Issue 62 Table of Contents

Issue 62
Table of Contents

	U.S. Now Violating 1973 War Powers Act	by Farhan Haq The NATO attacks on Yugoslavia, which began Mar. 24, involved U.S. forces from the outset and had gone on for "60 days plus 48 hours" without the appropriate authorization. Clinton and the heads of the other 18 governments in NATO have refused to admit that they are even at war with Yugoslavia over Kosovo. "Legally, there have been no wars (in Europe) since 1945," a British Foreign Office spokesman said this week, noting that neither Belgrade nor NATO had declared war
	When Will the Media Call it War?	by Norman Solomon Over two months have passed since the beginning of NATO's air war against Yugoslavia. After a shaky start, Washington's spin machinery has done much to promote a war agenda -- with crucial assistance from major U.S. news media
	Milosevic War Crimes Charges Open Pandora's Box	by Mile Branic Along with Pres. Slobodan Milosevic and four other high-ranking Yugoslav officials, NATO leaders and officers may also be accountable for war crimes before the United Nations Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, legal experts noted
	NATO's "Humanitarian" Reasons for War	by Diana Johnstone After the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO needed a new excuse for pumping resources into the military-industrial complex. Thanks to Kosovo, NATO celebrated its 50th anniversary by construction of its new global mission: to intervene anywhere in the world on humanitarian grounds. The recipe is easy: arm a group of radical secessionists to shoot policemen, describe the inevitable police retaliation as "ethnic cleansing," promise the rebels that NATO will bomb their enemy if the fighting goes on
	"Mission Creep" Towards a Major War	by Barbara Ehrenreich What is happening with NATO is known technically as "mission creep:" You start out doing -- or claiming to do -- one thing and end up doing quite another. While the bombs rain down on Serbia, the humanitarian crisis that originally inspired the whole operation has been relegated to a purely propagandistic role. The United States, for example, has budgeted only $58.5 million for humanitarian aid, less than the cost of a single day's bombing sorties
	No Excuse for NATO's Bombing of Civilians	by Mark Weisbrot It is really only the support of the media that has allowed these atrocities to go on for so long without provoking overwhelming revulsion among Americans. Despite some excellent reporting by individual journalists such as the New York Times' Steven Erlanger, most of the news that reaches most of the public-- on TV-- is little more than government propaganda
	How NATO Has Rewritten the Rules of Combat	by Claudio Nino It is the civilian population, who have become the principle victims of the pinnacle of advanced military technology. In World War I, the proportion of deaths was six soldiers for each civilian. In World War II, this ratio changed and the number of civilian victims was double that of the military. Now, they are rising to the level where losses among the populace surpass the deaths of combatants by more than 10 times
	U.S. Warned: Don't Use Landmines in Kosovo	by Mercedes Sayagues 17 out of 19 NATO members involved in the Kosovo operation have signed the Ottawa Convention to ban landmines and could object to joint operations using weapons their governments have banned. The two non-signatories are Turkey and the United States. U.S. officials have publicly stated their country reserves the right to use antipersonnel landmines in Kosovo. One would be the Gator mines that can be scattered by airplanes; another would be anti-vehicle or anti-tank mines with anti-handling devices.
	Cluster Bombs Target Innocents	Analysis By Vesna Peric-Zimonjic "A person standing a meter or two away from the cluster bomb gets the so called 'air-blast' injuries, coming from a powerful air wave. The body remains mostly intact while internal organs like liver, brain or lungs are imploded inside"
	Yugoslav Economy Will Take Decade to Rebuild	by Vesna Peric-Zimonjic In a country of ten million, where economic hardships started long before the NATO bombing, the official unemployment rate was 27 percent before the bombing began. Only 1.9 million people were fully employed by March. Most of the enterprises they worked at are now in ruins, including Zastava, Yugoslavia's only car plant, a home appliances factory and other plants making goods ranging from fertilizers to tobacco
	War on Kosovo Wrecks Pentagon World View	Analysis by Jim Lobe "I guess you could say this is an example of a C-List tail wagging the A-List dogs," said one administration official, noting how the conflict in Kosovo was reverberating with unexpected force in the two powers which could truly threaten the United States
	Russia-India-China Alliance More Likely	by Ranjit Dev Raj The proposed 'triangle' first proposed by Russian Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov during a visit to India last December was then thought impractical by Indian leaders. But the escalation of NATO's air offensive against Belgrade and China's stiff reaction to the accidental bombing of its embassy in the Yugoslav capital seem to have given the triangle idea a fresh chance
	"Unintentional" Bombing of Chinese Embassy Repeats a Familiar Pattern	by Peter Dale Scott The recent bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade looks like a replay. During the Vietnam War era, U.S. forces hit political targets, specifically embassies, just when international peace initiatives looked promising. Congress should insist on a thorough accounting from those responsible for the bombing
	How the Story of Embassy Bombing Changed	by Jared Israel Opponents of the war against Serbia argue that much of what passes for mainstream news these days is really a kind of war propaganda, that NATO puts out misinformation and the Western press disseminates the stuff uncritically. In the case of the Chinese Embassy bombing, the explanations changed daily, sometimes hourly, each new version told without doubt
	Serb Anger Deepens Over Civilian Bomb Targets	by Vesna Peric-Zimonjic Unlike six previous times since May 3, when Serbia plunged into darkness for the first time, this time NATO did not use the so-called "soft" or graphite bombs that temporarily disturb electricity supplies. This time missiles knocked the biggest power lines that link it to the capital and the rest of the country, seeking permanent damage. Not even priority users like hospitals, water facilities, bakeries or public transport had power
	The Boomer War	by Bill Bradley If Kosovo is somehow transformed from what it has been so far -- an embarrassing strategic defeat, a veritable case study in the tragedy of unintended consequences -- into a victory achieved without a tremendous loss in American blood and treasure, it is intended to be something much more than a one-time intervention. Namely, a model for an expansive new doctrine melding the liberal moralism of the baby boomer generation with the superpower-led realpolitik of globalist economics
	As Bombs Continue Falling, So Do Clinton Ratings	by Christopher Caldwell Think of what happens to a maternity ward or a nursing home that runs out of water, and you'll realize that Mikhail Gorbachev was right in saying the West has decided "the only way out for them is to destroy Serbia, destroy the entire nation." Gorbachev is not exactly a trustworthy voice where American power is concerned. But since Al Gore, Bill Cohen and our other video-game Pattons claim to be operating in the noble Cold War tradition of muscular American diplomacy, it's worth noting what our most courageous Cold War supporters -- the Soviet dissidents -- think about our little adventure. Alexander Zinoviev (in Le Monde) thinks the West is going totalitarian. Alexander Solzhenitsyn (at a poetry ceremony) compared the NATO invasion of Serbia to Hitler's
	GOP Whines About "Gore Tax"	by Donna Ladd GOP Congressmen tried to skewer the e-rate, an effort to help pay for Internet wiring in schools and libraries that quickly became a tool in the beat-Gore campaign
	The Return of the Yellow Peril	by Randolph T. Holhut Even though the supposed thefts have been taking place since the 1980s, the Republicans in Congress are putting the blame squarely on President Clinton. Why not? The Republicans blame Clinton for everything else, and there's nothing like a scary report that makes liberal use of the words "Communists," "spies," "nuclear warheads" and "treason" to raise the GOP's poll numbers
	CIA Screws Up, Gets Raise	by David Corn Right after NATO warplanes mistakenly bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and killed two Chinese journalists, the friends of the CIA cried out that this intelligence screwup was proof the CIA was underfunded and demanded more bucks for the intelligence agency
	Washington Dependent on Gun Money	Public Campaign When the House voted in 1996 to repeal the assault weapons ban, 239-173, gun rights PACs gave an average of $4,450 to House members favoring the repeal; opponents received just $280, on average, from gun control PACs. The ban is favored by 71 percent of the public, according to a recent CBS News poll
	Pay Raise for Government Leaders in the Works	by TJ Walker There is only one reason why lawmakers want to raise the president's salary; they believe it will then be much easier to boost their own salaries from what they consider to be a miserly $136,700 per year
	Clinton Plays the Littleton Card	by David Corn Here were the Clintonites scurrying to stay ahead of the curve on school shoot-ups. Big Daddy President has to respond to all threats to children -- immediately. In our age of cynicism, it's understandable that the White House operates this way, propelled by a permanent-campaign impulse that infects much of Washington. But in this instance, the political perversion was at a record-level
	John McCain's Squishy First Amendment	by Steve Chapman Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain "has consistently treated the First Amendment as nothing more than a stumbling block in the way of his political, so-called solutions," says Laura W. Murphy, director of the Washington national office of the American Civil Liberties Union. Thanks to his unassuming, non-ideological manner and his authentic war-hero credentials, though, McCain has been able to get away with it
	The Judi Bari Bombing Revisited	by Nicholas Wilson Many believe it was Judi Bari's effectiveness against timber corporations that made her the target of the bomb, and there is a strong case for that. Judi had a few detractors, and some claim it was paranoid for her to believe she had been bombed by the FBI or Big Timber, or the two working together
	Spreading Violence in East Timor	by Farhan Haq As August 8 vote on continued Indonesian rule approaches, stepped up intimidation and killings by armed militias against unarmed pro-independence civilians
	NYC Police Admission of Brutal Assault	by Farhan Haq The admission of guilt last week by a New York police officer charged with the brutal assault of a Haitian immigrant in 1997 signified a break from the police tradition of protecting officers from prosecution. Yet some critics still believed the so-called "blue wall of silence" -- the practice by police officers of refusing to testify against colleagues -- generally remained strong
	Shell Sued by Family of Eco-Activist Ken Saro-Wiwa	"We believe Shell facilitated Saro-Wiwa's execution," said Jenny Green, a lawyer for the family at the New York City based Center for Constitutional Rights. "We believe there is a basis in U.S. law to hold Shell accountable"
	Yeltsin Won, Russia Lost in Power Struggle	Analysis By Sergei Blagov The failed impeachment is widely seen as a defeat by the Communist-dominated opposition rather than Yeltsin's victory, while the disbelief many Russians feel over their rulers -- in the Kremlin, in government or in Parliament -- seems to be reaching nadir
	Error 404: News Not Found in Your Daily Paper	Misinformation about FEMA recommendations for Y2K; the search for Serb atrocities; White House hires PR expert for Kosovo; Chevron decides what's news
	CIA, DEA, Operated Without Oversight in Brazil	by Carlos Castiho Connections between the CIA, DEA, the military and drug traffickers returned to the Brazilian political agenda after the discovery, in the last week of April, that Brazilian air force officers were involved in shipping cocaine to Europe in military airplanes
	Cuban Spies Infiltrated U.S. Anti-Castro Groups	by Patrick Smikle It has all the ingredients of an espionage thriller. There is an undercover operation. There are your run of the mill spies and agent provocateurs complete with code names. Then there is the dashingly handsome "secret agent" who appears to be working for one side but is really spying for the other, unknown even to his wife. There is sabotage and there is death
	Health Alert Sounded Over Plastic Baby Bottles	by Danielle Knight A coalition of health, consumer and environmental groups want U.S. regulators to remove potentially harmful chemicals used to make plastic food containers, including baby bottles and bowls in use around the globe. Researchers said the chemical had disrupted normal hormonal functioning and caused adverse health affects in laboratory test animals, even at very low doses. BPA also was used as an "inert" ingredient in the manufacture of pesticides
	DDT, Other Pesticides Found in Breast Milk	Women who eat fish from Lake Ontario have significantly higher levels of PCBs and pesticides in their breast milk, a new study shows
	Slavery Conditions on Island Source of "Made in USA" Clothes	by Abid Aslam Upon arrival, workers express "shock and dismay upon discovering that "Saipan USA" is nothing more than a 47-square-mile island in the Pacific Ocean," says the report. Even working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, most are unable to pay off their debts, earn a living, and send money home. Their wages, subject to deductions for food and boarding, often are not paid at all
	Discovery of Agent Orange Dump Haunts Thailand	by Boonthan Sakanond Serious questions remain about the culpability of previous Thai regimes in the Vietnam War and the negative legacy it has left behind. Adding to public outrage over the issue is the revelation that the U.S. Air Force tested the carcinogenic chemical on Thai territory prior to its use in Vietnam
	Ten Years After, China's Tiananmen Wounds Fester	by Danielle Knight Chinese leadership is afraid of the memory of Tiananmen. In the past few years it has worked painstakingly to avoid a repetition of what happened in the spring of 1989, when first workers and later low-ranking cadres, joined students in their demands for democracy and an end to corruption
	Arabian Oryx Faces Second Extinction	The magnificent Arabian Oryx, which once ranged deserts throughout the Middle East and probably inspired the legend of the unicorn, is facing extinction in the wild for the second time in 30 years
	Dan Quayle, School Disciplinarian	By Steve Chapman Quayle normally gets noticed only when he makes an obvious blunder, like mispelling a word or getting tangled up in his rhetoric, confirming the widespread assumption that he is dumber than a sack of hammers. But the problem on display in this speech was not so much lack of intelligence as disconnection from reality
	Are Black Women the New Menace to Society?	By Earl Ofari Hutchinson Five African-American women have been shot under questionable circumstances by police officers in Los Angeles and Riverside in the past three years. This unprecedented pattern is a harsh reminder that, for many in law enforcement, black women are increasingly regarded, like black men, as menaces to society. While much of the media instill stereotypes of black men as lazy, violent, crime-prone, and predators, black women are now typed in much the same way
	Literary Fascism at The New York Times	by Jules Siegel Probably the most debated literary topic of 1998 was the publication of Joyce Maynard's memoir, "At Home in the World." Reviewers split on whether Maynard had the right to describe in detail her intimate 9-month relationship with reclusive J. D. Salinger
	Gore Opposing Help For African AIDS Victims	by David Corn The transnational drug companies were not keen on South Africa legislation that would allow South African firms to manufacture generic versions of the high-priced AIDS-busting drugs. They fear their profits will be undermined by a gray market of low-cost AIDS drugs, which can run $10,000 a year. (Average annual income in South Africa: $2600.) The drugmakers scurried to try to block the law in South African courts. In the United States, they turned to the Clinton-Gore administration for help. The White House obliged, threatening South Africa with sanctions if it does not yield
	Schools React Predictably to Littleton Shootings	by Steve Chapman After two students from a group called the Trenchcoat Mafia armed themselves with guns and homemade bombs and went on a murder rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., authorities in Portsmouth, N.H., responded in impeccably logical fashion. They moved to head off trouble in their schools by banning ... trench coats
	The Village Idiots Head Home	by Molly Ivins The 76th session of the Texas Lege has disbanded, allowing many a village to reclaim its idiot. Among the festive results: You citizens will now be eating $9 billion worth of bad debt on the two nuclear plants that our utility companies were stupid enough to build. But that's OK, because your governor got you a $2 billion tax break!
	Texas Budget and the Fat Cats	by Molly Ivins As you may have heard, there is all this new research about the importance of early childhood development, and how crucial early childhood programs are for later success in education, and Hillary Rodham Clinton had this big conference at the White House, and all the Repubs also endorsed it, so we're all for the program, right? Not in Texas
	The Great Chinese Spy Scandal	by Molly Ivins A country that spends between $25 billion and $35 billion a year spying on other countries is not in a position of high moral superiority, and since the last thing we did to the Chinese was bomb their embassy in Belgrade, perhaps it behooves us to be just a trifle discreet in our complaints about them
	Big Money Behind Right Wing Think Tanks	by Molly Ivins In addition to their long-standing attacks on environmental and worker-safety laws, the right-wing tanks are now concentrating on laws safeguarding the nation's food and drug supply. After their victory in eliminating the federal welfare entitlement, Callahan observes, they have now begun a vigorous attack on the other main components of the New Deal/Great Society legacy: Medicare and Social Security. They will have spent a total of $1 billion pushing their ideas in this decade
	Media Ignores Violation of War Powers Act	by Norman Solomon Sophisticated journalists in the nation's capital just shrugged. To them -- and to the Clinton administration -- the law is irrelevant and immaterial, a dead letter undeserving of serious attention
	New Treasury Dept. Boss Needs Scrutiny	by Norman Solomon While major American news outlets were quick to portray the selection of Larry Summers as a reassuring sign, Weisbrot sees things differently: "Summers' appointment is a sure sign that the interests of traders, speculators and multinational banks will remain supreme"
	If A Cluster Bomb Could Talk	by Norman Solomon I have gotten to do my stuff in Yugoslavia this month. One of my memorable performances came at around noon on a Friday. Some people in the city of Nis were shopping at a vegetable market when -- boom -- I arrived. It was dramatic as hell
	Clinton and the War Powers Act	by Alexander Cockburn We've got an administration that doesn't know how to cut its losses and which is therefore prepared to wipe Serbia off the map rather than lose face. In short, we're in the count-down phase to disaster. Now we need something that took half a decade to build towards back in the Vietnam era: a huge peace march on Washington. We need a Congress that will go on telling the President loud and clear: he has no mandate for war and he won't get the money to fight it. On May 25 Clinton was in breach of the War Powers Act of 1973. Spare a moment and travel back with me to that same year of 1973 and see why Congress voted in that law, over Richard Nixon's veto
	Making a Case for War Crimes	by Alexander Cockburn Back in Nuremberg time, Albright would certainly have been condemned and maybe hanged, if the standards applied to Seyss-Inquart had been leveled against her and if she had been on the losing side. So would her commanding officer, Bill Clinton
	The Old Druid's Last Campaign	by Alexander Cockburn It's been three decades, but he's making one last charge. Thirty years ago this spring, David Brower, the man later dubbed "the Arch-Druid," stood at what seemed the apex of his vocation as America's most effective green crusader. Under his leadership, the Sierra Club had turned from an elite hiking club of some 2,000 members into a vibrant movement of 77,000. When Brower's Sierra Club stood up for a river, a canyon, a mountain range or a forest, or against nuclear power plants, politicians had to listen
	Ulster Veto, Ulster Terror	by Alexander Cockburn The only foreign policy triumph of the Clinton presidency is on the verge of collapse
	Letters	Kosovo, the wrong war; the IMF and Yugoslavia; Chinese scandals; Leonard Peltier; John McCain; flooding and development
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