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Weekend Talk Show *Preview* for 5/13 - 5/14 (not the live thread)The main message is the Sunday Shows.  Message 1 will be the Saturday Shows and message 2 will be the show guest links post.  Then I'll post the ping list.ABC This Week (George Stephanopoulos) Meme: It's Mother's Day - they want the day off to be with Mom.Put Biden and Hagel on... it's autopilot time... we can phone this one in!We say that the NSA programs are all bad, therefore they're bad.  Don't listen to anyone else.See?  We're not being mean to (Laura) Bush, which means we're fair and...

Journal Editorial Report (Paul Gigot) - FNC show page Meme: Fissures in the GOP - immigration Topics: "Are Republicans headed for a political meltdown over immigration?" (as per Opinion Journal web site)"Immigration reform controversy: We'll examine policies under consideration" (as per FNC show page)"Plus, what a hard line on immigration means for this year's midterm elections" (as per FNC show page) Guests Colorado Governor Bill Owens I have a plan, just like the plan that's failing the President Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review illegal immigration isn't really a problem, really Stephen Moore, Walls Street JournalJason Riley, Walls Street JournalPaul Gigot, Walls...

AMERICANS will certainly have 9/11 in mind when they vote today. But they should keep another date in mind, too — one almost exactly a quarter-century ago: Nov. 4, 1979. A clear path runs to 9/11 from the day of the raid on the U.S. embassy in Tehran and the seizure of American hostages. The 1979 embassy attack came at a time when the administration of President Jimmy Carter was trying to prop up the new Khomeinist regime in Tehran. Carter had decided to support Khomeini in the context of the so-called "Green Belt" strategy developed by National Security...

In a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed entitled “American Debacle” Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national-security adviser to President Carter, begins with: Some 60 years ago Arnold Toynbee concluded, in his monumental “Study of History,” that the ultimate cause of imperial collapse was “suicidal statecraft.” Sadly for George W. Bush's place in history and — much more important — ominously for America's future, that adroit phrase increasingly seems applicable to the policies pursued by the United States since the cataclysm of 9/11. Brzezinski soon adds, “In a very real sense, during the last four years the Bush team has dangerously undercut America's...

Global political leaders realise the Pope 'has many troops' By LEON HADAR IT is said that in World War II, when the Soviet dictator Stalin was advised that the Pope was against one of his policies, he asked: 'How many troops does the Pope have? God is on the side of the big battalions.' He was wrong of course. Stalin's Soviet Union has disappeared and the communist ideology had been discredited. But the Catholic church is flourishing, including in the former Soviet bloc and especially in Poland, the birthplace of Pope John Paul II. In fact, while Stalin's how-many-troops-does-the-Pope-have comment...

Two years ago, as the United States prepared to invade Iraq, much of the opposition in Europe focused on the need to restrain the American "hyperpower" from running roughshod over international norms. But as President Bush nears the end of his goodwill tour of Europe this week, it is increasingly clear the attitude has shifted. With the United States pinned down in Iraq, where the continued deployment of nearly 150,000 troops has severely strained the U.S. military, European leaders no longer expect further military expeditions in Bush's second term. And so they have been gracious -- but assertive, thus reflecting...

LONDON (IRNA) -- Former National Security Adviser to the Carter Administration, Zbigniew Brzezinski, suggested Saturday that the U.S. should finally come to terms with the takeover of the American Embassy in Iran after 25 years. It is time to start closing that chapter of "humiliation" that Americans felt so strongly about instead of remaining haunted by the memories, Brzezinski said. In an interview with the Financial Times, he believed that there must eventually be "some accommodation" and that the west may even have to learn to live with Iran as a nuclear power as it did with China and later...

October 25, 2004 OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR How to Make New Enemies By ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI It is striking that in spite of all the electoral fireworks over policy in Iraq, both presidential candidates offer basically similar solutions. Their programs stress intensified Iraqi self-help and more outside help in the quest for domestic stability. Unfortunately, these prescriptions by themselves are not likely to work. Both candidates have become prisoners of a worldview that fundamentally misdiagnoses the central challenge of our time. President Bush's "global war on terror" is a politically expedient slogan without real substance, serving to distort rather than define. It obscures...

A geostrategy for Eurasia by Zbigniew Brzezinski Seventy-five years ago, when the first issue of Foreign Affairs saw the light of day, the United States was a self-isolated Western hemispheric power, sporadically involved in the affairs of Europe and Asia. World War II and the ensuing Cold War compelled the United States to develop a sustained commitment to Western Europe and the Far East. America's emergence as the sole global superpower now makes an integrated and comprehensive strategy for Eurasia imperative. Eurasia is home to most of the world's politically assertive and dynamic states. All the historical pretenders to global...

In 1999, U.S. presidential candidate George Bush spoke for much of the American right when he warned the Russians that they "need to resolve the dispute (with the Chechens) peaceably and not be bombing women and children and causing huge numbers of refugees to flee Chechnya."[1] If the Russians did not stop their brutal second war against the Chechens, which had begun in the fall of 1999, Bush threatened to cut off IMF and Export-Import Bank loans to the former superpower that the Republican right, led by Senator Jesse Helms, still saw as a dangerous manifestation of the USSR. In...

I apologize if this has been posted (other than the one time I've used it as a reply) already. Although the site I found it on is a leftist POS place, this poster kicks ass. I think that the leftists assume this poster is a slam on Rummy, when in fact it is patriotic - just shows how twisted their thinking is!

CNN and the Chechen Mujhadeen are accusing Christians of murdering Muslims. Here is Pat Robertson's response to CNN's baseless and inciting charge at the Nov. 26 interview on CNN. ... SAVIDGE: And there are Christians that are also burning mosques as well. ROBERTSON: No, they're not. Come off it. You know better than that. Christianity is a peaceful religion, and we're out to talk about peace. And I ran a television station that promoted peace between Muslims, Christians and Jews in the Middle East for 18 years, and I'm an advocate of peace, period. Thank you. The following is Islamist...

The former US president, Jimmy Carter, marked his elevation to the status of Nobel peace laureate yesterday by chiding President Bush on his doctrine of pre-emptive war, and urging him to respect the UN's role in Iraq. The comments, delivered at the Nobel awards ceremony in Oslo, were the second time that the award has been used as a vehicle for criticism of US preparations for a possible war on Saddam Hussein. In a speech that deplored the emergence of terror and sectarian conflict since the end of the cold war, Mr Carter said the United Nations - though flawed...

Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) - Results from the congressional inquiry into alleged intelligence failures leading up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks released Wednesday indicate a number of systemic problems with U.S. intelligence gathering, analysis, sharing, and response. The report was introduced with a somber warning from the co-chairman of the Joint House-Senate Intelligence Committee probe. "It is almost a certainty that, in the coming months, Americans will face another attempted terrorist assault; an assault that could quite possibly be on the same scale as that of September the 11th, 2001," Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.). "It is a certainty that such an...

An overwhelming majority of people in the United States, 91 percent, say they do not believe Iraq gave a full and accurate accounting of all weapons of mass destruction in a weekend report to the United Nations, a survey released Wednesday says. But the public wants the United States to be patient. The CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll showed a majority, 66 percent, want the United States to wait for U.N. inspectors to find evidence of such weapons before deciding to invade Iraq.The poll suggested public doubts about whether the U.N. inspectors will be able to find any such weapons that Iraq...

A newly released best-selling novel for teens, Rever la Palestine (Dream of Palestine), sympathetically portrays a young Palestinian who becomes a suicide bomber. The fifteen-year-old Egyptian author, Randa Ghazi, who lives with her family in Italy, writes about Palestinian teenagers who fight "bloodthirsty Jews, who assassinate children and old people, profane mosques, and rape Arab women." Dream of Palestine is being touted as 'surprisingly mature' and 'a great text of suffering and hope.' One of the novel's heroes calls for Jihad against the Jews who are 'a doomed people' and to 'kill all Israelis.' The main character is encouraged 'to...

The American writer Grace Halsell did not exaggerate when she said that Christian Zionists in Washington were more dangerous than the Zionist lobby. In 1989, Muhammad Sammak translated Halsell’s book “Prophecy and Politics” into Arabic. The book discussed the dangers posed by militant Christian fundamentalists to the Arab world but Arab policy-makers did not pay much attention to her warnings. Though a few Arab writers have written about the dangerous course taken by religious fundamentalists in the US, serious efforts have yet to be made to warn the Muslim and Arab public about the increasing influence of the anti-Muslim religious...

Part of the charm of the regime-change argument (from the point of view of its supporters) is that it depends on premises and objectives that cannot, at least by the administration, be publicly avowed. Since Paul Wolfowitz is from the intellectual school of Leo Strauss—and appears in fictional guise as such in Saul Bellow's novel Ravelstein—one may even suppose that he enjoys this arcane and occluded aspect of the debate. For those lacking a similar gift for hidden meanings, the best way to appreciate the unstated case for war may be to examine the criticisms leveled by its opponents. These...

Following the partial transcript is a link to a real audio file of the entire speech, 27 min long. Also supplied is a link to many more real audio clips from their site. Very disturbing. TALK: The Clash of Civilisations uploaded 10 Dec 2002 The clash of civilisations is an inevitable matter. It existed in the past, exists now and will remain until the clash ends shortly before the Hour, since it does not come except upon the worst of creation. The Capitalist Western civilisation has knocked the Muslims down militarily, politically and economically; however they will never defeat the...

U.S. Wrong to Back Sharon Nathan Gardels, New Perspectives Quarterly April 12, 2002 Zbigniew Brzezinski was the U.S. national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, and was involved in brokering the Camp David Agreement between Israel and Egypt. He spoke to NPQ editor Nathan Gardels about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Gardels: How dangerous is this situation now between Israel and the Palestinians? Has it spun beyond control? Zbigniew Brzezinski: The situation is quite dangerous. First of all, Yasser Arafat could well be killed in any effort to remove him from the office where he is trapped. If he is killed, Mr....