Free Republic

U.S. senators bash IMF plan to sell gold WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms joined other lawmakers on Tuesday in opposing an International Monetary Fund proposal to sell gold to aid poor nations, warning it could unnerve financial markets and hurt U.S. gold producers. ``We are unalterably persuaded that selling IMF gold reserves would adversely affect the very countries the (Clinton) administration intends to assist and further damage the U.S. domestic gold industry,'' Helms, a North Carolina Republican, and Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, said in a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary-designate ...

US believes Russian mercenaries operated in Kosovo WASHINGTON, June 23 (Reuters) - The United States said on Wednesday it believed a small number of Russian mercenaries had operated with Serb forces that laid waste to Kosovo. But Defence Department spokesman Ken Bacon said there was no evidence of any formal link with the Russian government and described the fighters as ``soldiers of fortune.'' ``We estimate that there probably were a relatively small number of Russians there operating on their own as volunteers, possibly as mercenaries,'' Bacon said. He said U.S. estimates were based on anecdotal information provided by the Kosovo ...

As people grow tired of EPA and environmentalist's attempts to tell us how we can use our land, FEMA has come up with a way to just kick us off. Permanently. James Lee Witt, director of FEMA, addressed the annual conference of the Association of State Floodplain Managers in Portland, Oregon, May 25, 1999, discussing Project Impact. "We've taken a firm stand. No permits to develop in floodplains or wetlands." FEMA is buying people out and restoring natural open space to build disaster resistant communities. The National Flood Insurance Program is becoming the preferred, quiet, incremental step to get more ...

Niece: Keep Lenin's Remains on Show By ANNA DOLGOV .c The Associated Press MOSCOW (AP) - The niece of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin said Wednesday that the mummified remains of her famous uncle should be left on display in Red Square and not buried, as many Russians are demanding. Lenin had insisted before his death that his body not be put on display. He wanted to be buried next to his mother in St. Petersburg. But shortly after his death, Soviet leaders turned the Bolshevik founder into a communist icon and put his body on display, where it was to ...

Angry Yugoslav soldiers block road, demand salary BELGRADE, June 23 (Reuters) - A group of Yugoslav army reservists blocked a road near the central Serbian town of Kraljevo on Wednesday, demanding their war salaries be paid, Beta news agency reported. It said the reserve troops were from the nearby town of Trstenik and that they had spent time in Kosovo during the 11 weeks of NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia. Under a peace deal signed earlier this month all Yugoslav security forces withdrew from Kosovo on Sunday. Beta said a local Trstenik television crew was turned back from the scene ...

Swiss chip in money, men for Kosovo BERNE, June 23 (Reuters) - Neutral Switzerland will chip in financial aid, 160 supply-line soldiers and army transport helicopters to help keep the peace in the Balkans and rebuild the shattered Serbian province of Kosovo, the government said on Wednesday. The cabinet also agreed at its last meeting before the summer break to provide cash payments for tens of thousands of Kosovo refugees who head home soon, reversing the greatest flood of refugees to Switzerland in half a century. ``We stand before the greatest humanitarian challenge since World War Two,'' Defense Minister Adolf ...

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY claims to be the party of personal responsibility, yet it has become a party that takes no responsibility for the predicaments it finds itself in. Instead Republicans blame bias in the media, or the liar in the White House, or their unprincipled opponents or even the immorality of the American people to explain their defeats. How can you win in American politics if you have contempt for the judgment of the American people? You can’t. The greatest political deficiency of the Republican Party today is lack of respect for the common sense of the American people. This ...

FBI Aids in Kosovo War Crimes Probe By ANNE GEARAN .c The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - Scientists and crime scene experts from the FBI began work today at the sites of two alleged massacres in Kosovo and will turn over their findings to war crimes prosecutors pursuing Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, the agency's chief said. ``The province of Kosovo is now one of the largest crime scenes in history,'' FBI Director Louis Freeh said at a press conference today. A team of 59 agents, chemists, forensic dentists and other specialists are working inside a house where prosecutors assert that ...

CASTLE ROCK, Colo. Jun 23 -- A police shootout in Colorado ended with a tragic discovery early Wednesday -- the bodies of three little girls who were apparently murdered by their father. The girls' mother had called police, fearful for her children and warning that her estranged husband was suicidal. Her worst fears came true early this morning in the town of Castle Rock, about 25 miles south of Denver. Police say the suspect parked his pickup truck in front of the police station and began shooting at the building about 4:30 a.m. Officers returned fire and killed the man. ...

Attorney General Janet Reno lied to the world Press and American public...A career U.S. Intelligence Officer tells it all. Click here Read it now on the all new Strategic Intelligence Review.

The Rant I am, therefore I rant. . . The last hope for real reporting BY DOUG THOMPSON "The role of a newspaperman," legendary Chicago reporter Finley Peter Dunne once wrote, "is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." Simple rule. Good rule. Notice Dunne didn't say "journalist." Dunne hated the term "journalist." A journalist, he once said, is "an unemployed newspaperman." Dunne worked for newspapers when such jobs were fun. You raised hell and took names later. You drank hard, lived hard and took no prisoners. Politicians existed only to be exposed. Elected officials? Obviously corrupt. It was ...

For fair use The Longest Campaign The gossip in Washington this past week was that Hillary Clinton might not run for Senate in New York after all. Smells like George Stephanopoulos (via Dick Morris, of all people) spin to me: She totted up discouraging stats that suggest she’ll get creamed by Rudy Giuliani and will instead raise a lot of money and save it for an Illinois race in 2004...or maybe to pay off legal fees. If she had a conscience, which isn’t likely, Hillary would divvy out some of those funds to all the White House aides who are ...

What happened to our Republican congress? Are they still viable, or have they crawled under some rock?Trust me. Another round of Congressional Pubbies like this batch and you won't be able to recognize this palce... Link here Special Operations Military Training Abroad and Its Dangers by John Rudy and Ivan Eland Cato Foreign Policy Briefing No. 53 June 22, 1999 John Rudy was a research assistant at the Cato Institute in 1998. Ivan Eland is Cato's director of defense policy studies. Executive Summary In one of the most dramatic shifts in U.S. defense policy since the Cold War, the U.S. ...

1630 GMT, 990623 EU/Yugoslavia – The European Union (EU) has earmarked $500-700 million dollars to fund the reconstruction of Kosovo. The EU announced that it would create an agency dedicated to the reconstruction, although its budget was as of yet undecided. The creation of the agency was approved June 21 in a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg, who said that the aid would help all Yugoslav citizens, including Serbs. The ministers noted that current sanctions against the country would remain in place and that no funds would go to strengthen the regime of Slobodan Milosevic. The EU said ...

Earth Y2 Quake   By Charlie Register June 21, 1999   The first news reports from Mexico City indicated a strong earthquake struck in the mid-afternoon shattering windows yet causing no immediate injuries or serious damage. But it wasn't long before the strong earthquake was amended to be an extremely strong earthquake, measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale. By 6 PM Eastern time, wire services reported one dead and 200 injured, with Mexico City under a "state of emergency." The nearby Volkswagen manufacturing plant had to be shut down. Quickly, news analysis hit the wires, with stories relating the ...

For fair use Kosovo And Nam The more one examines Kosovo, the more it begins to look like what would have happened if we’d "won" in Vietnam: We get to marry a dictatorship of our own making till death do us part. In fact, as Paul Warnke, the Pentagon’s political director in the mid-60s put it, "We can keep on ‘winning’ the war forever. We always win and we always will, and it won’t ever make any difference." In rushing to the altar, we’re drawing all sorts of wrong lessons. One is that the principle that you can’t win a ...

As George W. Bush and Al Gore began their presidential campaigns last week, it was no surprise that their rhetoric sounded similar. The parties they hope to lead are more alike with each passing day. From the fall of the independent counsel law and mushy Social Security "reform'' to acquiescence to United Nations demands and post-Littleton talk of media regulation, the two parties are becoming indistinguishable. There was a time when each party stood for worthwhile principles. Republicans focused on the enumerated powers of government and the constitutionally limited role of government in our society. Democrats focused on parts ...

Cook condemns Kosovo barbarity BBC UK Foreign Minister Robin Cook has visited the site of an alleged massacre in southern Kosovo, describing it as a vision of hell. He is one of four European foreign ministers in the province on Wednesday to review progress in restoring peace. As the politicians toured the region, the Swiss Government announced it had frozen the assets of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and four other war crimes suspects. It said the move was at the request of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia. Mr Cook travelled to the village of Velika Krusa to observe ...

6/23/99 -- 8:33 AM Oldest shipwrecks ever found discovered off the coast of Israel .6/23/99 TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) - Using the same techniques he used to locate the Titanic, explorer Bob Ballard said today he has found the oldest known deepwater shipwrecks: a pair of wine-laden ships dragged to the depths of the Mediterranean during a fierce storm more than 2,500 years ago. The pair of Phoenician cargo chips were found using an underwater robot and deep-water tracking equipment, Ballard told reporters at a Tel Aviv hotel overlooking the Mediterranean. ``A lot of history books will be rewritten from ...

Clinton To Aid Those Who Defied NRA By RON FOURNIER AP Political Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House is promising political life support to Democratic lawmakers who risk their seats to vote for gun control. ``We'll go out and do anything we can to help people who vote the right way,'' White House chief of staff John Podesta said Tuesday. Podesta made the remarks in an interview with The Associated Press as his boss was returning from a week-long European trip prepared to refocus on domestic policies such as gun control, race relations and prescription drug coverage for the ...