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To: Douglas V. Fant who wrote (42506)	4/17/1999 5:46:00 PM
From: gmccon	Respond to of 95453

Sorry, Doug. Couldn't pass up on the shot. Thank you, Greg (eom)

To: Douglas V. Fant who wrote (42506)	4/17/1999 10:26:00 PM
From: PartyTime	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 95453

Douglas, speaking of the plight of Albanians and earlier discussions on low-priced oil stocks, it might interest you to note former bankrupt TRGC (Trinity Gas Corp), now renamed Trinity Energy Services, Inc. (trading symbol not yet changed to TERI), has been negotiating oil exploration in Albania. And TRGC has to be the lowest-priced oil stock in the market. The Albanaian talks were initiated prior to the NATO bombing campaign. Could Trinity's action become part of a future Albanian economic recovery program? The poorest nation in Europe, it certainly could use some help. On the other hand, so could Trinity. Also, under its new management, the company is negotiating Third World energy plant construction. 209.238.49.107 As you peruse this link, note the agreement with Chad was inked on 23 February 99 (see news release from website). Yes indeed, we're today witnessing the drillers returning from near-death experiences; however, revival of Trinity's oil and gas exploration efforts will clearly mark a return from the grave. On a different note, speaking of graves, regarding previous discussions on this thread about the Balkan War, I think Clinton's best move--for him and everyone else in the world--might have been to have amassed many of the world's religious and political leaders to meet in Macedonia and then--following a bombing campaign of leaflets (instead of bombs) announcing the action--walk through Kosovo into Belgrade in order to call on Milosevic to do things differently. Hmmm. "Suppose they gave a war and nobody came?" A good ole' song from the 60's, by the West Coast Experimental Pop Art Band. Whose got memory? (LOL) Who knows? By doing it this way, Clinton might have: a) changed the traditional way of resolving world conflict; b) trumped Ghandi in history; and c) cause the entire world to finally forget about Monica. Heck, I'd put my ass on the line for all of those people--why can't he?

To: Douglas V. Fant who wrote (42506)	4/18/1999 3:04:00 PM
From: Crimson Ghost	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 95453

OT: For those who think humanitarian concerns have anything to do with the NATO attack on Serbia, the following artice will be of interest. The sole reason for this attack (and the genocidal sanctions on Iraq) is that the leaders of these nations refuse to follow US orders. That is the bottom line pure and simple. No problem when Turks slaughter Kurds though. 15 April 1999 So what's the truth about NATO and Kosovo? Like many others involved in international news reporting, I've spent several hours each day over the last three weeks covering the crisis in Kosovo. And despite the relentless outpourings of the NATO PR machine, I've found the explanations reported in the mainstream media steadily less convincing. How is it, for example, that one of scores of simmering local disputes across the world has mushroomed into possibly the most dramatic crisis facing Europe since World War II? And why is there such a broad consensus amongst both decision-makers and media commentators that bombing an apparently sovereign country is the only way forward? When I first set about compiling OneWorld's Kosovo Special Report, I was broadly in agreement with the dominant viewpoint that Milosevic must be stopped. Cases of severe human rights abuse, committed with impunity and official encouragement by Yugoslav military forces and special police, have been well documented by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. It is reliably estimated that around 2000 people had been killed in the conflict before the peace negotiations began at Rambouillet in February. The pressure for an agreement was intense, and apart from the Yugoslav delegation very few voices of dissent were to be heard. One was Jan Oberg of Sweden's Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, whose condemnation of the proposed peace deal as "imperialism in disguise" was startling in its rejection of the Western consensus. At this point the conflict still looked manageable - in terms of numbers killed it was nothing compared to Algeria, Sierra Leone or the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an increasing number of African nations are getting mired in a bloody war with little apparent purpose or prospect of resolution. It was certainly on a different scale altogether from the 1995 genocide in Rwanda, where the international community refused to lift a finger to stop the needless deaths of half a million people. The West's laissez-faire attitude to this tragedy has also been well documented by Human Rights Watch in a recent report. Then, to the surprise of almost everyone, Milosevic called NATO's bluff. He refused to sign the American-sponsored deal, and the bombs began to rain down on Belgrade. I still don't believe that NATO is particularly eager to get involved in a long war in Yugoslavia. The alliance's military strategists are not stupid, and they knew full well that unless Milosevic buckled quickly NATO would get stuck in a potentially disastrous long-term campaign. Which raises the question: why did NATO want to get involved at all? First of all, it is abundantly clear that humanitarian concerns had absolutely nothing to do with it. A superficial veil of concern for the rights of oppressed Kosovans has been useful to keep public opinion on side - as countless soundbites from Western leaders and military commanders affirm. If NATO had really cared about Kosovan civilians, it would never have launched its military campaign without the ground support necessary to protect the two million people then thrown at the mercy of a furious and vengeful Yugoslav army. It was widely predicted that a straightforward air campaign would make the refugee crisis dramatically worse - although the scale of the catastrophe when it happened was probably as much a surprise to NATO as it was to international aid agencies. I believe the real reason for NATO's intervention is rather less altruistic. This is an issue of geopolitical power, not human rights. Ever since the end of the Cold War, NATO has been busily trying to transform itself into the guarantor of stability for all of Europe and beyond. For this it needs to protect both its credibility and its vast military expenditure. The alliance could not simply stand by and allow a small-time demagogue like Milosevic to thumb his nose at American power. Once Yugoslavia knuckles under, the Western powers will replace the stick with the carrot - as a recent British press report revealed. Hence NATO's utter lack of interest in Turkey's brutal suppression of its Kurdish population - who have been in armed revolt for far longer than the Kosovans and who have just as strong a claim to nationhood. But Turkey is a compliant state, willing to play the game according to US interests - for example by allowing its bases to be used for bombing raids over Iraq. So the Kurds are theirs for the killing, condemned by the West as terrorists rather than celebrated - like the Kosovan KLA - as freedom fighters. There are plenty of other examples of serious humanitarian disasters where Western countries have been not just silent but actively complicit in the torture and murder of innocent civilians. Israel, for example, can happily flout any number of UN resolutions and still be the recipient of billions of dollars of aid from the US. Israel holds stocks of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons which could potentially cause more destruction in the Middle East than Saddam Hussein could do in a century. There's also East Timor of course, that half-forgotten corner of the world where a third of the population has been killed since the US-approved Indonesian invasion of 1975. It is revealing also that the US didn't even try to go through the formal procedures for getting UN Security Council legitimacy for its war in Yugoslavia. Of course both China and Russia could have been expected to use their vetos - but that is what collective security means. It does not mean the unilateral exercise of military might by the world's one remaining superpower - and its client states like Britain. There is no doubt that the current military campaign is illegal under international law. The saddest thing of all is that there was once the chance of a peaceful solution in Kosovo. Led by the moderate Ibrahim Rugova and inspired by Gandhian principles, a non-violent resistance movement had successfully mobilised a more democratic and inclusive civil society. Had as much financial support been offered for democratisation in Yugoslavia as has been expended on military hardware in just one night of NATO bombing (an estimated £90 million on the first night alone), things would have been very different. And, as many democracy activists have written, the NATO action has so strengthened Milosevic that it has set their cause back by decades. But then a democratic Yugoslavia was never really the West's concern. Neither was getting rid of Milosevic, who - like Saddam Hussein before him - needed only to be brought back under control. As decades of experience show, tin-pot dictators are just fine - so long as they obey the rules of American power.