Wow. Glad we're all on the same Bush team, anyway. Off the top of my head:
Arafat, Nasser, Assad, Hussein, Khomeini, the Sudan (red Chinese Communists there in BIG numbers), etc. are all the same IslamoCommunist, but each in slightly different flavors of nationalism, Muhammadanism and Communism in there own wrappers. Stalinist Muhammadan terrorists.
They're all of the same old Communist school, creating instability through Communist terror or Muhammadan terror. It's as if each group, the mongrels, the moores and the crusaders are all pitted in a strugge that will end up with only one real survivor.
In every single region of the world where Islamist Muhammadan terror exists, be it the:
Balkans (Albanians, KLA, Mujahideen [al-Qaeda], etc.),
North Africa, the Near East (Pakistan, tied to red China,
Syria, North Korea - who in turn are tied to Russia
[Significant CinoRussian Military Treaties and Weapons
Systems Technology, Hardware, etc. involved]), America
(ACLU, DemocRATic Communists, CAIR, ISCA {sic?},
FaraKKKan, Tens of thousands of 'OTMs' crossing our
borders, Lord only knows in our ports as well),
Central and South America (FARC, Nicaragua ['former'
Communists run most of the 'reformed' Communist nations],
the Panama Canal in red Chicommie 'control' {thank you
Jimmy Communist Carter/s}, let alone THE ENEMY WITHIN.
And now...
I see naked collaboration between a Party that has a Congressional Minority Leader that is, among a very large 'throng', a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist with the aims of America falling completely into the UN World IslamoCommunist goose-step.
And I didn't even touch on the Euros and their harboring of 'moderate[ly]' murdering Muhammadans like Cat Islam and his now well known love for and involvement in the Religion of Pieces {as in body parts, seemingly hung up on the head-sawing verses of their Mein Koran most recently}.
If I brought in the Euronames, Euronations and the UN World IslamoCommunist Death Cult R Us, Inc. involvement in all of this, most EXPLOSIVELY our money, America's, going directly to directly to PLO IslamoCommunist terrorist Arafat and indirectly straight through the UN - then I'd never sleep.
Now, who is John Kerry with? America and our warriors fighting so that we aren't the next 100 million slaughtered by these evil alliances - or the IslamoCommunists that we wants to 'cut and run' from, like the IslamoCommunists want? Who are Ted Kennedy, Pat Leahy, Charles Gun Grabber Communist Schumer, Lincoln Chafee, John Kerry, John Edwards and all the rest of the DemocRATs siding with RIGHT NOW? America, the Crusaders that will to save civilization? Or the "everybody else" crowd? The Kerry campaign is going to our coalition nations with troops there and scaring them to go away. All of this like Kerry did to us for the North Vietnamese Communists, and we all know how he's doing it to us all over again.
We are told by Homeland Security that we are going to be hit. Between the borders and ports, the world web alligned against us, experiencing death of friends and neighbor Americans here in America and abroad from Islamists working out of right here in America.
Kerry is playing like Zapatero. Do we remember what the Communists and Islamists just did in Spain? Lest we forget, here's Zap's own words:
>>>
http://iblnews.com/news/noticia.php3?id=115969
'The Zen Of Zapatero', the president of Spain in Time's magazine
Time dedicates six pages to José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, two of them of interview. James Graff signs the next article in which the journalist presents us Zapatero as a 'radical democrat compromised with the feminist politic movement', with a 'high citizen support'.
Miércoles, 22 septiembre 2004
REDACCIÓN, IBLNEWS
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s office in Madrid’s Moncloa Palace has an almost Zen-like atmosphere — bright and spare, with cool grey walls and stainless-steel furniture. And there’s something Zen-like about Zapatero himself. The Spanish Prime Minister with the beatific smile says his role is not to shape public opinion but to follow it.
"I don’t want to be a great leader; I want to be a good democrat," he said in an interview with TIME last week. "I accept that when an overwhelming majority of citizens says something, they are right."
Zapatero calls this "citizen’s socialism;" the opposition calls it rank populism.
Either way it’s a far cry from the stubborn conservatism of José María Aznar, the man he replaced five months ago.
Aznar brought Spain into the U.S.-led Iraq coalition against the will of his people, and voters ousted his Popular Party (PP) three days after the March 11 Madrid terrorist attacks that killed 191. Zapatero’s brand of "citizen’s socialism" may be just a slogan — the Tao of political expedience — or it may be a way to impart a democratic glow to a foreign and domestic policy agenda that’s long been dear to his Socialist Party (PSOE).
But whether it’s shtick or statesmanship, it has worked surprisingly well in the early days of Zapatero’s government. Often derided as a compromise candidate who wasn’t expected to win, Zapatero, 44, is riding high. A poll commissioned earlier this month by the radio network Cadena SER, which is considered close to the Socialists, found his approval rating at 60%, the highest of any Spanish politician in years.
The opposition has been fuming as it watches Zapatero dismantle prize parts of Aznar’s legacy. On April 18, the day after he took office, he ordered Spain’s 1,300 troops out of Iraq. He set up a government that has as many women ministers as men, and alternates them down the hierarchy, causing some to dub it la cremallera (the zipper).
He canned the previous government’s pharaonic €4 billion plan to divert water from the Ebro River in the north to drier regions further south, proposing a more modest desalinization program instead.
He increased the minimum wage, pledged to do the same for pensions, and launched an unprecedented war against the dark side of Spanish machismo, stiffening laws against domestic violence and proposing the legalization of gay marriage and rapid, no-fault divorces.
A radical democrat committed to feminism is a major departure for Spanish politics, where the most successful politicians — among them Aznar and his Socialist predecessor, Felipe González — were macho men with killer political instincts. Zapatero’s bet is that he can govern effectively and retain power simply by giving the people what they want.
But that’s a fickle foundation for policy.
The time is bound to come for Zapatero, as for all political leaders, when he’s unable to deliver on that grand promise. Indeed, the season of testing is already upon him.
The coming challenges in domestic, foreign and economic policy will determine whether his "citizen’s socialism" will work.
"Up until now he’s been throwing carrots to the masses," says Guillermo de la Dehesa, a prominent Spanish banker and economist. "It’s only now that he faces tough issues, and we’re all waiting to see how he does."
One of Zapatero’s first tasks will be to establish his credentials in foreign policy, especially the Iraq war and the strains within the European Union.
Last week he capped his country’s about-face on Iraq by hosting the leaders of the E.U.’s antiwar faction, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, at a mini-summit in Madrid. Zapatero called those countries "the heart of Europe" and inverted U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s famous jibe by saying "old Europe is like new."
A week earlier, during a visit to Tunisia, he called on all other coalition countries to pull their forces out of Iraq.
Zapatero constantly stresses that his government’s resolve against terrorism is as firm as ever. The Socialists have faced charges at home and abroad that they only won the election because the bomb attacks scared the country into a retreat.
Zapatero told TIME he "respects the views" of those who believe "that when the Spanish people voted for me they voted out of fear," but he contends such views reveal "a lack of knowledge of the Spanish people.
This is the country that has suffered most from terrorism, with 1,000 killed by the [Basque] terrorist band ETA over the past 30 years. Our people have learned to adapt and understand that we have to combat [terrorism] by being firm but also by respecting democracy."
In the Parliamentary Commission investigating the March 11 bombings, the Socialists and the PP are battling each other. Last week all parties agreed to call Aznar before the commission. But the PP was furious when a majority refused to hear from witnesses the PP believes would bolster a theory — so far dismissed by police officials — that ETA and Moroccan intelligence were part of the March 11 conspiracy. Spanish authorities are holding 20 suspects in connection with the blasts, which they believe were masterminded by suspected al-Qaeda operative Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed.
He was arrested in Italy in June and awaits extradition. The PP has also made a formal request for Zapatero to testify. It wants to probe whether he was involved in organizing apparently impromptu protests in front of PP headquarters, which they say violated the law against political demos on the day before elections.
Aznar won’t testify until October. Zapatero said last week he would be willing to testify if called, though he told TIME he thought the request "verges on the ridiculous" since he sees the commission’s remit as probing the terrorist attack, not the election.
Chirac and Schröder don’t see involvement in Iraq as a litmus test for antiterrorist resolve. But both their governments reacted with notable reserve when Zapatero called the U.S. occupation "a disaster" and "a huge mistake," then yanked his troops, just as France and Germany were seeking to lower the temperature of the transatlantic dispute.
The German opposition, which is now polling stronger than Schröder’s weakened Social Democrats, is withering in its criticism. "Zapatero made a grave mistake when he immediately announced he would pull Spain’s troops out of Iraq, sending a single message to Osama bin Laden: Terror pays," says Friedbert Pflüger, a member of the German Bundestag and foreign policy expert for the Christian Democrats.
"With Aznar we had a heavyweight in Europe. Without him we have lost an interesting voice and committed opponent of terrorism in Europe."
The PP considers Zapatero callow but calculating.
"The majority of countries in Europe want a strong E.U. that doesn’t compete with the U.S.," says Gustavo de Arístegui, the PP’s foreign policy spokesman.
"Zapatero forgets that out of sheer opportunism. He’s an able politician and he saw the tendency of the man on the street. But a government has to be able to take unpopular opinions; that’s why they get a four-year mandate."
In fact, Zapatero has shown a commitment to a strong E.U. Last December Aznar blocked agreement on the European Constitution at a Brussels summit, rejecting a proposal that would have reduced Spain’s voting weight.
Zapatero embraced a similar proposal in June, and has vowed to hold one of Europe’s first national referendums on the constitution in February. Spain’s strong popular sentiment for the E.U., which has contributed massively to the country’s climb to prosperity over the last two decades, makes a positive result all but assured. Even the Popular Party is counselling a yes vote.
Yet Spain’s relations with the Continent’s two biggest states might not always be so smooth as during last week’s get-together. Germany, a net payer to the E.U.’s coffers, is taking a hard line on holding down spending on regional and agricultural funds.
Spain has been a net recipient of an average of €6 billion per year of E.U. aid over the last decade, and it wants to be let down easy as those funds begin to flow to new members in the east. It’s a problem that a PP government would have faced, too, of course, and Zapatero’s aides suggest that better relations with Germany can only help.
On the economic front, Zapatero’s critics say he’s still learning the ins and outs. He has an exemplary teacher in his Minister of Finance and Economy, Pedro Solbes. Holding the same position from 1993 to 1996, Solbes brought Spain’s budgets into trim and got the country ready for the euro zone; then, since September 1999 as European Commissioner for monetary affairs, he was a fierce defender of E.U. budgetary rules.
His presence has eased many of the fears Spain’s business leaders might have had over the return of Socialists to power after the probusiness Aznar years. The government did well in appointing a seasoned and respected economic team, says Manuel Balmaseda, chief economist of BBVA, one of Spain’s largest banks.
"These are people who know what they are doing, not just at the national level but also at the international level, and they know what businesses want."
Many expect the Socialists to intervene in business less than the PP did. Four out of five of Spain’s largest companies — Telefónica, oil company Repsol, BBVA, and utility giant Endesa — have chairmen appointed by the previous government. Some fear they will get turfed out. But while the government is said to have quietly encouraged Telefónica to invest more in broadband, for instance, few expect it to get heavy-handed.
A drastic bloodletting, says José Manuel Campa, professor of finance at Madrid’s Institute for Advanced Business Studies, "would send a very bad signal to the markets."
Still, Spain’s business community is waiting to see Zapatero’s first budget, to be presented later this week. In a speech to high-carat investors in Madrid last Friday, he said the 2005 budget would yield a slight surplus. He vowed to spend 34% more on housing, 7.4% more on education, 6.9% more on health and 6.2% more on police and justice. Some of that will further his ambitious social reforms, many aimed at turning Spain away from its machismo traditions. According to Amnesty International, more than 2 million Spanish women suffer abuse from their partners every year, and putting a stop to it is a human and political priority for Zapatero.
The rest of the new spending, he has suggested, would go to correct Spain’s low labor productivity. Part of the problem, he believes, is that 30% of all workers are on temporary contracts. So Zapatero has started discussions with employers and unions to encourage a shift to permanent part-time jobs, which he says would mean more security for workers and efficiency for employers. He also wants to encourage a shift to renting, which, he says, can stabilize the boom in housing prices and promote labor mobility. The goal is to "get over the false choice between efficiency and equality, between social policies and productive policies."
Easier said than done. The government’s numbers will be closely scrutinized in the Spanish Cortes in coming weeks and then in the Senate, where Zapatero needs the support of all smaller parties to push it through. While growth remains strong, there are warning signs. According to Eurostat, the country’s annual inflation rate in August was 3.3%, a full percentage point above the euro-zone average. That gap has widened since the Socialists took over, a trend they attribute to the country’s dependence on imported oil. By the end of the year, Solbes says, he intends to get inflation down to 3%. He has acknowledged it will be "a very difficult task."
Tougher still is unemployment, which is the highest in Western Europe at more than 11%. On that front Zapatero may have already promised more than he can deliver. Earlier this month, he told shipyard workers in Bilbao that he would save the bankrupt state-owned Izar shipyards, even as their holding company was discussing a privatization rescue plan that would mean closures and layoffs.
Now striking workers in five cities are calling Zapatero a liar and dozens have been injured in clashes with police. In other words, Zapatero is just beginning to address the questions that cost real money. And already looming is another passionate issue he had hoped to put off: the reform of Spain’s pasted-together 1978 constitution. Increasing demands for far-reaching power in some of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions, particularly the Basque Country and Catalonia, were tamped down by the Aznar government, which feared that opening a constitutional debate could only bode ill for Spain’s unity.
Zapatero cannot afford to ignore the problem: his minority government not only has to keep Catalonian Socialist leader Pasqual Maragall happy, but also depends on the votes of the radical pro-independence Left Republicans of Catalonia.
Zapatero took a smart first step in July, when he invited Juan José Ibarretxe, the President of the Basque region — whom Aznar refused to meet for three years — to a formal meeting at Moncloa, with the red, green and white Basque flag fluttering at the door’s entrance. But the good feeling didn’t deflect Ibarretxe’s pursuit of a referendum — considered unconstitutional by the Madrid government — to create a Basque state merely "associated" with Spain.
Catalonia’s wishes aren’t any easier for Madrid to swallow, but already Zapatero has given Maragall a transfer to Barcelona of Spain’s telecommunications competition authority — as well as a promise that a Catalonian representative can attend the government’s foreign-policy planning sessions. "Imagine the California governor sitting in on [U.S.] National Security Council meetings," says the PP’s Arístegui. "Every day Maragall shows his muscle and says, ’You owe me.’"
The constitutional question could reveal Zapatero’s already vaunted talante, an aptitude for consensus, as a great strength — or a fatal weakness. Zapatero says he has a "contingency view of history," citing the famous line from Spanish poet Antonio Machado: "Traveler, there is no path, the path is made by walking." If he can finesse the constitutional debate and meet Spain’s other domestic and foreign challenges, he will have set the country on a bold new course. But that will be a path the traveler will have to blaze himself, not just follow.
Hi Apes, wasn't sure if you got a chance to read this so I brought it forward:
MEMO TO CIA FROM KGB DEFECTOR, ANATOLY GOLITSYN, 1 FEBRUARY 1995 (Taken from his book, Perestroika Deception, Edward Harle Limited, 1998, ISBN 1-899798-03-X).
Excerpt (footnotes removed):
THE EVENTS IN CHECHNYA EXPLAINED IN TERMS OF RUSSIAN STRATEGY
The conduct of the Chechnyan operation raises a number of questions. For instance: why, given the vast military and secret police experience at their disposal, did the Russians choose to dispatch in to Chechnya in the first place, inexperienced young Soviet army draftees who put up a poor performance in front of Western television cameras? Why were the Russian special forces who, for example, captured General Pal Maleter during the Hungarian upheaval of 1956, too inept to capture any of the Chechen leaders? How did the Chechen Fighters come to be so well armed? Why did the army and Ministry of the Interior troops not take immediate action to surround the city of Grozny and cut off the one route which remained available for the movement of Chechen Fighters and supplies in and out of the city centre?
Why, with their huge preponderance of firepower, did it take the Russians so long to capture the Presidential Palace, the symbolic centre of Chechen resistance? Why, before the Palace fell, were its Chechen defenders, according to their own accounts, allowed to leave, taking their Russian prisoners with them, so that they were free to continue the struggle elsewhere? Why was the bombardment of buildings in the centre of Grozny conducted with what Chancellor Kohl described as ‘senseless madness’? And why, as the Chechen fighters ‘took to the hills’, was a local guerrilla leader willing to receive a Western journalist in his own home in a mountain village without disguise, providing his full name and a history of his family? [The New York Times, 20 January 1995].
I am skeptical about much of the Western press and television coverage of Chechnya. In the first place, coverage was restricted by various factors. For example, Western access to Russian troops engaged in the operation was severely limited according to John Dancey, the NBC News correspondent in Moscow, speaking on the Donahue-Pozner Program on 12 January 1995. The bombardment itself was a powerful disincentive to intrusive journalism, and reporters obviously cannot be blamed for their inability to provide a coherent account of the fighting which took place in the centre of Grozny.
The important general point is the Western press and TV representatives reported the events as Westerners observing what they took to be a real conflict in a free society. It is not their fault that they were not briefed concerning the possibilities of provocation along Communist lines. Hence they were not looking for evidence of mock confrontations, faked casualties of planted information. The prominent Western reporters themselves, though courageous, appeared young and lacking in experience as war correspondents.
Nevertheless, some revealing items surfaced in the coverage. For example, the New York Times reported on 15 January that ‘some of the least serious’ of the Chechen fighters ‘would parade before the cameras’ at the Minutka traffic circle. That report prompted questions as to how many serious Chechen fighters were actually involved in action against Russian troops. Another report insisted that ‘ the last Western reporters’ had left the area of the Presidential Palace, where the ‘murderous fighting’ was concentrated and that Chechen fighters were no longer able to move easily to the south of the city in order to brief journalists about what was happening. It seems therefore that there were no Western eyewitnesses of the ‘final battle’ for the Palace, and that much of the evidence on the fighting was derived from Chechen fighters, whose reliability the reporters were no position to assess.
Two Western reporters were killed during these events. Though these deaths were reported as accidental, the fact is that the Russians would have no compunction about eliminating Western journalists if they thought they might be liable to expose their provocation. It was no coincidence that 40 Russian rockets were targeted at, and hit, Minutka Circle—which up to that moment had been favoured for meetings between journalists and fighters. Almost certainly, Russian officers who told journalists that they had arrived in Grozny without maps were briefed to tell this tall story. A Russian General who was shown on television going through photographs taken by reporters, said the pictures they had taken were useful because they helped him to assess what was going on in Grozny. In all likelihood, he was checking to make sure that the photographs taken by the reporters conveyed the images the Russian wanted conveyed for international public consumption.
The spectacular and continuous bombardment of buildings in the centre of Grozny, many of them probably empty, struck me as deliberately designed to monopolise television cameras, replicating in many ways the ‘Reichstag Fire’ bombardment of the ‘White House’ in Moscow in October 1993.
Inevitably, the detonation of so much high explosive was accompanied by casualties. But the actual number of casualties was probably limited by the departure of many inhabitants of the centre of Grozny before the bombardment started in earnest. As early as 7 January 1995, the Red Cross reported that 350,000 people had fled from the fighting, a figure equivalent to over 80% of the population of Grozny. It would be interesting to know to what extent the authorities encouraged or arranged the evacuation of central Grozny before the bombardment began.
Verification of casualty number is the most difficult problem. According to Dudayev, cited in The New York Times of 12 January, 18,000 Chechens had already died, a figure which the reporter said ‘seems exaggerated’. Casualty figures for the Russian army quoted in The New York Times of 17 January varied from 400 to 800 killed. Again there is no knowing whether these figures were exaggerated or minimized. The Russian authorities are reported to have delayed the admission of European observers interested in verifying numbers. Even if they were eventually to arrive on the scene, such observers would be unlikely to be able to check the numbers allegedly buried in mass graves. Total casualties will probably never be known with any certainty. From the Kremlin strategists’ point of view, casualties are inevitable during this kind of operation and a necessary price to pay of the attainment of defined strategic objectives.
THE KREMLIN’S OBJECTIVES AND THE CHECHNYA CRISIS
The timing of the Chechnyan crisis is an essential key to understanding the strategic objectives which underlie it. The crisis followed closely on the Republican Congressional victory, with its possible consequence of a reversal in the US military rundown. Contrived and televised Russian military bungling during the Chechnyan campaign has sent a strong message to the West that Russian military leaders are divided amongst themselves and that there is widespread incompetence and low morale in the army—factors which demonstrate that it can be discounted as a serious military adversary for the foreseeable future.
This message is intended to influence US Congressional debate on the subject of Russia’s military potential and the size of US forces required to maintain a balance with it. The message can also be used as a pretext for deepening the partnership between the US and Russian armed forces by seeking American advice and help in ‘reforming’, reorganizing and retraining the Russian army in order to enable it to serve as a ‘democratic’ system.
The events in Chechnya have enabled the Russians to play especially on European fears of destabilization in Russia and the development there of an internal ‘Bosnian situation’. These fears have injected a further boost to the European desire for partnership with the ‘democratic forces’ in Russia in developing democratic solutions to Russian problems. European hopes of promoting real democracy in Russian will of course prove illusory. The Russians will use the partnership to ease their entry into European institutions as a rightful member of the ‘European house’, a house which over the longer term they intend to dominate.
Given continuing Russian influence and leverage in Eastern Europe, East European and eventually Russian involvement in NATO are in the long term Russian strategic interest in accordance with Sun Tzu’s principle of ‘entering the enemy’s camp unopposed’. Though for different reasons, I share the view expressed by a writer in The New York Times of 11 January 1995 that East European membership would mean the ruin of NATO. The ruin of NATO is a long-term Russian objective, towards the achievement of which much progress has already been made. The televised spectacle of Russian barbarity in Chechnya has aroused apprehension in neighboring states of comparable Russian military operations against themselves, thereby strengthening the argument that former members of the Warsaw Pact should be admitted to membership of NATO. Yeltsin’s firmly expressed opposition to their membership and his Foreign Minister’s ambivalence (see, for instance, The New York Times of 20 January 1995) can be read as possible preludes to dramatic ‘change’ in Russian policy, perhaps under a new government.
Furthermore, the reassertion of Kremlin control over Chechnya through massive military intervention (which, despite the calculated impression of bungling, achieved its objective, thereby itself revealing the contrived nature of the televised ‘bungling’), the spectacular, televised destruction of buildings in Gozny and the publicity surrounding the level of casualties, have sent the strongest possible signals to genuine would-be Muslim and non-Muslim secessionists in Chechnya and other Republics that secessionism is a very dangerous game. The strategists may well have chosen Chechnya for their demonstration of force specifically because real secessionism can be more easily contained in that territory than in others.
To ALL:
If you would like more info. on how the Russians (read: Soviets) use terrorism to further their unrelenting drive towards world government, check out "Terrorists in Muslim Disguise" and "We Are The Next Target" threads below.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1220747/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1220737/posts