Blogging the democratic revolution
Via Real Clear Politics, Donald Rumsfeld has presented his thinking on the new kinds of challenges the U.S. faces as it fights the long hard war on terror and seeks to win the hearts and minds of the Arab world in spreading the idea of democracy. He lays out all the angles on how this is playing out in democratic revolution – through technology and the power of ideas here. This happens to coincide with what we’ve been seeing on the State Department’s Web site, debunking all the flying-saucer theories put out by leftists and assorted ignoramuses and tinfoil-hat wearers…
Kill terrorists ‘like rats’ Just so you know.
Imagine for a second that you’re the head of a secular authoritarian regime in the Middle East. The West is pressuring you to liberalize your political system, but elections are bringing to power grassroots Islamist groups who are looking to take you out of power. The root of this, you realize, could always be due to your terrifying rule of oppression, but of course that would be impossible. Simply unbelievable. I mean, who doesn’t love you, RIGHT? But nonetheless, you’re shitting your pants at the prospect of overthrow by Islamists, whether violently or democratically. Lucky for you, Muslims across the…
Rage across the Muslim world persists and grows for another week over cartoons published in a Danish paper depicting the prophet Muhammed. It has culminated in violent protests with chants of death, the burning of embassies, and a round of condemnations from governments in the region. Meanwhile, in Europe, the cartoons have been reproduced by newspapers all over the continent in a show of solidarity with the Danish journalists — who are now in hiding for fear of their lives. The battle lines are being drawn. They are not between nations, defended with vast armies as it has been throughout…
No one has a penchant for coming down on the wrong side of the issue like Spain’s Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Whenever there is a critical juncture, a challenge from brute force, he has a way of placing himself on the illiberal side of the issue. So now he’s made a new string of appeasing statements about the Islamofascists, right in the middle of the Denmark cartoon crisis – taking the side of the rioters. In part his actions may be due to fear, considering that Spain gets more immigrants from Islamic countries than elsewhere. But such people…
The first-ever participation of Hamas in the Palestinian elections on Wednesday poses significant policy challenges to the United States, Europe, Israel and the region. Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel and is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the E.U. A Hamas victory could lead to the creation of the first Sunni jihadist state in the modern Middle East, paralleling the Shiite theocracy in Tehran. Hamas is a local offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, a regional extremist network that threatens Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. While Hezbollah represents only one sect in Lebanon, Hamas threatens to overwhelm…
Mark Steyn has a new killer essay at the Spectator about the collapse of Russia and the spread of Islamic fascism. It’s worth reading if only for the, er, fowl pun partway down page one (there’s one that’s actually funny further down, but I won’t ruin it for you). Excerpt: Moscow has reduced Grozny to rubble, yet is further than ever from solving its Chechen problem. Moreover, the sheer blundering thuggery of the Russian approach has no merits other than affording Moscow some short-term sadistic pleasure as it exacerbates the situation. The allegedly seething ???????Arab street????????, which the West????????s media…
Jailed Abimael Guzman, the Pol-Pot-ian Marxist terrorist leader of Peru’s Shining Path, which terrorized Peru for 20 years, gave Peru corrosive, confidence-killing hyperinflation, and murdered no less than 35,000 to 70,000 people, mostly from among the poorest of Peru … was a bigtime writer of fuzzy love poetry. The story is here. You know how repulsive that news is. Saddam the human shredder was into writing romance novels, this freak was into sentimental poetry. Somehow, it makes the monsters even creepier. What’s disgusting is that there are still certain kinds of people on the international left who defend him or…
Today the Marxist FARC guerrillas of Colombia attempted to murder a close senatorial ally of President Alvaro Uribe with a car bomb. They have tried for years to kill Uribe, probably hundreds of times, but the popular president’s security is too tight. So this time, the detested Marxists went after his allies. It was the first car-bomb attack in Colombia in a couple of years, and only for one reason: President Uribe has rounded up vast numbers of the terrrorists and put them in jail where they belong. But he’s not done yet and there are still a few lurking…
Harry Hutton lived through it here. The revolutionary courage of Colombians still blazes like an emerald.
Via Real Clear Politics, the Washington Post has an astounding article about a young rock band in Indonesia that is defying the vicious local Islamofascists by singing innovative songs against Jihad terrorism. Every time the terrorists threaten to blow them up, the youthful band comes up with a new song, calling it their next new ‘smart bomb’ aimed at the Islamists. They are literally defying death by singing songs condemning terrorism. And they just keep doing it. There are signs that this group is changing Indonesia, a nation that is full of intelligent, interesting young people who have no interest…
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty has several long pieces regarding the war on terror following President Bush’s speech. Read them: – Four years later, no clear winners in the war on terror – Who is the enemy, and how is it changing? – Can West fight terror and still maintain civil liberties? – Global war on terror faces government with unique enemy
The weekend’s terror attack on the Indonesian island of Bali was a monstrous atrocity. Does it have revolutionary implications? I think it does, because it’s closely aligned with Indonesia’s brave self-transformation into an authentic democracy in 1999. The terrorists who struck Bali were trying to destroy Indonesia’s fragile democracy – at a sensitive time. With fuel costs soaring and the rupiah battered, these evil people were going after an economic power center, and they intended their attack as economic warfare. It’s something they are betting can topple democracy. Do I think they can do it? No. Indonesians treasure their democracy…
Why is he doing this to us? He’s appointing incompetent cronies left and right. Who am I talking about? Not some corrupt Chicago machine pol or some New Orleans lowlife political vermin, but George Bush himself! Apparently, he never learned ANYTHNG from Katrina! Do we really need a Julie Myers, age 36, experienced at writing export control briefs, niece to General Myers (Memo to Bush: look up the Latin root of the word ‘nepotism’), leading the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement? You know, the one that guards our borders from bin Laden? The organization that is so badly run…
A source in Colombia has emailed me to say rumors are flying that Manuel “Sureshot” Marulanda, the Marxist FARC guerrilla chief of chiefs, has been shot dead – UPDATE from my source: died in bed. If it’s true he’s been shot or captured, it has the significance of the U.S. taking out Zarkawi or Bin Laden. This aging thug has terrorized Colombia for more than 40 years. Even if he died in bed instead of splattered against some wall as he deserves, it will decapitate the FARC leadership. The FARC denies the rumor. But if Colombia has really got him,…
The FARC’s massacre victims this past week. Source: Yahoo! The FARC makes my blood boil. There is no eviler organization in this hemisphere than these murderous Marxist narcoterrorists. Nothing good has anything to do with them. These monsters put necklace bombs around housewives in the mountains just to see what a blown-off head looks like. Today they pulled so much garbage in Colombia I thought it was worth a news and blog roundup. I would be so much happier if I could write ‘FARC Roundup’ instead. This is what the bastards did today: They called for the murder of all…
I’m in quite a bit of a mood for Russia at the moment after finishing Kremlin Rising. The book went into detail about Putin’s life and how he has consolidated power to the Kremlin since being elected, but it both started and ended with the massacre at Beslan School No 1. The authors themselves were WaPo correspondents and in Beslan during the hostage crisis, and they go into great detail about the actions of both the Chechen terrorists and the outright corruption of the Russian security forces, of which the latter is quite extensive and relatively untold since it isn’t…
In an extreme sign of victory, Colombia’s vile communist narcoterrorists are suddenly apologizing for their latest murders, the killings of two priests and two others. Over 40 years, they’ve killed countless priests, journalists, businessmen, housewives, children and others. But this is the first time they are “sorry.” A strong hand against terror is withering the brazeness of these cold-blooded murderers. Suddenly, killing away isn’t so popular. That strong hand is in the leadership of the great President Alvaro Uribe, a man of death-defying courage who has met terror threats and terror bombs by hitting back harder. And he’s winning. Now,…
Colombia and El Salvador, two nations that have known war and terror, have joined forces to beat the hell out of terrorism. So if Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez or Al Qaida or the Maras or the FARC have designs on the region, the entire Western flank is about to strike first. This dual axis is a straight pointed knife down the center of Latin America, poised to bring democracy and kill off terror forever. This is very big news. These two nations know the sorrow of war like no others. They are unyielding allies of the U.S. in the…
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, a vile Maoist terror group enamored of Pol Pot terrorized the Peruvian countryside. They were communists known as the Shining Path and along with their ugly cousin known as Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), they specialized in murder. Being cowards, they didn’t just go after ‘oligarchs’ (whom they never seemed to find) but unarmed community organizers and civil society advocates, the people who wanted to spread the world democracy revolution by peaceful means. They especially went after those. In the face of these remorseless, psychopathic Marxist death squads, Peruvians organized themselves into curious collectives,…
Hear that poofing sound? It’s the showering, shattering of electronic pixels as one by one, British Intelligence destroys al-qaida Web sites. The move cuts critical communication lines among terrorists. Suddenly they can’t plot and giggle together through sinful Western Internet technology. They’ll have to go back to inscribing on Stone-Age tablets or something. Or give up terror altogether. In war, it’s not enough to just cut financing lines and indoctrination houses like madrassas – communication lines are important, too. It’s so in any war. Britain and the U.S. should have done this a long time ago. This is war and…
Fausta at BadHairBlog, citing someone named ‘Cake Eater’ has a truly marvellous comparison of the efforts of the McCartney sisters to break the back of the vile IRA terrorists, versus the non-efforts of too many Muslim “moderates” to halt the Islamofascists among them. it’s been speculated that it’s because these moderate Muslims are afraid to speak up, for fear that the Islamofascists will turn on them. Well, it appears that six women—who loved a man as a brother and a fiancee—proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back when it came to the IRA. Robert McCartney, a Belfast…
Any time Danny Glover, Babs Streisand or Michael Moore open their big Hollywood mouths, the media come running, happy to feed these bawl-babies with free publicity. But let Puertoriqueno singer Ricky Martin, declare his intention of improving the U.S.’s image abroad, particularly among Arabs, using his experience as a Boricua, and these media suddenly go silent, desperately silent. To heck with that. Ricky Martin is out to spread democracy and I am going to say something! Check out GOPinion’s full story about this admirable young man here.
The Iranian regime for decades has been a state sponsor of terrorism, both domestically and internationally. Concern is ever the more mounting after the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who may have been involved in, or even the leader of, the 1979 embassy hostage crisis. But how directly involved is the Iranian regime in funding and aiding terrorist groups? Apologists might say that the regime’s money trail and links to groups like Hizb’allah and Islamic Jihad are too obscure to trace and may not even exist at all. Well, they’re apologists, what do you expect? Even if there was ever evidence…
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams in April called on the IRA to lose its arms after getting totally snubbed by the usual supporters in Irish America. Yes, even Ted Kennedy gave him the cold shoulder. This announcement seems several months in the making, though hardly anyone believed the organization would seriously embrace the message. They are saying that it will only work through peaceful, democratic means to achieve independence from British rule, though questions of their current political legitimacy still exist in my mind, given that they achieved their status through the “armed struggle.” But most importantly right now, if…