Benjamin C. Works, Executive Director

--Celebrating Chaos Theory Since 1990--

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SIT 9-9; Wednesday. September 9, 1998 5PM

* Osama: Since August 20^th I have repeatedly referred to Interpol as part of the effort to contain terrorist groups such as Osama's. Interestingly, in the Sept. 9^th New York Times an ex-Clintonian now with Interpol makes that case and makes the case for better funding --Does his agenda include a little sinecure building in the growing international turf wars flourishing in our New War on Terrorism?-- See Ronald K Noble: "A Neglected Anti-Terror Weapon" at the Times' website.

* Russia: This in per the LA Times this morning and available at www.latimes.com:

Russia Lied to Get Loans, Says Aide to Yeltsin

By RICHARD C. PADDOCK, Times Staff Writer

MOSCOW--A key architect of Russia's economic transformation said in a published interview Tuesday that Russia "conned" the international community out of nearly $20 billion in loans by hiding the severity of the country's fiscal problems.

     Anatoly B. Chubais, who in July negotiated a $4.8-billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, said in an interview in Kommersant Daily that it was necessary and appropriate for Russia to lie to obtain infusions of cash.

     If the government had told the truth, the longtime advisor to President Boris N. Yeltsin said in the interview, Russia's economy would have collapsed last spring and global lenders "would have stopped dealing with us forever."

Regarding my ongoing discussion of the strikes against Osama bin Laden and the Shifa factory in Sudan, no matter how that attack plays out in the "TheoryA/B" sense regarding the ongoing fight against terrorism, I have to say that in the larger view, the Clinton Administration has not only failed to wield its military-diplomatic power wisely, it has also contributed greatly to a deterioration of morale and quality in our standing armed forces over the last five years.

Further, the succession of Tomahawk strikes against Saddam Hussein's regime has not added to our credibility, but rather, diminished it as he continues in his defiance, while gaining sympathy in the developing world. Add to that the conspicuous failure in Somalia and the camouflaged non-success in Haiti and we have not seen much progress.

Our troops remain in Bosnia as a neutral, and the occupation has been a success, but after the fact of one of the most unneutral and most politically biased of our interventions. To the extent troops remain in Bosnia, this contributes to further deterioration in combat readiness terms for our remaining deployable forces and occupation skills differ materially from combat skills.

Now, the Clinton Administration, in cooperation with Western Europe's masters and with the very biased elites at the UN and in the NGOs are bullying Yugoslavia again over Kosovo, and the US is prepared to deploy even more troops in an occupation that has no basis in the law of nations and is a serious breach in the principle of national sovereignty. That Robert Dole, a purported Republican leader, is cooperating in that conspiracy, trading his political agenda's interests over our Constitutional interests, shows yet again how degenerate our governing classes have gotten, not just in Europe --where decadence and cloaked autocracies are old hat-- but in the US itself.

With regard to Bosnia and Kosovo and all that; whether you accept all the anti-Serb propaganda, some of it, or reject all of it is secondary. What is important to understand at this moment is that for years, going back to the Carter and Reagan administrations, the US has been dealing politically-shaped advice to developing and redeveloping states emerging from communism, rather than dealing with expert constitutional and economic advice. Mr. Dole was able to pursue his pro-Croat, pro-Albanian agenda overriding facts on the ground while overwhelming the necessities of modern development with cheap political horse-trading and myopia. That he did this under the guidance of a Croat-American staffer Mira Baratta, Dole's Foreign Affairs advisor. She is the granddaughter of an Ustashe (Nazi) Croatian general with family connections to the Croat Fascist Ustashe, which makes this even more curious. But Mr. Dole, sponsor of a 1986 resolution in favor of Albanian independence for Kosovo, in terms of corruption stands on the upside and in contrast to Mr. Clinton's "everything and everyone is for sale" politics. Dole appears to at least represent all the classic virtues of corrupted American politicians --when bought he stays bought, despite the perils to our Constitution of interventionist precedents. Mr. Dole now has his own refugee NGO in order to further his career as a wrecking ball swinging against Yugoslavia's territorial integrity and constitution.

The other important point to Americans about this monstrous infringement on Yugoslav sovereignty and conspiratorial misrepresentation of "human rights violations" in the middle of a nasty insurrection, is this: the same NGOs and international organizations will be after the United States the next time Watts, West-Central LA or any of our other remaining ghettoes goes ariot in the heat of racial violence. The New Left and New World Order use such naked forms of coercion (more below) based on political choices and ideological-rhetorical thinking, not on the basis of human needs or judicial equity. This is trouble for all of us.

Other writers are also tracking the problems experienced in the Air Force and Navy of personnel acquisition, pilot retention and even the low state of maintenance and spare parts which is forcing the cannibalization of aircraft in order to round out deploying squadrons. The situation is bad, deteriorating, and would get no better under a President Gore, should Mr. Clinton be forced to resign.

Atop the deterioration of our conventional forces, we now face the fact of the flight of a North Korean Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) of unknown range. Despite the fact that Mr. Clinton has attempted to bribe good behavior out of Kim Jong-Il's regime, they continue to tinker at longer range missiles and share technology with other unfriendly or non-aligned powers, including Iran, Iraq and others. Pakistan and India have also developed their IRBMs. Mr. Clinton has obstructed scrapping or reworking of the Ballistic Missile ban signed with the old Soviet Union and it is time to scrap the Clinton policy. The US is developing theater cruise missile defenses and needs to further develop our theater ballistic missile defenses. Some professionals may complain about the potential waste of dollars, but the US needs, for its defense, a combination of credible first strike and counter-strike deterrent forces, defensive systems and diplomatic efforts to retard proliferation --a tripodal strategy. The diplomatic has been over-emphasized and the defensive leg underemphasized and thus, our tripod is a-tilt. With a weak president and directionless foreign policy, that tripod is wobbly.

The whole complex of Liberal-Left Weapons bans and collectivist regimes was naïve and self-deluding from the first. You cannot have increased security with decreased arms and armed forces; nor can you scrap build-able weapons and expect nobody will cheat and build something dangerous that you don't have. But such is the collectivist fantasy of liberal disarmament --if we herd together like so many cattle, the wolves cannot get in and raven us. But the wolves get together and crack the herd until it stampedes and they can pick off the tastiest weaklings first.

Now, in conjunction with collectivist aggression via the UN and EU-NATO organs, free peoples are in grave danger from a conspiracy of bureaucrats, politicians and leftist activists. We have a Congressional election and some of the attention to issues ought to be brought back to our grave foreign policy perils with a focus on these conspiracies and unelected conspirators. Let Vietnam veteran senators Bob Kerrey and John McCain both expound about the graver threat to America and give a rest to Beltway issues such as restrictive campaign reform nonsense.

There are elections this weekend in Bosnia and a call to reduce the US-NATO military presence. The following newsclip should give the reader a sense for what is going on in Bosnia to maintain the appearance of democratic progress. To it I add the following; the UN-NATO people have been muzzling free speech by banning some election campaign literature, including the display of photos of indicted suspect Dr. Radovan Karadzic, but worse, :the UN "viceroy" has banned inclusion in schoolbooks of poetry by a Serbian priest dating to the 1830s on trumped up claims that his works inflame homicidal nationalism, or some such claptrap.

International community swaying Bosnia polls: analysts

Agence France Presse, Wed 09 Sep 98 - 14:29 GMT

SARAJEVO, Sept 9 (AFP) - The international community is using "non-democratic" means to help moderates win a bigger share of the vote in this weekend's Bosnian elections, a respected think-tank said Thursday.

"The elections will bring changes, but this will be due to non-democratic measures that the international community has undertaken," said Christopher Bennett, director of the International Crisis Group (ICG) Balkans project.

He pointed to the exceptional powers granted last December at an international conference to High Representative Carlos Westendorp to push forth the Dayton peace accords that halted the 1992-95 war.

Westendorp, the top international mediator in Bosnia, used his authority most notably to push aside hardliners in Republika Srpska who had been allies of fugitive war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic.

In a report, the ICG also cited Westendorp's dismissal of elected Bosnian politicians deemed to be blocking the return of refugees, and "snatch operations" by NATO-led peacekeepers against indicted war crimes suspects.

Though the international community has "ridden roughshod over Bosnia's democratic institutions," the ICG predicted that the elections "will again ratify the status quo."

"They will not of themselves take the peace process forward," the report said.

Based in Brussels, the ICG is respected among diplomats and political analysts for its reports on global hotspots. US Senator and Northern Ireland mediator George Mitchell

chairs its multinational board of trustees.

Bennett, speaking in Bosnian, told reporters that while he thought arbitrary international actions had been "positive," they were also "non-democratic" ones, and that Westendorp would not have to face their consequences.

Westendorp, deemed by some to be the "viceroy" of Bosnia, has defended the use of his special powers, saying he resorts to them only when Moslem, Serb and Croat politicians cannot agree among themselves.

Bennett said democracy was a "dangerous" process especially in the former Yugoslavia, and that it could lead to tensions in Bosnia between the three main ethnic communities.

"Politicians represent only the interests of their own ethnic group, and that is usually damaging for other groups living in Bosnia," he said, arguing that the electoral system spelled out in Dayton needed to be changed. ©AFP 1998

Tomorrow or Friday, I will further explore the continuing crisis in Kosovo in light of this discussion.

© Copyright 1998 Benjamin C. Works-SIRIUS