* * * Russia has heard many cases of illegal adoptions due to the heavy demand from Western couples wanting to adopt Russian children. * * *

EVERYONE WANTS A SMART RUSSIAN KID. NO ONE ADOPTS THEM DIRTY ARAB KIDS WHO WIPE THEIR ARSES WITH FINGERS.

CLICK HERE TO READ HOW MUCH PEOPLE OF AFGANISTAN LOVE TALIBAN, THEY CAN'T WAIT TO DIE FOR THEM! OR MAYBE NOT.

Serbs Languish In Kosovo Jails
Human rights activists accuse KFOR of being a silent accomplice to the imprisonment of scores of Kosovo Serb civilians

By Miroslav Filipovic (BCR No. 133, 14-Apr-00)

Scores of Kosovo Serb civilians abducted by local Albanians are being held in a number of small prisons across the province, a local branch of the international human rights organization, the Helsinki Committee has revealed.

The prisons, the exact number of which is unknown, are run by the Kosovo Protection Force, according to Committee officials. Captives, they say, have been badly treated - some are known to have died after being tortured.

Members of a branch of the Helsinki Committee in the predominantly Muslim Sandzak region, straddling the border between Montenegro and Serbia, recently visited five such prisons - in Dobra Voda, Peja, Djackovica, Studenica and Drenovac - where around 142 Serbs were being held.

"At the beginning the treatment of the prisoners was terrible - now conditions are much better because captives are being prepared for exchanges with the Albanians in Serbian prison, " said the president of the Sandzak Helsinki Committee President, Sefko Alomerovic.

There are also reports of Serbs and Albanians being held in prisons in northern Albania. "There were two camps. One in Kukes and the other in Tropoja. While I was there I saw many people who were not Albanians. We weren't allowed to make contact with them, but they could only be Serbs," one former Albanian detainee told Amnesty International.

The Helsinki Committee has passed on its research to KFOR, but its apparent failure to launch a full investigation into the findings has prompted Alomerovic to accuse the alliance of being a silent accomplice to Serb imprisonment. He claims that immediately after KFOR was notified of the camp locations, the prisoners were moved to other sites.

The Helsinki Committee's discovery follows growing concern over the whereabouts of hundreds of local Serbs who have been kidnapped by Kosovo Liberation Army, UCK, fighters.

In January, a Belgrade-based association representing the families of abducted Serbs gave Alomerovic a file containing a list of nearly 500 kidnapped Serbs with comprehensive details of their abductions. The association says it is also looking into the disappearance of a further 700 Serbs.

The kidnapping of Kosovo Serbs began almost two years ago, coinciding with the increase in UCK guerrillas activity in the province.

According to the independent Belgrade-based human rights group, the Humanitarian Law Centre, UCK fighters set up checkpoints in areas they controlled, stopping buses in search of Serb security officials - around 100 people were seized. Most of them, however, were civilians.

The Albanian militants also employed kidnapping as an instrument of terror, abducting Serb villagers and threatening their neighbours with a similar fate unless they abandoned their homes.

The Humanitarian Law Centre says many of the kidnap victims were held in UCK run prisons, and interviews with former detainees revealed that inmates were regularly beaten.

Following the arrival of NATO, kidnapping continued to be used to terrorise Serbs into leaving their homes but increasingly abductions have been carried out with a view to exchanging capitives for Albanians held in Serbia proper.

Estimates of the number of Kosovo Albanians imprisoned by the Serbs range from 2,000 to 3,000. They include combatants and many civilians, including some reportedly snatched as Serb forces left the province a year ago.

Many of the inmates are maltreated, have no idea what charges they face and are denied access to lawyers.

Under the terms of the Geneva Convention, all prisoners of war should have been released once the Kosovo war came to an end. The Yugoslav authorities argue that the treaty does not apply because the conflict was internal rather than international.

The West challenges this, yet when the NATO signed the Kumanovo agreement with the Yugoslav Army prior to its departure from Kosovo, they left the issue of prisoner releases off the document.

As a result, international agencies find themselves operating in a grey area. The ICRC, for example, argues that even though it visits Albanians detained in Serb jails, it cannot advocate their release because Kosovo is still technically part of Yugoslavia, not a foreign state.

There have been some prisoner exchanges since the end of the conflict, but the vast majority of detainees appear to have little hope of early release.

As a result, some families of detained Serbs and Albanians have tried to arrange exchanges privately through well-connected friends or by bribing officials. Some have even employed a Serbian detective agency. (See BCR No. 118 - Detective Offers Kosovo PoW Hope)

More disturbingly, there are cases of Serbian lawyers ransoming their clients to their families back in Kosovo. And in Podujevo, close to the provincial border with Serbia, and unofficial "prisoner market" is said to operate.

Miroslav Filipovic is a regular IWPR contributor based in Kraljevo.

It is enough to put your name in the bottom...

Subject: Fwd: [Fwd: For the Women in Afghanistan
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 13:21:07 CEST

Dear Friends,
Please do not ignore this email. This is something
that we as women (and men) and essentially as human beings need to support -
I don't know if this is going to
help but take 3 minutes out of your life to do your part.

Madhu, the government of Afghanistan, is waging a
war upon women.

Since the Taliban took power in 1996, women have had
to wear burqua and have been beaten and stoned in
public for not having the proper attire, even if this
means simply not having the mesh covering in front
of their eyes. One woman was beaten to death by an
angry mob of fundamentalists for accidentally exposing
her arm while she was driving. Another was stoned to
death for trying to leave the country with a man that
was not a relative.

Women are not allowed to work or even go out in
public without a male relative; professional women
such as professors, translators, doctors, lawyers, artists
and writers have been forced from their jobs and stuffed
into their homes. Homes where a woman is present
must have their windows painted so that she can never
thbe seen by outsiders. They must wear silent shoes so
at they are never heard. Women live in fear of their
lives for the slightest misbehavior. Because they
cannot work, those without male relatives or
husbands are either starving to death or begging on the
street, even if they hold Ph.D.s. Depression is
becoming so widespread that it has reached emergency
levels. There is no way in such an extreme Islamic
society to know the suicide rate with certainty, but
relief workers are estimating that the suicide rate among
women, who cannot find proper medication and treatment
for severe depression and would rather take their
lives than live in such conditions,has increased
significantly.
There are almost no medical facilities available
for women. At one of the rare hospitals for women, a
reporter found a still, nearly lifeless bodies
lying motionless on top of beds, wrapped in their
burqua, unwilling to speak, eat, or do anything, but
slowly waste away. Others have gone mad and were seen
crouched in corners, perpetually rocking or
crying, most of them in fear. One doctor is
considering, when what little medication that is left
finally runs out, leaving these women in front of the
president's residence as a form of- protest. It is at
the point where the term "human rights violations" has
become an understatement.
Husbands have the power of life and death over
their women relatives, especially their wives, but an
angry mob has just as much right to stone or beat a
woman, often to death, for exposing an inch of flesh or
offending them in the slightest way. Women enjoyed
relative freedom, to work, dress generally as they
wanted, and drive and- appear in public alone
until only 1996. The rapidity of this transition is
the main reason for the depression and suicide; women
who were once educators or doctors or simply used to
basic human freedoms are now severely restricted and
treated as subhuman in the name of right-wing
fundamentalist Islam. It is not their tradition or
'culture,' but it is alien to them, and it is
extreme even for those cultures where fundamentalism
is the rule. Everyone has a right to a tolerable human
existence, even if they are women in a Muslim country.

If we can threaten military force in Kosovo in the
name of human rights for the sake of ethnic
Albanians, citizens of the world can certainly express peaceful
outrage at the oppression, murder and injustice
committed against women by the Taliban.

STATEMENT:
In signing this, we agree that the current
treatment of women in Afghanistan is completely
UNACCEPTABLE and deserves action by the United Nations
and that the current situation overseas will not be
tolerated. Women's Rights is not a small issue
anywhere, and it is UNACCEPTABLE for women in 2000 to
be treated as subhuman and so much as property.
Equality and human decency is a RIGHT not a freedom,
whether one lives in Afghanistan or elsewhere.

PLEASE COPY this email on to a new message, sign
the bottom and forward it to everyone on your
distribution lists. If you receive this list with more than 400
names on it, please e-mail a copy of it to :
sarabande@brandeis.edu
Thank you!

1...

Saladin

" The Russians envisaged the mujahideen to be "vulnerable" this time after the deadening 94-96 War."

No they didn't. That's why they sent an army tenfold the estimated size of the guerilla groups.

" The Russian generals promised a "quick and crushing" end to the so-called "bandit formations." They predicted the so-called "anti-terrorist" campaign to be over by the end of 1999. "

When the russians took grozny, the russian generals said the real war has just begun.

"The "success" was short-lived however"..

Russia is still controling 95% of Chechenya.

." Eight months into the war, we're witnessing a miracle in Chechnya: A ferocious yet determined resistance by the outnumbered and outgunned Mujahideen resulting in serious Russian setbacks. "

Resistance, yet no victory.

Russian Army in disarray as war drags on...

Mood Darkens Over Chechen War

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 15, 2000

NOVOKUZNETSK, Russia –– No more ceremonial flag-raisings over battered towns in Chechnya flash on the television news. No more cheerful meetings feature blustery Russian military commanders and haggard civilians. No more predictions are made of imminent troop withdrawals and war's end by summer.

After almost eight months of fighting and more than a month after the last major Chechen town fell to Russian troops, the feeling has grown that Russian forces are in a quagmire.

Hardly a day goes by without reports from Chechnya of big or small rebel assaults on Russian outposts or convoys. Many have occurred in areas long officially designated as "liberated" by the Russians--such as the capital of Grozny, where 84 police died, or in the mountainous Vedeno area, where at least another 32 were killed. Officially, 2,000 Russian troops have died in the last six months--a higher rate than during the bloody 1994-96 conflict in Chechnya, Russian reports say.

Here in distant southwestern Siberia, where troops have recently returned from combat, nobody needs newscasts to understand that quick victory is out of the question. "There's no triumph, no victory. We've been lured into a guerrilla war," said Dmitry Lyapin, a young trooper who gazed at homemade combat videos of himself and comrades.

While it is unclear whether this realization has diminished public support for the war, the sensation has filtered through to mouthpieces that normally provide upbeat accounts of the war. In Moscow, the Defense Ministry abandoned plans to turn over responsibility for order in Chechnya to police forces, which in Russia include military contingents. "As long as rebel formations have hundreds and thousands of fighters, special troops alone will not be able to deliver a decisive blow against them," Gen. Valery Manilov, deputy chief of staff, said last week. Shortly after the fall of Grozny, in early February, officials said police units would handle control while Russia reduced its total strength in Chechnya from 90,000 troops to 15,000.

Newspapers, which once mainly provided cheerleading, now offer scathing criticism. "The federal command is clearly confused," wrote Nezamisimaya Gazeta on Monday. "The entire territory of Chechnya is 'controlled' by the federal forces, who nevertheless report casualties almost every day. And the losses are mounting."

Last week in Obschaya Gazeta, an analyst wrote, "Something happened in Chechnya which until recently seemed impossible--the mood in the army is changing . . . for the worse."

Here in Novokuznetsk, a town showered daily with soot from aluminum and steel works, random conversations with residents suggest some misgivings. No one, however, expressed doubt that the conflict was a just cause. The war won overwhelming support among Russians last fall, following four terror bombings of Russian apartment buildings. The government blamed Chechen extremists, without offering proof.

"Of course, our army is a poor one and does not always perform well," said Svetlana Romankova, a retired schoolteacher. "We must take care not to waste our boys' lives. We need to make sacrifices. Chechnya is a danger to Russia."

"If we can't control a little part of our country like Chechnya, how will we fix anything else?" asked truck driver Rodion Bogomolov.

Veterans here acknowledge serious battlefield problems, but caution that even in the best of conditions, the war would be costly. "The lack of full control is what's on show. Potentially, all units in Chechnya are vulnerable. We must be ready for these disasters," said Yuri, a colleague of Lyapin's who, like many, didn't want his full name used in print.

Russia's ground force in Chechnya is a complex blend of infantry, armor and artillery coupled with Interior Ministry units, which are normally in charge of police work. The hardest-hit units in recent ambushes have been OMON police, whose job is usually riot control. Lyapin belongs to an anti-narcotics and anti-terror department in the Novokuznetsk police.

Lyapin fought in Chechnya four times during the 1994-96 conflict. His unit finally withdrew from Grozny in August 1996, after being trapped by Chechen guerrillas. The same month, all Russian forces left the city, and the region won effective independence from Russia.

The year before, Lyapin had an even closer brush with death. Chechens ambushed an armored car carrying him and fellow police. It was hit by seven rocket-propelled grenades. He escaped, but four comrades were incinerated.

Last December, Lyapin returned to Chechnya and took part in the storming of Grozny. On the way, his unit fought to retake Alkhan-Kala from guerrillas who had infiltrated the town and held it for three days. In Grozny, under the cover of artillery fire and airstrikes, Lyapin, 30, went house-to-house hunting snipers. Sometimes he spotted guerrillas only dozens of yards from his makeshift barracks, in a refrigeration room of an old chicken farm.

"We called it the Black Hole," Lyapin said of their outpost in the western Staropromyslovsky district. "You feel like you can never escape danger."

In this campaign, no one in Lyapin's unit was killed, although two were injured by mortar fire. "This is what the authorities call checking for passports," Lyapin said sarcastically, in reference to the officially announced mission of his unit.

Lyapin and other colleagues complained of poor coordination with army units and other police forces in Chechnya. Radios didn't work well and sometimes orders were changed from moment to moment.

Public accounts of recent setbacks in Chechnya suggest such problems are widespread. Two weeks ago, 41 OMON troops were caught in an ambush near Vedeno. They could not call in airstrikes because they lacked the proper radio frequency. A rescue team of another OMON unit picked up the SOS call, but was itself intercepted. It retreated. In the end, no one reached the ambush scene. Thirty-two troopers died and nine disappeared.

One OMON officer charged that agents of the Federal Security Service, which handles intelligence, failed to notify them of guerrilla movements. The Defense Ministry responded with criticism that the police vehicles had rolled into an ambush in close formation, as if on parade.

To this newly born baby IGOR,
"Despite the fact that air strikes could destabilize the Taliban and
deter the Northern Alliance from considering peace talks, neither Iran nor Pakistan has the
political or military might to counter Russia."

We are watching the show of this "military might"
in Chechniya for past 7 months, We have seen their
show in Chechniya in 1996 and we have watched them in Afghanistan as well so we will see them again.

In response of ban,
Please forward this mail to as many friends as possible that no one cried on the death and the destruction of million of people in Afghanistan caused by the barbaric aggretion of mighty Military power of Russia which resulted in the convergance of devastated and ruined nation led by extremist Taliban. It is the powerful aggressor that bring a whole nation to this stage and it is
the same aggressor that helped Yugoslavia to play the same brutal game in Bosnia and Kosovov. And now this "mighty power" is creating another catastrophic situation in Chechniya. DONT BLAME TALIBAN or any other EXTREMIST BUT TRY TO STOP THE MIGHTY AGGRESSOR TO NOT TO FURTHERB CREATE THEM.
REGARDS/WELLWISHER

All this time AllAmerican failed to inform us of his family ties to Mother Russia and that he has a Russian born wife. Here's a good photo of his wife:

sublimedirectory.com/pod8.jpg

Perhaps this can help to explain some of AllAmerican's previous actions, i.e., vulgarity, riding off into the sunset with Bacon and their enama bag; his romps in the back seat of his taxi with his fairies; pulling his pants down and then sticking his head in a fence for that other faggot Bernstein's pleasure. Not to mention that he forgets that he's not talking to his mother and/or wife when he's posting to us "DEBONAIR LADIES" of this board.

BAbbbbbbboooooooooooooon;

You one cent crack Ho' ! LOL.

Still trying to get at me and failing miserably while trying to do it. You are too stupid to realize that you have lost the war of words a long time ago.

Everyone saw you lie yourself into stupidity about Switzerland and the Oil Tanker... Even KA/Kissie/Lmemenxe were awed by your ""weasel-like"" attempt at lying your way through those topics. LOL. Lucky I was there to catch you ---- BOTH TIMES YA CRACK HO'! lol

What a silly Prostitute U R! lol.

Do everyone a favor and go smoke your Crack somewhere else Ya BABBOOOOOOOOOOoooooon! LOL.

Have not read any good 'brave mujahideen' stories lately. I wonder why?

Matters not, chaps. Mujahideen already killed up to 70,000 Russians. With 93,000 to begin with and 3,000 already out of Chechnya, that's only 20,000 Russians left to kill. Maskhadov said he still has 55,000 mujahideen and "every young [brainwashed] Chechen man". Except me, Mr. Maskhadov.

Chechenyonok,

"Have not read any good 'brave mujahideen' stories lately. I wonder why?"

Brave Mujahideen battle provess should not be confused with "stories". They are not fighting so that idiots like you read them as "stories". The war will continue until the last Mujahideen is killed and there are still plenty and more are on the way.

"With 93,000 to begin with..."

* laughable. If I'm not mistaken, there were more than 100,000 troops alone around Grozny during its "siege". There are no less than 250,000 Russian troops stationed in Chechnya.

P.S. Pretty soon Russia has to beg NATO and UN to come to its rescue. Already Albright has answered the call of Russia and is helping the beleaguered Russian Army with massive military and financial "aid". But the "might" of Russia and its supporters is no match for the might of the Almighty.

Indeed God is Great.

"would pursue state integrity."

Can you impose state integrity? Or does in then become something else?
===================================
Just one westerners point of view

Nato and the EU may be idiots, but they have kept us in the West stable and prosperous for a good many decades. Logically it is those countries who have suffered instability in all that time (often, though not exclusively, through there own making) that are now calling for them to be disbanded. Fine Nato is an outdated organisation. Is there a viable alternative from a western point of view?
My personal reaction to what I have been hearing is fear- At some basic level, I just don't want instability, corruption and the mafia dictating politics here. This maybe why I chose to live in the Switzerland and not the RF. But I have that choice, others don't. I can understand the resentment, but I don't agree that everything the West does is purposefully to undermine the rest of the world,but simply to keep what we have.
Can you blame us?

So change is neccersary- but don't expect the West to change without winging, after all it works for us.

It's like asking car-drivers to give up their vehicles to reduce world polution levels. We can see it makes sense, but on a day to day level we just can't quite bring ourselves to do it.
Any westerner that claims otherwise is a hypocrite.

I happen to like being employed and getting paid for it, having decent housing, decent education,
feeling safe, having some influence at the election polls, the values of freedom of speech, human rights, equality. The rule of law. The fact that my neighbours are unlikely to storm into my home and kill my family. Others might recent that, but can they seriously blame me for liking it?

So, I watch telly or read the papers and see that others in the world live in circumstances that are unbearable. Where ordinary people, who are not that different to me want to live in peace, watch their children grow up and fullfil their potential, all the above. And I think why is that not happing for them? Why are they at war? Why are they being persecuted by their own government, why are their governments so corrupt.Why can't they determine their own lives. Why are they used as pawns in wars they barely understand. How can children by killed in the name of nationalism.

And then the next question: Why isn't someone doing something about it? So people like me then ask our governments to do something about it, because we have prosperity and peace and feel guilty, because we have it at someone else's expense. But the truth is there is little our governments, our armies can do to. So they attempt to look as though they are doing something.

The UN, Nato, EU, OSCE are all based on a dream, a wish that the world could be a safer place for all. In practise they become corrupted by the reality of politics, vested interests, capitalism, globalisation. So a "benign world government" is an imposibility. Because who can decide what is in another countries best interests. The west may be prosperous and relatively peaceful and think that their way of life is best, but other countries resent being morally dictated to, whilst at the same time being economically dictated to by globalisation.

Then there are the Milosoviches and the Sadam Hussains of this world, who have their own vested interests to maintain. So Milosovich wanted to keep Yugoslavia together and was willing to do that at all costs. (I try to imagine the circumstances in which the Scots finally vote for independance from London and the British army is sent in to wipe out the Scottish National Party-
I can't. In the 1300's yes(Braveheart) in the 21 st centuary-no). Some have claimed that it was Nato that broke up Yugoslavia- tell me if it was simply Nato that wanted the break up, why did Croatia and the bosnian Muslims go to the savage lengths they did to break away from Serbia?

Sadam used chemical weapons on the Kurds to suppress their drive for independance. He drained the marshes in the south destroying an ancient way of life. He invaded Kuwait and stuck his middle finger up to the rest of the World:"What are you going to do about it?" He started to build an arsenal of weapons, he could use to threaten anyone who stood in the way of his ambitions.

In both these cases it is not the nation state that is the threat, it is the personality cult of the leaders. The unpredictability of a leader who will go to any lengths to get what he wants. And if their own people are not spared, what chance the surrounding Nations? And if they possess modern military equipment.....................

So Nato bombed. Sanctions and diplomatic means were not exhausted, but if there had been a chance of them succeeding wouldn't we have tried?
Then again can you bomb someone into agreeing with you? No unlikely. So Nato lost in the end.

Now the post-mortem: People celibrating Milosvich' victory in the David and Goliath battle with Nato, seem to have lost sight of what he is.
The idea of course is not so much to support Milosovich as to celibrate Nato's defeat.
-Suddenly Nato's motives are no longer preserving peace in the Region,but protecting economic vested interests.
-The pluralitic western press suddenly becomes state controlled en masse.
-Those seeking independence on the grounds of oppression and irreconcilable differences with a government that has losted credibility, are suddenly called criminals
- And Milosovich was simply fullfilling his duty as leader to preserve the integrity of the Yugoslavian State.

I have been asked to look at this from the Russian perspective. I'm not sure if I can, or if any of the Russians here would recognise their country in my discription. I certainly find their discription of Nato and the events of the past 10 years difficult to reconcile with my own experience of that period.

To be continued...........(perhaps)