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Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

lunarchick - 05:22pm Jul 10, 2001 EST (#6867 of 6882)
lunarchick@www.com

Beijing bid corruption fears By Lynne O'Donnell, China correspondent July 11, 2001 AS the decision nears on which city will host the 2008 Olympic Games, questions are being raised in Beijing about who will pay and who will benefit should the vote go China's way.

If, as widely expected, the International Olympic Committee, which votes on Friday for the 2008 Olympic host, chooses Beijing, it will be obliged to ignore the repressive and corrupt nature of China's ruling Communist Party.

Senior Chinese leaders are reportedly already manoeuvring to ensure that should the IOC award the 2008 Games to Beijing, they will be the biggest winners.

Real estate near proposed sites for Olympic facilities was being carved up in backroom deals involving an elite Communist Party clique, according to a report in Britain's Sunday Times.

Chinese economist Hu Angang estimated that corruption, acknowledged by President Jiang Zemin as a cancer within the Government, cost China more than $US150 billion ($295 billion) between 1995 and 1999.

Money lost through smuggling, tax evasion and the siphoning of funds slated for development projects equalled 17 per cent of economic growth in that time, he said.

With about $US20 billion slated for spending on an Olympiad, analysts said yesterday that huge opportunities for graft would be offered to Communist Party officials.

"If there is a major development spurt over the coming eight years, you can be sure that the Government will have to grapple with the greedy hands that will seek to benefit personally from it," an investigator with a Western consultancy said. "Corruption is not something the Government can get rid of overnight, so to imagine that Olympic projects will not be seized upon by corrupt officials is just dreaming," he said on condition on anonymity.

Such fears have been expressed by a group of Beijing residents who sent an anonymous appeal to the IOC not to award the 2008 Games to China.

In an appeal published in a Chinese language newspaper in Paris, the group said the country's ruling elite "will be the greatest beneficiaries of a successful bid. Land to be used for Olympic facilities and related projects will be sold and resold several times over and they will pocket the money".

In a country where opinions outside the party line are rarely tolerated, both the Government and the IOC's evaluation commission have conducted door-to-door polls that have shown more than 95 per cent public support for a Beijing Olympics.

But in February, Shan Chengfeng, wife of jailed Chinese Democratic Party leader Wu Yilong, was sentenced to two years in a labour camp for "disrupting social order" after signing a letter urging the IOC to pressure China on human rights issues.

IOC sources have said the Chinese Government's pledge to cover all the costs associated with staging an Olympics (without revealing its sources of financing) had worked strongly in the city's favour, but some Chinese officials worry that China's economy, delicately balanced on a program of massive government spending to maintain growth levels, will not be able to cope with the strains that staging an Olympics, and the seven year run-up, will bring.

almarst-2001 - 05:28pm Jul 10, 2001 EST (#6868 of 6882)

Why Wasn't Kissinger Asked About War Crimes Charges? - http://www.fair.org/activism/kissinger-crimes.html

rshowalter - 05:36pm Jul 10, 2001 EST (#6869 of 6882)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD6344 rshowalter 6/30/01 3:46pm

Henry Kissinger on Trial: A Guide to the Controversy Surrounding the Diplomat from the Encyclopedia Britannica web site --February 2001

MD5784 rshowalter 6/22/01 1:05pm ... MD5785 rshowalter 6/22/01 1:05pm
MD5786 rshowalter 6/22/01 1:06pm ... MD5787 rshowalter 6/22/01 1:06pm

MD5870 rshowalter 6/22/01 8:41pm says

" We aren't that far from a deal - --for real peace --- but the key problems, just now, are on the American side.

but also inclued this:

" gisterme , have you read the references collected in Britannica's KISSINGER ON TRIAL piece? . . .

Really read them?

" Don't they set out unfortunate circumstances?

" Isn't it reasonable that we try to do better?

We have to.

almarst-2001 - 05:36pm Jul 10, 2001 EST (#6870 of 6882)

WORLD ANTI-WAR FORCES RESPOND TO MILOSEVIC KIDNAPPING - http://www.iacenter.org/yugo_extr7.htm

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