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Balkan unity a delusion Balkan unity a delusion   June 21, 1999 BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Just one week after President Clinton explained that he authorized a military attack to enforce ethnic amity in the Balkans, the Senate Appropriations Committee last Thursday quietly and unanimously voted $20 million in start-up money to equip a Kosovo "self-defense force." It definitely will not be in the business of promoting good feelings between Albanian and Serb. The Clinton administration made no objection to the appropriation pressed by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). While insisting it was not a continuation of his long ...

Stakes High in 2000 Voters Can Redirect 3 Federal Branches By David S. Broder Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, June 21, 1999; Page A01 The campaign of 2000 is starting a year too early for most voters, but there are reasons the politicians can't wait. Everyone talks about the fierce competition for contributions and the pressure to organize for the earliest primary elections in history. But lost in all the focus on tactics and timetables is the biggest reason of all: The 2000 election has the potential to determine the direction of all three branches of the national government. "This ...

Testifying before Congress last Thursday, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan strongly hinted that the Fed will raise short-term interest rates when it meets a week from tomorrow--despite the news Wednesday that May's Consumer Price Index had remained unchanged from the previous month. It's the right thing to do. To sustain America's economic expansion, the Fed will have to move pre-emptively against the threat of inflation. This view runs counter to that of many economists, who argue that in light of the good news on inflation, there is no need for a rate hike and might even be reason to lower ...

I am one of those scandalous Americans who carry a copy of the Citizen's Rule Book, that remarkably seditious document which is a weapon of instruction and a rod of correction. Using this assault weapon -- defined so because those who purport to rule us find it threatening -- makes it easy to show any of the millions of fearful non-seditious exactly how far our "government" has slipped into tyranny. I care very little for the Constitution as constitution, it being a mere plan of government and flawed at that. I care a great deal for the Bill of Rights, ...

Robert Fisk - Was it rescue or revenge? Independent (6-21-99) Bestialisation is an unpleasant sport. The Serbs bestialised the Albanians for years. Terrorists, mafia, communists, Marxists, murderers. Officially directed at the Kosovo Liberation Army, these epithets came to be applied to the entire Kosovo Albanian community. And when General Nabojsa Pavkovic warned that "settling scores... is what we'll do if our country is attacked from the air or the ground," the Albanians knew what to expect. The moment Nato commenced its blitz against Yugoslavia, the harassment of the Kosovo Albanians turned into persecution, and the atrocities into mass murder. But ...

How fake guns and painting the roads fooled Nato By Robert Fisk in Belgrade NATO officers began to realise the discrepancy between their own claims and reality within hours of the start of the Yugoslav military withdrawal. In just the first stage of the Serbian retreat, they logged 250 tanks moving out of Kosovo - all undamaged - and at least 40,000 men. This was supposed to be the troop strength of the entire Third Army; thousands more soldiers left in the next three days. All of which casts serious doubt on Nato's wartime propaganda. On 17 April, for example, ...

ROANOKE, Va. (AP)-- The Rev. Jerry Falwell's newspaper has turned its attention from warning about Tinky Winky to the "demonic legend" behind the female music tour called Lilith Fair.Lilith Fair was created in 1997 by singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan. More than 800,000 people attended the summer concert series last year. The third and final tour begins July 8 and features artists such as Sheryl Crow, The Dixie Chicks and Queen Latifah."Many young people no doubt attend the Lilith Fair concerts not knowing the demonic legend of the mystical woman whose name the series manifests," an editor of National Liberty Journal wrote ...

For fair use purposes of information and discussion only: THE CITY OF CHICAGO had a problem familiar to many other cities: gangs. Sporting their colors, tattoos and other identifiers, they liked to hang out in poor neighborhoods looking for trouble. Responding to the law-abiding citizens of those neighborhoods, who reported feeling intimidated and unsafe, the Chicago City Council passed an anti-loitering ordinance. The ordinance made it a crime punishable by a fine of up to $500 and imprisonment for up to six months to "loiter," defined as "remaining in any one place with no apparent purpose." The council provided ...

China sends U.S.-based dissident to hard labour HONG KONG, June 21 (Reuters) - China has sent a U.S.-based dissident to three years in hard labour for illegally entering the country, a Hong Kong-based human rights group said on Monday. Zhou Yongjun, one of the leaders of the ill-fated 1989 pro-democracy movement centred on Tiananmen Square, slipped into mainland China from Hong Kong on December 21 after being refused legal entry, the human rights group said. The Information Centre of Human Rights & Democratic Movement in China said it obtained the information from the dissident's wife in the United States. Zhou, ...

Clinton supported racial profiling in ArkansasBy Jerry SeperTHE WASHINGTON TIMESresident Clinton last week criticized racial profiling by police as a "morally indefensible, deeply corrosive practice," but he strongly defended such profiling when he was governor of Arkansas.     He approved the profiling of Hispanics by Arkansas State Police as part of a drug interdiction program in 1988.     The Arkansas plan gave state troopers the authority to stop and search vehicles based on a drug-courier profile of Hispanics, particularly those driving cars with Texas license plates. A federal judge later ruled the program unconstitutional.     A lawsuit and a federal consent decree ended the -- Continued ...

DEMS SEE GUN CONTROL AS POTENT POLL WEAPON By DEBORAH ORIN Democrats yesterday predicted that they'll score big and knock off some Republicans if they can turn the 2000 elections into a shootout over gun control. They spoke after the House, led by Democrats, killed the latest gun-control bill because it would weaken existing laws on background checks at gun shows - although it also had some tough new measures like safety locks. "When you look at polling data and when you see the resonance this issue has all over the country ... I think this is going to be ...

NEW NUKE-LAB AGENCY URGED By DEBORAH ORIN America needs a new agency to run the spy-haunted U.S. nuclear labs because their officials have an "astounding" attitude that led to outright defiance of President Clinton's order for lie-detector tests, a top watchdog says. The labs still haven't implemented polygraphs or toughened restrictions on foreign visitors, even though Clinton ordered those moves 16 months ago, ex-Sen. Warren Rudman (R-N.H.) told NBC's "Meet the Press." "When your commanding general tells you to walk to the right, you walk to the right," added Rudman, who examined the nuclear labs at Clinton's request, and last ...

'DIRTY TRICKS' LETTER ACCUSES RUDY OF GOP TAKEOVER BID By FREDRIC U. DICKER A POLITICAL consultant working for U.S. Rep. Rick Lazio is being accused of launching a "dirty tricks" campaign against Mayor Giuliani. Dozens of local Republican officials, including many of the state's 62 GOP county chairmen, recently received an anonymous multipage letter - postmarked in Albany - accusing Giuliani of plotting "to take over the New York GOP" by running for the U.S. Senate next year. The letter focuses on Giuliani's former chief-of-staff Bruce Teitelbaum, who heads the mayor's Senate campaign committee, calling him the "political agent" spearheading ...

SOME RETURN HOME - TO FIND IT GONE By NILES LATHEM WHEN Shahih Veseli came down from the mountains after spending the last three months hiding from Serbian stormtroopers, he hoped that life would start to get a little easier. But what he found when he arrived home in this northern Kosovo village just miles from the Serbian border sent tears streaming down his rugged face. This was the day when the last of the Serbian troops who had terrorized Veseli and the rest of the ethnic Albanian population pulled up stakes and left for Serbia. But on Veseli's farm ...

Some say all is lost, hold on because everything goes down hill from here, but I have faith in Americans. Don't every tell an American it can't be done...He will find a way to prove you wrong. That was America a few years ago. We seem weaker these days than in earlier times. Aren't we more inclined to want comfort, ease, and security over a fight to keep our liberty? Will Americans again hear all kinds of empty promises of change? Will another presidential election cycle come and go with no real changes resulting from the election of a new ...

SERBS FINALLY OUT OF KOSOVO By BILL SANDERSON Yugoslav forces finished their withdrawal from Kosovo 11 hours ahead of schedule yesterday, and were followed in by NATO peacekeepers who found so many sites of atrocities and massacres, there weren't enough troops to guard them all. NATO declared an official end to the bombing campaign and President Clinton met with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in Germany in an effort to patch up the war's damage to relations between the United States and Russia. As peacekeepers took up their posts in Kosovo and worked to disarm the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army, ...

LIBRARY INTERNET HIT AS PORNO HEAVEN FOR KIDS By NEIL GRAVES City libraries have become porno theaters for kids who routinely call up X-rated Web sites on computers there, a state assemblyman charged yesterday. Jeffrey Klein, a Bronx Democrat, said local branches should supervise kids who surf the Web from the library, warn parents about porn in cyberspace and consider installing software to prevent minors from visiting X-rated sites. "A child cannot go into a pornographic movie house, cannot go into a newsstand and buy a pornographic magazine," Klein said. "[But] that same child can walk into any public library ...

WHITE HOUSE STILL HOME FOR CANDIDATE HILL: BILL By DEBORAH ORIN President Clinton yesterday said it isn't so - wife Hillary won't move out of the White House and move to New York to run for U.S. Senate. Clinton said the First Lady won't have to do that because she'll run her Senate campaign like an "incumbent member of Congress" - even though she has never been elected to office or lived in New York. "It's not true that she's going to move out of the White House," Clinton told CNN. "If she runs for the Senate, she'll obviously have ...

Clinton says world must act faster to stop atrocities . 6/21/99 COLOGNE, Germany (AP) - President Clinton and other world leaders hailed the Serb military pullout from Kosovo and pledged to act more quickly to prevent fresh outbreaks of ethnic slaughter of the kind now being uncovered by NATO troops in the province. ``We will stand up for the innocents in the face of evil,'' Clinton said in a speech Sunday after the close of the three-day summit of the Group of Eight - the seven leading world economic powers and Russia. ``(We) begin a new century and a new ...

Navy Carrier Returning to Pacific By ROBERT BURNS .c The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - Now that NATO's air campaign against Yugoslavia is over, the Pentagon intends to return an aircraft carrier to the western Pacific in a move made more urgent by renewed tensions on the Korean Peninsula. The Navy has been without an aircraft carrier in the Pacific since early April, when the USS Kitty Hawk carrier battle group went to the Persian Gulf to cover for the USS Theodore Roosevelt. The Theodore Roosevelt diverted to the Adriatic Sea to bolster allied aircraft striking at Yugoslavia. With NATO ...