And Taiwan is arming for what is ahead ....

Taiwan's Chen Supports US Arms Deal

Friday March 31, 2000

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - Taiwan's newly elected president on Friday defended a plan to push for a U.S. weapons deal that would likely raise tensions with rival China, saying the arms were essential for preserving peace.

Since his election two weeks ago, Chen Shui-bian has tried not to rile Beijing. But the former Taipei mayor was not ready to placate Chinese leaders by suggesting that Washington postpone an annual decision expected later this month about selling weaponry to Taiwan.

``The weapons are needed for Taiwan's security and peace,'' Chen said in an interview with The Associated Press. ``They are not for war, but for peace.''

China fiercely protests arms sales between Taiwan and the United States, one of the only nations willing to risk Beijing's ire by selling the island defensive weapons.

Analysts and lawmakers have said Taipei's wish list includes upgraded Patriot missiles, advanced radar systems, and guided-missile destroyers equipped with the sophisticated AEGIS battle management system. China considers the ships part of an emerging regional anti-missile shield.

China and Taiwan split when the communists took over the mainland in 1949, and reunifying the two sides is still Beijing's sacred goal. China has threatened to attack Taiwan if it tries to break away permanently or indefinitely rebuffs reunification talks.

During the presidential campaign, China's leaders made it clear that Chen, 49, was their least favorite candidate. Beijing distrusts the former Taipei mayor because he was once a vocal supporter of Taiwan independence.

Since his upset victory, Chen has expressed his goodwill by offering to travel to China and discuss any topic, and he has invited Chinese leaders to visit Taiwan. In recent months, he has also softened his position on independence, saying Taiwanese should only vote on the issue if China attacks.

``Time will prove that the government under my direction will be prudent, responsible, rational, pragmatic and flexible,'' Chen said in his spare, tidy office decorated with framed international magazine articles of his political successes. ``We aren't just seeking lasting peace. We also want to have talks.''

Many believe that in the coming months, Chen might make new goodwill gestures that would help restart talks with China.

Some have speculated he might call for a one-year moratorium on arms purchases from America. Others have said he might send a high-profile delegation of lobbyists to Washington to help China push for permanent normal trade relations with the United States.

Chen said he has no plans to do either.

But he said that he hoped that U.S.-China trade relations would improve because that would further open up the mainland and help its leaders become more liberal on political issues.

``It would be helpful to China's democratization,'' Chen said. ``A democratic China, just like a democratic Taiwan, must help foster peace in Asia and the Pacific.''

Although Chen and Beijing have repeatedly said they want to negotiate, both sides disagree over the terms of setting up talks.

China has insisted that before any meeting is arranged, Chen must agree on its ``one China'' principle, which holds that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China. Chen has refused to accept any conditions for talks, but has agreed to meet with Chinese leaders and discuss the concept of a ``one China.''

Chen on Friday declined to discuss in detail possible interpretations of ``one China'' and said both sides should meet and talk about it.

``If you keep magnifying the differences, you can't expect to reach agreements on some of the things,'' he said.

Chen also said that he had no plans to visit the United States before he takes office in May, even if he got a rare invitation from President Clinton.

``Our substantial relations with America will improve and upgrade,'' he said. ``Whether I personally can visit the United States before my inauguration, in fact, is not that important.''

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More signs of Arab Unification.

March 30th 2000

Yemeni leader invites Saddam to union anniversary

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Yemen has invited Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to attend anniversary celebrations marking the merger of north and south Yemen in May 1990, the Iraqi news agency INA said on Thursday.

It said the invitation from President Ali Abdullah Saleh was handed to Saddam by Yemeni Minister of Legal Affairs Abdullah Ahmad Ghanem.

The Yemeni envoy also advised Saddam of Saleh's desire for an Arab summit as soon as possible.

Ghanem said Yemen, a poor Arab state on the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, would continue to push for the lifting of U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

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Terminal Madness in the USA

March 31st 2000

BRAVE NEW SCHOOLS
U.S. child murder rate soars
Firearms least of factors,
says new research

By Jon E. Dougherty
� 2000 WorldNetDaily.com

A new statistical analysis report shows that despite a child-homicide rate in the United States which surpasses that of most other Western nations, firearms are near the bottom of the list of causes for the alarming statistics.

According to a report drafted by Iain Murray, a senior research analyst at the Statistical Assessment Service, a Washington-based non-profit, non-partisan think tank, "in the rush to reduce America's high juvenile homicide rates into a gun-control debate, we're missing the chilling bigger picture of the real and deadly risks our children face, and what it says about our society."

The most recent statistical data available on child homicide rates, Murray said, indicated that the U.S. had the highest infant-child homicide rate -- four times as high -- as all other Western nations surveyed, at 4.1 children per 100,000 people.

But "for every American child 4 or younger" that is murdered, he said, "more than eight others die violently by other means -- blunt objects, strangulation or, most commonly, hands, fists or feet."

Even in the 5-14 age group, he said, the U.S. non-gun murder rate is more than double the rates taken from the international sampling group, "although the rate of murders by firearms does increase considerably as children get older."

One of the most recent high-profile child murder cases involving a gun was the shooting death of six-year-old Kayla Rolland, who was killed by a classmate in a Michigan school last month. As expected, the incident sparked more calls for childproofing handguns -- such as adding trigger locks -- from traditional gun control advocates and from the Clinton administration.

Some experts have said the Rolland case may even have been the impetus for Smith & Wesson, one of the nation's largest handgun makers, to strike a deal with the administration that would prevent the company from being sued by municipalities and the Justice Department, who say gun makers shoulder responsibility for illegal acts committed with guns they manufacture. Specifically, Smith & Wesson executives agreed to add trigger locks to all handguns sold by the company, and to forbid shipment of their handguns to dealers who would not agree to the company's new childproof packaging mandates.

But Murray said the statistics don't measure up to the hype.

"While the rate of child gun homicide in the U.S. is much higher than elsewhere -- as everyone acknowledges -- so is the rate of non-gun murder," he said. "Even if all the gun homicides were taken out of the equation, America would still have an infant-homicide rate more than 3.5 times as high as the other Western countries," a phenomenon he called "staggering."

America's obsession with guns and gun violence, Murray said, is understandable, but that obsession is "blinding us to another significant social problem," noting that in 1997 alone, 738 children under the age of 13 were murdered across the country (but only 133 by guns, according to the FBI).

"America is witnessing something barbaric happening to its young children," Murray said, noting that the figures might be unbelievable had they not been tallied by official U.S. government sources.

He said the case of another child, 23-month-old Brianna Blackmond, "is more typical of the young children killed in this country." She died in January from a blow to the head given to her by her mother after being returned from a foster home.

"But how much press attention did that death receive outside Washington, compared with Kayla Rolland's tragic but unusual death?" Murray asked.

It is also important to note, he said, "that the main thrust of the 'Kids and Guns' study" -- a recent government report -- "is that the rise and subsequent fall in the murder rate among older juveniles in the 1990s was driven by firearm murders and the consequent gun-control measures. ... But this does not apply to murders of children aged 13 or younger."

Murray said the murder rate in that group was 1.8 per 100,000 in 1976 and 1.7 in 1997, "never having risen above 2.1 in the intervening 20 years."

"Children under 13 are being killed just about as often now as they were during the height of the crack-fueled murder boom of the early 1990s," said the STATS researcher. "If anything has been done to combat the problem, it hasn't worked," which, ostensibly, includes a number of new gun-control laws that have been passed over the last 20 years.

Yet the data show something surprising: 85 percent of U.S. counties reported no child homicides -- by any cause -- in 1997, while just 7 percent experienced two or more.

"In great swaths of the country, child murder is virtually unknown," Murray said. "The problem is confined mainly to the big cities of the East and West coasts, and to the Southwest."

The research analyst also questioned the wisdom of universal gun laws emanating from the federal level. Though gun violence in otherwise peaceful suburban communities seems to garner headlines, "the overwhelming majority of child murders happen elsewhere. This fact alone would imply that across-the-board federal solutions affecting the entire country may be misplaced," he said.

Though it would seem more sensible to use government resources to "concentrate where the problem is the greatest," Murray added that other feel-good measures, such as having "pediatricians nationwide ... talk to all young children about guns," as some national pediatric groups have proposed, "is well-intentioned, but will achieve little."

"By letting ourselves believe that guns are the problem for pre-adolescents, we are avoiding the unpalatable truth that something is very wrong in American society," Murray said. "We focus on exceptional cases, and ignore the unsettling nature of the daily reality."

But, he said, there may be "a lesson here."

"We may be able to reduce child-murder rates to the levels of other countries if we concentrate on what causes those murders -- and guns aren't the biggest factor."

There may be a hidden "domino effect," he said, that causes children who live in unstable or dangerous environments "where their lives have little value" to also regard the lives of others in the same light "when they are seduced by the power of the gun." Breaking that cycle and making childhood safer and saving the lives of the youngest children may help save older children down the road, Murray said.

"Perhaps the safety locks we most need are the ones that other civilized countries place in their citizens' consciences," he said. While the tragic deaths of the "Kayla Rollands are thankfully the exception rather than the rule ... it is the Brianna Blackmonds who really deserve the attention of the nation's doctors and the president."

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Terminal Madness in Russia

March 31st 2000

Two Russian teenage girls slash boy to death

MOSCOW, March 31 (Reuters) - Two runaway girls in a remote Russian town slashed a 10-year-old boy to death with bits of broken glass because they thought he had robbed them of two dollars, Itar-Tass news agency said on Friday.

The girls, aged 13 and 14, ran away from their families in a small town near the Plesetsk space launch pad in the arctic Archangel region and made friends with the boy, who was also a vagabond.

Tass quoted local police as saying that, after several days together, they accused the boy of stealing 50 roubles ($1.75) from them and stabbed him to death with the broken glass.

The girls, who left the body lying in a street, were later arrested.

Gangs of homeless children have become a familiar sight in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. They live by begging, theft and prostitution. Violent crimes are not unusual among them.

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Terminal Madness in China

March 30 2000

Suicide bomber blast kills 37 in northern China

BEIJING (Reuters) - A suicide bomber, mad at the world because his wife left him, killed himself and 36 other people at a village wedding in northern China's Shanxi province, the China Youth Daily reported on Friday.

It said farmer Liu Zhanjin, a 34-year-old former miner used to handling explosives, filled several bags with 50 kg (110 lb) of explosives and took them to the wedding on a handcart.

Liu blew himself to pieces when he set off the explosives in the middle of the wedding party attended by more than 100 people on Wednesday.

He killed 36 other people and injured more than 30 with an explosion which shattered windows 100 metres (yards) away, the newspaper said.

It said Liu had carried out several test explosions outside the village in advance.

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