This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Foreign Policy

  • Chavez warns of US guerilla war (Updated)

     

    (Photo from Venezuela Llora, Venezuela Sangra)

    Well, Chavez is acting like he plans on blaming the student protests against his dictatorship on the US. According to the AP;

    President Hugo Chavez urged soldiers on Sunday to prepare for a guerrilla-style war against the United States, saying that Washington is using psychological and economic warfare as part of an unconventional campaign aimed at derailing his government.

    Dressed in olive green fatigues and a red beret, Chavez spoke inside Tiuna Fort—Venezuela’s military nerve-center—before hundreds of uniformed soldiers standing alongside armored vehicles and tanks decorated with banners reading: “Fatherland, Socialism, or Death! We will triumph!”

    “We must continue developing the resistance war, that’s the anti- imperialist weapon. We must think and prepare for the resistance war everyday,” said Chavez, who has repeatedly warned that American soldiers could invade Venezuela to seize control of the South American nation’s immense oil reserves.

    Como no? The US is the boogeyman that hides in every dictator’s closet – especially in Latin America. No matter who is President, he is evil incarnate to those who rape and pillage their own communities for personal gain.

    I guess it couldn’t have anything to do with Chavez tossing out oil companies this weekend could it? I linked to this earlier from Reuters (by way of CNNMoney):

    Some major oil companies have rejected Venezuela’s terms for the takeover of their multi-billion dollar projects and can leave the OPEC nation, President Hugo Chavez said Friday, days before a deadline for them to strike nationalization deals.

    Exxon Mobil , ConocoPhillips , Chevron Corp . , Norway’s Statoil , Britain’s BP Plc and France’s Total are the targeted companies in projects valued above $30 billion and capable of producing 600,000 barrels per day.

    “It seems there are some transnational companies that do not want to accept (the terms),” said Chavez, who met his energy minister to review the progress in negotiations earlier Friday.

    “Well if they do not want (to accept the terms), I told the minister to tell them they can go, that they should leave, that we, in truth, do not need them,” he added during a political speech to swear in the government’s new “central planning committee.”

    Chavez, who calls Cuban leader Fidel Castro his mentor and is on a drive to nationalize swathes of the economy this year, did not say which companies rejected the government’s terms.

    Or it couldn’t have anything to do with his anticipated purchase of Russian Subs, which I also mentioned earlier from Bloomberg;

    Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said his government may buy a fleet of Russian-made submarines when he visits Moscow next week, continuing an arms buildup that has cost his nation more than $4.3 billion since 2005.

    “The only way Venezuela could totally discard the idea of not buying submarines is if we didn’t have a sea,” Chavez told cabinet members at a televised ceremony tonight in Caracas. “We have to protect that sea.”

    Chavez said he also is looking to strengthen the nation’s short-range air-defense system to counter supersonic and “invisible” radar-evading aircraft he claimed Venezuela would face in the event of a U.S. invasion. Most U.S. analysts deem such an offensive unlikely.

    And the LATimes is, of course, impressed with Chavez’ socialist tendencies;

    Last year, public spending leapt to one-third of Venezuela’s economic output of about $180 billion, up from the average of one-quarter of output in the 1990s, said Jose Manuel Puente, an economist with the Institute for Advanced Administrative Studies in Caracas.

    Chavez’s social engineering has taken his predecessors’ plans a step further in giving worker groups a piece of the enterprises and letting them manage the businesses in concert with networks of “community councils” that are local governing modules.

    But, the thing is; it all depends on the world maintaining the status quo. When Chavez’ business sense finally shows no result, the world finds its oil elsewhere  – or finds it doesn’t need his oil at all, Venezuela collapses and Chavez needs to blame someone – of course the best people to blame are Americans. 

    Afterall, we’re the ones that caused Cuba’s economy to collapse, right? Even though Cuba trades with the 160+ other countries in the world, because we refuse to trade with them, they’re destitute – according to the Left. And everything bad that happens in Cuba is blamed either on our policies or the Cuban “ex-patriots”.

    So that’s really all Chavez is doing – setting us up to take the blame for his anticipated failures. from the AP article;

    “It’s not just armed warfare,” said Chavez, a former army officer who is leading what he calls the “Bolivarian Revolution,” a socialist movement named after 19th-century independence hero Simon Bolivar. “I’m also referring to psychological warfare, media warfare, political warfare, economic warfare.”

    Yeah, we’re going to be attacking them, but no one can tell because we’re so sneaky. Typical Latin American paranoia. probably more disturbing is;

    Under Chavez, Venezuela has recently purchased some $3 billion worth of arms from Russia, including 53 military helicopters, 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 24 SU-30 Sukhoi fighter jets.

    All the stuff needed to quell his own rebellions and control the inevitable “counter-revolution”. Bloomberg reports that Chavez is also aware of the fact that the military is the final arbiter in Latin American politics. He urged his troops to support his socialism;

    “The armed forces are an institution of the people, meant to promote our constitutionally mandated national project, and the national project we have is socialism,” Chavez told 3,000 troops gathered at a military ceremony in Caracas. “You can’t separate military thinking from political thinking.”

    “When a soldier says `Country, Socialism or Death,’ he’s giving the essence of the project we’re now involved in, and don’t be fooled, socialism is the road to nationhood,” he said at the event….

    It’s a pretty well known fact that if a Latin American leader can’t convince the military that what he’s doing is in the best interest of the country, they’re doomed. The military acts in the interests of the country and the people, not an ideology – that’s why there have already been attempts at a military coup against Chavez. His slogan “Fatherland (the article says ‘country’, but I know he used ‘patria‘ – which means ‘Fatherland’), Socialism or Death” doesn’t mention the pueblo – that means that Chavez wants his soldiers to defend socialism against their own people if they must.

    Ed Morrisey at Captain’s Quarters writes that Chavez is building his military might to use against US interests, but I think it’s to use against his own people when war with the US doesn’t overtly materialize in the form of a shooting war. Then he can blame the Compania and start shooting his own folks as agents of the imperialist US. That seems more plausible. The chavistas appear willing to swallow any red meat Hugo throws them-kind of like Noreiga’s Dignity Battalions.

    Meanwhile, as I also mentioned earlier this weekend, Evo Morales, Chavez’ “Mini-Me” is having his own problems with a few thousand protesters according to The Lima Bean (by way of Gateway Pundit);

    Locals of an ecological reserve in Bolivia have held protests demanding that they be annexed by Peru. Waving Peruvian flags, as many as 4,000 people filled the local square and called on the mayor to extend an invitation to Peru to occupy the region.

    The small town of Apolo, located just 6 hours’ walk from the Peruvian border, marks the entrance to the Madidi National Park, an Amazon wildlife refuge that includes around 1.8 million hectares (4.5 million acres) of pristine rainforest.

    Officials opposing the protest claimed that the people were angered that the protected nature of the area prevents them from being legally allowed to log the forest or take advantage of oil reserves thought to exist in the region.

    Speaking from La Paz 200km away, Bolivian President Evo Morales referred to the protesters as “drug traffickers and wood smugglers”.

    Well, at least it’s only wood smugglers. A couple thousand of them.

    Oddly enough, the protest happened just after the documentary “Cocalero”, Morales’ political biography opened at the Sundance Film Festival according to Bloomberg;

    “Cocalero,” the directorial debut of 26-year-old Alejandro Landes, chronicles Morales’s rise to power with the backing of the coca growers, or cocaleros, who fought U.S.- supported efforts to cut Bolivian drug production. Coca leaves, chewed for religious and cultural purposes across the Andes, are the main ingredient in cocaine.

    “The cocaleros are the sons and daughters of the U.S. war on drugs,” the Brazilian-born Landes said. “Their defense of the coca leaf detonated a nationalist wave that drove Evo to power.”

    The evil US makes such a convenient foil for Latin American dictators. Because we’re interested in criminals who poison our people in our own country, somehow we’re responsible for the rise of socialist governments. Suddenly, “defense of the coca leaf” is noble. 

    If you want to read about what’s happening inside Venezuela, on recommendation of my new friend Kate at A Colombo-Americana’s Perspective, I’ve been rereading much of the posts by Julia at The end of Venezuela as I know it – an English language blog written by a student in the middle of the White Hands movement. Last week, she wrote about the class-struggle inuendos that being flung at the students from Chavistas as if “rich kids are not people“ 

    I’ve noticed an increase in my traffic from Venezuela, Chile and Peru everytime I type Chavez’ name, so I have to guess that the internet is becoming an important information pipeline in that direction. So if I repeat myself and links, I apologize. 

    UPDATE: Apparently there was more to this speech to the army than was reported by the press (unsurprisingly) and the truth about what the event was supposed to represent and how it was staged from Daniel at Venezuela News and Views;

    Yesterday was yet another anniversary of the battle of Carabobo, our Yorktown (our Austerlitz?, our Waterloo?), that battle that made the independence of Venezuela irreversible.

    Usually at that date the armed forces hold a nice rally on the Carabobo field, in all regalia. The background is not bad, graced with the famous Carabobo arch, with lots of space for crowds to attend the festivities, a large tribune for officials, speeches and what not.

    Well, under Chavez things have started to change. First the governor of Carabobo was barred to attend the festivities…

    […]

    This year, Chavez is hurt by the student dissenting protest, a general animosity as per the closing of RCTV, and duly scalded by the failure of the intended pump and circumstances of the bridge reopening when crowds of neighboring shantytowns crashed the party. Thus Chavez did not take chances: Carabobo now was held in Caracas, as a private ceremony between Chavez and HIS army, the one he will use to stop the invasion of the Empire.

    There is much more at Daniel’s blog including screenshots Daniel took from his television. It appears that Chavez is getting a bit paranoid and not the guy he used to be among his “pueblo“. It appears more and more that yesterday’s speech was a plea to the military that they not toss his butt out of Venezuela.

    Daniel also tells of food and fuel shortages here.

  • So who’s going to step up?

    Since January 20th, 2001, I’ve heard and read countless times that the US is misusing it’s superpower status. Even before the attacks on us on September 11th that year, the knuckleheads at ANSWER and the various communist organizations were planning a protest against US imperialism and racist policy in Washington DC in October – luckily, for them, the President gave them a war against the Taliban so they didn’t look quite so silly.

    We all remember watching NATO, the EU and the UN twiddle their thumbs while Bosnia was torn to pieces by the Serbs in the 90s. The same group wrung their gnarled Old Europe hands over the attempted genocide in Kosovo and stood by impotently while Rwanda was drenched in the blood of millions macheted in droves.

    After Saddam Hussein thumbed his nose at UN and inspectors, fired at aircraft enforcing UN-mandated no-fly zones and paid off UN officials and their families to sidestep sanctions for 12 years, the US went ahead and decapitated the government with the tacit approval of UN resolutions when it was apparent that the UN couldn’t assemble the intestinal fortitude among its members to take action or make a decision – to the cries of imperialism. Critics charged that we can’t be the world’s police force. The US can’t just unilaterally enforce policy.

    OK, fine. Whatever.

    So we’re busy doing Old Europe’s dirty work killing terrorists by the thousands every month or so – it’s pretty much a full time job. So who’s going to step up to take care of the rest of the world’s business?

    The Gateway Pundit points out that Zimbabweans are wrestling with 4530% inflation – people are starving to death while communist icon President Robert Mugabe fiddles. Folks in Darfur have been dying in herds for more than ten years while Christian missionaries warned the world – and there’s no solution in sight, but at least Hollywood has noticed it now. Kosovo is still in limbo – and the Russians are blocking any meaningful solution because of their nationaistic pride – something frowned upon when it’s the US being nationalistic or prideful.

    The Bloodthirsty Liberal reports that the UN is busy compromising amongst themselves for purely bureaucratic reasons using human lives as barter while UN inspectors, who are unable, according to The Redhunter, to get Iran to stop their nuclear activities without the US apparently, are still looking for WMDs in Iraq.

    Hugo Chavez has negotiated the major oil companies right out of the market in Venezuela (while the LATimes fauns over his socialism) while contemplating buying some Russian subs – can the economc collapse of Venezuela be far away? Gateway Pundit also reports that thousands of Bolivians protested Chavez’ “Mini-Me” Evo Morales today. There’s so much more happening in South America and Kate at A Colombo-Americana’s Perspective does a much better job than I could summarizing it all.

    These are problems that affect real people – thousands, if not millions, are suffering everyday while bureaucrats seek compromises instead of acting as if real lives hang in the balance. Every day is agony – while fat cat politicians form commissions and discuss solutions while never accomplishing anything.

    Ronald Reagan once rhetorically asked, in reference to fighting the Evil Empire, “If not us, who? If not now, when?” I think it’s pretty much time for the rest of the world to put up or shut up and ask that question of themselves. If they don’t want the US to police the world, they’d better get off of their ample behinds and do something before they let all of this stuff get out of hand – again – so that the only solution is our unilateral application of military power.

  • To that Sicko guy

    I’ve never been to Cuba, I’ve known only a few Cubans in all of my travels, but I’ve always been in love with the place. I love the Caribbean culture (the pale white guy from Upstate New York dairy country that I am), I love the music, I love the food, I love the cigars and I love the rum. I can’t keep from dancing (well, my version thereof) everytime I hear Celia Cruz or Tito Puente.

    I fell in love with Gloria Estefan back in the early 80s when it was just the Miami Sound Machine and the only place you could watch her was on that old Spanish-language network SPN – and all of her music was in Spanish. 

    I feel cheated by Castro – admittedly not to the extent that Cuban exiles feel cheated, of course – but cheated nonetheless of steamy tropical nights in Havana with the smells and sounds that accompany my imaginary forays through that magical and historical city. The first thing I do when get out of the US is buy a Partagas Lusitania and a bottle of Havana Club Anejo Especial (most often at the Bodega Mi Amiga on Via Porra in Panama City) and head for the nearest beach with my big straw hat to do my best imitation of a colonialisto.

    Anyway, thanks to the internet, I get to read what life is like in Cuba and what it was like before 1959. So some of my favorite “recreational” blogs are Cuban – pale white guy from Upstate NY dairy country that I am.

    But anyway, today from Uncommon Sense (a great Cuban blog to keep up on Cuban and Cuban-exile politics with some historical perspective thrown in) I read the best refutation of Michael Moore’s latest low-budget-poorly-written-poorly-acted-film-masquerading-as-a-documentary from a recent Cuban immigrant who has witnessed first hand Castro’s healthcare system at her blog Cubanita in Colorado. I don’t want to spoil it for you by quoting from Mailyn – please go read it for yourself.

  • How the inmates began running the asylum

    What a nutty week, huh? We have Palestinians from the Gaza Strip begging the Isralis to let them into Israel so they can get away from other Palestinians and human rights organizations demanding that Israelis treat injured and ill Palestinians. From the AP by way of the Wall Street Journal;

    Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered the army on Wednesday to allow into Israel any of the hundreds of Gazans holed up at a fetid crossing who might desperately need medical treatment.

    A teenager with leukemia was on his way through shortly after, the military said. Additionally, Israeli officials allowed all foreign nationals in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip to cross over to Israel.

    In related news, Israel’s Supreme Court was hearing a petition Wednesday by a human-rights group, demanding that Israeli authorities offer immediate medical treatment to 26 critically ill Palestinians hospitalized in Gaza.

    Israeli aircraft, meanwhile, fired missiles at two rocket launchers in northern Gaza, in the first aerial attack since Islamic Hamas militants took over the coastal strip late last week. No injuries were reported. Earlier in the day, Israeli tanks entered southern Gaza, and four people, including at least two militants, were killed in an exchange of fire, Palestinian hospital officials said.

    And of course, Jimmy Carter, being the dumbass country hick playing diplomat, blames the Bush Administration;

    Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was addressing a human rights conference in Ireland, also said the Bush administration’s refusal to accept Hamas’ 2006 election victory was “criminal.”

    “Criminal”. And, of course, Carter doesn’t stop there. He claims that the murderous Hamas organization, a group of thugs masquerading as politicians (although that’s very thin line to begin with, I suppose) were elected fairly and democratically – by other terrorists;

    Carter said Hamas, besides winning a fair and democratic mandate that should have entitled it to lead the Palestinian government, had proven itself to be far more organized in its political and military showdowns with Abbas’ moderate Fatah movement.

    Except that Hamas has been terrorizing the Fatah government, and dragging it’s opponents into the street and gunning them down – I guess that’s a more effective way of winning the next election – would Jimmy call that fair? All of Hamas’ opposition in the graveyards?

    Here’s a story of Carter’s heroic Hamas from Conflict Botter;

    They surrendered. A Hamas gunman shot one of the 12 soldiers in the leg and told the rest to run away. As they fled, they opened fire, Iki said, shooting them all in the legs as they tried to run away. A Hamas gunman came up and executed each wounded soldier, continued Iki. Iki was lucky, the execution bullet hit him in the side of the neck and he didn’t die. He lay semi-conscious on the street for an hour and a half bleeding. The bus driver who had driven the Hamas militants to the fight checked his pulse at one point and found he was alive. He started to help him.

    “Leave him or we’ll shoot you,” a masked militant said.

    Ya hafta wonder what is going through Carter’s head (if anything at all). Everyone (and I mean everyone) agrees that Jimmy Carter was a walking abortion as President, but everyone always qualifies that with “but he’s a good man”. How does this statement fit into the category of “a good man”? He’s actually encouraging Hamas to continue their murderous rampage through the streets of Gaza – and he calls that “more organized than Abbas’ moderate Fatah”. I very rarely use the expression, but this warrants it – WTF? 

    Here’s the conflict that Carter is having with his own statements; if the US has no business interfering in Palestinian politics, why should what we give the Palestinian government have any impact? I mean, all we did was not give them money and weapons. If I don’t like Walmart, am I still required to give them my money? 

    It’s like Carter’s other idiot cause – Cuba. If communism is so great, if Cuba is such a paradise why does it need trade with the capitalist US in order to survive? It’s trading with the whole rest of the world – why should trade with one nation out of 170 impact it so?

    To quote Investors Business Daily’s editorial (h/t Blue Crab Boulevard);

    The statement was so malevolent and illogical as to border on insane. Carter wasn’t honest enough to say he was rooting for terrorists who started a terrifying new war in the region and trashed what little democratic rule the Palestinians had. Instead, he tut-tutted the West for being insufficiently sensitive to the fact that Hamas thugs were democratically elected in 2006 in an “orderly and fair” vote.

    When one party has started a civil war, democracy isn’t exactly the issue anymore. Just being elected does not justify making warfare on your fellow citizens. 

    But everything Carter says conflicts with itself – I found this great article in the Jerusalem Post that calls Jimmy Carter “Father of the Iranian Revolution“;

    The truth is the entire nightmare can be traced back to the liberal democratic policies of the leftist Jimmy Carter, who created a firestorm that destabilized our greatest ally in the Muslim world, the shah of Iran, in favor of a religious fanatic, the ayatollah Khomeini.

    Carter viewed Khomeini as more of a religious holy man in a grassroots revolution than a founding father of modern terrorism. Carter’s ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, said “Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint.” Carter’s Iranian ambassador, William Sullivan, said, “Khomeini is a Gandhi-like figure.” Carter adviser James Bill proclaimed in a Newsweek interview on February 12, 1979 that Khomeini was not a mad mujahid, but a man of “impeccable integrity and honesty.”

    The shah was terrified of Carter. He told his personal confidant, “Who knows what sort of calamity he [Carter] may unleash on the world?”

    Who knew that Carter would still be unleashing his calamities on the world thirty years later? The JPost goes on;

    In his anti-war pacifism, Carter never got it that Khomeini, a cleric exiled to Najaf in Iraq from 1965-1978, was preparing Iran for revolution. Proclaiming “the West killed God and wants us to bury him,” Khomeini’s weapon of choice was not the sword but the media. Using tape cassettes smuggled by Iranian pilgrims returning from the holy city of Najaf, he fueled disdain for what he called gharbzadegi (“the plague of Western culture”).

    Carter pressured the shah to make what he termed human rights concessions by releasing political prisoners and relaxing press censorship. Khomeini could never have succeeded without Carter. The Islamic Revolution would have been stillborn.

    Gen. Robert Huyser, Carter’s military liaison to Iran, once told me in tears: “The president could have publicly condemned Khomeini and even kidnapped him and then bartered for an exchange with the [American Embassy] hostages, but the president was indignant. ‘One cannot do that to a holy man,’ he said.”

    What was holy about the murderous rampage that was carried out in Khomeini’s name throughout Iran? What was holy about the 444 days our citizens spent in captivity? And remember why the hostages were taken? Because Carter gave sanctuary to the shah and his family from being murdered by the Islamic Revolution.

    Remember why we propped up Saddam in the 80s? Because we were afraid of the murderous Islamic Revolution spreading – and so were the Gulf States which plowed money into Saddam’s war. Which is why Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 – he was deeply indebted to Kuwait and Gulf States and figured the Kuwaiti oil fields would give him some fiscal relief by eliminating one debtor and gave him cash to pay off the others.

    Now Carter has deepened the conflict by allowing Chavez, who rules by decree these days, to seize power in Venezuela with his petrodollars and form an alliance with Iran. And he still doesn’t get it;

    Carter said the consensus of the U.S., Israel and the EU to start funneling aid to Abbas’ new government in the West Bank but continue blocking Hamas in the Gaza Strip represented an “effort to divide Palestinians into two peoples.”

    I guess murdering the opposition in the street doesn’t have the effect of dividing the Palestinians into “two peoples” does it? Although, this Hamas government is a demonstration of how voters get the government they deserve. Palestinians voted for Hamas because Hamas hates Jews and thinks they have a mandate from God to kill Jews – so anything they do in the space of time before they get to kill all of the Jews should be OK with God, too. And with Jimmy Carter as well, apparently.

    In other related news, Aunt Agatha at Bloodthirsty Liberal mirrors my thoughts on Ahmed Yousef’s piece in the NYTimes explaining to us poor, ignorant Zionists and those guilt-ridden Leftists looking for an excuse to continue supporting the bloody Palestinians “What Hamas Wants“.

    Boker Tov, Boulder reports that the peaceful Palestinians fired off two more Kassam missiles into Israel.

    Israel Matzav tells us that the New Hamas “government” (for the want of a better word) warns that the new Sharia Law in Gaza is going to apply to the dhimmis still in Gaza. That should be a warning to dhimmi-wannabes here in the US, but, I guess it probably won’t.

    I figured that I’ve been spending too much time on that buck-toothed, shriveled up, has-been-that-never-was moron, Jimmy Carter, so instead of repeating myself over-and-over, I created a Jimmy Carter category and ya’all can just go click that link on your right and it’ll take you to all of my brilliant thoughts about that dull, little POS Jimmy Carter and I swear I’ll never type his name again. Cuz Don Surber and I share a common shame – we both voted for Carter once.

  • Gazans prefer Israelis

    I watched with some interest, after reading Little Green Footballs (here and here) this weekend how long it would take for the media to decide it was alright to tell us that Palestinians in Gaza would prefer to be in Israel than under Hamas. Well it finally happened this morning, not in any of the major news outlets, but from the AP;

    Fearing death or persecution, Gazans began flocking to the Erez passage after Hamas militants wrested control of the coastal strip from Fatah security forces late last week. Israel, which has no interest in letting masses of Gazans pass through its territory and possibly destabilize the quieter West Bank, has refused to let most of them in, saying their lives were not in danger.

    By Tuesday, about 600 people were holed up in the long, concrete tunnel that leads to the Israeli side of the crossing. Around 100 people belonged to Fatah security forces, but the rest were civilians, seeking a better life in the West Bank.

    And of course, the civilized Hamas fellows were more than happy to make their stay in the concrete tunnel as memorable as possible;

    On Monday, gunmen allied with Hamas disguised themselves as fleeing civilians and hurled hand grenades at Israeli soldiers and Palestinians at Erez, killing a relative of a slain Fatah warlord, and injuring 15 other Palestinians.

    In a move to maintain order, Israeli tanks and armored vehicles rolled up to the Palestinian side of Erez on Tuesday, chasing away cars parked next to the tunnel, including vehicles belonging to journalists.

    Wait. Do you mean that AP is going to admit that the Israelis actually decided to protect Palestinians? Well, not completely;

    “There is a clear conflict between security needs and humanitarian considerations,” Peres said. “It’s clear that we don’t want to see in the West Bank (Fatah-allied) Al Aqsa militants who carried out attacks in the past.”

    Israel allowed about 50 senior Fatah officials and their families to cross into the West Bank from Gaza over the weekend, citing threats to their safety. Some 200 other Fatah officials are in Egypt, trying to travel to the West Bank via Jordan, Fatah officials said.

    And this from a MidEast News article from last week;

    “I’m afraid to say this out loud, they may execute me for it, but there are a lot of people, including myself, who think it would be better if Israel came back here. Things would be much better than they are now,” said Samara (alias), a graduate of the Islamic University living in the Gaza Strip.

    […]

    “The children are afraid all the time,” Samara says. “My nephews ask, ‘Why are the Israelis shooting at us?’, and we tell them it’s Palestinians. Then they ask, ‘Why are Palestinians shooting at us?’, and I have no answer for them.  

    Well, if I believed in kharma…. 

    Meanwhile Carl in Jerusalem at Israel Matzav reports that the Lebanese Army claims to have interferred with a Katyusha rocket attack on Israel. This after a 4-rocket attack on Sunday. Think there could be a link between last week’s Hamas action in Gaza and Hezbollah’s in Lebanon? Nah, Hezbollah says they’ve had nothing to do with the rocket attacks – we know we can trust them at their word, huh?

    Lady Vorzheva, the Spanish Pundit, writes and researches long and hard on the events in Gaza with constant updates. Especially interesting is the article she links to in Catholic World News which reports;

    On June 14, a school administered by the Sisters of the Holy Rosary was demolished in the Gaza Strip. In the chapel adjoining the sisters’ convent, the crucifix and a statue of Christ were broken and prayer books burned.

    Well, at least they didn’t draw unflattering cartoons of Jesus on the walls – that might have gotten those Catholics hopping mad and driven them to burning cars and buses in Europe.

  • Hamas pulls out the plugs

    Fighting is raging across the Gaza strip today as Hamas decides it’s more fun to kill Palestinians than Israelis. the Washington Post reports;

    Palestinian hospital officials said at least 14 people were killed and 70 wounded in the hours-long fight for the Fatah-run Preventive Security headquarters in the center of Gaza City.

    Witnesses said Hamas fighters led Fatah officers from the building, some bound and dragged. Television reports from the scene showed groups of shirtless Fatah fighters being marched through the street.

    The best way to get your guys worked up into a fighting frenzy is to dehumanize the enemy;

    The Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas military wing that has begun referring to Fatah as the “Jew American Army,” has given the Fatah-dominated Palestinian National Forces across northern Gaza until Friday evening to surrender their weapons and turn over their posts.

    USAToday has an after-action report;

    A survivor of the Hamas assault said the Fatah forces were outgunned and that reinforcements never arrived. “We were pounded with mortar, mortar, mortar,” the Fatah fighter, who only gave his first name as Amjad, said excitedly and out of breath. “They had no mercy. It was boom, boom. They had rockets that could reach almost half of the compound.”

    No mercy. From UK’s Telegraph;

    “They’re firing at us, firing RPGs, firing mortars. We’re not Jews,” the brother of Jamal Abu Jediyan, a Fatah commander, pleaded during a live telephone conversation with a Palestinian radio station.

    Minutes later both men were dragged into the streets and riddled with bullets.

    These are the guys with whom we’re supposed to negotiate? They shoot their own neighbors in the street. How do we talk to them, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid? Maybe you two should go to to Gaza and talk to them.

  • Communist Victims Memorial unveiled

     

    Yesterday, President Bush dedicated the new memorial to Victims of Communism here in Washington, DC. From the Washington Times‘ Kristen Chick;

    President Bush yesterday told hundreds of people whose countries had emerged from the grip of communism that their sacrifices would not be forgotten as he dedicated the Victims of Communism Memorial to the millions oppressed and killed by totalitarian regimes.
        “We’ll never know the names of all who perished, but at this sacred place, communism’s unknown victims will be consecrated to history and remembered forever,” he said to more than 500 people just blocks from the Capitol. “We dedicate this memorial because we have an obligation to those who died, to acknowledge their lives and honor their memory.”
        The memorial is the only such monument in the world, according to its founders, who estimate that communist governments have killed more than 100 million people.
        Mr. Bush compared the Cold War to the fight against terrorism, saying that the “evil and hatred” that inspired totalitarian regimes to kill millions is shared by terrorists today.  

    I took this picture about 20 years from a hill over looking part of the East German border about 20 miles north of the town of Coburg;

    This was one of the legal border crossings into East Germany – that narrow road in the bottom of the picture. This picture is the East German checkpoint on that same road;

    That’s how I remember Communism – a giant prison walled-in from the North Sea across Europe to Yugoslavia. Everyone remembers that Berlin was walled, but people tend to forget that there was a wall across all of Europe.

    I remember in the early 80s when there were Claymore-type mines attached to the razor-wire fence which would slice-to-shreds anyone above the weight of a sparrow who disturbed the fence. An entire population isolated from the world by mine fields and fences. It’s hard to imagine that even today, just a decade or so later.

    Oddly, at least in my mind, the world seems to have forgotten about the evil that men do to each other. In fact, people have ho-hummed Communism for years now – despite the cost in human lives. Books like Martin Ami’s Koba the Dread; Laughter and the Twenty Million  and the meticulously researched and footnoted Black Book of Communism should be required reading in schools everywhere – to teach the horrible lessons of the past that we should never forget.

    But, I guess it’s inevitable that Mao’s and Stalin’s deniers should crop up – just like Nazis’ Halocaust deniers. Jimmy Carter certainly didn’t learn his lesson from the Pol Pot regime. While Carter ranted and raved about arpartheid in South Africa, millions of Cambodians were butchered by Communists and millions of Vietnamese were “reeducated” or escaped in rickety boats. 

    If communism was really remembered as it actually was, no one would be forming a new communist bloc of nations in South America today unopposed.

    And, to prove they aren’t Mao’s China anymore, China threatens to step up war preparation against Taiwan because President Bush shook hands with Taiwan’s representative at the ceremony, Joseph Wu. 

    More on the lack of media coverage of the event from Newsbusters’ Michael Chapman.

    I may put some more pictures of the Inter-German border on this post tonight if I can remember which file I put them in when I get home.

    Well, I couldn’t find where I hid my scanned photos of the Border, but I found an early draft (in .pdf) of a book I started years ago that includes a bunch of photos and some stories tentatively titled Hier Grenze.

  • Reid; Iran “invasion” would destabilize region

     

    Harry Reid in a blogged interview on Think Progress, in his infinite wisdom, and counting the times he’s been correct on any issue on one finger, determined that Joe Lieberman’s call for a strike against Iran would destabilize the region;

    “I know Joe feels strongly about that part of the world. I do too,” said Reid, rejecting Lieberman’s calls for ratcheting up tensions. “I believe our efforts should be diplomatic in nature,” Reid said, citing the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and others to hold a regional conference to resolve security issues in the Middle East. Reid also noted that “we are so overextended” that the U.S. does not have the ground troops necessary for a war with Iran.

    “The invasion of [Iran] is only going to destabilize that part of the world more,” Reid charged. “I know Joe means well, but I don’t agree with him.”

    Well, Harry, Senator Lieberman recommended a retaliatory strike, not an invasion. And I don’t know how much more the region can be “destabilized” anyway. Turks are poised to attack the Kurda. Syria is gearing up for another Summer offensive against Israel for the Golan Heights, Iran is scooping up US citizens left and right knowing that you and Nancy Pelosi will throw yourselves in front of an airstrike against them.

    But, to your original statement, there’s a difference between what you’re saying and what Senator Lieberman said. According to Reuters, Lieberman said;

    Lieberman, appearing on CBS’ Sunday program “Face the Nation,” said the United States had “good evidence” that Iraqis were being trained to use the weapons at a camp inside Iran. He advocated a military strike in retaliation, saying much of the job could be done with air strikes.

    MSNBC also reported Lieberman’s statement;

    “I think we’ve got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq,” Lieberman said. “And to me, that would include a strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers.” 

    As compared to your false assumption that the strike aircraft will be carried into Iran on the backs of infantrymen. How much aircraft is being utilized in Iraq and Afghanistan as opposed to the number of aircraft currently floating off the coast of Iran? Why do you think the three carrier groups were deployed to the Gulf?

    Reid just won’t let go of the Iraq Study Group recommendation;

    So I would think rather than talking about military action against Iran, we should do what the Iraq Study Group said. Have a regional conference where we sit down and the president himself is personally involved with the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and yes, Iran. That’s where our efforts have to be.

    Reid’s child-like innocence is stunning. I guess he hasn’t noticed that Iran won’t even own up to what they’re doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, so how do we sit down and talk to them? The only thing they understand is unrelenting force. According to CBS News;

    Iran on Monday [February 12, 2007] rejected U.S. accusations that the highest levels Iranian leadership has armed insurgents in Iraq with armor-piercing roadside bombs.

    “Such accusations cannot be relied upon or be presented as evidence. The United States has a long history in fabricating evidence. Such charges are unacceptable,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters.

    U.S. military officials in Baghdad on Sunday accused the Iranian leadership of arming Shiite militants in Iraq with the sophisticated bombs that have killed more than 170 troops from the American-led coalition.

    So while Harry is busy waving his current white flag, Iran has taken to threatening the US once again according to the Associated Press (On Fox News);

    Iran will make the United States “regret” its detention of five Iranian officials in Iraq, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Tuesday.

    Mottaki was referring to five Iranian officials detained in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil by U.S. troops in January, who still remain in U.S. custody. The U.S. military has said they are suspected of links to a network supplying arms to Iraqi insurgents — an accusation that Iran has denied.

    “We will make the Americans regret their ugly and illegal act,” Mottaki was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying. He didn’t elaborate on how Iran will make Washington regret the action.

    But ya see, the Iranians can just take hostages left and right, as reported by the Independent;

    Iran’s confirmation yesterday that it has detained a fourth Iranian-American – this one a peace activist from California – seems certain to further rile relations between the two countries, already tense over Iran’s nuclear program.

    The United States has sharply criticized the detentions but Iran insists America has no right to interfere.

    Mohammad Ali Hosseini, the spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, confirmed at his weekly news briefing that Iranian-American Ali Shakeri had been detained.

    And the reason they think they can away with that kind of behavior? Because they have Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi carrying their water for them in Congress; Iran’s own ready-made lobbying team that operates free-of-charge in the intrests of the mullahs.

    Gateway Pundit points and giggles at Harry Reid’s poll numbers (19% approval rating) – the same poll numbers that Reid used to deride Vice President Cheney a scant few months ago. I guess that since Reid has taken to surrendering to the nutroots as well as the jihadists (or apparently anyone who gives him a disapproving look), he’s just not liked by anyone anymore.