Election Numbers Do Not Add Up/Moscow Times--New WMW

Full links, exerpts up now at http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical
Tomorrow at Buzzflash.com


WORLD MEDIA WATCH FOR MARCH 19, 2004

1//Inter Press Service, Italy--ANALYSIS: FOR U.S. HAWKS, MADRID 2004=MUNICH 1938 (Warning that the bombings and the election results in Spain ''have brought the United States and Europe to the edge of the abyss'', the co-founder of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), whose alumni include the most powerful hawks in the Bush administration, poured scorn on European Commission President Romano Prodi's comment after the attacks that, ''It is clear that using force is not the answer to resolving the conflict with terrorists''… But aside from this rather fundamental disagreement over whether Iraq is or is not part of the war against terrorism, the eagerness with which the hawks have taken to comparing the Spanish electorate's verdict to the 1938 Munich agreement also betrays a basic distrust of democracy, about which the neo-cons have long been ambivalent.)



2//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--SHOCK AND AWE, FROM MESOPOTAMIA TO MADRID (March 11 changed Europe - and the world - and that's why there was such thundering silence from Washington, now replaced with the infantile hysteria of blaming Spanish voters. It's unbearable for the neo-cons to see there's now a totally different dynamic in the trans-Atlantic relationship. The Blair-Berlusconi-Aznar pro-Washington axis has been reduced to ashes… The perception among most European politicians, intellectuals and the overwhelming majority of public opinion is that Washington does not care about what happens in Iraq: the only thing that matters is to repatriate US troops as soon as possible for the electoral benefit of Bush next November…As well as Tony Blair, Italian premier and "amico di Bush" Silvio Berlusconi, whose credibility is near zero inside the European Union, is now even more isolated.)


3//The Guardian, UK--BRITAIN TO SEND TROOPS TO KOSOVO (Britain will send a 750-strong military force to Kosovo after a day of ethnically fuelled violence in the province which claimed the lives of 22 people and injured hundreds…Serbia's senior official for Kosovo, Nebojsa Covic, accused Nato of "dramatic inability" to protect the Serbs in Kosovo, adding: "The entire concept of multi-ethnic life in Kosovo has now collapsed." )



4//The Moscow Times, Russia--ELECTION NUMBERS DO NOT ADD UP (Some 900,000 people seem to have disappeared from the country's lists of registered voters in the three months between the parliamentary and presidential elections, in what appears to reflect a clever effort to boost last Sunday's turnout figures…"It was a statistical trick consciously meant to raise turnout by lowering the number of voters," said Nikolai Petrov, an expert on regional politics at the Carnegie Moscow Center who closely watches elections. In the lead up to the election, the Kremlin worked to ensure high turnout, believing that it would confer added legitimacy on President Vladimir Putin's second term.)



5//eTaiwanNews.com, Taiwan--MAC SAYS CHINA MAY HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO NEGOTIATE PEACE WITH TAIWAN (With March 20 fast approaching, China should seriously consider the peace talks under consideration in Taiwan's first-ever referendum initiated by President Chen Shui-bian, Mainland Affairs Council Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen said yesterday. When asked at an international media conference if Beijing would be willing to negotiate peace and stability initiatives with Chen if he is re-elected, Tsai said, "My question is whether China has another choice?")

software of Katherine Harris' and Jebbie with Pootey Poot? :wow:

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4//The Moscow Times, Russia--ELECTION NUMBERS DO NOT ADD UP (Some 900,000 people seem to have disappeared from the country's lists of registered voters in the three months between the parliamentary and presidential elections, in what appears to reflect a clever effort to boost last Sunday's turnout figures…"It was a statistical trick consciously meant to raise turnout by lowering the number of voters," said Nikolai Petrov, an expert on regional politics at the Carnegie Moscow Center who closely watches elections. In the lead up to the election, the Kremlin worked to ensure high turnout, believing that it would confer added legitimacy on President Vladimir Putin's second term.)
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NOTE: bold-face type mine

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