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Missile Defense

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?

servzone0 - 01:05pm Apr 20, 2001 EST (#2430 of 2433)

Unicef is a good organization
That protects children from childhood porn and prostitution, This is a good contact for people in china or russia , if you or your children are in danger contact them.I do think they are interested in world peace too. without all these missiles killing innocent woman and children. I would like to see america work towards peace with China and Russia. We all are people that have feelings, we may have differnt colors or different speech but we are all the same. So for world peace I will say it again , We the americans are sorry . You are good people china and russia. I hope our Republican president and our democrat leaders can find it in their hearts to work for world peace or today may be the end. We need to all work together in a good public open community spirit. robert.

almarst-2001 - 01:23pm Apr 20, 2001 EST (#2431 of 2433)

Macedonia War Gets Kosovo Treatment-- In Reverse - http://www.fair.org/activism/macedonia.html

April 13, 2001

"At the outset of NATO's Kosovo bombing campaign in 1999, FAIR urged journalists not to oversimplify the conflict. At the time, U.S. coverage took a propagandistic tone-- blaming a long-standing, multi-faceted conflict almost entirely on the Serbs, or even solely on one man, Slobodan Milosevic. FAIR pointed to the region's complex history of ethnic confrontation, including the chronic turmoil of the 1980s, when it was the Albanian majority, then enjoying broad political autonomy, that was accused of discrimination and abuses aimed at driving out the Slavic minority.

In the jingoistic atmosphere of the NATO war against Yugoslavia, much of the media portrayed the conflict as little more than a racial pogrom orchestrated by the Serbs for the simple purpose of satisfying their own consuming hatreds. The fact that Serbian atrocities were taking place in the context of a full-scale armed Albanian guerrilla insurgency was often strangely missing.

Now an almost identical ethnic clash has erupted in neighboring Macedonia, but the press's coverage is almost a reverse mirror image of its Kosovo reporting. In each case, reporters and pundits have deferred to U.S. officials' view of the situation: While the war in Kosovo was blamed on the Serbian authorities (rather than the Albanian guerrillas), blame for today's clashes in Macedonia is placed mostly on the shoulders of the Albanian insurgents rather than the pro-NATO government. "

rshowalter - 02:33pm Apr 20, 2001 EST (#2432 of 2433)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

As far as I can tell, from the pieces I've seen, FAIR is careful about balance, fair minded, and concerned with civility.

An organization like FAIR can work with a state supported press (for instance, BBC, or People's Daily) as well as a privately owned one.

The suggestion about internet based discussion of articles set out in rshowalter 4/19/01 4:41pm were implemented, organizations like FAIR would have more leverage, and better, fairer press balance might be possible within a range of press systems.

Nobody ought to doubt that the American press has shortcomings, too. rshowalter 4/19/01 4:53pm

rshowalter - 02:35pm Apr 20, 2001 EST (#2433 of 2433)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

On the anti Serbian bias -- there are reasons for some of it.

Fifteen years ago, I met a lady reporter, and an able one, a sister of an investment banker I was working with. She had reported from the Yugoslavian region -- and she told me that Serbians, to punish her for being where they thought she shouldn't be, and to show power, had raped her four times.

This experience gave, I have no doubt, a slant to her coverage.

Such things don't excuse 30:1 mistakes about the number killed, or other gross disparities.

But Serbians (and sometimes Russians, too) have earned the ill will of some people, and have to deal, as best they can, with that situation.

(Everybody has problems and shortcomings, after all.)

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