast to several
reports of the ``confirmed'' sale in the
Anglo-American press. Deputy chairman of
the Ukraine Parliament Volodymyr Grinyov
said in Taipei that no decision had been
made to sell Beijing the carrier. 

   BRITAIN
will have to live with at
least another two years of recession,
predicted Lord Blakenham, the chairman of
Pearson Plc, one of Britain's biggest
firms, on Sept. 4. Because of structural
problems, there is no hope for a recovery
in the next two years, he declared. 

   RUSSIA
has agreed to supply India
with critical military spare parts,
Indian Defense Minister Sharad Pawar said
in New Delhi Aug. 22, the Press Trust of
India reported. Moscow's assurance is
part of a $400 million extended-credit
facility that Russian President Boris
Yeltsin promised in July, Pawar said. 

   FINANCIAL
experts from the World
Bank arrived in Cambodia on Sept. 3 to
``assess the current financial
situation,'' according to Eric Falt,
spokesman for the U.N. Transitional
Authority in Cambodia, Reuters reported.
Inflation is at more than 110% a year,
and unemployment appears set to increase
as rival armies begin to demobilize. 



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