hi kim!
=
igor,
re: kisako....maybe she'll return to visit our wistful vista....
or....not.

My Kim I thought you did not read my posts.I can say that I agree with Gervasi's interpretations because of actions that were taken by the west vis a vis ex Warsaw Pact countries since the breakup of the pact.They are looked at as slave labour by Germany that is why these countries will never be self sufficient.The west wants to get them in the IMF net from which they will never be able to extricate themselves.Once they hook up with IMF their economic future is controlled by IMF.I believe we have already discussed IMF and why it is no good.I know I have posted articles to that effect.Unfortunately when I upgraded my computer my favourites list was wiped out and I do not have any idea where those articles could be.I would ask you if Russia is not the enemy then what is the reason for NATO? Gervasi supplies a lot of footnotes in his article.My father is also of the same opinion as Gervasi as are a lot of intellectuals that we know.To sum it up Gervasi has written what we have analyzed and concluded and believe to be true on our own and seems to be of the same opinion.

Igor, vis a vis the IMF and Eastern European economies- We are looking at the same monetarist policies applied in Britain by Thatcher. I'll have to get back to you on that when I dig out some of the sources I have.

Russia is not the enemy, but the instability caused by a changing world balance. Even the perception of instability is a problem to Western governments. Think stockmarkets, international investment programmes,etc. It takes time to come to terms with change, looking at things from a purely phycological point of view. It think both sides of the Cold War divide are still dealing with the legacy of those fourty years, and big organisations like the UN and Nato are difficult to change. I don't regard Russians as enemies, that would be rediculous. I hope you realise that people like me in Europe are not your enemies either. Maybe we have a common problem: outdated organisations, outdated ways of thinking, and little democratic control over these organisations. They act on our behalf, but we are lied to, on both sides.

Kim

http://www.rae.org/compcre.html
http://answering-islam.org/Humor/create.html
http://www.mcsdtechcenter.org/humor/begin.htm

and many more.... going back 20 years ago.

Hairy don't be so sarcastic - its very unlike you.

And I totaly agree with you on the lonely, sexually desperate people out there...

So how come no one is discussing the war in East Africa ...

Hashish,

Computers around the world use 'Arabic' numerals, legacy of Islamic rule in Spain. If there were no Arabic numerals or Arabic Zero, there would not have been the computers as we use it today.

you can earn nearly 50,000 $ in the next 100 days.

If you are interested please wrtie to

moreinfo@england.com

So, if Allah hadn't created the numerals, God wouldn't have had the computer in the first place?

Much too Monty Python- "This is getting too silly".


Here's one for Allam, and Igor this would count as evidence, I guess. The Truth will out.

Shot by both sides

We've all heard about the murdered children and
the mob violence. But what if the UN is largely to
blame? Fiachra Gibbons reports on a shocking
documentary about Sierra Leone



Film Unlimited

Fiachra Gibbons

Thursday May 25, 2000

Never again will I be able to watch Michael Buerk on the
Nine O'Clock News give the customary warning "Scenes
you are about to see may disturb some viewers" without a
pang of anger.

After watching New World Order (Somewhere in Africa) at
Cannes, a gut-wrenching documentary about Sierra Leone
in which the hypocrisy of Britain and the United Nations
turns the stomach as much as the barbarity on the streets,
you cannot but think that our dinners are not disturbed half
often enough.

French director Philippe Diaz insists that when he went to
Sierra Leone with the charity Action Against Hunger it was
to make a "little humanitarian film" about how famine and
politics are often entwined. "I had no intention of making a
film about changing the world. It just happened," he says.
"We found a terrible situation made worse by the UN. It was
being presented as a war between democracy and
barbarian, diamond-hungry rebels who were chopping
civilians' hands off; this was not what we found. What we
did find shocked us so much it was hard to believe."

Watching the film unfold is not an easy experience. The
opening credits roll over a casual murder on the streets of
the capital Freetown by a government militiaman patrolling
with the UN-backed Nigerian Ecomog troops. What passes
for the UN in this part of the world, we soon discover,
doesn't just allow cold-blooded murder, but actively takes
part.

The civilian is wearing shorts and white vest and you can
feel his panic. The militiaman looks like a cross between a
voodoo witch doctor and Davy Crockett. You just catch the
cutlass in his belt, and the barely raised rifle. It is all over in
a second.

The bizarre get-up is the uniform of the Kamajors, a
strange pro-government army of religious fanatics who go
through an initiation ceremony that is supposed to make
them invulnerable to bullets.

Later in the film we see the coup de grace delivered by
someone well out of shot. A Nigerian gun doing its
humanitarian duty as part of the UN mandate probably put
the poor guy out of his misery. Brains do not pour out on to
the ground like this in Hollywood. It is messier and more
unsettling than you can possibly imagine, as if someone
had spilled a blancmange. This is not a film, however, that
relies on gore to shock. It is those nice familiar UN men
and women, the dashing, recently recalled British high
commissioner Peter Penfold in his colonial white suit, and
the mealy-mouthed rebel propagandists that are really
scary.

Diaz's film tells how in nine years Sierra Leone descended
into a bloody pit of anarchy and despair, not through the
usual flashy jump-cuts of action footage, but through eerily
still talking-head interviews. Decisions taken in London
and New York that mean horror and starvation on the
ground in Sierra Leone are elided with practised ease:
President Kabbah talks about combating hunger with a
$150m bridge to the airport; rebels behind massacres and
mutilations talk haughtily about illegality and injustice. It is
soon clear that nothing big ever happens without Britain
and the UN's say-so.

Only when he has painstakingly shown how Britain in
particular, and the international community in general,
scuppered a peace agreement four years ago because it
did not conform to the small print of that year's big global
push for democratisation does Diaz confront us with the
results of that high-handedness in the most brutal fashion.

A man shot by the Ecomog/UN troops slowly splutters his
last alone on a pavement, a corpse burned beyond
recognition twitches with life, amputation victims come
bearing their hacked limbs, a man is battered to death by a
mob, his head impaled on a stick, and then later his penis.
Dead children lie rotting in the ruins of their homes, killed
by cluster bombs allegedly paid for by Britain and dropped
from Ecomog jets. In Africa, it seems the niceties of
peacekeeping need not be observed.

These scenes, shot by Sorious Samura, a cameraman who
worked for the Sierra Leone government until he could no
longer square himself with their actions, represent a tiny
fragment of the 70,000 people who have died since the UN
killed off the last hope that Sierra Leonians might make
peace between themselves. Sorious has since fled to
London.

"My assistant Michele got sick when he first played the
tape," says Diaz. "I thought, I can't let people see this. But
then I thought, they must."

When I saw New World Order in a small municipal theatre
in a village high in the hills above Cannes, its impact was
stunning. No one in the audience moved for a few minutes.
Then everyone wanted to speak. The debate lasted longer
than the 120 minutes of the film. No one, as Diaz feared,
felt the scenes of graphic suffering excessive and, lest his
compatriots feel smug, Diaz pointed out, "It is France that is
the real neocolonial villain in Africa."

Diaz has become used to this first incredulous and then
impassioned reaction. "We always want to think the best,
that if the UN is involved it will be OK and we can forget
everything. Sometimes though, as in Sierra Leone, that is
when the problems really begin."

One woman, however, refused to let him go without an
explanation. "How can this be? The UN - how could they?
Why have the journalists not told us of this?" Indeed.


Source: The Guardian(British Daily)_ 25May, 2000

The war in east africa? Maybe they will all kill each other and then we can move and make a resort out of the place! That's pretty bad, sorry!

By IGOR ( - 149.99.71.52) on Sunday, May 28, 2000 - 10:15 pm:
Why is NATO in Yugoslavia?
if Russia is not the enemy then what is the reason for NATO?

"The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded in 1949 with the stated purpose of protecting Western Europe from possible military aggression by the Soviet Union and its allies. "

Milosevic's government is socialist and the last remnant of the Soviet Union or to be exact of its allies. Therefore Nato in Yugoslavia only continue its role it has been created for at is origine.
Serbia is the last state keeping sovietic socialist way of ruling and its militarist mentality. So, it's not surprising if we see Nato there. I agree that they used excessive forces and are making mistakes in the Balkans day after day. I just want to say that it's presence and is logical and its existence is still relevant even in the Cold War context.

The EU already accounts for some 40 percent of Russia's foreign
trade and Prodi said the figure would rise to around 60 percent as
the bloc expands to include former Soviet satellite states in
central and eastern Europe.
Addressing Russian concerns about this expansion, Prodi said Moscow
stood to gain from the emergence of a single market with lower
tariffs and more than 500 million consumers with high incomes --
twice the population of the United States.
Putin Eyes Cooperation, Even On Chechnya
Putin said Monday's talks had been ``very constructive, very frank
and very fruitful'' and said Russia was committed to closer ties
with the EU in a wide range of spheres, including security.

Computers around the world use 'Arabic' numerals, legacy of Islamic rule in Spain. If there were no Arabic numerals or Arabic Zero, there would not have been the computers as we use it today.

THANK YOU for showing us ONCE AGAIN how STUPID YOU ARE. Just because they are CALLED 'Arabic' doesn't mean Muslims invented them. The numerals came from INDIA, do your RESEARCH! AND I BET anything that COMPUTERS WOULD BE HERE. Heck, maybe they would be much more efficient if they'd use AZTEC numeric system based on 20s.

BETTER THAN

... LATELY YOU HAVEN'T RESPONDED TO ANY OF MY DIRECT POSTINGS TO YOU. DID I INADVERTANLY INSULT YOU? YOUR ONE OF THE BETTER GUYS OF THIS BOARD AND I HOLD YOUR RESPONSE AND POSTINGS IN THE HIGHEST OF ESTEEMED.WHAT GIVES?

The List Keeper,

I have some good news for you. You can add RAMZAS DZHAMBAEV, officer of Maskhadov's security service, to your list. KILLED, accept nothing less.