To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Sept 21, 1999 TV Programs
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 08:40:06 +0000

From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>

8:00 PM Eastern

 DISC - INVISIBLE PLACES - "Underworld" - Crypts, dungeons,
   catacombs and subterranean tunnels.(CC)(TVG)

9:00

 PBS - NOVA - "Einstein Revealed" - Albert Einstein's
   troubled personal life contrasts with his scientific
   genius.(CC)(TVG)

10:00

 HIST - RADAR - Radar helps the Allies win World War
   II.(CC)(TVG)

--- BPR

BPR Web Site - http://philologos.org/bpr

========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Edupage items (9/20/99)
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 08:57:53 +0000

From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>

RESEARCHERS SEND HDTV OVER NEXT-GENERATION INTERNET
Researchers at Stanford University and the University of
Washington on Sept. 15 announced that they were able to send
high-definition TV (HDTV) signals across the Internet2 network.
Used by companies and universities for sophisticated research
projects, Internet2 offers data transfer rates 85,000 times
faster than current dial-up modem rates. IBM, Microsoft, Nortel,
3Com, and AT&T are among those working on Internet2 development. Rich
Wall, IBM's project manager for advanced Internet technologies, says
that IBM sees Internet2 as a potential medium for delivering bundled
entertainment and electronic commerce services. (C|Net 09/15/99)

WAL-MART SETS COMPUTER DOCTOR CENTERS
Wal-Mart plans to test a possible entry into the computer
services business by opening 10 Computer Doctor centers in its
stores that will fix systems and install software for consumers.
The initiative poses a threat to electronics stores such as Radio
Shack and CompUSA, which now lead the consumer services market.
Currently, Wal-Mart sells computers in almost half of its U.S. stores,
but has not yet made a name for itself as a computer retailer. The
company plans to base further moves into the computer market on
consumer reaction to the Computer Doctor centers, according to a
Wal-Mart spokesperson. The first Computer Doctor center opened last
week in Ankeny, Iowa, and the remaining nine test centers will debut
next year. The centers will charge a flat rate for a range of services
and will also provide house calls. (Wall Street Journal 09/20/99)

via: EDUPAGE@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU

========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - First time in history, Catholic bishop charged with genocide
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 09:19:42 +0000

From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>

Catholic clergy on trial in Rwanda

For the first time in history, a Catholic bishop is
charged with genocide. His trial resumes Thursday.

Lara Santoro
Special to The Christian Science Monitor

                                  KIGALI, RWANDA

Bishop Augustin Misago isn't your typical martyr.

Yet to the Roman Catholic Church, Bishop Misago is just that.
With his trial for war crimes scheduled to resume Thursday, he's
seen as a scapegoat standing up to the Rwandan state that is
determined to try the church for its role in the 1994 genocide of
800,000 Tutsis.

The church's outrage stems from the fact that Misago is charged
with crimes against humanity - failure to provide assistance to
people in danger and incitement to murder. And he is not alone.

Twenty other Catholic priests are facing similar accusations -
but he is the highest Catholic official to be charged with
genocide in Rwanda. The local Hutu clergy has been accused of
offering no resistance, and in some cases assisting in the
massacres that took place in many of its churches.

The Catholic Church has since insisted that the church as an
institution is not to blame, though some individuals may have
bloodied their hands. Analysts say this position has influenced
the state's decision to bring the bishop to trial.

The trial got under way on Sept. 14 in Rwanda's capital, Kigali,
with the prosecution reading out the names of all the people
Misago could have saved, and allegedly didn't. Misago
responded by comparing himself to Jesus, oppressed by the
weight of the cross. And it came to a pause last week with a
genocide survivor, an old woman, wailing outside the
courtroom: "I lost my mother, my father, my sister, and all my
brothers. He never helped anyone, even though he had the
power to, he never lifted a finger. I know what he did."

Misago is specifically accused of turning over three Tutsi priests to
genocide perpetrators. He is also charged with turning a deaf ear in
April 1994 to the pleas of 30 young school girls seeking aegis from
armed Hutus. The girls were later killed.

Misago flatly denies both charges, insisting that with no security
detail he had no way to protect them.

What Misago did or didn't do is up to the judges to decide, the
church says. But church officials say the outcome has already
been determined. "I am a hostage," Misago said in an interview
last week in Kigali's central prison. "This is a trial against the
Catholic Church."

The prosecution has ascribed to him the role of planner and
organizer of the genocide, placing him in "Category 1" of
Rwanda's genocide law, an offense for which the death penalty
is automatically invoked.

Yet the prosecutor's 300-page case file of evidence against
Misago to date contains no evidence of his participation in the
planning and execution of the genocide. It does list the
statements of many genocide survivors who maintain that, as a
figure of authority, he could have used his considerable powers
to save the lives of many Tutsi refugees who had sought
sanctuary in schools, hospitals, and churches across his diocese
and were instead mercilessly murdered there.

"Bishop Misago is accused of having participated in the
organization of the genocide," says Kigali's chief prosecutor
Emanuel Rukangira. "We are accusing Misago personally - not
the church."

"It is possible, even probable that as a bishop, Misago could
have done more than he did," says a Kigali-based Western
observer. "But to place him in Category 1 is absurd."

Critics cite the chronology of evidence gathering as indicative of a
political agenda in this case. Misago was first accused by Rwanda's
president, Pasteur Bizimungu, on April 7 of this year, at a memorial
service marking the fifth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide.

No arrest papers were produced at the time, and no evidence
produced to justify his arrest.

The following day, Rwanda's justice minister, Jean de Dieu
Mucyo, claimed in an interview with the BBC that Kigali's chief
prosecutor, Emmanuel Rukangira, had amassed a sufficient
body of evidence to incriminate Misago and justify his arrest.

The first evidence collected against Misago, the testimony of a
genocide survivor, is dated April 16, 1999 - two days after the
prelate's arrest.

"What do you want? This is Rwanda," says a longtime observer
of the region. "All you need is a couple witnesses whispering
something in Kinyarwanda [Rwanda's language], and that's the
end of that."

             The apparent sloppiness of the prosecution's
             case, the witnesses who contradict each other,
             and the apparent disregard of evidence
             pointing to Misago's innocence - such as the
             testimony of a worker in the bishopric who
             says Misago parted with large sums of money
             to keep the genocide's militia at bay - seem to
             confirm the often-voiced suspicion that this is a
             political trial against the Catholic Church.

"There is a difference between "historical justice and legal
justice," says Alison Des Forges, a historian and Rwanda
researcher with Human Rights Watch, a New York-based
group.

"The courtroom is there to try the individual and not the
institution. History's judgment of the church should and will be
rendered. But not this way," she says.

http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1999/09/21/fp8s1-csm.shtml

========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Russia to cooperate with OPEC
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 12:42:01 +0000

From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>

                 Russia to Cooperate With OPEC

                 LONDON (Reuters) -- Russia will continue to restrict
                 oil supply in coordination with OPEC producers and
                 wants to keep prices around current levels, Deputy
                 Fuel and Energy Minister Yelena Telyegina said on
                 Tuesday.

                 "We're not going to join OPEC as an official member
                 but we are going to join in efforts to keep oil
                 prices at their present level," Telyegina said on the
                 sidelines of a conference in London.

                 "We'd like to coordinate our activities with
                 OPEC...We want to keep the situation as it is."

                 Telyegina's comments came as ministers from the
                 Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
                 converged on Vienna for Wednesday's policy-setting
                 meeting.

                 Analysts expected no slackening in 12-month supply
                 curbs agreed last March, which have since led to a
                 doubling in world oil prices.

                 Telyegina said relations with OPEC were good, and she
                 denied that Russia -- one of the world's top oil
                 producers -- had come under recent pressure from the
                 cartel to be more rigorous in applying pledges to
                 curb oil output.

http://www.arabia.com/content/business/9_99/russia21.shtml

========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Iraq supports idea of Arab economic bloc
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 12:43:37 +0000

From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>

                 Iraq Supports Idea of Arab Economic
                 Bloc

                 BAGHDAD (AFP) -- Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yasin
                 Ramadan said Monday that his country would support
                 the setting up of an economic bloc with other Arab
                 countries to compete with the existing international
                 trade groups.

                 "Iraq is ready to put its economic capacities at the
                 disposition (of such an Arab bloc) to install a solid
                 Arab economic system capable of standing face-to-face
                 with economic bloc around the world," said Ramadan,
                 who was receiving a Libyan industrial delegation.

                 "The Arab nation possesses enormous economic
                 potential" and Iraq is ready to participate in such a
                 system, the official Iraqi INA news agency quoted the
                 minister as saying.

http://www.arabia.com/content/business/9_99/iraq21.shtml

========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Arutz-7 News items (9/21/99)
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 12:53:08 +0000

From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>

BARAK TRIP TO GERMANY DRAWS FIRE
Prime Minister Ehud Barak departs today for an official two-day visit
to Germany and France. He will be the first world leader to visit
Berlin since its becoming the capital of united Germany - a status it
has not held since World War II. Barak, who will be accompanied on
his trip by six Holocaust survivors, canceled plans to visit the
Reichstag, but he will stay at a hotel that served as Gestapo
headquarters. Barak deflected criticism of this choice by saying that
almost every building in Berlin is somehow related to Nazi history.

Although President Ezer Weizman visited the German parliament in Bonn
over three years ago - where he delivered an impassioned and
highly-praised speech on the Jewish significance of his trip - he was
not criticized at the time, whereas Barak's trip has drawn public
fire. In a pre-Yom Kippur editorial, Ha'aretz journalist Ya'ir Sheleg
wrote, "The implications of Germany's return to the capital of the
Third Reich worry historians and cultural researchers throughout the
western world. What could be more fitting [from Germany's standpoint]
than having the Prime Minister of Israel provide symbolic
legitimization for this symbolic step?"

Speaking to Arutz-7 today, Sheleg noted that "Israel is far from being
Germany's most important ally - but does play a crucial role in terms
of removing the cloud of history that hangs over Germany since World
War II..." Advocating the need for symbolic gestures by Israel to
subtly reprove the German nation, Sheleg said, "I am not saying that
Israel should refuse to recognize Berlin as the reunited capital, but
Barak didn't have to be the first leader to do so with a state visit -
he could just as well have been the seventh or eighth to do so."

YOM KIPPUR SERVICE ON TEMPLE MOUNT
As in previous years, a special Yom Kippur prayer service was held
yesterday on the Temple Mount, at the Temple Mount police station atop
the Western Wall. Yehuda Etzion, one of the regular worshipers at the
annual service, said that one of the rooms of the police station juts
out onto the Mount. "Although Jewish Law [halakhah] forbids entry to
the area of the Holy Temple," explained Etzion, "because we are
'defiled by contact with dead bodies,' this is in an area in which we
are permitted to enter, after proper immersion beforehand in a mikveh
[ritual bath]."

Dozens of worshipers took part in yesterday's service, including Rabbi
Yisrael Ariel, Meir Indor, and Rami Goren (son of Rabbi Shlomo Goren,
who originated the annual service after the Six-Day War). Former IDF
Chief of Staff Moshe Levy also took part in the prayers. Meir Indor
told Arutz-7 that there is an "amazingly elevating sensation in taking
part in a Yom Kippur service so close to the holy spot where the High
Priest used to perform the atonement service for all of Israel."

YESHA COUNCIL SAYS NO TO REMAINING UNDER FOREIGN RULE
Position papers circulating in the Prime Minister's Office recommend
that residents of isolated settlements in Judea and Samaria remain in
their homes - under Palestinian sovereignty. Yediot Acharonot reports
that several settlements are mentioned by name, including Otniel, Beit
Haggai, and Karmei Tzur south of Hevron, and Ganim, Yitzhar, Brachah,
and others in Shomron. Bentzy Lieberman, head of the Shomron Regional
Council, said that he knows no details of the above recommendations,
but "we object to any form of this proposal. We did not return to our
Land after 2,000 years of exile in order to live under foreign rule,
but rather to be an independent nation in our Land."

Regarding the apparent lack of response to the recent developments by
the Yesha Council, of which he is a member, Lieberman said, "The Yesha
Council is preparing a comprehensive program, including informational
and protest efforts where appropriate. These must begin at once, in
order to attempt to convince the public and the government that these
agreements are a catastrophe for us. The end-goal is of course the
referendum that Barak promised, but we know that we will only be able
to succeed in the referendum if we begin now."

HIGH IMMIGRATION LEVELS NOT WELCOMED BY ALL
Michael Bavel, who immigrated to Israel from the Soviet Union in the
early 1970's, has begun what is almost a one-man campaign against the
high rate of non-Jewish immigration to Israel from Russia. Once a
week he and several friends stand at Paris Square in Jerusalem with a
petition on the matter, and they have called a demonstration tonight
outside the Prime Minister's Office. Deputy Minister of Immigration
Marina Solodkin told Arutz-7 today that current immigration levels
from the former Soviet Union stand at approximately 60,000 annually,
"but given the terrorist attacks in Russia, and the current and future
warfare there, this number could grow to 70 or 80,000, and I have
heard even 100,000."

"The number of non-Jews arriving in Israel is not just a problem,"
Bavel told Arutz-7's Ariel Kahane today, "it is a downright danger to
the State. A concrete threat to Israel's Jewish majority and character
is being introduced into the country in the form of new immigrants.
When I came here, the rate of non-Jews among the immigrants was 50% -
it's about 85% now. Many of them don't even hide their anti-Semitism.
 The word Zhid [a derogatory term for 'Jew'] is frequently heard, as
well as 'too bad Hitler didn't finish you off...'" Bavel said that he
knows that decisions on this matter are not made by the public, "but
we are trying to wake up the government."

Arutz Sheva News Service
     <http://www.a7.org>
Tuesday, September 21, 1999 / Tishrei 11, 5760