[interact_list] seeing the end of me: thousands years old empire system of the west
- From: Akio Fujita <A.Fujita@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: interact_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 23:47:16 +0100
to dear all,
how can you talk of peace
only i can afford is being desperate and crazy
not seeing an any piece of reality
darkness and silence
and i'm scratching nothing - to get myself stand and go
-and someday someone will scrap me
i wish the moment will be less painful than i can imagine and bear
realists, intelligence -
west has been carrying its empire system for thousands years
and seems it never been changed the way how it sustains itself
be a citizen
be happy
some born in safety zone, it's lucky
some born in turmoil zone, oh sorry
that's the only truth we can know and
there aren't anything else we can add in reality
silently i'm going through all those horrible dark hours
silently, desperately and being all alone
empire of tribes -
if we can tear off tribalism cultures
there can be hope
but no one wants to yield, distract themselves from those
hedonism, insensitivity and excuses for collective conformity
can't make it
no worry i will have a further go
no hope or trust - only suspicion guides me
but i've been doing my best as much as humanely can
and i'm seeing the end of me
having an absolute idea that now i came to know that there is nothing
we can do for change
some time left
what am i now
empire, mercenaries, barbarians, rotten/corrupt politicians and
hippy-happy citizens in the safe (metro)polis
we are doing romanic-moronic life in the safety zones
nothing has been changed in past 3000 or 4000 years
good night,
A.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16751-2001Jun3.html
Paid to Make Peace:Mercenaries are no altruists, but they can do good.
(Think again: Renouncing Use of Mercenaries can be lethal)
By Sebastian Mallaby
Monday, June 4, 2001; Page A19
In the late 1980s Mozambique was no-go territory: The rebel Renamo
movement terrorized the countryside, and aid workers cowered in the
capital. But Lonrho, a British company, chose that moment to buy a
large swath of the country and farm cotton on it. Didn't rebels make
such investment dicey? Yes, but Lonrho had hired a force of
mercenaries. If you visited Lonrho's Mozambican headquarters, they
showed you candid snapshots of rebels crumpled on the ground.
It's worth recalling Lonrho, because the dilemma posed by mercenaries
is growing sharper. These days it's governments that hire them; and
last week this habit came back to haunt U.S. policymakers when The Post
reported that the private firm engaged to supply police officers to
Bosnia had sent a few characters who needed police oversight
themselves. In Sierra Leone and Angola, however, mercenaries have
performed effectively, raising the question of whether they should be
used more often in peacemaking operations.
The case for Lonrho's behavior in the 1980s was not all that different
from the case for government-hired mercenaries today. In an ideal
world, the state would provide for public safety. But governments never
quite deliver, not even in rich countries, which is why U.S. spending
on private security firms outstrips the combined budgets of public
police forces by more than two to one. In poor countries, the state is
all but helpless. The choice is often mercenary-protected investment or
no investment at all.
In an ideal world, similarly, strong countries would help war-torn ones
by sending in their soldiers. Last year a contingent of fewer than
1,000 British troops beat back Sierra Leone's limb-chopping rebels from
the outskirts of the capital and clobbered a particularly murderous
bunch known as the West Side Boys. But that British deployment was the
exception. For the most part, rich countries are sick with the Somalia
syndrome: no troops for Africa, not even for Rwanda, not even to
prevent genocide.
So, much as with investment, the choice often comes down to mercenary
peacekeeping or no peacekeeping. The trouble is that rich governments
are not as blunt as Lonrho, and refuse to acknowledge this bottom line.
They find the idea of mercenaries embarrassing. They are cautious about
their relationships with firms such as DynCorp, which supplied the
police for Bosnia. And the result of this squeamishness is that lots of
people die.
Unwilling to commit troops yet unwilling to pronounce the "m" word,
governments have devised a peacekeeping system that is mercenary in all
but name. Rich countries pay poor-country soldiers to go to dangerous
places, either under the banner of the United Nations or in the name of
regional super cops such as West Africa's Ecomog. And the pay is pretty
handsome -- enough so that poor countries can use the profits to
subsidize domestic defense establishments.
This arrangement might be fine if it worked properly. Sadly, it does
not. In 1995-97 a South African firm called Executive Outcomes was paid
$1.2 million a month for its Sierra Leone operation; it hammered the
rebels so thoroughly that they ran to the negotiating table, clearing
the way for an election. Executive Outcomes was then succeeded in
Sierra Leone by Ecomog, and the rebels resumed their limb-chopping.
Then came a U.N. peace force, whose current performance is encouraging
-- but at a cost of $47 million monthly.
The critics of mercenaries say that paid war makers cannot promote
peace in the long run. But this is like pretending that weapons
designed for killing cannot be life-saving, even when the weapons are
wielded by good guys. The critics charge that mercenaries won't be held
accountable for battlefield atrocities. But Nigerian troops committed
plenty of unpunished atrocities in the course of Sierra Leone
peacekeeping. If the United Nations hired a private firm of mercenaries
for peacekeeping, it could write accountability into the contract --
and enforce that contract much more readily than it can discipline a
wayward government.
As it happens, the U.N. did once consider hiring mercenaries. It was in
the wake of the Rwanda genocide, when the killers were hiding among
refugees in eastern Zaire. Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary-general who
was then the man in charge of peacekeeping, wanted to disarm the
fighters so that humanitarian assistance could flow to the civilians.
He appealed to governments for help; they spurned him. So he considered
the mercenary option, only to drop it because the U.N.'s member states
were horrified by the idea.
The consequence of the no-mercenary policy was that refugee aid went to
soldiers, who used it to regroup, provoking the Rwandan invasion that
started Zaire's march to mayhem, ultimately costing almost 3 million
lives.
Variations on this pattern have occurred repeatedly. After mercenaries
left Sierra Leone, rebels butchered 5,000 civilians in the capital. If
mercenaries had been protecting the Balkan safe havens, there might
never have been the massacre of Srebrenica.
Holly Burkhalter, a Washington human-rights activist, has words for the
common squeamishness about mercenaries. "Watching a Rwanda genocide or
a Srebrenica unfold without anyone's lifting a finger is what I find
obscene -- not using paid professionals to put a stop to it." She's
right.
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#The article mentioned in the above one, I think it's not that
controversial.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A88992-2001May28.html
Misconduct, Corruption by U.S. Police Mar Bosnia Mission
U.N., Europeans Query Push To Bring In More Officers
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#Seems irrelevant but very 'realistic' perspective -
how to steer Albanian nationalism can lead to another war -
or can lead to civil society -
but maybe Jim Hooper's perspective is unrealistic,
the drive to seek 'self-determination' can be untamable -
but either way West need to call back entire region to the
structure of 'formality' -
i think i'm seeing bankrupcy of western intervention
in moral/cause and in political options
i wish i'm totally wrong.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A85741-2001May27.html
Balkans on the Back Burner
By Jackson Diehl
Monday, May 28, 2001; Page A23
"The whole course of Albanian nationalism is now up for grabs," says
Jim Hooper, the managing director of the Public International Law and
Policy Group. "Depending on how the West and particularly the United
States handle it, it can be a nationalism that buys into democracy and
buys into regional stability, or it can turn into another destructive
force in the region."
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A355-2001May31.html
Relearning the Balkans
Thursday, May 31, 2001; Page A24
similar criticism against west's ad hoc interventions
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A72540-2001May24.html
Operation in Yugoslavia Highlights a New Alliance
Frenki's boys/Franko Simatovic...Bosnian ethnic clensing units are
now in Albania? or Kosovo?
and I really don't understand what this article is trying to imply -
'"They had this whole region and in one sweep it's gone," said Zanza, a
30-year-old ethnic Albanian in a cafe below a rebel headquarters in
Veliki Trnovac, where guerrillas scurried in and out carrying automatic
weapons and ammunition. "Nobody understands how this could happen."'
Akio Fujita
A.Fujita@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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