What is it about seeing them flee in panic that is so gratifying?
Posted on 11/11/2002 7:05:48 PM PST by doug from upland
West in mortal danger from Islam, says Putin
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels and Julius Strauss in Moscow
(Filed: 12/11/2002)
Islamic radicals are pursuing the systematic annihilation of non-Muslims, President Vladimir Putin claimed yesterday.
The Russian leader said at a European Union summit in Brussels that western civilisation faced a mortal threat from Muslim terrorists, and claimed that they had plans to create a "worldwide caliphate".
His words overshadowed the main achievement of the summit, which was to end years of wrangling over Moscow's isolated enclave in Kaliningrad.
The EU and Russia reached a compromise deal that will prevent Russian citizens from being cut off in the Baltic port as the EU's borders move east in 2004.
Mr Putin said the world no longer faced isolated acts of terrorism but a "concerted effort and programme" by a global network bent on slaughter, perhaps with nuclear weapons.
He said the West should face up to the reality that Chechen terrorists were religious extremists in league with al-Qa'eda, rather than a separatist movement seeking a breakaway republic.
If the West failed to deal with the Chechen terrorist threat, he said, there would be repeats of the Moscow theatre siege and the Bali bombing "all over the world".
Mr Putin secured a joint EU-Russian action plan to fight terrorism at the mini-summit, but he was firmly warned that Europe would not give Russia carte blanche in its fight against terrorism, particularly after reports that fragmentation bombs were being used widely against civilians in Chechnya.
Privately, EU diplomats said Mr Putin was playing the al-Qa'eda card for all it was worth, seeing it as a useful way to create a sense of common purpose with the West and heighten the strategic value of Russia.
The resolution of the Kaliningrad issue, which is highly emotive in Moscow, will have satisfied Mr Putin. The Russian press had warned of a "blue curtain" encircling a million Russians in EU territory.
But the Russian president said yesterday he was now "satisfied" that fellow-citizens living in the drab industrial hub, once the great German city of Konigsberg but now a smuggling centre, would be able to travel freely across Lithuanian territory.
Under the deal, residents of Kaliningrad will be given cheap multiple visas. This will allow Lithuania and Poland to comply with the Schengen agreement, which obliges them to eliminate their western border posts once they join the EU but at the same time erect more rigid barriers to the east, including tougher visa restrictions on Russians.
The agreement clears away one of the last obstacles to the EU's "Big Bang" enlargement of 10 mostly ex-communist states.
What is it about seeing them flee in panic that is so gratifying?
If the muslims continue their current wave, that is to immigrate legally/ otherwise and have more children than the native Europeans, they can take over without any force. The muslim version of the neutron bomb. This will depend upon the stupidity of the Europeans.
Good point. Perhaps Russia will be the source of the clear studies of International Wahhabism since our own academia is stuck in anti-Americanism, denial, third worldism, and active disinformation about the world. For now, Putin will be spun by the frontline troops of the media as having ulterior motives, even racist, for speaking the truth.
Plus Saudi money...Russia doesn't have a problem with that influence, as we do. Perhaps Russia and Saudi will come to arms...notice Putin's statements of late seeking to create a military that could stirke its enemies anywhere in the world.
I'm so glad and I've just having spasms to think that Pooty Poo is reading your *stuff*.
Having read a few other of your comments, I wouldn't wish you on Fritz Mondale.
A number of the things that capitalist theory suggests we should do such as reducing barriers to trade and lubricating the wheels of trade necessarily make our way of life more susceptible to destruction.
The recent longshoreman strike showed us the downside of JIT (Just In Time) delivery systems. Sure JIT minimizes inventory costs, but look what happens when the flow of goods is stopped for just a week!
Allowing or even encouraging companies to go back to the old practice of maintaining reasonable inventories would increase the costs of everything, but would also make our economic systems a bit more robust in case of a terrorist act, e.g. blowing up a port or collapsing a tunnel over a major thoroughfare.
Backing off on JIT would have negative economic consequences, but it would not have the same negative constitutional impacts that looser wire-tapping privileges would have.
There are probably a bunch of other economic "truths" we may need to reconsider if we want to protect ourselves from terrorist attacks on our infrastructure.
Totally shutting down the border with Mexico and Canada is another that comes to mind.
Maybe Milton Friedman's nostrum should be equally applied to that of free-market capitalism: The effect of a particular policy is usually the exact opposite of that intended. Strict adherence to free-market principles may lead us to a world of desperate and disparate survivalists bartering goods between secure bomb shelters across a nuclear wasteland.
Let the Islamic nuts get caught being directed from Saudi Arabia and bye-bye Mecca.
Folks, the West must defend itself in order to survive.
Here's a little historical secret: The Crusades started as a DEFENSIVE response to Muslim attacks across Europe. Islamists were raiding the Vatican from bases in Sicily in the late 800's, prompting the response.
Thinking nice thoughts about the "Religion of Peace" won't stop the next bombing/sniper/hostage-taking. Only force will stop them.
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