Should Blair continue to do nothing vis-a-vis Iran's act of war, and should Bush likewise continue to do nothing in the face of Iran's hand in Iraq, the enemy may be now planning on the Madridization of our 2008 elections.
It will be remembered that the Spain bombings led directly to the ouster of our Spanish ally and the election of enemy appeasers.
As the American electorate seems content to elect the treason party now, imagine how gleeful it will be to do so following the next activation of sleeper cells to commit the next act of terrorism in CONUS.
It's far too soon to tell how Iran Hostage Crisis II will play out. See timeline of a similar previous incident *here*. Commentary *here*.
It will be remembered that the Spain bombings led directly to the ouster of our Spanish ally and the election of enemy appeasers.
Just so. It also needs to be remembered that after the Social Democratic Party of Finland gained an absolute majority in the Parliament of Finland after the general elections of 1916, resulted in the pendulum swinging back in the elections of October 1917, appointed a purely conservative cabinet. The *Sore Loserman* response of the SDs was to create a Workers' Revolutionary Council which voted by a narrow majority to seize power on 16 November at 5 a.m. The supreme revolutionary “Executive Committee”, however, was unable to recruit enough members to carry out the plan and had to call the proposed revolution off at 7 p.m. the same day. The incident, "the shortest revolution", effectively split the Social Democrats in two, a majority supporting parliamentary means and a minority demanding revolution, not very dissimilar to the divisions that America's Democratic-Socialist party now is exhibiting. The repercussions of the event had a lasting effect on the future of the movement, with several powerful leaders staking positions within the party- which again, doesn't sound so far removed from today's jockeying for the Democratic nomination for 2008.
During the strike associated with the election of 16 November 1917, however, radical elements of the Workers' Security Guards executed several political opponents in the main cities of southern Finland, and the first armed clashes between Protection Guards and Workers' Guards broke out, with thirty-four reported casualties.
The final escalation towards war began in early January 1918. The most radical Workers' Security Guards from Helsinki, Kotka and Turku changed their names to Red Guards and convinced those leaders of the Social Democrats who wavered between peace and war to support revolution. The Workers' Guards were officially renamed the Red Guards at the end of the same month, under the command of Ali Aaltonen, a former Russian army officer, who had been appointed in December. At the same time, the Svinhufvud Senate and the Parliament decided on 12 January 1918 to create a strong police authority, an initiative which the Workers' Security Guards saw as a step towards legalizing the White Guards. When the Senate renamed the White Guards the Finnish White Army, the Red Guards refused to recognise the title. On 15 January, Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, like Aaltonen a former officer in the Russian army, was appointed supreme commander of the White Guards. He located his headquarters in Vaasa, while Aaltonen located his in Helsinki.
The first serious battles were fought during 17–20 January in Karelia, in the south-eastern corner of Finland, mainly for control of the town of Viipuri and to win the race for weapons. The White Order to engage was issued on 25 January; the Red Order of Revolution was issued on 26 January. The next day, the White Guards attacked trains carrying a large shipment of weapons from Russia, as promised to the Reds by Lenin. Official hostilities began in the late evening of 27 January, followed by disarmament of Russian garrisons in Ostrobothnia during the early hours of 28 January. A symbolic date for the start of the war could be 26 January, when a group of Reds climbed the tower of Helsinki Workers' Hall and lit a red lantern to mark the start of the second major rebellion in the history of Finland.
And the Finnish Civil War was on, with the Red forces numbering 100,000 to 140,000 during the course of the war, whereas the Whites mustered at most about 70,000. Both sides included foreign volunteers, some foreign troops and others as individuals. The fighting continued until 14–15 May, when a small number of Russian troops retreated from a coastal artillery base on the Karelian Isthmus. Finland celebrates its victory in Helsinki on 16 May 1918.
Almost 37,000 people perished in the four months of fighting, 5,900 of whom (16% of the total) were between 14 and 20 years old. A notable feature of the war was that only about 10,000 of these casualties occurred on the battlefields; most of the deaths resulted from the terror campaigns and from the appalling conditions in the prison camps. The deaths amounted to about 1 percent of the total population of Finland. By comparison, the bloodiest war in the history of the United States, the Civil War, cost the lives of about 2 percent of the population, but that loss was spread out over four years.
As the American electorate seems content to elect the treason party now, imagine how gleeful it will be to do so following the next activation of sleeper cells to commit the next act of terrorism in CONUS.
And that will be when they climb the tower light their red lantern. And that will be when it will begin. One percent of some 300 million would work out to around three million or so.