From: Eddie Chumney
To:      heb_roots_chr@hebroots.org
Subject: News of Interest: December 13 - 19, 1999


                                News of Interest
                 December 13 to December 19, 1999


DRUMBEATS OF WAR

YELTSIN PUTS NUCLEAR MISSILES ON 'RED ALERT'
NewsMax.com December 14, 1999

Still furious over United States criticism of Russia's war in
Chechnya, President Boris Yeltsin has placed his most deadly
intercontinental nuclear missiles on "combat alert."  The Moscow
bureau of the London Express is reporting that, on his orders, 10
of Russia's newest, most sophisticated weapons - capable of
striking the U.S. - have been deployed in full readiness.  This
unprecedented dramatic warning has Western observers nervous
about the possibility of an inadvertent launch at a time when it
is known that Russia's missiles are not fully reprogrammed to
avert all millennium- year computer failures.  Russia just
recently sent computer and missile experts to Washington to work
with American specialists in averting Y2K glitches.

Yelstin's hawkish missile deployment is just the latest move of a
laundry list of recent military developments in Russia.  In
October, Yeltsin's Prime Minister announced Russian government
plans for a massive military build-up, with plans to raise the
military budget by 50 percent.  Last month, the Russian Navy
fired two intercontinental ballistic missiles from a submarine.
They struck a target range more than 3,000 miles away on Russia's
Kamchatka peninsula.  Since the Kosovo war, Russian military and
civilian leaders have made clear that their war game exercises
are preparation for a conflict with the U.  S.

Toronto's Globe and Mail reported the most recent missile test
firing was the first time Russia has launched an ICBM from a
nuclear submarine in four years and the third time in a month it
had fired off missiles.  The paper called it "an intimidating
wave of test launches."  At the same time, Russia has been
deploying subs and planes on cat-and-mouse surveillance with U.S.
ships and jets, which the Toronto paper said is "the first time
in years that the Russians have played such Cold War games."

Yeltsin's deployment for combat of the missiles - the Topol-Ms -
is the most serious military development yet.  With a striking
range of 6,200 miles, the Topol-Ms - are based in the Saratov
region, 400 miles southeast of Moscow.  According to the Express:
Although the West was advised in advance, as required by nuclear
treaty commitments, the rarity of this move can be regarded only
as a deliberate and serious show of force to underscore Yeltsin's
outrage.  It coincided with his return to Russia after a trip to
China, where he warned Clinton and other Western leaders to stay
out of Russia's business in Chechnya.  Yeltsin brandished
Russia's still great missile threat by thundering, "Russia is a
great power that possesses a full nuclear arsenal.  It is we who
will dictate."

Recently, Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev, the Russian missiles-forces
commander, also bragged, "Of the five nuclear powers, none of the
others will match these weapons in the next few years.  "Topol-M
is able to breach any anti-missile system that exists in the
world and any which will be built in the near future."

Also troubled by the missile alert are Russian politicians and
analysts who regard Yeltsin as too ill to have his finger on the
trigger of the world's second largest nuclear power.  Britain's
leading independent nuclear expert, John Large, said, "There was
an unwritten agreement for both Russia and the U.S. not to deploy
nuclear weapons before the Y2K period.  "Even if the weapons
themselves are OK - which I very much doubt since their testing
system has been effectively down and out for three years - they
would have to work within the strategic defense system there,
which is full of Y2K glitches.  "There is no real need for it -
it is a risk they don't need to take.  "I am not suggesting that
these nuclear bombs will go off on their own, but we do expect to
see the defense systems playing up a bit."

JUBILANT ZHIRINOVSKY WANTS TO HACK WESTERN COMPUTERS
December 19, 1999 Moscow (Reuters) 12/19/99

Russia's maverick politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, whose
ultra-nationalist bloc looks set to do well in a parliamentary
election, said Monday he would celebrate by hacking into Western
computers.  Zhirinovsky's bloc was running at more than eight
percent in early results compared with pre-election opinion polls
which had given him some five percent.  Asked by Reuters whether
he would have a drink to mark his party's good showing, he said:

"No.  No way, we Russians don't drink any more.  We now work on
computers, we use computers to send viruses to the West and then
we poach your money."  "We have the best hackers in the world.
We do not need to drink or smoke...We do not drink, smoke, have
drugs and we don't have AIDS, that's what you have got in the
West."


PREPARATION FOR WAR

MILITARY POSTURE OF EUROPE TO TURN MORE INDEPENDENT
December 13, 1999 By Craig R. Whitney  Paris

By deciding to equip itself to send up to 60,000 troops to a
crisis zone like Bosnia or Kosovo, the European Union aims to
become a strategic player that the United States and other
countries will have to reckon with.  French officials, chafing
under what some of them call American "hyperpower," have long
wanted to make Europe a political and military power as well as
an economic colossus.  Now other European leaders have adopted
the military goal, agreeing at a meeting on Friday in Helsinki to
build the command and planning staffs, intelligence bases, and
the decision-making and deployment apparatus needed to realize
their new ambition by 2003.  The allies in the 15-member union,
including France, pledged that Europe's new military strength
would not detract from, but instead would contribute to, the
cohesion and effectiveness of the NATO alliance.

RUSSIA TEST-FIRES NEW MISSILE, AGAIN WARNS U.S.
Drudge Report December 14, 1999

Russia on Tuesday launched a new intercontinental ballistic
missile that flew across Russia and hit a target 3,400 miles
away.  Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin used the occasion to
tell the West that Russia "will use all diplomatic and military-
political levers in its disposal" to counter criticism of its
military attacks on Chechnya.  Elsewhere, China is considering
buying a third Project 636 Russian submarine, a military-industry
official told ITAR-TASS on Tuesday.  The submarine, which is now
at the Krasnoye Sormovo shipyard in the central European Russian
city of Nizhni Novgorod, will be ready and offered for export
within months, the source said.


ALL U.S. PORTS PUT ON HIGH ALERT
Drudge Report Saturday, December 18, 1999

The U.S. Customs Service has placed all 301 ports of entry into
the United States on high alert following the arrest of an
Alergian in Washington state.  Ahmed Ressam, 32, was charged on
Friday with transporting explosives into the United States,
providing false identification and lying to authorities.

The WASHINGTON POST is reporting in Sunday editions that U.S.
authorities have intensified efforts to find an accomplice who
apparently had been with Ressam at a motel in British Columbia
for three weeks prior to Ressam's passage into the United States.
"Ressam's arrest has left law enforcement and intelligence
officials scared and deeply concerned about possible terrorist
attacks on U.S. soil as millennium celebrations approach,"
reports the POST's Vernon Loeb.

The detonation device found in Ressam's rental car -- circuit
boards linked to a Casio watch and a nine-volt battery -- is "the
method they teach in [Osama bin Laden's] camps in Afghanistan --
and the Casio device turned up in one of the Moscow apartment
bombings" thought to have been carried out earlier this year by
Islamic radicals, reports the paper.  Sunday's NEW YORK TIMES
reports that authorities believe the second man has returned to
Montreal, which Canadian authorities have described as the base
of an "Algerian cell" created to finance terrorist organizations.

APOSTASY AND ECUMENISM

POPE TRIES TO HEAL CHURCH RIFT
London Electronic Telegraph 12/18/99 Francis Harris, Prague

The Pope yesterday sought to heal one of the oldest wounds
between the Catholic and Protestant churches by expressing "deep
regret" for the death at the stake of the Czech religious
reformer Jan Hus.  The pontiff's historic words at a religious
conference in Rome attended by President Vaclav Havel of the
Czech Republic, constitute an apology for the actions of the
Catholic Church in luring Hus to Constance in 1415 with
assurances for his personal safety and then burning him as a
heretic.  The Prague cleric had accused the church of failing to
practise what it preached.


ANTI-SEMITISM

ANTI-SEMITISM SAID RISING IN RUSSIA
By DAVID HO Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP)

Anti-Semitism and religious persecution are increasing across
Russia, a Jewish rights group said in a report issued Tuesday.
After monitoring the countries of the former Soviet Union over
the past year and collecting documents chronicling religious
persecution since 1991, the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews
said anti-Semitic incidents there have risen dramatically.

``Obviously the newly won democracy in those countries has not
succeeded in educating their populations on the perils of racial
and religious hatred directed towards the Jews,'' said Elie
Wiesel, a Nobel peace laureate and Holocaust survivor.  ``The
situation has become serious, and human rights organizations as
well as governments must intervene on behalf of tomorrow's
possible Jewish victims,'' Wiesel said.

Bombings and attempted bombings of synagogues, desecrated
cemeteries and anti-Semitic political speeches have increased
between February and June of this year, the report said.  In
virtually every case, it said, there has been no serious police
investigation and no one has been prosecuted for hate crimes.
The survey found that anti-Semitism is often supported by the
remains of the Soviet infrastructure, including the Communist
Party, organs of the judicial system and security apparatus, the
Russian National Unity movement and the Russian Orthodox Church.

Anti-Semitism ``operates with complete impunity, sending the
message that neither the central nor local government will
provide for the physical or political safety of Russian Jews,''
the goup said.


Y2K PROBLEM

CLINTON READIES 50 STATE EMERGENCY DECLARATIONS
Washington, D.C. (Baptist Press) 12/7/99

Fifty declarations of emergency, one for each state, have been
prepared for President Clinton to sign on New Year's weekend if
regional computer glitches occur in the United States due to the
"Y2K" problem.  "For the weekend beginning New Year's Eve, we
have prepared 50 emergency declarations in case there is any
scenario in which a local area's problems cannot be handled by
local and state emergency personnel and a request for a
presidential declaration of emergency is requested by a
governor," said Mark Wolfson, a spokesman for the Federal
Emergency Management Agency told Baptist Press.

EXPERTS EXPECT MANY Y2K ERRORS, MODERATE IMPACT
December 13, 1999 Washington (Reuters)

The 2000 computer glitch will cause many errors in automated
systems worldwide but their combined damage will be "moderate," a
United Nations-created information clearing house said Monday.
In its final report, the Washington-based, World Bank-funded
International Y2K Cooperation Center said most critical systems
"will function about as well as they normally do in the first
days of the new year."

It said computer errors that stop short of triggering shutdowns
will lead to "degraded performance in many infrastructures," such
as electricity generation and distribution.  "The world will be
well into January before a considered assessment can be made of
the medium term effects" of Y2K, the design flaw that could
confuse some computers when their clocks roll over to 2000 in 19
days.  "We expect few serious Y2K-caused effects in energy,
telecommunications, finance, transportation, customs and
immigration, food and water infrastructures" in the first days of
next month, the report said.

But it cited a medium to high risk that Y2K-caused errors could
adversely affect public health and safety early on, especially in
developing countries and in smaller, less-prepared organizations
worldwide.  "Life is full of risks," the report said.  "Y2K
creates additional risks in some areas.  Fortunately, the risk
from Y2K throughout the world is decreasing as readiness
increases."

CHERNOBYL "IS MILLENNIAL TIME BOMB"
From Roger Boyes in Berlin London Times 12/15/99

Chernobyl and two other ageing Soviet bloc nuclear reactors may
help to fulfil prophecies of millennial disaster if work is not
done swiftly to adapt their computers.  The head of the
Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, Muhammad
al-Baradei, has identified three nuclear plants that are lagging
seriously behind in preparing for the Year 2000 software problem:
the Medzamer reactor in Armenia and the Ignalina reactor in
Lithuania as well as the still- functioning reactor in Chernobyl.

The locations have long been a headache for Western experts.
Even after considerable investment, the safety standards are well
behind those in the West.  The Medzamer plant, consisting of two
pressurised light water reactors, is in an earthquake zone.It had
to be closed in early 1989 after an earthquake, but by 1995 it
was reopened.  Armenia is dependent on nuclear-generated
electricity.  Before the re-opening, residents of Yerevan, the
capital, were rationed to two hours of electricity a day.

There are Western worries about the plant's ability to withstand
another earthquake, about the level of staff training and the
plant emergency planning.  But Armenia's dependence on the
reactor is such that politicians refused to close it for tests or
maintenance.  Computers are central to nuclear plant safety: they
gather, compare and contrast data received from the different
stages of electricity production and monitor temperatures and
possible leakages.  Dr al-Baradei said the "millennium bug"
problem in the atomic energy sector of the former Soviet Union
was due to lack of money - maintenance is chronically
underfinanced - and lack of adequate planning.

U. S. GIRDS FOR FEARED Y2K VIOLENCE
December 15, 1999 By Jim Wolf Washington (Reuters)

U. S. officials are preparing for the possibility that the
much-heralded Year 2000 computer bogy may turn out to be the
least of their problems on New Year's weekend -- overshadowed by
political, cult or racial violence.  As officials grow more
confident that U.S. infrastructure will emerge relatively
glitch-free, they appear increasingly concerned about those who
might try to wind up the century with a kind of bloody
exclamation point.  The chairman of a Senate panel that studied
the Year 2000 technology challenge, Robert Bennett, said the
United States and its allies should be on guard for both physical
and computer-generated attacks timed to coincide with the new
year.  "We think there may be terrorist groups planning to ride
in on the Y2K wave," the Utah Republican, who receives
intelligence briefings, told Reuters.  "There is the potential
for these groups to commit acts that may be mistakenly attributed
to Y2K."

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