Fausta's blog

Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) the subjects of this Stratfor report:
Nicaragua: The Inherent Dangers of Being a Militant Mecca (h/t Siggy.)

However, the fall of the Soviet Union affected more than just economics. As the political landscape shifted in the late 1980s, places that had served as havens and training bases for Marxist militants, such as South Yemen and East Germany, became less welcoming. In 1990, both of those countries ceased to exist. This left a lot of fugitive Marxist militants looking for a place to go, and many of them relocated to Managua. What resulted was an influx of Marxist militants from European groups such as the Irish Republican Army, ETA and the Red Brigades, as well as Middle Eastern militants, such as representatives of the various Palestinian Marxist-oriented groups.

Some of the fugitives who moved to Managua were educated, skilled and surprisingly entrepreneurial. A couple from the Italian Red Brigades opened a popular Italian restaurant in downtown Managua, and members of the Basque group ETA opened an automobile repair garage in Managua's Santa Rosa neighborhood.

Go read every word.

Just last week the Washington Post was writing about Ortega and Nicaragua's Eroding Democracy. Daniel Ortega, like Hugo Chavez, has had himself elected to office in order to establish a dictatorship. He has named his wife co-president; he might be looking at a line of succession, considering how he went missing for several days earlier this month for reasons that were never made clear.

Things in Nicaragua are getting so bad that even Noam Chomsky is acussing Ortega of stifling dissent.

Noam Chomsky, Salman Rushdie, Bianca Jagger and other high-profile former sympathisers have joined a chorus of alarm at recent actions.

Back when he got elected

Ortega returned to power after swapping fatigues and Marxist rhetoric for white linen shirts and John Lennon peace songs. Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, has pledged subsidised oil to his socialist ally but Ortega's ratings have slumped to 21%, according to a recent poll, on the back of high inflation and enduring poverty.

Good-bye John Lennon, hello again, FSLN's buddies.



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Labels: Latin America, Nicaragua, terrorism

At Breath of the Beast, Welcome to Sderot:

Do you believe that it is about The Nakba or The Occupation or The Settlements? Do you allow yourself the fantasy that there is a way to stop the madness- a sacrifice big enough to satisfy this ravenous cult?

Then what did the innocent victims die for on 9/11- or Madrid- or London- the Darfur? This is part of the same grotesque lottery that has been going on for 1500 years. In spite of the sacrifice of the innocent victims of 9/11, it is all too easy for us to deny that we are hostages too, but those “zero beings” from the Islamist void will not be happy to delete only Israel. They have "selected" them for annihilation first but it is nothing personal, you understand, just a sacrifice to prove there is no value to human life. There is no value to anything that does not affirm the spiritual vacuum of Islamism. It is not because they worship Allah, nor is it is that they believe Mohammed was a prophet. It is that they believe that he was the only prophet, that they know the absolute truth and that it is their mission to ignore (and destroy) all evidence to the contrary. If you believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, they will not rest until they destroy you too.

Go read all of it.



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Labels: Israel, terrorism

On June 11 I translated a report by Patricia Poleo that stated that Venezuelans of Arab ancestry are being recruited under the auspices of Tarek el Ayssami, Venezuela's vice-Minister of the Interior, for combat training in Hezbollah camps in South Lebanon.

Yesterday the US Treasury Department designated a Venezuelan diplomat as a Hezbollah supporter.

The Jerusalem Post (h/t Siggy) reports that Venezuelan diplomat Ghazi Nasr al Din, former Charge d' Affaires at the Venezuelan Embassy in Damascus and Director of Political Aspects at the Venezuelan Embassy in Lebanon, who is also president of a Caracas-based Shi'a Islamic Center, used his position to give financial assistance to Hezbollah.

Noticias 24 from Caracas (in Spanish) states that a source at the Venezuelan chancellory verified that Nasr al Din is a Venezuelan diplomat based in Damascus. The Venezuelan government refused to issue an official statement "for the time being".

The U.S. Department of the Treasury designated Nsr al Din and Fawzi Kan'an, along with two travel agencies owned and controlled by Kan'an, as terror supporters

Nasr al Din has counseled Hizballah donors on fundraising efforts and has provided donors with specific information on bank accounts where the donors' deposits would go directly to Hizballah.

Ghazi Nasr al Din has met with senior Hizballah officials in Lebanon to discuss operational issues, as well as facilitated the travel of Hizballah members to and from Venezuela. In late January 2006, Nasr al Din facilitated the travel of two Hizballah representatives to the Lebanese Parliament to Caracas to solicit donations for Hizballah and to announce the opening of a Hizballah-sponsored community center and office in Venezuela. The previous year, Nasr al Din arranged the travel of Hizballah members to attend a training course in Iran.

The Treasury Dept. statement lists 12 aliases for Nasr al Din, who was born on December 13, 1962 in Lebanon.

The Treasury Dept. identifies Fawzi Kan'an as a

a Venezuela-based Hizballah supporter and a significant provider of financial support to Hizballah. Kan'an has facilitated travel for Hizballah members and sent money raised in Venezuela to Hizballah officials in Lebanon.

Kan'an has met with senior Hizballah officials in Lebanon to discuss operational issues, including possible kidnappings and terrorist attacks. Further, Kan'an has also traveled with other Hizballah members to Iran for training.

The Treasury Department shows Kan'an as a naturalized Venezuelan citizen born in 1943. Kan'an owns and operates the Biblos Travel Agency, located in Caracas, which reportedly he uses to courier funds to Lebanon.

In Caracas, Noticias 24 reports that Kan'an denied the the U.S. accusations, said that his accounts in the US have not been frozen, and sstated that his Biblos and Hilal agencies closed a year ago. However, as you can read in the AP report, who interviewed Kan'an, he was at the "Hilal travel agency in Caracas, a street-level office with barred windows" itself.

The BBC, which also interviewed Kan'an in Caracas, also says he operates two travel agencies in Caracas.

The US assets of both Kan'an and Nasr al Din have been frozen.

William Davila, candidate for governor for Merida, Venezuela, brought a complaint to the Venezuela Attorney General's re: Hezbollah, which has remained ignored.

Why is this important:
As Efraim Karsh explained in his article, Islam's Imperial Dreams (via Siggy)

As the 14th-century historian and philosopher Abdel Rahman ibn Khaldun wrote, "In the Muslim community, the jihad is a religious duty because of the universalism of the Islamic mission and the obligation [to convert] everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force."

The Venezuelan government is in bed with this scheme. As the Treasury Department stated,

"It is extremely troubling to see the Government of Venezuela employing and providing safe harbor to Hizballah facilitators and fundraisers. We will continue to expose the global nature of Hizballah's terrorist support network, and we call on responsible governments worldwide to disrupt and dismantle this activity," said Adam J. Szubin, Director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Bill Roggio is also posting on the story. Noticias 24 has a background article (in Spanish) on Hezbollah in Latin America.



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Labels: Hizballah, Hizbollah, Latin America, terrorism, USA, Venezuela

McCain Slams The Supreme Court's Habeas Decision (emphasis added):

The United States Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country. Sen. Graham and Sen. Lieberman and I had worked very hard to make sure that we didn't torture any prisoners, that we didn't mistreat them, that we abided by the Geneva Conventions, which applies to all prisoners. But we also made it perfectly clear, and I won't go through all the legislation we passed, and the prohibition against torture, but we made it very clear that these are enemy combatants, these are people who are not citizens, they do not and never have been given the rights that citizens of this country have. And my friends there are some bad people down there. There are some bad people. So now what are we going to do. We are now going to have the courts flooded with so-called, quote, Habeas Corpus suits against the government, whether it be about the diet, whether it be about the reading material. And we are going to be bollixed up in a way that is terribly unfortunate, because we need to go ahead and adjudicate these cases. By the way, 30 of the people who have already been released from Guantanamo Bay have already tried to attack America again, one of them just a couple weeks ago, a suicide bomber in Iraq. Our first obligation is the safety and security of this nation, and the men and women who defend it. This decision will harm our ability to do that.

As Ace pointed out yesterday,

The Court holds that not only do the terrorists have a habeas right, but they have a Super Special Celebrity Killer Habeas Right, entitling them to judicial "review" -- pre-review, actually, as there's nothing yet to review -- of the entire scheme of the once-upcoming process before it actually unfolds.

Flopping Aces quotes Justice Roberts,

Today the Court strikes down as inadequate the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants. The political branches crafted these procedures amidst an ongoing military conflict, after much careful investigation and thorough debate. The Court rejects them today out of hand, without bothering to say what due process rights the detainees possess, without explaining how the statute fails to vindicate those rights, and before a single petitioner has even attempted to avail himself of the law's operation.

This is probably the worst decision the Supreme Court has made in my lifetime.



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Labels: law, SCOTUS, terrorism

UPDATED
As background info, habeas corpus means,

A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody.

Wikipedia:

Also known as "The Great Writ," a writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum is a summons with the force of a court order addressed to the custodian (such as a prison official) demanding that a prisoner be brought before the court, together with proof of authority, allowing the court to determine whether that custodian has lawful authority to hold that person, or, if not, the person should be released from custody.

I just got home and haven't had the chance to read the actual (lengthy) Supreme Court decision, but, according to SCOTUS blog,
Court gives detainees habeas rights

In a stunning blow to the Bush Administration in its war-on-terrorism policies, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign nationals held at Guantanamo Bay have a right to pursue habeas challenges to their detention. The Court, dividing 5-4, ruled that Congress had not validly taken away habeas rights. If Congress wishes to suspend habeas, it must do so only as the Constitution allows — when the country faces rebellion or invasion.

That is, the government cannot deny the Gitmo prisoners habeas corpus rights unless it suspends them under the Suspension Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

From the sound of it, the Court has granted citizens' rights to terrorists who are not citizens of the USA, who are not on US soil and therefore are not subject to US laws.

Another part of the decision appears to apply only to American citizens,

In a second ruling on habeas, the Court decided unanimously that U.S. citizens held by U.S. military forces in Iraq have a right to file habeas cases, because it does extend to them, but it went on to rule that federal judges do not have any authority to bar the transfer of those individuals to Iraqi authorites to face prosecution or punishment for crimes committed in that country in violation of Iraqi laws.

My question is, in either case, are they considered criminals, or are they prisoners of war? If they are POWs, why grant them rights under criminal law?

James Joyner has a great roundup on the decision, and I agree with Lean Left:

If these people are prisoners of war, then treat them as such. If they are not, then they are criminals and should be treated the same as every other criminal in the care of the federal government.

And if the death penalty applies, then indeed, go ahead.

UPDATE
Taranto:

It's possible that Scalia is wrong when he predicts more Americans will die as a result of this ruling. It may be that al Qaeda is a weak enough enemy that America can vanquish it even with the Supreme Court tying one hand behind our back. Anyway, keeping future detainees away from Guantanamo should prevent them from coming within the reach of the justices' pettifogging.

Perhaps decades from now we will learn that detainees ended up being abused in some far-off place because the government closed Guantanamo in response to judicial meddling. Even those who support what the court did today may live to regret it.

Five Justices in air-conditioned roomsin DC may think troops will be mindful of habeas corpus and all that in the heat of battle. They are wrong.

UPDATE
Ace:

The Court holds that not only do the terrorists have a habeas right, but they have a Super Special Celebrity Killer Habeas Right, entitling them to judicial "review" -- pre-review, actually, as there's nothing yet to review -- of the entire scheme of the once-upcoming process before it actually unfolds. This despite the fact that the DTA actually granted a right to challenge the procedures, with later Article III court review (that is, a real judicial court defined by Article III under the constitution, and not a quasi-court as are established by Congress and run by the Executive), a right to challenge the terrorists never bothered availing themselves of.

The Court could easily have found the terrorists do have habeas rights, but that filing is premature, as they would with any other citizen criminal in the country. For reasons clear only to themselves, they didn't.

Guessing at a non-retarded opinion, I figured maybe there might be some initial habeas review to determine if these guys are being lawfully held in the first place (which, of course, they are, the same as it was lawful to hold all those Nazi prisoners we took), and that a habeas review of their criminal incarceration would only be ripe once they were actually convicted.

Nope. They went the full-on retard route. The prisoners get to challenge their trial in advance of actually having the trial.

And the majority laughingly posits that part of their reason for demanding this is to prevent delay in their claims being heard. Uh-huh.

What a disgrace.



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Labels: law, SCOTUS, terrorism

The NYT, London Times and the BBC are reporting that
Pakinstan is furious over an incident on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

A. J. Strata has examined the information and asks Exactly What Happened On The Pakistan-Afghan Border? Did We Uncover Taliban Allies Inside The Pakistan Government?

Strata:

My conclusion is the incident actually exposed a much rumored ISI mole who is working for the Taliban, and seems to point to a situation where the Frontier Corps manning the outposts are manned by Taliban allies who probably provided cover fire for their retreating allies and attracted US fire.

He concludes that

First there was the attack, then the counter-attack, and then the cover fire from the outposts directed at US and coalition forces, making those outposts legitimate targets. And I think when the dust settles it will be discovered ISI sympathizers (like the one who was the source for the AFP story) helped Taliban agents get slots in the Frontier Corps so their comrades could slip across the border and execute raids.

You can see video of the attack here

UPDATE, Friday 14 June
The dark frontier.



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Labels: Afghanistan, Pakistan, terrorism

Via the Baron, ALGERIA: MOTHER OF AL-QAEDA'S EMIR ASKS HIM TO LAY DOWN ARMS

"El Hadja Zhor", the mother of the national emir leading al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb, Abdelmalek Droukdal, has launched an appeal to her son persuading him to lay down arms.

Sensible words, indeed.

Interestingly, "El Hadja" means an elderly woman in Arabic. Can't she at least be referred to by her name, instead of "the old lady"?



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Labels: al-Qaeda, terrorism

The NYT today, Embassy Attack in Pakistan Kills 4, and the article mentions,

The bomb was the second effort to target foreigners in Islamabad in the last few months and came as the civilian government has signed a series of peace deals with Islamic militants in the nation's tribal areas.

Appeasement never works.

Then there is the old Mohammed cartoons excuse: Bloomberg

Denmark's three biggest newspapers, and about a dozen regional ones, on Feb. 13 reprinted an image of the Prophet Muhammad by cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, after police said he was the target of a terrorist-related murder plot. The publication of cartoons has triggered widespread protests in Pakistan, where 97 percent of the population is Muslim.

Gates of Vienna points out that,

Ever since their recent ban on the wearing of headscarves in courtrooms by judges, the Danes have been expecting trouble from the world’s 4.9 octillion outraged Muslims.

Trouble finally arrived today in the form of a car bomb detonated in front of the Danish embassy in Pakistan. Preliminary reports indicate that no actual Danes were injured or killed in the attack. Like so many other expressions of Muslim indignation, the work of the terrorists has had the primary effect of killing and maiming other Muslims.

The Beeb has the weirdest headline: Blast by Pakistan Danish embassy. Blast by? Do they mean to imply that the Danish embassy is to blame? As you can see in their own video report, the explosion was at the embassy site.

Or can't the Beeb get themselves to call an attack an attack?

UPDATE, Wednesday June 4
Pakistan ambassador to Denmark: 'Are you satisfied?'

(The Carnival of Latin America will be up in an hour or two. Please bear with me.)



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Labels: Denmark, Islamic Jihad, Mohammed cartoons, Pakistan, terrorism

Via Memeorandum, Thomas Joscelyn reviews Andrew McCarthy's book, Willful Blindness: Memoir of the Jihad. McCarthy was the prosecutor responsible for leading the investigation of Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and others involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Joscelyn's review shows an overview of that case, but more importantly (emphasis added),

Had McCarthy stopped at telling the story of the many tactical failures that allowed Rahman's terrorists to menace America in the early 1990s, Willful Blindness would have been an invaluable addition to the literature of 9/11. But he takes his argument a step further, showing how these tactical failures were merely symptoms of a larger strategic failure to comprehend the nature of our terrorist enemies. In the process, McCarthy has given us one of the most important books on jihadist terrorism.

The strategic failure McCarthy exposes is ongoing, and extends even to something as basic as naming the enemy. Just as Willful Blindness was released, the State Department and other agencies published an edict banning the use of the word "jihadist" (as well as similar terms) from the government's lexicon. The thinking is that the terrorists like to call themselves "jihadists," thereby appropriating an Islamic term which can have far more benevolent meanings, such as the struggle for spiritual betterment or simply to do good.

It is true that, in some Islamic traditions, "jihad" has been endowed with such inoffensive meanings. But as McCarthy rightly argues, "jihad" has far more frequently been used to connote violent campaigns against infidels since the earliest days of Islam. When Sheikh Rahman called on his followers to wage "jihad," they knew that their master did not mean for them to become absorbed in prayer.

Moreover, Washington is apparently too obtuse to notice that Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda's terrorists, Tehran's mullahs, and Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi clerics have called for a militant brand of jihad persistently over the past several decades. All of these parties know how their words will be interpreted by the Muslim masses, and no fiat from the Washington bureaucracy will undo this widely accepted meaning.

Not only does Washington have a hard time properly naming our jihadist enemies, it still fails to understand that terrorist-sponsoring regimes have long backed them. Here, McCarthy has been at the forefront of explaining how jihadist terrorism is frequently, but not exclusively, a tool of hostile regimes: Writing in these pages in 1998 ("The Sudan Connection"), he explored the many ties between the 1993 plotters and the Sudanese regime then led by an Islamic radical named Hassan al-Turabi. Indeed, Turabi and Rahman were longtime friends and allies. McCarthy returns to this aspect of the story in Willful Blindness to show how Sudan's U.N. delegation provided material support to Rahman's terrorists as they plotted to blow up New York's landmarks. (The Clinton administration even expelled two Sudanese delegates because of their involvement.)

Sudan's sponsorship went far beyond Rahman's goons. In the early 1990s Turabi forged a broad terrorist coalition that included Osama bin Laden's core group of followers, all of al Qaeda's affiliates, and a number of other organizations. Turabi envisioned bringing all of these parties together in one grand anti-American terrorist coalition. And he received the support of the two leading state sponsors of terrorism: Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the mullahs' Iran. Out of this witch's brew of state and nonstate actors grew the network that we commonly call "al Qaeda."

It is beyond my scope here to summarize all of the evidence that supports this thesis, but suffice it to say that McCarthy is exactly right when he asserts,

It is not difficult to find some current or former intelligence official ready and willing to opine that Sunnis [such as Rahman and bin Laden] would never cooperate with secularists or Shiites--overlooking abundant evidence of the Ba'athist Saddam Hussein coddling Sunni jihadists and a years-long history of collaboration between al Qaeda and Shiite Hezbollah.

McCarthy argues that, more than a decade after the Blind Sheikh was convicted of inspiring terrorism on American soil, America remains largely blind. Even the September 11 attacks did not fully awaken our nation, or its leaders, from their slumber. An implacable hate drives our enemies to never-ending violence. For them, we are the "other," infidels who deserve to be slaughtered as victims of a religious jihad, and there are many who are willing to support their war on us.

Scott Johnson at Powerline points out that

In the Bush administration, the "willful blindness" takes the form of political correctness. This political correctness, however, is more than an intellectual failure. On the one hand, the administration has supported the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation and the naming of CAIR and the Islamic Society of North America as HLF's unindicted co-conspirators supporting Hamas. On the other hand, the adminstration continues to treat CAIR and ISNA, for example, as respectable organizations and occasional partners.

On the Democratic side, the failure runs deeper. Listening to the Democratic debates over the past year, one could not help but be struck by the candidates' understanding of the Bush administration as an enemy far more formidable than any we are facing beyond our borders. Next to the Bush administration, the threats posed by Iran, Syria and their terrorist proxies pale in comparison. Should the Iranian Revolutionary Guard be designated a terrorist group? According to Barack Obama, this is going too far: the Bush administration is merely engaged in "saber rattling." He would prefer to rattle the tea cups with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran.

Scott quotes from Bruce Thorton's review,

This jihadist ideology motivated Abdel Rahman and the 9/11 jihadists, and continues to motivate Islamic terrorism today. But, then and now, this obvious traditional belief is ignored or rationalized away by those entrusted with our security: The secretary of state publicly croons that Islam is the "religion of peace and love," and the State and Homeland Security departments instruct their employees not to use words like "jihad" or "mujahedeen" (holy warrior) in their communications. In contrast to this delusional thinking, McCarthy bluntly, and correctly, states the obvious: "Islam is a dangerous creed. It rejects core aspects of Western liberalism: self-determination, freedom of choice, freedom of conscience, equality under the law." We refuse to face the truth about Islam, and thus we disarm ourselves before "a doctrine that rejects our way of life and a culture unwilling or unable to suppress the savage element it breeds wherever it takes hold."

In yesterday's podcast Dr. Andrew Bostom discussed his book The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History where he examined a vast amount of Middle Eastern Islamic anti-Semitic literature that has endured through the ages, literature that goes ignored. From the Middle East through Europe, the US and Latin America, the Jihad continues.

We are blinding ourselves again and again to the reality of Jihad. When will we wake up?



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Labels: Islamic Jihad, Middle East, terrorism, USA

ABC News has this report, Al Qaeda Supporters' Tape to Call for Use of WMDs

"There have been several reports that al Qaeda will release a new message calling for the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against civilians," FBI spokesman Richard Kolko told ABC News in an e-mail.

"Although there have been similar messages in the past, the FBI and [Department of Homeland Security] have no intelligence of any specific plot or indication of a threat to the U.S.," the e-mail said. "The FBI and U.S. intelligence community will review the message for any intelligence value."

The video in question appears to have been put together by jihadi supporter(s) and is already available on a YouTube channel devoted to spreading al Qaeda propaganda.

Counterterrorism blog states the video is

meandering, boring, and difficult to follow--and it certainly was not the product of Al-Qaida.

CT Blog points at the possiblity of a prank. Jawa is not alarmed but remains cautious to the possibility that the video may point to a bacteriological attack on September 2008.

However, in Iraq a new al-Qaeda cell has been created for Iraqis under 16 years old; the cell is named "The Youths of Heaven". And that is no prank. (h/t the Baron)

UPDATE
With al-Qaeda, it's starting to look as if it's a matter of women and children first...



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Labels: al-Qaeda, Iraq, terrorism, WMDs

FARC leader 'dead' says military

The leader of Colombia's largest rebel group, the Farc, has died, the military has claimed in a statement.

A national news magazine had earlier reported the death of Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda on 26 March, citing the defence minister, Juan Manuel Santos.

There has been no confirmation from guerrilla sources. The top rebel commander's death has been rumoured and disproved several times in the past.

But correspondents say the death would be a big blow to the Farc if confirmed.

The cause of death sounds like one of Ace's headlines: the Colombians say that three bombing raids had targeted the area where Mr Marulanda was believed to have been staying, while the FARC (unofficialy) say it was a heart attack. As Ace would put it, "Tirofijo dead of heart attack, or raid, but mostly raid". Either way, Tirofijo's dead.

Chavez is not going to sleep well tonight. He's been in bed with the FARC for a long time, and the FARC is now under siege. The Colombian government is fighting a winning battle against the FARC. The death of the head of the FARC is a huge blow to Hugo's Communist buddies. The CNN article reminds us

Established as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party in 1964, FARC is Colombia's oldest, largest and best-equipped Marxist rebel group, according to the U.S. Department of State.

The Economist has a good summary of Chavez's involvement with the FARC (regular readers of this blog know this, but here it is for review)
The FARC files: Just how much help has Hugo Chavez given to Colombia's guerrillas?

Batches of the documents have been seen by The Economist and several other publications. They appear to show that Mr Chavez offered the FARC up to $300m, and talked of allocating the guerrillas an oil ration which they could sell for profit. They also suggest that Venezuelan army officers helped the FARC to obtain small arms, such as rocket-propelled grenades, and to set up meetings with arms dealers.

Venezuelan officials have dismissed the documents as fabrications. That was contradicted by Ronald Noble, Interpol's secretary-general, who announced in Bogota on May 15th, after two months of study by a team of 64 foreign experts, that the computer files came from the FARC camp and had not been modified in any way. Mr Chavez called this "ridiculous", questioning the impartiality of Mr Noble, who is American, and labelling him a "gringo policeman". However, in one indication of their accuracy, the documents provided information that in March guided police in Costa Rica to a house where they found $480,000 in cash, as an e-mail suggested.
...
The captured documents seem to confirm that FARC commanders have co-ordinated closely with Venezuelan army and intelligence officers on the border for several years, according to a Colombian official.

The documents also cast light on the FARC's strategic thinking. Its overriding objective seems to be to obtain international recognition as a "belligerent force" and to persuade the EU to stop labelling it a terrorist group. The guerrillas are desperate to establish a "strategic alliance" with Mr Chávez. But that was still just an aspiration in early 2007, the documents suggest. "We don't know if we enjoy their trust," writes Jorge Briceño (alias "Mono Jojoy"), the FARC's military leader, to other members of the secretariat.

Contacts intensified last September after Mr Uribe asked Mr Chavez to mediate with the FARC to release the guerrillas' hostages, including Ingrid Betancourt, a politician with French and Colombian nationality. The secretariat agreed to send one of its members, Iván Márquez, to meet Mr Chávez in Caracas to talk about swapping the hostages for jailed guerrillas—but also, wrote Mr Briceño, "to lay the foundations for mutual political relations...even though this might be in the long term."

At their meeting, Mr Chavez "approved totally and without batting an eyelid" a FARC request for $300m, Mr Márquez reported to his colleagues in a message published by Spain's El País and Colombia's Semana. In a long e-mail 12 days later, Mr Briceño notes that it was not clear whether the money was "a loan or for solidarity" but that the FARC should offer Mr Chavez help in return. According to a document obtained by the Wall Street Journal, Mr Chavez's interior minister, Ramon Rodríguez Chacin, asked the FARC to train Venezuelan soldiers in guerrilla tactics for use if the United States were to invade.

In an e-mail dated February 8th, Mr Marquez and a colleague report that Mr Chavez (whom they identify with the pseudonym "Angel") had told them that the first $50m was "available", with another $200m over the course of the year. However, there is no corroboration as to whether any money was actually paid. Colombian officials have long said that the FARC was wealthy through drug money. So why were they so jubilant about the loan? Perhaps because army pressure against the guerrillas has disrupted their drug business. The government has evidence that some FARC fronts are short of cash and have trouble paying farmers for coca paste, says Sergio Jaramillo, the deputy defence minister.

The secretariat's e-mail correspondence sheds light on several other matters. It confirms that Manuel Marulanda, the FARC's veteran leader, is still alive and apparently in overall command. It also shows the FARC's cynicism about the plight of its hostages. Mr Briceño says repeatedly that he does not expect to achieve the hostage-for-prisoners swap while Mr Uribe is in power but that the FARC will keep pushing it to create problems for the president. When Mr Chavez asked for Ms Betancourt's release "we told him that if we did that we would be without cards," Mr Marquez writes.

The e-mails show the extent to which the army has the FARC on the run: the secretariat members often complain of their difficulties in communicating with each other. Days after Mr Reyes was killed another member of the secretariat, Ivan Rios, was murdered by his own bodyguard. This week Mr Ríos's deputy, Nelly Avila Moreno (aka "Karina"), surrendered. But the FARC is far from defeated. In an e-mail last August Mr Briceño notes that guerrilla landmines are undermining army morale. Their impact is "very good and we are going to increase them," he writes.

Go read every word.

UPDATE
Via Poliblogger, Colombian government statement (in Spanish)


Welcome, Instapundit, Hot Air, Memeorandum, American Thinker and Gateway Pundit readers. Please visit often, and don't miss the Monday Carnivals of Latin America and the Caribbean.



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Labels: Colombia, FARC, Hugo Chavez, terrorism, Venezuela

In today's NYT, A Living-Room Crusade via Blogging

And yet Ms. Novak has become so well known in Yemen that newspaper editors say they sell more copies if her photograph - blond and smiling - is on the cover. Her blog, an outspoken news bulletin on Yemeni affairs, is banned there. The government's allies routinely vilify her in print as an American agent, a Shiite monarchist, a member of Al Qaeda, or "the Zionist Novak."

The worst of her many offenses is her dogged campaign on behalf of a Yemeni journalist, Abdul Karim al-Khaiwani, who incurred his government's wrath by writing about a bloody rebellion in the far north of the country. He is on trial on sedition charges that could bring the death penalty, with a verdict expected Wednesday.

I have the honor of having met Jane and regard her as a friend.

Go to Jane's blog Armies of Liberation right now and read this,

Welcome New York Times readers! If you want to help entrench civil rights in the Middle East, please sign this petition, click here. It's a letter campaign to the Yemeni government, US and EU for the Yemeni journalist Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani who may be sentenced to death in tomorrow for insulting his president in an article. We can't have that. No, no, no. So please click here. It will help, really!

Besides the near genocidal war in the north of Yemen that displaced 100,000 civilians, there's broad and growing civil unrest in the south regions, the 10 million Yemeni children are the third hungriest child population on earth, and the city of Taiz only gets public water every 40 days. It's terrible. Yemen released all the terrorists who were convicted in the USS Cole attack that killed 17 US sailors in the port of Aden in 2000. There's an agreement between the Yemeni government and al-Qaeda, and the Yemeni government publicly defends it. The Yemeni military and security services are all in hands of President Ali Abdullah Saleh's direct relatives, and so is all the money from the oil revenue and donor aid. Corruption and nepotism is rampant, so about half the people live on under $2/day. There's almost no heath care, educational facilities, electricity or security in the rural areas where 70% of the people live. However, there is a strong democracy and reform movement that routinely gets crushed by the government, as is happening in the case of al-Khaiwani. For more on Yemen, click the Janes Articles link above. Details and supporting links on al-Khaiwani:
While the USS Cole bombers are all free in Yemen, my friend the Yemeni journalist Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani will be sentenced May 21 in a bogus trial and likely will get the death penalty or a long prison term. He is charged with insulting the president and demoralizing the military with an article about the Sa'ada war. He is an internationally renowned journalist and one of Yemen's most prominent and outspoken democracy advocates.

This is the guy I made the online petition for in March 2005 and the bloggers all helped and he got amnesty. Since then he and I have become good friends. He loves democracy as much as I do. And he's paid the price for it. Since he was released in 2005, Al-Khaiwani has been beaten, kidnapped, censored and imprisoned. His paper was cloned, his website blocked and his children threatened.

Read the rest. Sign the petition. Save a life.

Cross-posted at PoliGazette



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Labels: NYT, terrorism, Yemen

UPDATE
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French courts are due to render a verdict on the libel suit brought about by a media watchdog group against France2, a government-run news TV station. The case has to do with a news report where France2 reporter Charles Enderlin claimed that the child Mohammed al Dura had been shot dead by the Israeli Defense Forces.

The verdict on the al-Dura trial in France is due tomorrow.

This morning at 11AM, Dr Richard Landes and Yaacov Ben Moshe of Second Draft discuss what the possible verdicts will mean for the media, France, Israel and the Middle East.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) has BACKGROUNDER: Mohammed Al Dura
Anatomy of a French Media Scandal. From their timeline:

2000
Sept. 30, 2000:
Palestinian gunmen and Israelis soldiers clash at the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip. A large contingent of foreign reporters, photographers and television crews are present, including France 2 cameraman Talal Abu Rahma. Much of the day’s events are filmed by the various (20 or so) television crews, but only Abu Rahma records what he claims to be Mohammed Al Dura’s death by Israeli bullets. (A Reuters clip apparently captures Jamal and Mohammed Al Dura filmed from a different angle.) He records 27 minutes of footage that day. While France 2 Middle East Bureau Chief Charles Enderlin is not at the scene at this time, he later views Abu Rahma’s clips and accepts the cameraman’s account of events.

Enderlin edits the film and provides the voice-over commentary for that evening’s news broadcast. Only a small portion (55 seconds) of Abu Rahma's footage is broadcast on the evening news. The footage shows Jamal Al Dura and his son Mohammed huddled behind a thick concrete barrel, gunshots hitting the wall behind them. The footage does not show the child dying.

Correspondent Charles Enderlin comments on the footage for France 2 :

3 pm... everything has turned over near the Netzarim settlement in the Gaza Strip...here Jamal and his son Mohammed are the targets of gunshots that have come from the Israeli position.... A new burst of gunfire, Mohammed is dead and his father seriously wounded.

France 2 distributes the footage – free of charge – to the global media, and it is broadcast around the world.

Oct. 1, 2000:
ABC's Gillian Findlay also says the boy died "under Israeli fire." She repeats this language a few days later. Other media outlets make clear that the father and son were caught in the crossfire between Israelis and Palestinians.

Oct. 3, 2000:
Palestinian Cameraman Testifies

Talal Abu Rahma volunteers to testify in a sworn statement to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights the details of what he saw at Netzarim on Sept. 30. He says:

I spent about 27 minutes photographing the incident which took place for 45 minutes.... I can confirm that the child was intentionally and in cold blood shot dead and his father injured by the Israeli army.

(For complete statement, click here.)

Preliminary IDF Investigation

There is no autopsy on the boy and no bullets recovered. After a hurried preliminary investigation, the IDF expresses sorrow over the tragedy, concluding that its troops were probably responsible for killing Al Dura. IDF Major General Giora Eiland says:

There is no way to prove who shot him. But from the angles from which we fired, it is likely that he was hit from our gunfire.... It is very reasonable that they were hit from our gunfire.

While the IDF attempts to put the incident to rest by accepting responsibility for Al Dura’s death, Major General Yom Tov Samia, commanding officer at the time, and other senior officers in the Southern Command are convinced that IDF soldiers have not shot the boy.

October 2000:
Nahum Shahaf, an Israeli physicist, contacts Major General Samia to voice his doubt about Israeli responsibility and offers to collaborate in an investigation of the matter. Samia agrees and the IDF investigates further.

Oct. 23, 2000:
An IDF re-enactment of the Al Dura incident, with the participation of Nahum Shahaf, raises serious doubt about whether the gunfire could have come from Israeli positions. Investigators lay out replicas of the Israeli army position, and the concrete barrel and wall which sheltered Al Dura. Soldiers fire shots at the barrel and wall using a variety of different weapons and study the indentations made by the bullets. Also studied is the dust clouds which result from the wall being struck by bullets from various angles. The shape and size of the clouds is compared to the shape and size of dust clouds in the video of Al Dura.

The re-enactment indicates that based on the location of the Israeli soldiers, the concrete barrel would have prevented Israeli bullets from hitting Jamal and Mohammed Al Dura. The bullet holes and dust clouds in the Al Dura video further indicate that the fatal shots could not have come from the Israeli position, but rather from an area more directly across from the father and son, near a Palestinian police position.

Oct. 25, 2000:
Telerama, a French magazine, publishes an interview with Charles Enderlin in which he explains the brevity of the news clip broadcast of the incident. He asserts:

I cut the images of the child's agony (death throes), they were unbearable. The story was told, the news delivered. It would not have added anything more...As for the moment when the child received the bullets, it was not even filmed.
Nov. 27, 2000:
IDF releases the findings of its comprehensive investigation into the Al Dura killing. It concludes that Al Dura was likely killed by Palestinian gunfire. States Israeli Major General Yom Tov Samia:

A comprehensive investigation conducted in the last weeks casts serious doubt that the boy was hit by Israeli fire. It is quite plausible that the boy was hit by Palestinian bullets in the course of the exchange of fire that took place in the area.

Dr. Landes produced the documentary Pallywood. You can download it from Second Draft, and here's the YouTube:


The podcast starts at 11AM Eastern, and the chat room's open by 10:45. The call-in number is (646) 652-2639. Join us!





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Labels: AlDura, France, France2, Israel, Middle East, terrorism

At the Weekly Standard blog: More Evidence of Chavez Terror Ties

...the evidence suggests that Chavez was working hard to upgrade FARC's weaponry and reach:

The documents--more than a dozen internal rebel messages--detail several years of close cooperation between top officials in Venezuela's government and military and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, including the construction of rebel training facilities on Venezuelan soil.

They also suggest Venezuela was preparing to loan the rebels at least US$250 million (euro190 million), provide them with Russian weapons and possibly even help them obtain surface-to-air missiles for use against Colombian military aircraft.

Most importantly, they outline a joint strategic project between Venezuela and the Colombian rebels, with Venezuela even seeking rebel training in "asymmetrical warfare" in preparation for a feared U.S. invasion.

Where are the Democrats?

Beyond that, Democrats will have to answer for coddling this dictator. Joe Kennedy runs around extolling Chavez's virtues, Jimmy Carter disregards evidence that Chavez stole his 2004 victory, liberal actors kowtow to him for money, and Speaker Pelosi delivers on his top priority: defeat of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

And let's not forget Bill Richardson.




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Labels: FARC, Hugo Chavez, terrorism, Venezuela

Welcome to the Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean. If you would like your posts included in the Carnivals, please email me: faustaw2 "at" gmail "dot" com.

The big story: The FARC has set up undercover cells abroad in 17 countries.
Spanish newspaper El Pais published yesterday a report, Las FARC crean células clandestinas para su expansión internacional
Documentos del ordenador de Reyes revelan una red de apoyo en 17 países.
FARC creates clandestine cells for international expansion
Documents from Reyes's computer reveal a support network in 17 countries.

The article (in Spanish) states that the FARC, through its Coordinadora Continental Bolivariana (CCB) [Continental Bolivarian Coordination] network created in 2003, the FARC has developed a strategy that involves legal groups, clandestine cells and guerrilla training. These groups are closely associated with leftist organizations in seventeen countries, including Germany and Switzerland.

They opened four organizations in Mexico, managed by two cells that answer directly to the Secretariado, the FARC's leadership.

In the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela the FARC sponsor guerrillas through so-called "Biodiversity Forums", in addition to "official political-diplomatic relations" with Communist parties and the governments of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador.

Their aim, is

"Crear un gran Ejército revolucionario con el apoyo de masas para derrocar el sistema capitalista e instalar el socialismo".
"To create a great revolutionary Army with the support of the masses in order to destry the capitalist system and install socialism."

Al Jazeeera has a related Report: Farc set up cells abroad

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia has established undercover cells abroad in 17 countries, a Spanish newspaper says, quoting from documents found on the computer of Raul Reyes, a slain commander of the anti-government group.

All this information comes from the computers seized from Raul Reyes.

Both Interpol and US intelligence officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence have verified that the Reyes files are authentic.

Maite Rico of El Pais continues today their series on the FARC with this article, La guerrilla que pasó a ser mafia
Los documentos de Raúl Reyes reflejan la descomposición interna de las FARC The guerrilla that became a mafia: Raul Reyes's documents show the FARC's internal corrosion.

Among the details in today's article in addition to their narcotraffic involvement, the FARC is the world's largest planter of land mines, their ties with internations criminal organizations, and their revenues from kidnappings, among them half a million dollars revenue from kidnapping two Swiss executives from pharmaceutical company Novartis.

You can read the articles at El Pais in Spanish. The above is my translation and summary. Please credit me if you use it. Thank you.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Add Angela Merkel to the list of people Hugo has insulted: Venezuela's Chavez slams Germany's Merkel comments

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday almost told German Chancellor Angela Merkel to go to hell, but stopped short of insulting the woman leader on Mother's Day.
Instead he called her a political descendant of Adolf Hitler and German fascism.
"Ms. Chancellor, you can go to ...," he said, pausing for effect and eliciting giggles from the audience, a group of military officers, cabinet ministers and government officials. "Because she's a woman I won't say anything else."

Being insulted by Chavez is indeed a mark of honor.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
CARNIVAL LINKS:

LATIN AMERICA
South America: Leaders Warn of Autonomy Attempts in Venezuela, Ecuador

Narco subs pose new challenge for US coast guards

BOLIVIA
Chavez Threatens To Intervene in Bolivia!

Bolivia's largest state votes on sweeping autonomy measure

Open letter to my Santa Cruz friends in Bolivia

BRAZIL
Amazon's future in delicate balance

CHILE
Hacker leaks 6m Chileans' records

COLOMBIA
New Colombia drug gangs wreak havoc

CUBA
The "Non-Judgmental" Michael Moore

Slave-labor tourism: Destinations: Varadero and Havana

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Two Cheers for Fernandez: The president heads for a third term

ECUADOR
Ecuador's Constitution: Going nowhere
Another leftist bogs down

Chavez and Correa Must Go: FARC Materials Authentic

MEXICO
Mexican Drug Cartels Making Audacious Pitch for Recruits

Democrats wrong on cutting Mexican anti-drug aid

Via Siggy, Believers flock to 'Narco Saint's' shrine

NICARAGUA
Nicaraguan Councils Stir Fear of Dictatorship

PERU
Peru Takes The Other Path

Poverty amid progress: A revolution in South America's fastest-growing economy is not reaching everyone

PUERTO RICO
Puerto Rico Presidential Primary roundup at American Taino

Obama Slaps the Puerto Ricans in the Face

VENEZUELA
A must-read: From FARC to Venezuela to...

Chavez sought Belarus help for Colombian rebels: report

Chavez Tried to Arm FARC with Help From Belarus
Chavez tried to get arms from Belarus for FARC
Chavez tried to arm FARC, El Pais reports

Via Maggie and Instapundit, Morning Bell: Why Are Liberals Actively Helping Terrorists?

Colby Cosh on Hugo Chavez and FARC: Meet the Western Hemisphere's first state sponsor of terrorism

A simple cure for Venezuela's inflation

ENTERTAINMENT
Time to dance to Imigrante latino by Hermanos Flores (Flores Brothers) from El Salvador:




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Labels: Bolivia, Brazil, Carnival of Latin America, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, FARC, Hugo Chavez, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Puerto Rico, terrorism, Venezuela

Weekly Standard Blog:

This powerful editorial in the Wall Street Journal provides a welcome corrective. It turns out that 37 former Gitmo detainees have used their freedom to rejoin the jihad.

'Captive 220' is but one of them:

Some 500 detainees have been released from Guantanamo over the years, mostly into foreign custody. Another 65 of the remaining 270 detainees are also slated to go. Yet of all the prisoners released, the Pentagon is confident that only 38 pose no security threat. So much for the notion that the Gitmo detainees consist mostly of wrong-time, wrong-place innocents caught up in an American maw.

The Defense Intelligence Agency reported on May 1 that at least 36 former Guantanamo inmates have "returned to the fight." They include Maulavi Abdul Ghaffar, who was released after eight months in Gitmo and later became the Taliban's regional commander in Uruzgan and Helmand provinces. He was killed by Afghan security forces in September 2004.

Another former detainee, Abdullah Mahsud, was released from Guantanamo in March 2004. He later kidnapped two Chinese engineers in Pakistan (one of whom was shot during a rescue operation). In July 2007 he blew himself up as Pakistani police sought to apprehend him.

Labels: terrorism

Headline at the London Times: "murderous Islamic leader will not be missed", even when he was "a youth":

As head of al-Shabaab - "the youth" - he is implicated in the murders of 16 foreigners including the BBC journalist Kate Peyton.

But it was during the reign of the Islamic Courts Union that he came to prominence. His few hundred fighters were credited with providing the courts with their military muscle as they took over much of central and southern Somalia the year before last.

Since their defeat in December 2006, at the hands of Ethiopia's military machine, Ayro has gradually moved away from his former allies in the courts and waged his own Jihadist war against Somalia’s feeble government.

His tactics echoed those pioneered by Iraqi insurgents. His fighters posted videos on the internet warning peacekeepers they would be targeted and claimed responsibility for suicide attacks. Roadside bombs became a daily occurrence in the capital Mogadishu.

Taking out Ayro, who analysts believe trained in Afghanistan with al Qaeda, has been a key objective of US military policy in the Horn.

He was the target of an airstrike last year when US military officials say DNA evidence showed he was wounded. Then, in March, al Shabaab was designated a terrorist organisation by the State Department.

Or, as Ace would put it, Somali Al-Qaeda Leader Succumbs to Chronic Endocrine Fatigue, GBU-15, but Mostly the GBU-15



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Labels: al-Qaeda, Somalia, terrorism

The Obama affiliation with Weather Underground unrepentant ex-terrorists Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers was the big story yesterday at a lot of blogs. I intentionally waited to post on it today because we should be paying attention for more than one news cycle.

Powerline Blog: The friends of Barack Obama, part I

It turns out that we don't have to go back as far as 2001 to find that Obama's friends are as unrepentant as ever. Just last year, Ayers and Dohrn attended a reunion--no kidding--of what must have been the tiny remnant of SDS members who still haven't figured out that they were wrong about everything. Listen to what Bill Ayers, who hosted Barack Obama's first fundraiser, has to say about the United States.

Go to Powerline to listen. Part II has more. Keep in mind that those clips are from a reunion in November 2007.

Marathon Pundit has much more in Ayers and Dohrn, starting here: Broadway Baby and Weather Underground. Follow the links.

Dohrn is now a law professor at Northwestern University. Her husband Ayers is an education professor at the University of Illinois.

Siggy points to this article: Obama's Real Bill Ayers Problem
The ex-Weatherman is now a radical educator with influence (emphasis added)

Barack Obama complains that he's been unfairly attacked for a casual political and social relationship with his neighbor, former Weatherman Bill Ayers. Obama has a point. In the ultraliberal Hyde Park community where the presidential candidate first earned his political spurs, Ayers is widely regarded as a member in good standing of the city’s civic establishment, not an unrepentant domestic terrorist. But Obama and his critics are arguing about the wrong moral question. The more pressing issue is not the damage done by the Weather Underground 40 years ago, but the far greater harm inflicted on the nation's schoolchildren by the political and educational movement in which Ayers plays a leading role today.
...
Chicago's liberals have chosen to define deviancy down in Ayers's case, and Obama can't be blamed for that.

What he can be blamed for is not acknowledging that his neighbor has a political agenda that, if successful, would make it impossible to lift academic achievement for disadvantaged children. As I have shown elsewhere in City Journal, Ayers's politics have hardly changed since his Weatherman days. He still boasts about working full-time to bring down American capitalism and imperialism. This time, however, he does it from his tenured perch as Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Instead of planting bombs in public buildings, Ayers now works to indoctrinate America's future teachers in the revolutionary cause, urging them to pass on the lessons to their public school students.

Indeed, the education department at the University of Illinois is a hotbed for the radical education professoriate. As Ayers puts it in one of his course descriptions, prospective K–12 teachers need to "be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, a teacher teaching for social justice and liberation." Ayers's texts on the imperative of social-justice teaching are among the most popular works in the syllabi of the nation’s ed schools and teacher-training institutes. One of Ayers's major themes is that the American public school system is nothing but a reflection of capitalist hegemony. Thus, the mission of all progressive teachers is to take back the classrooms and turn them into laboratories of revolutionary change.
...
Ayers's influence on what is taught in the nation's public schools is likely to grow in the future. Last month, he was elected vice president for curriculum of the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association (AERA), the nation's largest organization of education-school professors and researchers. Ayers won the election handily, and there is no doubt that his fellow education professors knew whom they were voting for. In the short biographical statement distributed to prospective voters beforehand, Ayers listed among his scholarly books Fugitive Days, an unapologetic memoir about his ten years in the Weather Underground. The book includes dramatic accounts of how he bombed the Pentagon and other public buildings.

AERA already does a great deal to advance the social-justice teaching agenda in the nation’s schools and has established a Social Justice Division with its own executive director. With Bill Ayers now part of the organization's national leadership, you can be sure that it will encourage even more funding and support for research on how teachers can promote left-wing ideology in the nation's classrooms—and correspondingly less support for research on such mundane subjects as the best methods for teaching underprivileged children to read.

This is a particularly harmful waste of school hours for underprivileged children who need a strong and rigorous school curriculum since school is most likely the only place where they would learn literacy skills, without which they can not progress: Betsy asks,

Think of the problems that we have today in teaching literacy and basic math skills. Would any of those problems be ameliorated by teaching "social justice and liberation?"

Also via Siggy, At NPR

The issue, though, isn't what Ayers thought then; it's what he thinks now.

Read Ayers' memoir, Fugitive Days, which was published — in actual horrific irony — on Sept. 10, 2001. Though I have to admit it's pretty well written, it's filled with more paternalism ("A squad of cops in Cleveland had dragged Black men from a motel and shot them down in cold blood, and now we would, I thought, even the score.") and romanticism of what were ultimately terrorist acts. Ayers was also quoted in 2001 saying that he has no regrets for his past actions, but rather he feels that "we didn't do enough." Take a gander at his Web site and see if you find contrition or self-aggrandizement.

What someone did 40 years ago — within reason — should not damn that person forever. But that's assuming offending individuals pay their debt to society and repent. Ayers has done neither.

I genuinely hope Obama's got as much distance as humanly possible between himself and Ayers, and that Ayers is just, as Obama said in the debate, "a guy who lives in my neighborhood."

Some neighborhood: There are Auchi, Rezko, and terrorist fundraisers, too.

Obama, Auchi, Rezko Timeline? A Conspiracy? Don't forget to check Rezkorama for developments on that case.

Terrorist fundraisers for Obama. Roundup and more at Stop the ACLU, visuals by Doug Ross.

Gateway Pundit links to videos:


The distractions? Or the reality?


Rick Moran asks, Is Obama in trouble?. Well, from looking at all the above, he ought to be.

Special thanks to Larwyn for the links.


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Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, education, Election2008, politics, terrorism

From the looks of it, Paraguay's new president Fernado Lugo is Hugo Chavez's latest buddy. As you can read in Bridget Johnson's article, Latin America’s Latest Marxist Leader Takes Power in Paraguay, Marxist former Bishop Fernando Lugo is the latest of Hugo's friends to come to power with the help of Hugo's oil money. He joins Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, Bolivian President Evo Morales, and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa in the choir paid for by Hugo's money. And I'm not including those suitcases full of money Hugo was sending Argentina's Cristina Kirchner.

This means the least competitive economy in South America is now in Chavez's pocket.

Paraguay has elected former Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo in spite of the fact that the Paraguayan constitution prohibits ministers of any faith from standing as a political candidate. Lugo claims to have resigned from his position, but unfortunately for him, the Catholic Church isn't amenable to resignations by ordained clergy since ordination is a Sacrament and carries a lifetime commitment. He may be defrocked.

Here is Lugo's BBC profile, which says that Lugo's ready to put the squeeze on Brazil:

In particular he wants Brazil to pay Paraguay a lot more money for the electricity it buys from their jointly-owned Itaipu dam, the world's biggest hydroelectric plant. He says he will take Brazil to the World Court in The Hague if necessary.

He also wants to establish relations with China

Lugo fits the populist cookie-cutter:

They are protectionists, rejecting Washington's proposals for free trade throughout the Western hemisphere, and preferring to build up a South American bloc as a counterweight to Nafta.

They are populists, using public projects to buy support. They are nationalists, picking fights with the US, the World Bank and, when all else fails, each other.

They are, if not anti-democratic, at least anti-parliamentary, articulating their peoples' contempt for politicians: Bonapartists, if you like.

Monsignor Lugo fits the mould neatly. He is a brilliant orator, whether in Spanish or in the indigenous language, Guaraní.

While he recently tempered his anti-yanquismo, he none the less attacked Washington's unhappy record of backing dictators. And, for all his ideological proximity to Brazil's leader, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, he played on anti-Brazilian nationalism.

Lugo's victory completes the triumph of the radical Left in South America.

Which makes Paraguay ripe for Hugo's Bolivarian Revolution.

The Latin Business Chronicle urges Lugo to follow Chile's example because of the dismal economic conditions after sixty-one years of Colorado party rule:

Paraguay needs to follow Chile's - not Venezuela's - example as a way to reduce the country's poverty and corruption.
...
First and foremost, Lugo should realize that Paraguay's status as the poorest nation in South America is not due to Capitalism, but rather the lack of true free markets. Even after Paraguay became a democracy nearly 20 years ago, the country continued to be dominated by corruption and the rule of influence instead of transparency and the rule of law.

Paraguay has the least competitive economy in all of Latin America, according to the 2007 Global Competitiveness Index from the World Economic Forum. It ranks 121 worldwide among the 131 nations the survey looked at. Its low rank was due to such factors as weak institutions, inefficient infrastructure, insufficient macro economic stability, little innovation and low technology readiness. Paraguay is among the countries with the lowest Internet and fixed telephony penetration in Latin America, according to the 2007 Latin Technology Index published by Latin Business Chronicle, which ranked its overall technology level at 15th out of 20 nations in the region.

Meanwhile, the Milken Institute says that Paraguay ranks as the second-worst in Latin America when it comes to access to capital for entrepreneurs. Only Haiti ranks worse, according to the Capital Access Index released in February. Paraguay ranked in 94h place out of 122 nations worldwide.
...
Transparency International gave the country a score of 2.4 (with 10 being best) on its 2007 survey of corruption perception. That makes Paraguay the fourth-most