Year Six is upon us!

G21 NEWS:

I Spy

He was the kind of neighbor you'd expect to have in a respectable suburban community like Vienna, Virginia. He had worked for the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for twenty-five years. Passing his driveway, you saw all the signs of comfortable -- but not ostentatious -- suburban living: a 1997 Ford Taurus, a 1993 Volkswagen van, a 1992 Isuzu Trooper. He was the kind of guy neighbors characterized as "pleasant and friendly, but quiet." The guy had started his career, after receiving his MBA in Accounting and Information Systems from Northwestern University in 1971, as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA.)

This was certainly not the kind of profile you expect of a guy who is under indictment for spying for the Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation against the United States. This is not the profile of a traitor who could face the death penalty for espionage if convicted. But this is the profile, according to court documents available on the Internet at the New York Times (registration required) and Smoking Gun Web sites of Robert Phillip Hanssen, a man alleged to have passed on important and dangerous documents to the Russians for the last fifteen years.

The most startling part of the revelations provided by FBI Special Agent Stefan A. Pluta in his affidavit to the United States District Court of the Eastern Division of Virginia which G21 reviewed is that Hanssen was not recruited by the KGB when he allegedly began turning over classified documents to the Soviets fifteen years ago, but rather he voluntarily sought them out and demanded that his first documents were worth $100,000.... More


G21 LATIN AMERICA:

Zapatistas Begin Long March

Over seven years after their first appearance, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) returned to San Cristóbal on Saturday, February 24, 2001, this time to embark on a peaceful march to Mexico City to resume talks with the government, a process that stalled in 1996 under President Zedillo. Twenty-four representatives of the EZLN -- including the ever-charismatic Subcomandante Marcos, as well as four female delegates -- will tour through major towns in southern Mexico en route to the capital in a grassroots campaign to rally support for their cause.

The EZLN, or Zapatista Army of National Liberation, first burst on the Latin American revolutionary scene on January 1, 1994, when they militarily took over three cities in Chiapas, Mexico -- Ocosingo, Las Margaritas, and San Cristóbal de las Casas -- calling attention to their demands for indigenous rights and land reform.

While the rebel army has succeeded in attracting substantial international acclaim (indigenous rights are trendy, and they even have a website!), it has not fared as well in sparking a broad, activist backing in its home country. Although southern Mexico is a highly politicized region with revolutionary consciousness in its heritage, continuous pleas from the EZLN's high command for a country-wide, unarmed counterpart organization have had little effect. Perhaps this trip will provide the home-turf exposure and personal connection the EZLN needs to inspire Mexicans not just to sympathize but to act. ...More


G21 EUROPE:

The Divide

"Are you a Catholic?"

"No! I am Russian!" --- (Two women talk at the bus stop )

The question of creed, religious membership, has always been a question involving policy for Belarus.

What freedom of choice?!?

Czarist Russia is the conqueror -- Belarus turns to Orthodoxy; Poland is here -- and where is Orthodoxy? Now Belorussians are native Catholics! And, vice versa: the more Orthodox in Belarus -- the more Russian it is; the more Catholics -- Poland must be the master of it's territories. In the fourteenth, sixteenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that process took place by turns many times (later the Soviet regime stopped all transformations -- no churches at all ).

Today -- in the twenty-first century -- who needs religious influence? High technologies are the main weapon and argument. But the West has its needs, the East has its needs; as for Belorussians -- nobody asks them.

The argument of goes on between the West (Europe) and East (Moscow) only: " Belarus has always been Catholic/Orthodox ," the say, respectively, " -- so it is a part of Europe/Russia; Belorussian language takes it's origin in Polish/Russian -- so come back, brother, we are one family." ... More


G21 STUFF: We know. You want to let people know that you KNOW.

One way of doing that is buying our "stuff." Wear it, drink from it, click over it.

This Pull-down Menu will hyperjump you to all our great features. Try it!

MY GLASS HOUSE:

Lessons in Cat Dancing

In spite of my internationalist bonafides, I know that I have internalized the very American tendency toward restlessness for the new and riding off into the sunset. Considering the value I place on things past, there's an internal conflict at work, n'cest pas?

Nonetheless, your old pal Butterfly Soul has been working on learning the lessons of cat dancing. Not quite like being a cat on a hot tin roof, but the same kind of jiggy-ness (Is that a word?)

I'm starting to see that the key to all of this is letting go. Letting go of pride, of ambition, of pain, of too much planning. I'm riding, again, across the Great Plains of our human experience as a cat dancer this time.... More

COMING MONDAY

And don't forget to check our !

It makes sense.



THE NEXT EVENT

THE NOW EVENT