From: covici@ccs.covici.com (John Covici)
Reply-To: covici@ccs.covici.com
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: News 10/09/92
Date: 15 Oct 92 0:14:42 GMT
Organization: Covici Computer Systems

Mossad recall underlines 
   Middle East war threat
   
All station chiefs from around the
world of the Israeli intelligence service
Mossad were called home to Israel over
the weekend of Sept. 26, a Europe-based
intelligence insider told {EIR.} The
report provided additional evidence for
the alert issued by U.S. independent
presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche
(see last week's {EIR}) that the arrest
of Jordanian parliamentarian Laith
Shubeilat portended the danger of a
``Temple Mount'' incident and a broader
Middle East crisis. 
   ``LaRouche might be right. All I can
tell you is that there is a lot of
activity in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv right
now. Something big is in the wind. All
Mossad station chiefs from around the
world have been called home to Israel. It
happened this weekend,'' Sept. 26-27, the
source said. ``I don't know what it means,
but things like that, in the past, have
happened only before very big
developments, like the 1967 Six-Day War.
It could mean anything, from an imminent
change in government in Israel, to a
major assault being planned. Or, it could
be what you're warning about. Or,
something else. In any case, the Israelis
are obviously not taking any chances.'' 

   Japan warns China 
   against military buildup
   
Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Koji
Kakizawa has sharply criticized Beijing's
recent purchase of a fleet of Russian
Sukhoi 27 fighter aircraft, and its plans
to buy a Ukrainian aircraft carrier. This
means that ``the number of countries which
feel a threat from China will increase,''
Kakizawa told a Tokyo symposium, entitled
``Twenty Years of Japan-China Relations,''
in late September. 
   ``Our aid to China over six years is
$5.6 billion and the aircraft carrier
costs $2 billion,'' Kakizawa told
reporters. 
   Former Japanese Foreign Minister
Saburo Okita told the symposium that
China's carrier purchase violates Japan's
``Four Principles'' of foreign aid, which
say that Tokyo will cut aid to countries
spending too much on weapons. Okita is a
top Trilateral Commission collaborator
and Sinophile, indicating the extent of
the anger in Tokyo over the Chinese
military buildup. 

   Partition of Lebanon
   being pushed by U.S.
   
The United States is proposing to
Lebanon that it take part in multipartite
negotiations between Syria and Israel,
the only outcome of which would be the
partition of the country, according to
Lebanese sources. The U.S. policy is
consistent with the implementation of the
Bernard Lewis Plan for the dismemberment
of nation-states in the Middle East. 
   Syria, after the recent elections in
Lebanon, instead of withdrawing to the
northern part of the country in September
as stipulated by the Taif Accords, has
increased its stranglehold on that
country. 
   In the context of overall
negotiations, the Israelis, according to
these sources, would settle for letting
Syria
take the Bekaa Valley and the north of
the country. The Israelis, for their
part, want to keep southern Lebanon
because of their need for water from
the Litani River--which they are already
pumping into Israel through secret
subterranean conduits, sources report.
What would be left of Lebanon would then
be the small Christian enclave in the
central part of the country. 
   The other major issue of
negotiations concerning Lebanon, is the
naturalization of some 400,000
Palestinians who have been living
illegally in Lebanon for years. The Taif
Accords called for their naturalization,
a step which many world powers backed in
order to turn a million Palestinians into
Lebanese, leaving that many less to be
part of a Jordan-Palestinian
confederation. 

   Normalize relations,
   Vietnam urges U.S. 
   
Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen
Manh Cam said in a speech to the U.N.
General Assembly that ``the normalization
of relations between Vietnam and the
United States will benefit not only the
Vietnamese and the American peoples but
also peace and stability in Southeast
Asia,'' Reuters reported Oct. 2. 
   Cam said Vietnam had ``turned the
page of past history'' and looked forward
to the future. ``We have done whatever
possible in cooperating effectively with
the United States to settle the question
of Americans missing in action during the
Vietnam War.'' 
   The issue of missing U.S. servicemen
has blocked the normalization of
relations, and the United States still
maintains a trade embargo against
Vietnam. It is quite possible that the
current Senate hearings on the POW-MIA
issue were designed to clear the POW-MIA
issue from the negotiating table. 
   On human rights, Cam said that every
state and nation strove for the ideal of
democracy and freedom in its own way
rather than through a ``stereotyped or
dogmatic approach and still less through
the adoption of models imposed from
outside.'' In a reference to the United
States, he added: ``It is unacceptable
that one nation may impose its own
standards of democracy and human rights
upon another nation. And it is all the
more unacceptable that one nation may
stand as judge above another nation.'' 

   Savimbi issues threats 
   over Angolan election 
   
Jonas Savimbi, the head of the
Angolan rebel group UNITA, in a statement
issued on Oct. 3, charged the ruling
communist-backed Popular Movement
for the Liberation of Angola
(MPLA) with vote fraud, and hinted at a
new war, according to U.S. press
accounts. ``It is the duty of us freedom
fighters, those who through their blood
and sweat brought about democracy to this
country, to tell you that the MPLA is not
winning and cannot win,'' he said. 
   Results have the MPLA ahead by 55%
to 25% for UNITA. International observers
have not reported fraud. The bulk of the
UNITA support was expected to come from
the countryside, but preliminary vote
totals had shown the MPLA getting a
smaller margin in the cities than
expected. The vote is still coming in. 

   Spanish defense head 
   resigns over budget cuts
   
Spanish Secretary of State for
Defense Jose@aa Miguel Herna@aandez resigned in
late September in the face of the biggest
budget cuts in 20 years. The defense
budget will be cut overall by 1.5%. 
   In May before the latest cuts, he
had said, ``First they told us to tighten
our belts. Now they want us to drop our
trousers.'' The latest defense cuts
include 9% less for investment, which
means that the Baza@aan state shipyards at
Cartagena will be shut down along with
the military satellite program and the
radar program for the airplanes on the
carrier {Pri@aancipe de Asturias.} These
planes, at present, cannot fly at night. 
   Speaking to Congress, Economics
Minister Solchaga also announced that
transport subsidies will be cut by 7.5%,
the housing budget by 0.4%, and
industrial investment by 4%. 
   According to Solchaga, ``everything
that can be cut from the budget will be
cut,'' except debt payment. Payments for
interest on public debt are to increase
by 20%. The debt burden is such he said,
that ``budget growth for 1993 will be nil,
leaving aside expenditure for interest
rates. The accumulation of the public
deficit, and debt to pay that back, along
with the high interest rates, has forced
us to increase by 400 billion pesetas the
budgetary provision to cover this.'' 

   Belgium debates 
   partition scheme 
   
The Belgian Parliament is debating a
project to create relatively independent
regional parliaments and governments for
both major Belgian regions: Flanders, in
the north, which is Dutch-speaking, and
Wallonia in the south, which is
French-speaking. While the project is
officially to counter the so-called
``separatist virus,'' it is in fact fueling
it. Although approval requires a
two-thirds majority vote, the fact that
the Oct. 3 French daily {Le Monde}
covered the story on its front page
demonstrates the seriousness of the
situation. 
   Opinion polls in Flanders show that
the number of those in favor of partition
has risen to over 30%, the highest ever.
This shift in sentiment has been
accelerated by studies done at the
University of Louvain, popularizing the idea that
each (rich northern) Flemish family is
paying the equivalent of one car to a
(indebted southern) Wallonian family
every four years. 
   Similar stories are coming out on
the Wallonian side. The summer cover
issue of the weekly {Le Vif-L'Express,}
for example, was entitled ``What If
Belgium Were about to Fall Apart?'' The
report was obviously intended to plant
the ``separatist virus'' in people's mind
along the line expressed by the leader of
a newly created ``Wallonian movement,''
Maurice Lebeau, who expressed his
enthusiasm for the ``adventure for
Walloons; the independence would be in
the case the acceleration of the process
of regionalization would lead to
partition.'' The article mooted 10
scenarios for the case in which Belgium
would simply be attached to France, in
the event that Wallonia couldn't repay
its enormous debts, expecting France
would help. 

   Germany to approve `out
   of area' deployments?
   
French Defense Minister Pierre
Joxe and German Defense Minister Volker
Ruhe announced at a colloquium on the
``New Strategic Debate'' in late
September in Paris that negotiations
between the founders of the French-German
Eurocorps and the NATO Supreme Allied
Command, Europe (Saceur) will begin in
December. The Atlantic Council will
mediate the talks on what the Eurocorps
could contribute toward allied defense. 
   ``What is decisive,'' stated Ruhe, ``is
that the creation of a European defense
identity not be perceived as being in
competition with NATO.'' 
   The announcement came amid pressure
on Germany to authorize NATO ``out of
area'' (out of Europe), deployments for
use against the Third World. Ruhe
predicted that German military forces
could be authorized by the Parliament
to
participate in out of area deployments as
early as autumn 1994. 

   MIKHAIL GORBACHOV,
the former Soviet
President, has been barred from leaving
Russia by the Constitutional Court
because he has refused to testify in a
trial to determine whether the Communist
Party should be outlawed.
Gorbachov was forced to cancel a
trip to South Korea. 

   INDIA
plans to invite Indonesia,
Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and
possibly other Southeast Asian countries
to participate in joint naval exercises
in the Indian Ocean planned for the
spring of 1993, Navy chief Adm. L. Ramdas
told a seminar in New Delhi, organized by the Naval
Foundation, a government-supported
think-tank. 

   THE NEW SOUTH WALES
synod of the
Uniting Church of Australia, which claims
1.2 million members, voted Sept. 27 to
support the legality of abortion, without
limiting it to medical necessity, rape,
or defect in the fetus, according to
Reuters. The Uniting Church, formed in
the 1970s, embraces the Presbyterian,
Congregational, and Methodist churches. 

   IRAN
and the United Arab Emirates
broke off talks over the Iranian
occupation of the island of Abu
Musa at the entrance of the Persian Gulf
on Sept. 28. The immediate reason talks
broke down was the inclusion by the U.A.E.
of two other disputed islands, the
greater and lesser Tumbs, seized by Iran
in 1971. 
                   
   THE UNITED NATIONS
Security Council
impounded most of Iraq's oil-related
assets on Oct. 2, the first time the U.N.
has ordered the seizure of a nation's
money. One provision in the resolution
forbids states from allowing Iraq to use
some of its frozen funds to buy food and
medical supplies. 

   BULGARIA
is the center of interest
of dirty money launderers, said Bulgarian
Foreign Affairs Vice Minister Valentin
Dobrev on Sept. 30 at the First
International Conference on Laundering
Money, held at the Council of Europe in
Strasbourg, France.  

Rock singer rips pope 
   photo on NBC program 
   
Bald Irish rock singer Sinead
O'Connor called for people to ``fight the
enemy'' and ripped up a photo of the pope
on ``Saturday Night Live,'' Oct. 3, in a
shocking display of satanic hatred, which
took even the cynics at NBC network by
surprise. O'Connor, in a later interview,
blamed child abuse on the Catholic
Church. In her appearance on ``Saturday
Night Live,'' she performed the song ``War''
written by the late Jamaican marijuana
advocate Bob Marley. When she reached the
final refrain, ``We have confidence in
the victory of good over evil,'' she
pulled a photograph of the pope out from
behind her back and ripped it into four
pieces, flinging them into the face of
the audience. ``Fight the {real} enemy,''
she spat. 
   Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the
New York archdiocese, where NBC and
``Saturday Night Live'' are based, told
press: ``To me what she did was an act of
hatred and promoted intolerance. Pope
John Paul is a tireless advocate for
peace.'' A spokesman for Bishop Daily
said, ``I'm sure the Holy Father would be
the first one to say a prayer for her to
come to grips with whatever is angering
her.'' 
   O'Connor's action comes at the same
time that Madonna, another former
Catholic and rock star who has viciously
attacked the church, has come out with a
so-called ``music video'' that displays
such explicit hetero- and homosexual
activity, that even the hard-core MTV
will only air those portions of it late
at night. MTV had earlier placed
strictures on the video ``Erotica'' that
Madonna could not ``desecrate'' the cross
or show sexual relations with animals or
minors. 

   Cisneros takeover of 
   network gets FCC okay 
   
The Federal Communications
Commission approved the sale by Hallmark
of Univision, the largest
Spanish-language TV network in the U.S.,
to a consortium headed by Mexican TV
magnate Emilio Azca@aarraga, Venezuela's
Gustavo Cisneros, and Norman Lear's
partner Jerrol Perenchio, 
according to UPI. The FCC approved the
deal on Sept. 23, but it was not reported
until Oct. 1. The approval process was
expected to take up to a year; instead,
the FCC rushed it through in five months. 
   Approval was granted without a
hearing, although several
objections had been filed against the transaction.
One of the objections was filed by {EIR},
which, among other issues, noted that
Cisneros does not believe in free speech
and has a proven record of squashing
dissent, and that he does not meet the
U.S. character qualifications to run a
broadcast company, given several
instances in which his name and/or the
name of his companies and associates have
been alleged to be linked to corrupt
activities, including drug-trafficking
and drug-money laundering. 

   Royko roasts blackout 
   of Iraqi child mortality 
   
In a most trenchant column, which
was printed in the Virginia {Winchester
Star} on Sept. 30, syndicated columnist
Mike Royko takes up the theme of the
recent study on deaths of Iraqi children,
which was published in the Sept. 24
edition of the {New England Journal of
Medicine.} The study by the Harvard
School of Public Health, a followup from
last year by the Harvard team that
visited Iraq, attributed the high
child mortality to the U.N. embargo and
the U.S. bombing of non-military-related
infrastructure, and found this year that
46,900 more children under the age of 5
had died as a result of the continuing
hardship inflicted on Iraq by the
``allies.'' 
   Royko lampoons the media for not
considering this story newsworthy, and
puts forward dramatic ways in which the
story could be tailored to media tastes:
If 46,900 children were put in a football
stadium, and then it were blown up, or if
a giant meteor were to hit Disney World
some afternoon. 

   Local Mich. candidate 
   blasts Kevorkian backers 
   
Following Dr. Jack Kevorkian's
fifth murder, state representative
candidate for the 28th District in
Michigan Karen Roberts, of Warren, 
blasted the death lobby in the state
legislature. ``How is it that in the last
two years Dr. Kevorkian got away with
five murders?'' she asked in a statement
on Sept. 30. 
   She singled out for condemnation
House Judiciary Committee
Chairman Perry Bullard and Rep. Lynn
Jondahl of the Judiciary Subcommittee,
who prevented Senate Bill 32 from
reaching the floor: ``While Senate Bill
32 is highly inadequate because its
penalty for so-called physician
assisted-suicide, or killing the sick ...
falsely distinguishes between euthanasia
and murder, and therefore promotes
euthanasia; nonetheless, it starts right
by classifying assisted-suicide as a
felony offense. 
   ``More than simply killing people,
Kevorkian is consciously assaulting the
most important values of Judeo-Christian
civilization, and thus opening the door
to even more horrible crimes, the way the
Nazi practice of euthanasia opened the
way to the concentration camps.... Is it
not obvious,'' Roberts asked, ``that once
the principles of the sanctity of life
have been eliminated, the state, to
reduce its expenses, will be more and
more tempted to look at some lives as
being a burden and to see their
elimination as a relief? Perhaps Mr.
Bullard and Mr. Jondahl's stalling
tactics have just such a goal.'' 

   ARGUS, U.S. Marshals 
   under investigation 
   
At least two different
formal investigations are now ongoing against
the founder of the private military group
ARGUS (Armored Response Group United
States), which was instrumental in the
Oct. 6, 1986 military raid against Lyndon
LaRouche in Leesburg, Virginia. One
investigation is by the Department of
Justice and another by the 
District of Columbia Police, according to the Oct. 3
{Washington Post.} The object of the
investigation is to determine how ARGUS
co-founder J.C. Herbert Bryant used his
links to the U.S. Marshals Service to
avoid an arrest for carrying illegal guns
in his car when he was detained on Sept.
2 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington.
Bryant also heads the Marshals Service
Association. 
   Henry Hudson, the U.S. Attorney for
the Eastern District of Virginia who ran
the LaRouche railroad in 1988 and the
illegal bankruptcy against companies and
publications associated with him in 1987,
is currently the head of the U.S.
Marshals Service. D.C. Police say that
Bryant ``represented to us he was a U.S.
marshals deputy.'' 

   Slaves of Saudis 
   ask for U.S. asylum 
   
Defense lawyers for two Asian women
kept as slaves by the older brother of
Saudi King Fahd in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel
in Houston, filed a summary with
immigration authorities in the women's
deportation proceedings, according to the
Sept. 29 {Houston Chronicle.} The summary
states that domestic workers have been
tricked into signing employment
contracts. 
   ``We have actual written confirmation
of the agreement between the Saudi and
Philippine governments requiring the
return of slaves who escape,'' said
defense lawyer Jerry S. Payne, who is
trying to win political asylum in the
United States for his clients. Payne made
public an internal report sent in 1987 to
the Philippine government from its
embassy in Riyadh which said: ``The
Kingdom's concept of domestic helpers is
that of a slave, having no rights
whatsoever. They can be given away as
presents.  They can be maltreated and
when they complain they are under the
police jurisdiction and immediately land
in jail, even if they are the
complainants.'' 
   After ``strong recommendations''
from the embassy in Saudi Arabia,
Philippines President Corazon Aquino
instituted a temporary ban on the
deployment of Filipino workers to Saudi
Arabia in 1988, but later the ban was
lifted under a Saudi threat to ban oil
sales to the Philippines. 

   DOJ covers for Bush
   in Iraq bank loan case
   
In an unexpected move which
surprised both the judge and the defense
team, federal prosecutors in the Altanta,
Georgia case involving the Banca
Nazionale del Lavoro moved Oct. 1 to
withdraw a plea bargain agreement with
defendant Christopher Drogoul and allow
the case to go to trial. The government
had previously opposed allowing him to
withdraw his guilty plea, but made an
about-face when CIA documents implicating
the White House's involvement in illegal
loans to Iraq surfaced at Drogoul's
sentencing hearing. The newly discovered
evidence that Drogoul was not acting as a
``rogue'' banker, as the DOJ had
contended, but had approval from the Bush
administration, led Drogoul to withdraw
his guilty plea, which the government
opposed. The threat of more hearings,
with more evidence of government
involvement being aired this close to the
election changed prosecutors' minds, and
the unexpected Department of Justice move
now shuts the BNL case down until well
after November. 
   The {New York Times} said Oct. 2
that the hearings ``provided a daily
reminder of the administration's policy
of aiding Mr. Hussein before the Persian
Gulf war, and spawned charges of an
administration coverup.'' Under pressure,
from this ``daily reminder'' in both the
courtroom and hearings by Texas Rep.
Henry Gonzalez's House Banking Committee,
CIA director Robert Gates ordered a
belated internal investigation into why
the agency made ``incomplete statements''
to the Justice Department about the
affair on Oct. 7. 
   Judge Marvin Shoob stated that,
based on what he had heard, ``I have
concluded that the substantial financing
of Iraq by BNL-Atlanta was well known in
international banking circles, that it
was well known in the United States, and
by U.S. intelligence.'' On Sept. 30,
Drogoul said that two front companies
with U.S. intelligence agency connections
used BNL in connection with the loans to
Iraq. Drogoul said that the Iraqi
minister of industry and military
production had told him, ``We're all in
this together. The intelligence service
of the U.S. works very closely with the
intelligence service of the Iraqi
government.'' 

   DONALD PHAU,
a LaRouche
associate convicted in Virginia for his
political organizing activities, had his
appeal denied by the state Court of
Appeals. Phau has been sentenced to 25
years in prison. The trial judge,
Clifford Weckstein, had been caught
secretly communicating with the
LaRouche-hating Anti-Defamation League
about the ``LaRouche cases'' he was
hearing. 

   A KEY CHARGE
in the Iran-Contra
indictment against former Secretary of
Defense Caspar Weinberger was dismissed.
Federal Judge Thomas Hogan struck down
the charge that Weinberger obstructed
Congress by withholding his notes and
diaries from congressional investigators
in 1987. 

   THE NEXT VICTIM
Virginia
Attorney General Mary Sue Terry has lined
up for the Virginia electric chair is
wheelchair-bound paraplegic Charles S.
Stamper. He is scheduled to be executed
on Oct. 28, and a clemency petition has
been submitted to Gov. Douglas Wilder. 

   THE U.S. NAVY
officially changed its
strategy from preparation for deep-water
war to dealing with regional hot-spots.
``It is a fundamental shift from
open-ocean warfighting,'' said Defense
Department spokesman Pete Williams on
Oct. 3. The Navy said it was forming a
new Naval Doctrine Command to develop
details of the new strategy which cohere
with the exigencies of the ``new world
order.'' 

   `NEW YORK'
magazine's Oct. 5 issue
attempted to debunk the theory that the
CIA was involved in the downing of Pan Am
Flight 103 in 1988 as a ``LaRouche hoax.
The article follows the format of an
earlier article in {Time} magazine which
claimed that the ``October Surprise'' was
concocted by LaRouche investigative
journalists. 
Health Care 
   
Poland imposes 
   harsh budget cuts 
   
Polish Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka
has signed a bill cutting the public
health sector budget, which will increase
the cost of basic medicines and hospital
care. Poles will have to partially cover
the costs of a bed and food during
hospital stays, and share the costs of
special health tests and dental care. 
   The cuts will further worsen the
situation in the health care system,
which has been suffering from a constant
undersupply of medicines and erosion of
care in the past years. 
   Theoretically, health care is still
free for all insured people in Poland,
which is a large majority of the
population. In practice, however, most
clinics and hospitals ask for voluntary
donations before they admit someone for
treatment, and some more expensive
treatments have an ``official'' price list. 
   Most patients do pay--sometimes
because they want to help out, sometimes
because they feel embarrassed or even
hope for better than ordinary treatment.
Often, hospitals also rent their premises
to bookstores, newsstands, and even
hairdressers in order to make extra money
to cover maintenance costs. 

   Infrastructure
   
North-South high-speed
   rail axis said critical
   
The creation of a North-South axis
for high-speed rail transport in Europe
is vital, declared Heinz Duerr, the head
of the two German state railway
companies, after a meeting of several
North European railway directors in
Copenhagen, Denmark on Sept. 29. 
   The meeting, which was also attended
by Peter Langager of the Danish State
Railways (DSB) and Stig Larsson of the
Swedish State Railways (SJ), resolved on
a policy for more joint investments in
the development of combined rail-truck
transportation in high-speed transit at
speeds of 200 kilometers per hour and
more. Also, the development and
production of multi-system locomotives to
make cross-border rail transport
independent from the differing electrical
currents in Germany, Denmark, and Sweden
was endorsed at the meeting. 
   The directors called on their
governments to accelerate construction of
tunnels and bridges across the three
Baltic straits of the Fehmarn Belt,
Fehmarn Sound, and the Oresund to make
the uninterrupted passage of trains
between Sweden and continental Europe
possible by early next century. 
   It is expected that the volume of
commodity transport of goods between the
European mainland and Sweden, which
reached a volume of 8 million tons
annually in 1990 already, will double by
the year 2000 and triple by 2010. 
   In reviewing plans for new
high-speed rail transit routes across the
continent and to Turkey by the year 2015,
the German daily {Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung} on Sept. 29 reported that 3
million jobs will be created and secured
by such projects. The report mentions
plans, though not concretized yet, in
eastern European countries for links to
the predominantly western high-speed
projects, through Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, the Balkans, as well as
through Warsaw into the Community of
Independent States, including a
high-speed rail route from St. Petersburg
to Moscow. 

   France
   
Economy suffering effects
   of worldwide depression 
   
According to two recent polls of the
National Institute of Statistics (INSEE),
based on questioning 3,300 heads of
companies, the economic situation in
France looks extremely grim. If some were
still hoping for an upswing 
during the first quarter this year, nobody expects
one now. All those questioned indicate
that they will be decreasing investment
considerably and reducing jobs. 
   The majority of companies are
revising downward their expectations for
the year. Rho@afne Poulenc has announced
reduced profits from an estimated 20% in
the beginning of the year, to 10-15%
now. The quarterly profits of Total,
the oil company which just recently
privatized a part of its capital, have
decreased 30%. Other large companies like
Club Mediterrane@aae and Carrefour are also
drastically reducing profit estimates.
   The worst results for mid-year,
however, are those of Cre@aadit Lyonnais.
Profits for the first half of the year
are down 93% from those of the same
period in 1991. 
   The foreign trade deficit for August
is 3 billion francs. What is unusual
about the deficit is that for the third
month in a row, industrial exports to
Germany have considerably decreased,
indicating that there is a crisis on the
other side of the border as well. 

   Trade
   
Europe must stand up on
   air war, says Attali
   
European airlines must stand up
against the ``aerial version of the Pax
Americana,'' demanded Bernard Attali,
chairman of Air France, in the French
Sunday newspaper {Le Journal de Dimanche}
on Sept. 27. Bernard Attali is the
brother of Jacques Attali, the present
French chairman of the London-based
European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development. 
   Attali said that Europe is 
confronted with a fierce trade war
launched against transatlantic air
traffic, with U.S. airlines, which should
not be capable of running this ruinous
competition because they are all bankrupt,
setting prices below cost. They seem to
have strong political backing from the
top of the U.S. administration, he said. 
   Attali charged that the aim of the
U.S. airlines' strategy is to conquer the
transatlantic air passenger market by
``killing'' the other competitors, to
impose an ``aerial version of the Pax
Americana'' along with the Bush
administration's new world order project. 

   Energy
   
Declassification to aid
   fusion power development
   
The ``United States is starting to
declassify H-bomb fusion technology,'' in
order to permit the more rapid
development of laser pellet fusion energy
systems, William J. Broad reported in the
Sept. 28 {New York Times.} The same
scientific principles are used in
igniting nuclear fusion in tiny pellets
with lasers as those utilized to ignite
large-scale H-bombs with atom bombs. The
move toward declassification was first
reported in the July issue of the
newsletter of Fusion Power Associates,
edited by Dr. Stephen O. Dean. 
   All of the essential concepts in
H-bomb fusion have been published by
Japanese, French, and Spanish scientists
over the past decade. The continued
secrecy has prevented U.S. scientists
from participating in international
science conferences where these ``top
secret'' questions were openly discussed.
The {Times} noted that in 1979, the U.S.
government attempted to prevent {The
Progressive} magazine from publishing an
article on the H-bomb. The Fusion Energy
Foundation introduced an {amicus curiae}
brief in the case--which the government
subsequently lost--pointing out that the
information the government wanted to
suppress had already been published and
circulated in both the {New Solidarity}
newspaper and {Fusion} magazine. 
   The move toward declassification is
welcome, if it actually happens. It
brings to the fore other questions, such
as whether the government will admit the
key role of Bernhard Riemann's 1856 paper
on shock waves in the development of
inertial confinement fusion. 

   Africa
   
IMF responsible for
   infrastructure collapse
   
``The increasingly parasitic role of
the International Monetary Fund'' (IMF) is
to blame for the collapse of Africa's
infrastructure and economy, Kevin
Watkins, a policy adviser to Britain's
Oxfam relief agency, wrote in a
commentary in the Sept. 28 London
{Guardian.} 
   Watkins charged that the growing
economic-currency crisis in Europe has
``blown Africa off the agenda'' at this
year's IMF-World Bank meetings in
Washington. This is only ``the latest in a
decade of policy failures and financial
mismanagement orchestrated by the two
institutions. Since the debt crisis
struck in the early 1980s, the IMF and
World Bank have dominated economic
policymaking in Africa. As one country
after another succumbed to the lethal
combination of rising interest rates and
falling commodity prices, the IMF stepped
in with short-term loans to burgeoning
trade and budget deficits. Along with the
loans came conditions governing money
supply targets, interest rate levels, and
public spending, which transferred budget
management to Washington.'' 
   Watkins complained that the ``free
market writ'' of the so-called IMF
``Structural Adjustment Programs'' (SAPs)
now ``reigns supreme across Africa, but
recovery is nowhere in sight. Living
standards, which fell by a third in the
1980s, continued to slide.... Investment
is hovering around mid-1970s levels,
infrastructure is collapsing, inflation
is rampant, and hunger is a spreading
threat.'' 
   The blame for these developments, he
wrote, rests with the IMF's total backing
for ``creditor claims that sub-Saharan
Africa's crippling external debt
could--and should--be honored, consigning
the region to repayment levels bound to
stifle growth.'' 
   According to Watkins, ``over the past
10 years, sub-Saharan Africa's debt has
tripled to $180 billion, and the annual
cost of servicing it is $10
billion--draining the region's limited
capital resources. Moreover, despite
allocating almost a third of their
foreign exchange earnings to debt
repayment, most countries are building up
arrears at a frightening rate.
Collectively, these amount to almost $11
billion, compared with $220 million in
1980.... 
   ``The human costs of Africa's debt
crisis have been immense, with
governments squeezing public sector wages
and health and education budgets to meet
their financial obligations. Debt
repayments are also undermining efforts
to introduce successful market reforms,
including many advocated by the World
Bank and IMF.... 
   ``There is little point in the IMF
Managing Director Michel Camdessus
issuing ... declarations on poverty
alleviation, when his institution is part
of the problem.'' 

   USE OF HEROIN
is on the rise in the
United States, as the drug is entering
the country in greater amounts, at lower
prices, and ever more lethal levels of
purity than before, the {China Daily}
reported Sept. 23. One U.S. official is
quoted saying that heroin users will
outnumber cocaine users by the year 2000. 

   JAPAN
and the United States will
jointly develop a new solid-fuel rocket
engine to improve the range and speed of
surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles,
Japan announced Sept. 29. Foreign
Minister Michio Watanabe and U.S.
Ambassador Michael Armacost exchanged
formal notes on the five-year plan. 
 
   IRAQI
health officials say that the
U.N. sanctions and the destruction of
syringe plants by the bombing are forcing
them to re-use syringes and steel
needles. This will ``lead to very, very
serious health problems, carrying
dangerous diseases and microbes, like
AIDS, from one person to another,'' Health
Ministry Undersecretary Dr. Shawqi Murqus
told Reuters on Oct. 1. 

   AIDS AND TUBERCULOSIS
are rampant
among Florida migrant farm workers, the
Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta,
Georgia reported Oct. 1. Tests of 310
migrant workers in Immokalee, Florida
during February and March showed a 5%
rate of AIDS infection--ten times higher
than the national average--44% tested
positive for TB, and 8% for syphilis. 

   CITIBANK
engineered the stock market
scam which crashed the Bombay stock
market this spring, Harshad Mehta, the
broker accused of wrongdoing in the case,
has charged in an exclusive interview
with {Newstrack} magazine. 

   CHINA AND RUSSIA
plan to build a
bridge across the Heilongjiang (Amur)
River at the city of Heihe, linking the
Chinese industrial center Harbin with
Blagoveshchensk in Russia, the Chinese
news agency Xinhua reported Oct. 1.
``Transport industries ... are unable to
meet the demand caused by sudden
development of border trade,'' it said. 




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

Newsgroups: alt.activism