Ivo Skoric 9-11

[anna balint]

9 From: "Ivo Skoric" <ivo at reporters.net>
Subject: Free Market Follies
Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 10:39:45 -0400
Reply-to: ivo at balkansnet.org

Iraq: Yugoslavs built it the first time. They can build it again!

Three Macedonians were kidnapped in Baghdad on August 23. Curiously,
the kidnappers do not demand that Macedonia withdraw its contingent
of 30 soldiers from Iraq. Sadly. Because that would be the easiest
thing for Macedonian government to do. Instead they want cold cash -
$300,000 - something that is very hard to come by in Macedonia, with
a jobless rate of 40% and the average monthly salary of $150.

Which is precisely why many young Macedonians - 500 of them - sought
their fortune in re-building Iraq. Not that their own beautiful
country does not need rebuilding. Quite the contrary. But nobody
wants to pay for it. Instead, a US company has offices in small
Macedonian towns recruiting young males to go to work in Iraq on 6
month contracts making $1500 a month rebuilding other peoples
country, the one that the expensive US bombs (paid for by your tax
dollars) had first destroyed.

In the end, the average US citizen loses, because they don't get back
services from their government for taxes they pay to it (those being
used to wield worldwide mayhem and destruction), the average
Macedonian citizen loses, because their country stays poor and
underdeveloped, the average Iraqi citizen loses, because their
country was first destroyed, then rebuilt by the foreigners, leaving
them holding the bag. Somebody must be making a killing in that
equation, though, and I think you don't need a PhD in math to find
out who...

ivo

From www.iwpr.net:
JOBLESS MACEDONIANS RISK ALL IN BAGHDAD

Poverty driving young men to take dangerous, highly-paid work in
Iraq.

By Miomir Serafinovic and Maja Jovanovska in Kumanovo and Skopje

The apparent abduction of three Macedonian construction workers near
Baghdad is not deterring hundreds of their poverty-stricken
compatriots from signing up for similar jobs in war-torn Iraq.

The Macedonian authorities are currently struggling to establish the
whereabouts of the three men – all from the north-eastern town of
Kumanovo – who went missing on August 23. Unconfirmed reports suggest
that they were captured by a criminal gang, now demanding 300,000 US
dollars for their safe release.

While the news has horrified the Macedonian public, it has not
dissuaded many unemployed young men from seeking highly-paid work in
Iraq.

Kumanovo resident Saso, who has two young children, told IWPR that he
saw “no alternative” to taking a six-month contract with the same
construction firm that had employed the three missing Macedonians.

News of the suspected kidnapping has not changed his mind. “I must
take the risk - and the job - or my children will starve,” he
shrugged.

More than 300 people applied for 38 available posts with the United
Arab Emirates-based construction company, which is offering a monthly
salary of 1,500 dollars – almost ten times the average Macedonian
wage.

Macedonia is one of Europe’s poorest countries, with a jobless rate
of nearly 40 per cent. Around 25,000 of Kumanovo’s 85,000 inhabitants
are registered unemployed, most under the age of 35.

Government sources believe that Kumanovo residents make up the
majority of the estimated 500 Macedonian workers who have already
taken up jobs in Iraq. A US company with offices in the town is
understood to have handled much of the recruitment.

Kumanovo’s mayor, Slobodan Kovacevski, voiced concern over the trend,
but told IWPR that he understood the men’s motives. “They can come
back after six months with big salaries, and even if they cannot work
on their return, at least they have some money they can live off,” he
said.

“We would prefer it if these people did not take such risks, but it
seems they have no alternative.”

The risks were brought home last week in the most harrowing way. News
of the disappearance of Dragan Markovic, Zoran Naskovski and Dalibor
Lazarevski had been kept secret for a week after they disappeared,
with the latter’s mother claiming that the families learned of the
incident through the media first.

A representative from the men’ Dubai-based employers visited Kumanovo
last week to talk to the families. At the same time, the Macedonian
government sent a special representative to Baghdad to learn more
about the apparent kidnapping.

The little information available does not suggest that the workers
were kidnapped to force Skopje to withdraw its personnel from Iraq.
Macedonia has contributed around 30 soldiers to the US-led Coalition
forces there.

“We still don’t have official confirmation about the kidnapping and
therefore the three workers are still being classed as ‘missing’,”
said Macedonian foreign affairs ministry spokesperson Dusko Uzunov.

Kumanovo resident Mirce Dodevski worked alongside the missing men,
and was one of 12 who decided to return home following their
disappearance.
However, he is seriously considering going back.

“In Macedonia, it would take me ten years to earn the same amount of
money I could make in Baghdad in only six months,” he explained.

But his former co-worker Nikica Tomic told IWPR that he now believed
the human cost was too high, adding, “I would never return for any
amount of money. I will gladly take other jobs abroad, but not in
Iraq.”

Lazarevski’s mother said tearfully, “We knew all along how dangerous
it is in Iraq as we watched news reports and saw what was happening
there, but he decided to go despite all that.”

Yet despite all the dangers, many unemployed people in Kumanovo see
it as their only chance to improve their lives.

Saso is reluctant to discuss the suspected kidnapping, telling IWPR
that he is confident that he will return safe and sound. “I don’t
want to think [about the trip] in a negative way. At the end of the
day, many people went there and came back with lots of money,” he
said.

His seven-year-old daughter Jovana knows that her father is going a
long way away to make money for the family. Saso hugs her proudly,
adding, “As soon as I get back I’ll buy my daughter the most
beautiful school bag there is.”

Miomir Serafinovic and Maja Jovanovska are journalists with
independent A1 Television.

10. From: "Ivo Skoric" <ivo at reporters.net>
Subject: Fraud Alert
Date: Sun, 05 Sep 2004 13:13:39 -0400

And that happened despite OSCE monitoring Florida elections in 2002?!
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1031-02.htm
(Albanian, Bosnian, Suisse, and Russian monitors were present at the
invitation of the State Department).
This is what Iran-Contra colonel Oliver North had to say about it:
http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,FreedomAlliance_110702,00.h
tml
If either Serbs or Albanians would do the same in Kosovo that Kath.
Harris did in Florida, the U.S. would threaten military action.
But who will protect the democracy in the US from the people like
her?
ivo

On 5 Sep 2004 at 3:12, Miroslav Visic wrote:

Is this going be the elections model that Bush will be exporting to
Iraq and Afghanistan?
http://www.ericblumrich.com/gta.html

11. From: "Ivo Skoric" <ivo at reporters.net>
Subject: Re: Direct Action <<>> Schwarzenegger lied about his past
Date: Sun, 05 Sep 2004 13:13:36 -0400


This is bizzare. He really did not need that. That entire note did
sound like a Hollywood script to me. After all I travelled through
Austria many, many times and never saw a single Soviet tank or
soldier. I grew up with Austria being a Western country where people
from Yugoslavia went to buy stuff unavailable to them in their
socialist economy. But then, I thought, Arnold is older than me, so
maybe when he was a kid, the situation was different. Apparently not.
Arnold lied to bolster his Republican friends. How odious.
ivo

On 5 Sep 2004 at 2:37, Miroslav Visic wrote:

Schwarzenegger, like his brethren Bush & Dick, is resorting to
lies...



* Austrian Scholars Question Arnold's Homeland Remark *
**



VIENNA, Austria -- Historians criticized Arnold Schwarzenegger for
telling the Republican National Convention that he left a "socialist"
country when he moved away in 1968, noting that Austria had
conservative leaders during the entire time he lived there.

Some also were doubtful about Schwarzenegger's remark that he saw
Soviet tanks as a child, since he lived in an Austrian region
occupied by British troops after World War II.

Still, the questions about the California governor's memories of his
homeland aren't likely to dampen his enduring popularity among
Austrians who admire him for rising from a penniless immigrant to
become an international movie star and the highest official in
America's most populous state.

In his convention address Tuesday, Schwarzenegger said: "As a kid, I
saw the socialist country that Austria became after the Soviets left"
in 1955 and Austria regained its independence.

But Austria was governed by coalition governments that included the
conservative People's Party and the liberal Social Democratic Party,
Martin Polaschek, a law history scholar and vice rector of Graz
University, told the Vienna newspaper Kurier.

Between 1945 and 1970, all the nation's chancellors were
conservatives
-- not socialists. And when Schwarzenegger left in 1968, Austria was
run by a conservative government headed by People's Party Chancellor
Josef Klaus, a staunch Roman Catholic and a sharp critic of both the
socialists and the communists ruling in countries across the Iron
Curtain.

Schwarzenegger "confuses a free country with a socialist one," said
Polaschek, referring to Soviet bloc communist officials' routine
descriptions of their eastern European countries as socialist. "He
did not speak as a historian, after all, but as a politician."

Norbert Darabos, a ranking official of Austria's opposition Social
Democratic Party, complained, "The Terminator is constructing a
rather bizarre Austria image."

Schwarzenegger's spokeswoman, Margita Thompson, said the governor was
not referring specifically to the Socialist party but rather to "a
socialistic style of government and governing that he experienced
when living in Austria."

Some Austrians also questioned Schwarzenegger's reminiscence about
seeing Soviet tanks growing up in Austria, which was divided into
U.S., British, French and Soviet occupation zones after the war.

"When I was a boy, the Soviets occupied part of Austria. I saw their
tanks in the streets," he told the Republican convention. "I saw
tanks in the streets. I saw communism with my own eyes," he added.

"It's a fact, as a child he could not have seen a Soviet tank in
Styria," the southeastern province where Schwarzenegger was born on
July 30, 1947, historian Stefan Karner told the Kurier, noting that
province and neighboring Carinthia were guarded by British troops.

Thompson, the governor's spokeswoman, said he was referring to a
visit to the Soviet zone, which was as close as 30 miles to his family's
home.

"Never in there did the governor reference that the tanks were where
he grew up. It was a reference to visiting Soviet-occupied Austria,"
she said.

Many ordinary Austrians seemed in a forgiving mood Friday over any
gaffes.

"Maybe he has a wrong recollection -- it's so many years since he
left," said Wilma Fadrany, 32, a waitress in Vienna.

"There must be political reasons for such comments," she said.
"You've
got to tell the (convention delegates) what they want to hear in
order
to win them over. Politicians always talk the way it fits into their
agenda."

© 2004 AP