[Asia-HR-Alert] (Analysis) Dictator

[cd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

re dictatorships, Kerry, i encourage all of you to read closely Cocaine
Politics by Peter Dale Scoot and Jonathan Marshall, publ. Univ of
California Press, Berkeley, 1991, on Iran-Contra, drug, armies, cia, and
dope trade. Extremely well researched, and the Kerry Report (Senate
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations of the
Committee on Foreign Relations). Drugs are another means of controlling
dictators, democracies, governments and resources and anything else
money can buy...the drug traffick in burma will not go away with
slorc...

dawn star
http://www-uvi.eunet.fr/asia/euro-burma/drug/ 



> 
> PRESS RELEASE
> Embargoed Until: October 8, 1997
> Contact: Catrice Gray (202) 319-7191, x10
> 
> ANNUAL STUDY REVEALS: $36 Billion
> in U.S. Military Support for Dictators During First Clinton Term
> 
> Washington, D.C., October 8...A study of U.S. transfers of arms and training
> to developing countries approved during President Clinton's first term in
> office has found that non-democratic governments received an annual average
> of $9 billion.  Dictators or Democracies? 1997: U.S. Transfers of Weapons
> and Military Training to the Developing World During President Clinton's
> First Term was released today by Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) and
> Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.).  They are the sponsors of an arms trade "Code
> of Conduct" bill that would bar U.S. military support for dictators.
> 
> The study is the third annual analysis by Demilitarization for Democracy, a
> Washington, D.C.-based research and advocacy organization that has joined
> hundreds of other citizens' organizations in a five-year effort to establish
> a Code of Conduct.  The study found that $35.9 billion in arms and training
> were provided by the Clinton administration to the armed forces of
> non-democratic governments -- accounting for 82 percent of the $44.1 billion
> in total U.S. military support for developing nations.
> 
> A Code of Conduct amendment by Representatives McKinney and Dana Rohrabacher
> (R-Cal.) passed the House in June.  It would bar arms transfers and training
> to governments that are non-democratic (either not freely-elected or not
> having control over their armed forces), fail to protect human rights, are
> engaged in aggression, or do not take part in the UN arms trade register.
> The amendment's fate is now being decided by a House-Senate Conference
> Committee on the State Department Authorization.  Senator Kerry's "Code"
> bill also instructs the President to challenge other suppliers to join in
> U.S. arms embargoes.
> 
> In their forward to Dictators or Democracies?, McKinney and Kerry said:
> "Transfers of U.S. arms and training to non-democratic governments may
> provide political support and military means for the repression of
> legitimate demands for democracy -- as they have in Indonesia."
> 
> With few congressional restrictions on arms exports, the level of U.S.
> military support rose and fell during the first Clinton administration based
> primarily on the ability of developing nations to pay for sophisticated U.S.
> weapons -- many of them equal in capability to those used by U.S. forces.
> According to Caleb Rossiter, director of Demilitarization for Democracy: "If
> not curbed by a legally-binding Code of Conduct, this $9 billion annual
> average of arms and training for dictators is likely to soar in the second
> Clinton term.  American military corporations are currently lobbying Asian
> and Middle Eastern dictators who have recently improved their cash balances
> to ask the Clinton administration for advanced weapons."
> 
> In 1996 the Clinton administration approved $4.3 billion in U.S. military
> support to 43 non-democratic developing nations.  This was almost a
> billion-dollar increase from 1995, when the United States provided $3.5
> billion in arms and training  to 42 non-democratic developing nations.
> 
> -30-