[marxist] Re: [ASDnet] Fw: [The Grip] Communist Party USA supporting Gore

Michael Pugliese debsian at pacbell.net
Tue Nov 7 08:44:41 PST 2000


Heh, here is another example of my masochism. An ex-boyfriend from my college years-he was a pagan anarchist into Starhawk, these days he's friends with those Trotskyist-Feminists at the Freedom Socialist Party in Seattle. They keep on sending their paper to me. By their lights Nader is a petty bourgeois reformist fink spreding illusions in the masses. In their last issue, Joel Kovel had a letter.Doug, tell Joel the FSP are sectarian loons. (Though one of their founders, Richard Fraser, had a very interesting position paper on "Revolutionary Integration" Check the archives at Lou's list) When the Nader HQ opened in San Francisco, it was right next door to the FSP on Mission St. Later they moved to much bigger digs on Valencia St.

Anyway, here is that other example of my M-L tendencies. That's Masochism-Listservism...

Michael Pugliese

P.S. I made a mistake in that earlier post. The right-wing website, Cockburn and Fulani have appeared in is NewsMax.com

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And another...M.P. (Attn:James Farmelant, Chris Burford or Daniel Davies, is that "Christians Against NATO Aggression, " group anything more than a front group for that kwazy Maoist from the Marxism-International listserv?)

FROM PHOENIX, ARIZONA

------------------------------------------------------------------- Truth in Media's GLOBAL WATCH Bulletin 2000/11-2 7-Nov-2000 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Topic: BALKANS AFFAIRS ------------------------------------

Belgrade 1. Kostunica Likens Himself to Lenin!

Belgrade 2. Yugoslavia's UN Membership: A Mistake Worse

Than Crime (By Milan Tepavac)

California 3. Double-talking "Dubya" Backtracks on

Kosovo (By Justin Raimondo)

London 4. Kosovo Elections - Close Up and Personal

Srem. Mitrovica 5. Serb Prisoners Riot for Amnesty

To read the above report, just click (or double-click, depending on your computer) on the following Web address, and you'll be able to see it in full color, along with accompanying images:

http://www.truthinmedia.org/Bulletins2000/tim2000-11-2.html

You can also check out Djurdjevic's weekly columns on the New World Order at "beograd.com" in English - http://news.beograd.com/english/articles_and_opinion/djurdjevic/index.html , or in Serbian - http://news.beograd.com/srpski/clanci_i_misljenja/djurdjevic/index.html .

A Stunning Comment by Yugoslavia's New President

1. Kostunica Likens Himself to Lenin!

New Foreign Minister - an Old Commie Turncoat, Now an NWO Liberal - Invites UN War Crimes Tribunal to Set Up Shop in Belgrade

BELGRADE, Nov. 6 - Yugoslavia's new 38-year old foreign minister, Goran Svilanovic, said that the new Yugoslav government would allow the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal to set up shop in Belgrade, and should set up the South Africa-style "truth commissions" to determine responsibility for the war crimes of its recent past.

"We cannot, and should not, avoid facing the consequences of war and responsibility for crimes," Svilanovic said, according to today's New York Times, for example (see http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/06/world/06YUGO.html).

The news was immediately greeted with protest from all sorts of quarters. Here's an excerpt from a letter we received today from William Spring, for example, director of the U.K-based Christians Against NATO Aggression (CANA) organization:

"I was distressed to learn this evening that the new Yugoslav Foreign Minister has agreed that Carla del Ponte's infamous kangaroo Court (otherwise known as 'The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia') should be able to open an office in Belgrade, with the co-operation of the Yugoslav Government.

I sincerely hope that the people of Belgrade, who displayed such heroic qualities in resisting the NATO bombing and in storming the Parliament Building etc, will display the same determination to shut down any office opened up by that corrupt Judge Carla del Ponte. But rather than have disorder in the streets of Belgrade, it would I think be wiser for the Yugoslav to think again about this idea.

The FRY should not entertain the idea of a foreign prosecutor, court and tribunal operating from the sovereign Yugoslav territory. Wasn't it the demand of the Austrians in 1914 that they appoint judges in Serbia to investigate the June 28th (Archduke Ferdinand) murder (in Sarajevo) which caused the breakdown of negotiations between Serbia and Austria, and led on to World War I? What were we fighting about then, if the new Yugoslav government is to give away the legal and jurisdictional integrity of Yugoslavia now?

The demand of the Yugoslav foreign minister should instead be that NATO hand over its war criminals for prosecution to Serbia, in accordance with the terms of the indictment already handed down by the Serbian Public Prosecutor's Office (ref: KT - 420/99 - 29th August 2000)."

And what of the new Yugoslav president's well known opposition to the work and legitimacy of the UN War Crimes Tribunal, often cited by Vojislav Kostunica's supporters during the recent election campaign? Swept under the rug obviously, along many other promises that the new Yugoslav president has broken in his first month on the job (he was sworn in as president exactly one month ago today).

But that's the good news.

That's the good news?

Yes.

So what's the bad news then?

It's what Kostunica reportedly has said himself in a meeting on the same topic (the UN War Crimes Tribunal setting up shop in Belgrade) with the Austrian foreign minister, Mrs. Benita Ferrero-Waldner, who is also the head of the Vienna-based OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe).

And what was that?

He likened himself to Lenin.

Kostunica, the Serb "nationalist," the God-fearing Christian who won the backing of the Serbian Orthodox Church even before the Oct. 5 "revolution;" the "first non-communist president of Yugoslavia in over 50 years?" That Kostunica likened himself to Vladimir Ilich Lenin, the leader of the Communist Revolution in Russia?

Well, that Kostunica has evidently passed away. But the one who talked to that Austrian lady on Nov. 5 did compare the challenges he faces to those Lenin had to overcome in 1917.

How do you know that?

First, from a well-connected EU source in Brussels (who also provided to us a year ago the information about the EU issuing a news "Lenin Stamp in Belgium"," Nov. 24, 1999). Second, from today's (Nov. 6) Agence France Presse (French language) report that quoted Madam Ferrero-Waldner to that effect. Here is an excerpt from it:

"The Yugoslav president made a parallel between his own situation and that of Lenin, who, after having taken power in 1917, made his first priority the industrialization and electrification of Russia, as was added by the diplomat who was present at the meeting [of Kostunica] with Mme Ferrero-Waldner."

(This translation of Kostunica's stunning comment courtesy of J.P. Maher, Professor Emeritus of the Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago)

Our EU source commented from Brussels: "To take Lenin as an example for reconstruction is rather striking, knowing the results 80 years later... Well now, for sure, we know WHO Kostunica is."

Actually, Kostunica has spoken this writer personally on many occasions in the past about the difficulties he had had in the 1970s and early 1980s because of his anti-Communist stance. But people change. "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" (Lord Acton, 1864).

Or if they don't change voluntarily, the New World Order crowd sees to it that they are surrounded, muffled and eventually changed by the leftist-liberal globalist ideologues. Such as Svilanovic, for example, Yugoslavia's new foreign minister. The New York Times referred to him today as "a shrewd, liberal-minded politician who was Mr. Kostunica's own choice for foreign minister."

If true, Kostunica is a bigger fool and a worse quisling than if Svilanovic were picked for the job by Washington, which to us seems like a more likely scenario.

Why a bigger fool and a worse quisling?

Because everybody who is anybody in Yugoslav politics knows that the tiny Civic Alliance party, of which Svilanovic is president, has no other claim to fame except for its Washington connections. Svilanovic took over the party leadership from Vesna Pesic, a proven Washington lackey, whom this writer has met personally in Washington on one of her order-taking trips.

Svilanovic was also in the U.S. as recently as last Thursday (Nov. 2, before he was officially appointed Yugoslavia's foreign minister on Saturday, Nov. 4), ostensibly to attend the (re)induction of Yugoslavia into the United Nations. But probably mainly to get some fresh marching orders and scripts from Washington. Which he evidently mouthed off in Belgrade over the weekend after he had been sworn in as foreign minister. Such as that stuff about the "truth commission" (remember how Bill Clinton praised Nelson Mandela for that?), and about the UN War Crimes Tribunal, for example.

By the way, neither issue would normally fall under the purview of the foreign ministry. Both would typically be matters with which the justice minister would handle, upon request by the prime minister. Since both of those Yugoslav officials remained mum on the Tribual issue, Svilanovic's usurping their prerogatives is another indication that Kostunica's Yugoslavia has turned into another Washington banana republic. And even if bananas are missing, there is evidently no shortage of monkey-see-monkey-do turncoats, quislings and collaborators.

Speaking of turncoats, a TiM source in Serbia has provided to us an interesting biographical detail about Svilanovic. Here is an excerpt, in our translation from Serbian:

"Born in 1962, Svilanovic graduated from the Faculty of Law in Belgrade, where he has been working as a lecturer. In late 1980s (i.e., during the waning years of the Communist Yugoslavia), he was a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in charge of its ideological-legal platform. Later on, he replaced Vesna Pesic as the head of the Civic Alliance, an insignificant political organization whose membership could fill a single bus."

So a former Communist ideologue turns coat and becomes the New World Order's "liberal-minded" lackey and "democratic" Yugoslavia's foreign minister. Whom Kostunica was supposed to have personally picked for the job, according to the Times.

Do you now see why we were wondering if Yugoslavia's new president was a bigger fool or a worse quisling than we had originally thought?

"The king is dead; long live the king!" - used to be what the medieval masses chanted, unwittingly celebrating the perpetuity of monarchy and their own oppression. A slightly modified version of this refrain seems to fit the New Yugoslav president. "(Old) Kostunica is dead; long live the Kvizling!" (Kvizling is the Serbian spelling of Quisling).

Which is still also good news.

"Also good news?" How can that be good news?

Because he may also go down in history as the "Serb Lenin." By his own comparison. -------------

2. Yugoslavia's UN Membership: A Mistake Worse Than Crime (By Milan Tepavac)

BELGRADE, Oct. 28 - We received the following comment from Mr. Milan Tepavac, a Belgrade attorney who specializes in international law. His comment was made on the eve of Yugoslavia's (re)admission to the United Nations, but is every bit as appropriate today:

"In textbooks of history of diplomacy it is claimed that Napoleon's minister of foreign affairs Talleyrand once remarked in connection with an assassination of a political opponent: "That is, Sire, worse than crime - it is a mistake".

Disregarding the question who first made such an observation, it was confirmed innumerable times in history. Mistakes made by the rulers and their consequences are worse that individual crimes. We who live here know it better than anybody else. In a series of mistakes committed, the one made by Vojislav Kostunica yesterday is one of the most devastating for Yugoslavia, Serbia and the entire Serbian people.

First, Kostunica had no right, under the Constitution of the FRY (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) to do such a thing (this question is in competence of the federal government and parliament).

Second - which is much more important - that request is tantamount to the AMNESTY not only of secessionist criminals who are responsible and guilty for all crimes against the Serbian people committed within last 10 years, but also amnesty of all their foreign accomplices who instigated, helped and financed their crimes. Yet it was done on behalf of Yugoslavia and Serbian people.

Milosevic and his regime, it is known, committed many mistakes "worse than crime". Those mistakes were in a way logical because he had dispersed all his aids and advisers who were qualified for the job (or they just left him) and surrounded himself with ignoramuses. Kostunica cannot excuse himself with such justification, because he, as a man of academic training, was quite aware what he was doing and did it all the same, no matter how much he was under pressure, particularly in Skopje the day before yesterday, by the greatest Serbophobe and racist Richard Holbrooke.

The secessionist criminals could not expect a bigger gift than this one. No wonder that they are celebrating the event in ecstasy."

Milan Tepavac, Belgrade, Serbia ------------

3. Double-talking "Dubya" Backtracks on Kosovo (By Justin Raimondo)

CALIFORNIA, Nov. 3 - The following are excerpts from the latest piece by Justin Raimondo, a columnist for the Antiwar.com web site. As in Kostunica' s case, the globalist tactics here in the U.S. are to neutralize and reverse out an unfavorable political position by surrounding the claimant with advisors loyal to the New World Order bosses. Even if such a person is the future president of the United States, like George W. Bush, let alone the president of a tiny Yugoslavia.

They've done it to Ronald Reagan, the only American president in the last three+ decades who was not a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. So why not to Dubya or Kostunica?

"George W. Bush hasn't even been elected ­ yet ­ and already he's breaking his campaign promises! During the second presidential debate, in answer to Jim Lehrer's question on what he would do in the Balkans, Bush answered: "I'd very much like to get our troops out of there. Our military is made to fight and win a war" ­ not baby-sit the Kosovars.

Underscoring what was an obvious attempt to reassure his conservative Republican base ­ which has persistently opposed the Kosovo intervention ­ and cash in on public skepticism of our interventionist foreign policy, his chief foreign policy advisor, Condolezza Rice, told the New York Times that a Bush administration would leave the Balkan quagmire for our allies to sink into, and that the US would seek to pull out its troops.

The storm of criticism that followed, from Gore to Albright to anonymous "diplomatic sources," has obviously had an effect, because now, a mere six days before Election Day, Dubya's advisors are falling all over themselves trying to deny that they ever said it, or meant it.

In a highly unusual announcement, Lord Robertson, NATO secretary general, disclosed that he has been in touch with the Bushies and "received reassurances" from George W. Bush's campaign team not to take Boy Dubya too seriously. After all, as one analyst put it, everyone knows that, "If the Republican candidate wins, [Bush's] seasoned foreign policy team will talk him out of his stated plans to pull U.S. troops out of the Balkans and press ahead with an extended anti-missile shield regardless of international opposition."

His Lordship went on to say "I am not taking sides in this election campaign," His Lordship went on to say, "but I am concerned that no ally would want to unilaterally pull out of what is a common mission in Bosnia and Kosovo." Translation: We're all in this quagmire together, and don't you Americans forget it. Robertson, meanwhile, was determined to forcefully remind the Bush camp by going public with his fears.

Backed into a corner, the Bushies were forced to admit that Lord Robertson had indeed called Bush security policy advisor Stephen Hadley, and, as the Reuters story put it, "Lord Robertson apparently found his words reassuring." I'll bet. After getting an earful from His Lordship, can't you just imagine Hadley's end of the conversation? ­

"Look, your Lordship, don't worry about Dubya. He's dumb as a doornail, and, besides, he'll do anything we say. And don't forget, we can always bring in the father."

According to His Lordship, Hadley, who served the senior Bush as assistant secretary of defense with special responsibility for the European front, assured him that "there will be no unilateral action taken in relation to peacekeeping forces by a President Bush administration, if that is the choice."

In other words: if the choice is to withdraw from the Balkans without the sanction of our NATO "allies," or stay in, then we're in ­ to stay.

That no one has taken notice of this outrageous intervention in American politics by a top official of the NATO alliance, and a British Lord to boot, is the measure of how decadent and basically spineless our ruling elites have become. How dare this Blairite s.o.b. presume to pontificate on American politics and try to get his two cents in a week before the election!

The Bush reply to the Brits should have consisted of two words: bug off! Instead, they cravenly "reassured" London not to worry, it wasn't going to happen immediately ­ in effect pushing the prospect of a US withdrawal into the far distant future.

What is truly indicative of the ordeal we face if Bush is elected President is that the Bushies are still maintaining that they haven't changed their position. The Clintonization of the Republican party proceeds apace: Clinton's "legacy," if it can be called that, will be to enshrine "spin" and weasel words as the official language of the American presidency. [.]

Unlike Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan has made our disastrous Balkan policy an issue in his campaign. Buchanan's address to the 1999 Antiwar.com conference received a lot of coverage, and Pat has continually pounded the point home: We attacked a country that had never attacked us or threatened our legitimate interests, and we ought to pull out now.

Team Bush, ever sensitive to the threat posed by Buchanan in what looks like a real horse race, tried to cover their flank with a sop to any conservative "isolationists" thinking of straying from the Republican herd. That's what the Condolezza Rice Dog & Pony Show was all about. Lord Robertson did us all a favor by exposing the Bushies for what they are: indistinguishable from their Democratic opponents not only programmatically, but also stylistically. Team Bush, like the Gore camp, will say and do practically anything to win the White House, and the lies won't stop when Clinton cleans out his Oval Office desk. Condolezza Rice's proposal had all the solidity and reality of a soap bubble or a hot-air balloon, and the Brits did us a good turn ­ without meaning to, of course ­ by pricking it."

For the full Raimondo column, check out the www.Antiwar.com web site. --------------

4. Kosovo Elections - Close Up and Personal

PRISTINA, Nov. 4 - The following are excerpts from a report filed by Anthony Daniels, an observer of this weekend's Kosovo elections on behalf of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group, as reported in the (UK) Spectator on Nov. 4. Mr. Daniels' comments complement a similarly damning report by Mark Ames, an American journalist who spent six weeks in Kosovo prior to the election, and whom TiM had quoted in our recent letter to the New York Times (see A Hell Hole Called Kosovo: Get Us Outta Here!):

"If freedom is proportional to the number of political parties competing for power, then Kosovo is now one of the freest countries in the world. In Pristina, at the Electoral Commission office of the Organisation for Security and Co-opera-tion in Europe (OSCE), there was a seating plan for representatives of the political parties to meet around the table under the chairmanship of the OSCE. The parties represented inter alia were: the PLDK, the QRSH, the PNDSH, the LPK, the LKCK, the USHDK, the UNIKOMB, the AAK, the PPK, the BSDAK, the USD, the LNDSH, the PGJK, the PDK, the KTHP, the PD, the PRK, the PQLK, the LDK, the PSHDK, the PSDK, the PLK, the PDASHH, the DRSM, the SDA, the TDB, the PLSH and the LBC.

The OSCE created most of these parties, of course, organized and funded them, and decided their political outlook. It was a triumph of bureaucratic pluralism. Not surprisingly, therefore, the leader of the Liberal party of Kosova was very proud of the fact that his party had actually existed before the arrival of the OSCE and that it had close links with the Liberal Democrats in Britain. Poor man; he had not yet realized that liberalism in Britain is now a matter of wheelchair access to taxis, speed bumps, bicycle lanes and the right of Royal Marines to change their sex - concerns that will soon be foisted upon him if he wants to retain good relations with the Liberal International.

Moral imperialism is, of course, the order of the day. The OSCE, which organized and supervised the municipal elections in Kosovo, required that 30 per cent of the candidates be women, irrespective of local custom or feeling. In other words, you can have any culture you like, as long as it's ours.

The polling stations had two prohibitions: no guns and no smoking. It is well known that cigarette smoke poses the same threat to the free expression of political will during elections as AK-47s wielded by supporters of one of the parties, which is why the prohibitions were given equivalent weight; indeed, one Czech supervisor said that his main problem was in getting the voters to stop smoking. Needless to say, the prohibitions were published in English, the new language of Kosovo.

Let it not be said that the ban on smoking applied only to Albanians, however the OSCE does not allow smoking in any of its thousands of vehicles or in any of its buildings. And, for the purposes of the elections, it considered the schools in which the polling took place to be its property: ergo, there was to be no smoking during the elections. Kosovo is the OSCE's and the fullness thereof: Kosovo, and they that dwell therein.

The conduct of the elections was impeccable - on the part of the people, who queued for many hours in good humor and without complaint, as the officials floundered in their morass of incomprehensible regulations. For sheer disorganization, for unadulterated incompetence, however, it would have been difficult to surpass the OSCE's way of proceeding.

By the end of polling day, the OSCE had broken every electoral rule for the infringement of which it has ever condemned as invalid an election in a country of whose government it disapproved and wished to see replaced.

It is nevertheless my patriotic duty to report that of all OSCE officials the British were by far the worst. They had a quality of blithering idiocy quite unmatched by citizens of lesser nations. I shall not soon forget the mustached man shouting irritably at the bemused Albanians, 'Look at the notices, look at the notices!' which, incidentally, conveyed no useful information whatsoever, and were in English. I tried to imagine a Kosovar official shouting, 'Look at the notices, look at the notices!' in irritated Albanian at the voters in my local church hall, but, alas, the faculty of imagination is too weak fully to envision it.

There was, of course, another side to British officialdom: hard-bitten cynicism. The supervisor of one polling station, for example, allowed people with a doubtful right to vote to do so, having first marked their papers with a sign to render them invalid. In that way, he said, they would benefit from the civic education that the elections provided, but it would save the time and effort needed to establish whether or not they really had the right to vote according to the complex rules for such cases.

On the other hand, it was impossible to beat American officialdom for invincible ignorance. The American supervisor of one polling station, for example, was under the impression that the people were voting for president. Although he was in charge of the counting, he had not the faintest idea how to do it, or how the system was supposed to work.

In this, at least, he was absolutely typical of the OSCE staff I met, none of whom was able to explain the voting system to me. I was asked by OSCE staff my opinion during the counting about the validity of votes, and after reading a couple of paragraphs in the OSCE election manual (182 pages long), readers will be pleased to know that I allowed the votes, in part because they were all for the peaceable Dr Rugova and not for the thuggish Mr Thaci.

It is a tribute to tertiary education in the Western world that none of the OSCE's staff anticipated problems when ten polling stations (with about 750 voters registered at each) were located in a school with a single door. Outside the school, hundreds of people had been waiting for several hours to vote; but, inside, in the polling stations themselves, a monastic calm reigned. I asked to speak to one of the OSCE supervisors, and was told that she had gone to look for voters, several hundreds of whom were clamoring to enter.

The chaos outside the doors eased somewhat when those traditional guarantors of institutional democracy, the Spanish Guardia Civil, who were stationed nearby, were called. It took up to 20 minutes to scrutinize the right of a single voter to cast his vote. Not only did he have to appear on a list of voters, but he also had to prove his identity by being matched with a photograph taken digitally on prior registration to vote. Unhappily, the OSCE had omitted to put their photographs in any particular order. That is to say, each of 750 people had to be compared with up to 750 mug shots.

The OSCE blamed the Albanians for the chaos. As one supervisor put it, 'We have no problem - only the people.' They blamed the Albanians for being so many and for coming to vote at the same time: that is to say, between seven in the morning and one in the afternoon. They blamed the chaos on the fact that the Albanians had never voted before, though this (had it been true, which it isn't) might have been an argument for as simple an electoral system as possible, rather than one of Byzantine complexity. An Egyptian supervisor suggested that the people waiting at his polling station should go away for lunch and return in strict alphabetical order.

There was one unanticipated advantage of the chaotic arrangements of the municipal elections on Kosovo: it would have been very difficult for any of the parties to arrange fraud had they wished to do so. Only the OSCE itself could have done that.

After the elections, the OSCE congratulated itself fulsomely (though, in fact, it had declared the elections to be free and fair weeks in advance of their having taken place). That any faith can be put in the result is, however, more attributable to the good behavior of the Kosovars than to the conduct of the OSCE itself. All Kosovars are agreed that they want independence, and so they all - even the thugs -agreed to behave impeccably during these elections, to demonstrate their maturity and worthiness of independence. They are already very nervous about the West's rapprochement with Serbia, regarding Kostunica as more dangerous than Milosevic (he was, after all, photographed brandishing a Kalashnikov at a rally in Kosovo in 1998). The last thing they wanted was a violent election to give the West an excuse to betray them.

For the moment they are happy to be subjects of the Emperor Bernard Kuchner, UN administrator in Kosovo. They need the West, after all, to keep the Serbs out. But if the international aspect of the problem is ever settled, they will soon fight among themselves, and the thugs will win." --- TiM Ed.: Same conclusion at which Mr. Ames, the Ameircan journalist, arrived. -------------

5. Serb Prisoners Riot for Amnesty

SREM. MITROVICA, Serbia, Nov. 6 - More than 100 Serb inmates in the Srem. Mitrovica infamous penitentiary demanded that they be included in any amnesty for ethnic Albanian political prisoners which the new Yugoslav government is planning. Prisoners drove off the guards on Monday (Nov. 6), as inmates in a second prison went on a hunger strike asking for reduced terms.

In rioting that began Sunday night, prisoners set fire to cells and took up positions on the roof with iron bars at one of Yugoslavia's largest prisons at Sremska Mitrovica, about 50 miles northwest of Belgrade (see the photos at our web site - courtesy of Beograd.com).

Dragan Subasic, one of three Serbian justice ministers negotiating with inmates, said three people were hospitalized for slight injuries suffered during the riots at the prison, which houses 1,300 inmates including 50 foreigners and six prisoners on death row, according to an Associated Press report.

Subasic said the inmates were angered by the possibility that an amnesty law under discussion would free ethnic Albanian inmates - mostly political prisoners - but not Serbs convicted of other crimes. He told the Tanjug state news agency Monday that the inmates were demanding the law be broadened to some nonpolitical crimes.

The Beta news agency reported that ethnic Albanian inmates, said to number about 150, were evacuated from the prison Monday evening and taken by buses to an undisclosed location. Most of their cells were destroyed in the fire, Beta said.

In the southern Serbian city of Nis, about 1,000 inmates, including 300 ethnic Albanians, went on hunger strike demanding that their sentences be reduced by 30 percent and that prison management be replaced by Wednesday (Nov. 8). A Nis prisoner reached by phone told the Associated Press that the inmates banged pots and other items to make noise. He said the guards stood by without intervening.

The prisoner, who identified himself as Miomir Radosavljevic-Musa, said inmates had taken over the keys from the wardens and had climbed on the rooftops, demanding the justice ministers come to negotiate with them.

Footage from the prison riot at the prison at Sremska Mitrovica showed two inmates, surrounded by hundreds of other cheering prisoners, complaining of severe beatings since 1994.

"They used to beat us like horses," an unidentified prisoner with head bandages said. "People have been destroyed physically, psychologically and morally. They were left with no desire to live." Others displayed a baseball bat allegedly used by prison guards to beat the inmates. ------------ NOTE: To cancel the e-mail editions of our reports, just reply REMOVE or UNSUBSCRIBE, followed by your e-mail address. -------------

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Visit the Truth in Media Web site http://www.truthinmedia.org/ for articles on geopolitical affairs.

----- Original Message ----- From: <LEOCASEY at AOL.COM> To: <asdnet at igc.topica.com>; <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>; <marxist at egroups.com> Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2000 6:15 AM Subject: [marxist] Re: [ASDnet] Fw: [The Grip] Communist Party USA supportingGore


> Michael, you are a masochist.
>
> Leo Casey
> United Federation of Teachers
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> Power concedes nothing without a demand.
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> Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men
who
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