Kabul in a Far Better Shape than You Think

Fire of Liberty

As I was watching FOX News this past Monday I came upon the rioters in the street burning cars and raising all kinds of hell in the streets of Kabul after a truck our soldiers were driving collided(faulty brakes)with several Afghan civilians. One thing that really got my attention was a young guy before a large group started shouting in perfect English that the folks in Afghanistan wanted Bush , the Americans, foreigners and their various influences out of Afghanistan for good. Now I'm not a complete expert on Afghanistan but I know that based on the pre-war nature of Kabul, the likelihood that an everyday Afghan enunciating such fluent English is very rare. I'm guessing he's part of the large groups of rabble-rousers who's migrated to Afghanistan from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf or even Europe to cause trouble and thus presented a sense of chaos in Kabul to the Western media. With cameras on the scene, folks from New York, L.A., Chicago, London, Paris, Berlin, and even Middle Georgia were presented with a deluge of scenes of cars and shops afire, rioters in the streets and the cameo of our English speaking thus presenting Afghanistan in complete chaos and the Afghan security forces and police absent from the scene. Now most folks would assume from the footage that all is lost in Kabul but luckily for us there's fine bloggers like Bill Roggio who are providing us a far better assessment of the situation in Kabul than what the MSM seems to report. According to Roggio's fine reporting over at Counterterrorism Blog the Afghan capital is at a relative calm which is far from what a casual viewer would have thought was possible. I'd say folks will gleam more knowledge from reading this post than anything the MSM has put together, so be sure to read it and get informed.

Hanging The Democracy Movement In The Wind

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Tonight in Tehran the mullahs are falling all over themselves in laughter because the United States has declared that they're willing to have direct talks with Iran. It looks like Secretary Rice is returning to her realist foreign policy training and pushed the march towards freedom foreign policy to the wayside to get in the good graces of Europe and the Republican Wets in the Senate. The only thing that this hat in hand approach towards Iran is providing some legitimacy for the mullahs. All the regime has to do is point out that their saber rattling has brought the 'Great Satan' to its knees much like it did in 1979. This show of weakness before the mullahs will push the radicalism in the Islamic world even further thus creating the strong horse versus weak horse scenario that the great Middle East historian Bernard Lewis has pointed out since September 11th, 2001. (He originally pointed this out in an article in Foreign Affairs upon reading Bin Laden's 1998 fatwa against the US).

The folks in the NSC, CIA, and State Department might think that this is a move in the right direction but they're leaving the democratic movement of Iran(Egypt, Lebanon, Syria) out on the lurch even when the regime is feeling the pressure of the democracy movement, see here. As you know, I've stood shoulder to shoulder with the folks of Iran who take on the Islamo-fascists each and every day and thus we should be focused more on following the Jeffersonian/Lincolnian/Reaganesque policy of promoting the principles of liberty and freedom and thus embracing the democracy movement throughout the world that President Bush stated in his 2nd Inaugural Address rather than giving a vast upper-hand to the mullahs by offering direct talks. It seems as of late that we're standing by the chicken coop door with the door opened and telling the fox to get his full. Where is the sanity to this move after standing by the forces of freedom for the last five years.

A Closer Look At Senate Immigration Bill

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Robert J. Samuelson, columnist for the Washington Post and Newsweek, has a wonderful column out today in Newsweek that shows the hidden costs of a comprehensive immigration reform policy that Senator Kennedy is praising to high heaven. According to Samuelson, the MSM (With the exception of FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, National Review) seemed to be singing like larks about how the Senate's bill would open an avenue for amnesty for the 12 million illegals already in this nation but failed to report to the news-consumers of America that the legislation would also doubles the limit on legal immigration from the current 20 million people to a whopping 40 million folks over the next twenty years. Now I don't know about you but if its a trying time for the current flow of legal immigrants to assimilate and become Americans along with the burden of granting amnesty for the 12 million illegal immigrants(Their families as well) one can imagine what we'll be in for if Congress doubles our immigration limit to 40 million. I'd say that Samuelson puts his finger on the trouble that is waiting down the track some twenty years from now when he notes the following:

But if it had, senators would have had to defend what they were doing as sound public policy. That's the real point. They would have had to debate whether such high levels of immigration are good or bad for the country. What arguments would they have used?

No one can contend that the United States needs expanded immigration to prevent the population from shrinking. Our population is aging but not shrinking. With present immigration policies, the Census Bureau projects a U.S. population of 420 million in 2050, up from 296 million in 2005. Another dubious argument is that much higher immigration would dramatically improve economic growth. From 2007 to 2016, the Senate bill might increase the economy's growth rate by a tiny 0.1 percentage point annually, estimates the Congressional Budget Office.

The doubling of legal immigration under the Senate bill that I cited at the outset comes from a previously unreported estimate made by White House economists. Because the president praised the Senate bill, the administration implicitly favors a big immigration expansion. The White House estimate could be low. Robert Rector of the conservative Heritage Foundation has a higher figure. The CBO has a projection that the White House describes as close to its own. But all the forecasts envision huge increases.

Our immigration laws involve a bewildering array of categories by which people can get a "green card'' -- the right to stay permanently. The Senate bill dramatically expands many of these categories and creates a large new one: "guest workers.'' The term is really a misnomer, because most "guest workers'' would receive an automatic right to apply for a green card and remain. The Senate bill authorizes 200,000 "guest workers'' annually, plus their spouses and minor children.

One obvious question is why most of the news media missed the larger immigration story. On May 15, Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama held a news conference with Heritage's Rector to announce their immigration projections and the estimated impact on the federal budget. Most national media didn't report the news conference. The next day, CBO released its budget and immigration estimates. These, too, were largely unreported.

If history follows as it did with the passage of previous immigration reforms, one can expect to see in twenty years time a huge mess boiling over after 40 million people immigrate here and another 14 million illegals cross over the border because they'll wager that they can come here illegally because the generation before them had received amnesty. At least we've got a columnist in the MSM like Mr. Samuelson who keeps the citizens of this country informed on the actions going down with regard to immigration reform.

We Remember You

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As I comb through some of the articles and pieces that I missed this week, I came across a wonderful column by Peggy Noonan which provides a fitting and moving dedication to the soldiers who have battled for our freedoms since the founding of this great nation. I thought I'd share a part of the column that seemed to have reached out to me and salute those who made the ultimate sacrifice. Here's a look:

It is good that we have this day to remember heroes, to think again of those who over the centuries put themselves in harm's way for our country, for us. It is good that we remember, and take inspiration from, tales of valor, of flags carried uphill, like the one carried by the intrepid young First Lt. Arthur MacArthur, during a Union charge in the Civil War (he would go on to become a lieutenant general and the father of a son named Douglas), and heavily defended positions taken by a lone soldier, like Sgt. Alvin York in World War I. It's good to remember the simple human potential for bravery that lives within all of us, and that in some is fully tapped and met with brilliant, unforgettable actions.

The starkest description of the meaning of what the members of the armed services do, and have done, is the simple observation that freedom of speech was not secured for us by editors, readers and writers, but by soldiers who gave their lives to win it and would give their lives to defend it.

But thinking of "From Here to Eternity" has me thinking of the old American Army of the 20th century, the Depression era, peacetime army that Jones captured as no one else ever had. It was an unspectacular thing, that Army, or seemed so until December 1941. Jones's Pvt. Prewitt was a lost Southern boy who found a home in that Army. He and his friend Angelo Maggio of New York "could live better Inside."

They came from little, had no money, had received indifferent public educations, and the 1930s Army they joined was neither racially integrated, gender-neutral nor adequately funded. The great divide, the caste system, was between officers and enlisted men. The latter were given training and discipline and were left with a passionate and passionately mixed attitude toward the institution that made them part of something as it chipped away at their individuality, that employed them and enslaved them, that made them men and often treated them like children.

When James Jones himself joined the Army, in 1937, a young man whose options seemed limited, he wrote back home, "This place is hell. They herd you around like cattle; they order you around like dogs; they work you like horses; and they feed you like hogs." In the 1953 film of the novel, directed by Fred Zinnemann, the first shot after the credits is of men marching in brisk formation. But all you can see are their boots on a dusty field, perfect but anonymous.

They were not, the men of the peacetime, Depression-era Army, especially respected by the public they served.

G-d bless our servicemen and Peggy Noonan for her continued support of our troops of the past and present.

To all Veterans: Thank You

Fire of Liberty

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

On this Memorial Day, we take a moment to remember the countless numbers of Americans who died in various other Flanders Fields throughout the world. So let me take a few moments to send out a great big Thank You to all of our servicemen who have died or risked their lives in various conflicts and wars to defend our nation and preserve the freedoms we hold dear. God bless ya'll.

Mexico: Liberalize Your Economy

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Bloomberg columnist Amity Shlaes has a good column out today on the whole illegal immigration debate which notes that a lot of our problems can be solved on Mexico's side of the border via economic growth and a further liberalization of the Mexican economy. If the government will move away from their highly regulated and monopolistic ways of business towards a more market-based economy with lower taxes and less red-tape, folks in Mexico would witness an economic boom that would create a massive influx of jobs that pay far better wages than the currently make in Mexico thus cutting back on the flow of Mexicans looking to the US. Shlaes notes that the people of Mexico have an opportunity to ensure such prosperity by electing Felipe Calderon, a market oriented candidate who advocates a flat tax and the further liberalization, president of Mexico come July 2, 2006. After seeing the folks of Mexico break the 70 year domination of the socialistic PRI by electing Vicente Fox, one can only hope that the folks in Mexico want to continue their path forward and upward by electing Calderon but then again the current drift to the left seems to have engulfed various parts of Central and South America. All in all, the fate of Mexico belongs in the hands of its people. For me, I hope they choose a path of growth to take the burden off themselves and on our citizens in the border states of Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas. It's always good to have an libertarian like Amity Shlaes pointing out that Mexico's wacky quasi-socialistic economy is one of the main reasons why Mexicans are flocking here illegally everyday.

A True Story on Cuba's Revolution

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If you're thinking about going to see a movie this Memorial Day weekend and aren't that fired up about X-Men, The Da Vinci Code or MI-III then I suggest you try to take find a theatre that's playing Andy Garcia's new movie The Lost City. Its basically a well written and directed movie about what a Cuban family(and the nation for that matter) had to endure at the hands of Castro, Che and fellow communistas during the 1959 Cuban Revolution. While a lot of Hollywood's luminaries yuck it up with Castro, Barbara Walters gushes of Cuban Health Care and Education and kids walk around wearing T-shirts emblazon with Che's face, there are individuals like Garcia(Who left Cuba at a young age with his family to escape the oncoming horror of Castro ) have made it the effort to produce a film that reveals that Castro and his right hand man Che Guevara are really monsters who engulfed Cuba in a revolutionary fire that has resulted in a "Worker's Hell" that has resulted in shear misery and death for the citizenry of Cuba. Now I know that Garcia's movie won't get a nomination for an Oscar or any praise from the folks in Hollywood but it is much to the true on Castro's regime than what his fellow actors and directors seem to put out on the Tropical Gulag" ninety miles off the coast of Florida. So try to catch The Lost City but in the meantime read this review by National Review Online's Kathryn Jean Lopez.

Catching Terrorists Via The Net

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Though I generally fall far more to the right than the whole staff at the New Yorker, I generally head over to the web-site from time to time to read most pieces written by Jeffrey Goldberg or find some interesting profiles of writers/thinkers, reviews of books, literature, food and whatever else catches my eye. Well, today I decided to try my luck and see if I could find anything interesting and to my surprise I stumbled across a great article by Benjamin Wallace-Wells on Rita Katz and her efforts to take down Islamic terrorists via her organization Search for International Terrorist Entities(SITE). According to Wallace-Wells, Katz and her colleagues at SITE comb the various Islamic Terrorists chat-rooms and countless other sites in an effort to discovering the techniques, technical know-how, thinking and plans of the various jihadists who intend to kill American citizens, soldiers as well as our allies/friends throughout the world. Basically Katz and SITE provide our intelligence agencies with a extra hand in deciphering the massive reams of information that terrorists are continually producing on the information highway thus making it much easier to catch terrorists at a much greater rate than we currently do. Though a lot of individuals in the intelligence community tend to look down on Katz due to her lack of "intelligence experience"(This just shows you how the CIA is so protective of their turf that they're unwilling to think that folks from other areas of our society can track down terrorists even better than they can.)they still can't ignore the fact that sometimes the private sector filled with devoted individuals have a better chance of combining through valuable information and deciphering what the terrorists are up to compared to a bloated bureaucracy like the CIA and the DNI have become.

I'm glad that we have private entity like SITE under the hands of Katz especially when our intelligence agencies are having a hard time finding individuals who speak fluent Arabic and understand the way of the Arab world(Who see the Islamic terrorists as a great threat rather than the academic status quo of Islamic terrorists being "misunderstood individuals who have endured years of Western colonialism"). I have to say that you couldn't find a more qualified individual than Katz to do the job of searching for dangerous terrorists especially after you read the following:

Katz was born in Basra, Iraq, in 1963, one of four children of a wealthy Jewish businessman. In 1968, in the wake of the Six-Day War, the Baath government, with Saddam Hussein as its head of security, encouraged attacks against Iraqi Jews. Some Jews from prominent families were arrested and charged with spying for Israel, among them Katz'’s father. After he was imprisoned, his wife and children were transported to Baghdad and kept under house arrest in a stone hut. Katz'’s father was convicted in a military tribunal and executed, in 1969, with eight other Jews and five non-Jews, in a public hanging in Baghdad'’s central square. Hundreds of thousands of cheering Iraqis attended; the government offered free transportation to people from the provinces, and belly dancers performed for the crowd. Katz was six years old.

After the family had been living in the hut for months, Katz's mother drugged the guards and escaped with the children. By pretending to be the wife of a well-known Iraqi general, a woman she faintly resembled, she got the family first to the Iranian border and then to Israel. They settled in a small seaside town called Bat-Yam. Katz did her military service in the Israel Defense Forces after high school, and studied politics and history at Tel Aviv University. She married a medical student, and went into business with her mother, manufacturing clothes; Katz handled sales. In 1997, Katz'’s husband won a fellowship to do research in endocrinology at the National Institutes of Health, and they moved to Washington with their three children. (They later had a fourth.)

The particulars of her biography——her father'’s execution, her escape from Iraq, and her education in Israel——give Katz, in the eyes of some in the counterterrorism community, a kind of bionic character, as if she had been designed to hunt down terrorists. Her friends and allies are awed by her background; her critics find in it reason to be suspicious of her motives. Katz claims to attach no special meaning to it. "“I would have to think about that,"” she said, when I asked her if her early life had made her particularly sensitive to the terrorist threat. Later, she told me, "“I know that the people who killed my father aren'’t the same as the jihadis, but obviously I would never have got interested in the politics of this part of the world if it weren'’t for his execution."” (She also said, "“When you grow up in a place like Iraq, you understand maybe a little bit about how Arabs think, and also what they are capable of.").

So if you want to read a good and lengthy piece on on an individual and her associates who work day and night tracking the various Islamic terrorists who threaten our lives and way of life then I'd say check out Benjamin Wallace-Wells piece "Private Jihad" in the New Yorker. Now I'm all for going after terrorists via the long end of the law but I still prefer that we kill the terrorists dead in their tracks and prevent them from returning to the battlefield. I can find a good gem every once in a while and I think I found one.

#####

Also check out Katz's book Terrorism Hunter to learn more about how she goes about taking down terrorists.

A Nation Of Laws

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As members of the Senate celebrate the most recent passage of the "comprehensive immigration reform" bill, there's a lot of folks in the country scratching their heads wondering what in the heck are these folks doing with regards to our borders.(My two Senators (Chambliss and Isakson) voted no with 34 others) With the passage of this bill, the Senate has signaled that they could care less about the 12 million who broke the law but are making it possible for more uneducated illegals to come in here while making it harder for the more productive and highly educated individuals from entering this nation. So it seems that the individuals within this august body seem to forget that we live in a nation that is ruled by laws and has a people that expect individuals to abide by them. Well, George Will has a wonderful column in the Washington Post that shows how the folks in D.C. are failing to enforce laws that are already on the books with regards to immigration by pushing through outlandish things like the publication of bilingual ballots(The same thing goes for bilingual education). Here's a look at what Will had to say:

To understand why millions of conservatives do not trust Washington to think clearly or act reasonably about immigration, consider bilingual ballots. These conservatives, already worried that both the rule of law and national identity are becoming attenuated because of illegal immigration, now have another worry: The federal government's chief law enforcement official might need a refresher course on federal law pertaining to legal immigrants.

In 1906, the year before a rabbi in a Passover sermon coined the phrase "melting pot'' during torrential immigration from eastern and southern Europe, Congress passed and President Theodore Roosevelt signed legislation requiring people seeking to become naturalized citizens to demonstrate oral English literacy. In 1950, the requirement was strengthened to require people to "demonstrate an understanding of the English language, including an ability to read, write and speak words in ordinary usage in the English language.''

Hence, if someone needs a ballot written in a language other than English, that need proves the person obtained citizenship only because the law was not enforced when he or she sought citizenship. So one reason for ending ballots in languages other than English is that continuing them makes a mockery of the rule of law, including even the prospective McCain-Kennedy law that pro-immigration groups favor.

So once again we have a bunch of law makers who created a new set of laws while ignoring the ones that we have on the books. One can only imagine what shape this nation would be like if our society as a whole just decided to up and ignore all the laws of this nation because they just want to. My advice is to work with what you've got rather than waste our time pushing ineffective laws.

Boot-Strap Time

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As you know, I'm a big fan of Booker T Washington's "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" ideals that puts the emphasis on the individual and the private sector of alleviating problems like poverty, crime, drug use, illegitimacy and what not rather than sitting merely complaining and waiting for the government to solve their problems. Such thinking or return to such ideas is something that the black community of America needs to return to in order to fix the problems I noted earlier(The same goes for all Americans).

In fact this is pretty much the point that respected people like Bill Cosby, Shelby Steele, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, John McWorter try to convey the the black community in their various speeches and publications. Another individual that's studied issues on race and the problems that affect this community is Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, who penned a fine piece in the May 21 edition of the Chicago Sun-Times that calls on individuals in the inner city and black community in general to return to the wisdom of Booker T. Washington. Though I recommend you read the whole piece, I'd like to share with you what I thought was the most impressive part of the piece. Here's a look:

Washington bore a heavy burden, and his goal was a practical one. African Americans in the 1880s were a vulnerable population, and the best way to improve their chances was through an educational program that would send them into the world as skilled workers and wise consumers, not agitators. And to make it happen, Washington had to appease, cajole and deflect white skeptics, politicians and race baiters every day of the year.

Behind the program lay a simple strategy. Before you demand political rights and social status, Washington told his followers, get some economic power. Learn a skill, find a job, do it well, make your boss or client need you. Buy some property, take care of it, pay taxes, and raise property values so that the community wants you. Be a paying customer in the local shops so that the proprietor who admits you will count on your business. The profits you generate and the work ethic you model will blunt their racism and boost your finances. Let them shun you in the train stations and the voting booth for now. When black families are secure, when black capital is indispensable, when black labor is in demand, then will come the time for political action.

There is no better message for young Americans today, especially young black men. If we ramp up Washington's curriculum to include the professions, his self-reliance, work ethic, and thick skin when it comes to race relations are a welcome alternative to the cynicism and despair that characterizes racial talk today. It is also more in line with the realities of American life. As the 2000 Census demonstrated, more African Americans are moving into the middle class, and the political/social revolution of the civil rights movement is one of the glories of our history.

The various members of Congress can continue to offer up countless government programs and flood dollars upon dollars in these segments in society if they want to but I'd bet my last two on the wisdom of Booker T. Washington over anything that seems to orginate out of D.C. So my advice is for more folks to read Washington's writings and speeches and get to setting their community in the right direction.

Support Mugabe, Get a $88,000 Land Cruiser

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As the people in Zimbabwe are starving to death, seeking new homes after being thrown out of their homes due to Mugabe's "Drive Out the Filth" campaign as well suffering from an inflation rate hovering above 1,000%, the ruthless regime of Robert Mugabe has purchased some 100 Land Cruisers valued at £47,000 a piece($88,362.35)to dole out to various members of his family and regime loyalists to retain his hold on power. One thing that perplexes me is that even after Christina Lamb has run several fine pieces in The Times on the horrific nature of the regime, few nations besides the US and the UK are interested in saying a thing about Mugabe and his actions. If the UN amounted to anything you'd think they'd step up and condemn Mugabe and call up sanctions or call for him to step down but as with Rwanda, Kosovo and Sudan they've once again demonstrated their ineffectiveness. So here's hoping someone ends the burden of the people in Zimbabwe real soon. (Twenty-six years of Mugabe is enough hell for anyone to endure.)

**Even worse, mothers are abandoning up to 20 babies a day due to the lack of food in Zimbabwe(Once the bread-basket of Africa) due to the regime seizing farms from farmers to give to cronies (Thus no crops being grown) as well as the tremedous inflation rate of 1,000%.(Cost too much to buy food.)

Braving the Fire of Radical Islam

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Suzanne Fields penned a wonderful column in yesterday's Washington Times that provides a good look at two Muslim women who have braved the odds to protest Islamic extremism and its horrific nature towards women. I'd say that these two individuals are chief examples of why we're taking on the terrorists in the first place(Well that and the destruction of the WTC and some 3,000+souls on 9/11)

Historical Insight On Spanish Civil War

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If anyone has read anything on George Orwell you know that the great writer/thinker became disillusioned with communism and his fellow travelers after fighting alongside his comrades-in-arms in the Spanish Civil War. As Orwell noted in his masterful book Homage to Catalonia, he decided to split ways with his communist brethren after he witnessed the totalitarian nature of the Soviet commanders who rounded up and executed various members of the Spanish Republican army and members of the International brigades because they weren't as devoted to the Soviet cause as they were. Now while a lot of folks in Hollywood, academia and the left seem to go on and on about the horrific nature of Franco and his allies while noting how the Spanish republic and its allies fought a gallant fight against the fascists, they seem to have erased from their memory banks the fact that the Soviet commanders were not only fighting Franco but were also conducting a purge of their allies who were deemed enemies of the cause. Luckily, British historian Antony Beevor seems to be uncovering the horrific nature and intentions of the Soviet commanders by researching the various records of the Soviet Union. Beevor presented his most recent findings in an opinion piece in today's edition of The Times in which he noted the following:

Even before most volunteers reached Spain, Soviet advisers were planning to destroy their left-wing allies. In September 1936 General Gorev reported to Moscow: "“A struggle against the anarchists is absolutely inevitable after victory over the Whites. This struggle will be very severe."” André Marty, the Comintern representative, wrote in October: "After victory we will get even with them, all the more so since at that point we will have a strong army."” And Pravda declared openly in December that the “"cleaning up of Trotskyist and anarcho-syndicalist elements will be carried out with the same energy as in the USSR"”. The Popular Front alliance was merely a tactic "“for the moment". Stalinists were not prepared to share power with anybody else.

Although Stalin had said that he wanted "“to prevent the enemies of Spain from seeing her as '‘a communist republic'"”, Comintern representatives sought total control. Spanish Communists had infiltrated the directorate of personnel in the Ministry of Defence from the start of the war. By March 1937 party members held 27 out of the 38 key posts, and sympathisers held several more. A report to Moscow that month claimed: "“The party now has hegemony in the army, and this hegemony is developing and becoming firmly established more and more each day."”

Marty wrote about the socialist prime minister in a revealing report to Moscow. Largo Caballero, having been a Communist sympathiser and hailed by their press as the Spanish Lenin, had discovered the reality of their tactics. "“Caballero does not want defeat,"” Marty wrote to Dimitrov, "“but he is afraid of victory . . . Victory means an even greater strengthening of the position of the Communist Party. A final military victory over the enemy means for Caballero and the whole world the political hegemony of the Communist Party in Spain. This is a natural and indisputable thing . . . a republican Spain, raised from the ruins of fascism and led by Communists, a free Spain of a new republican type, will be a great economic and military power, carrying out a policy of solidarity and close connection with the Soviet Union."” Comintern bosses evidently saw the Spanish Republic as a future Soviet satellite state despite Stalin'’s desire to hide his involvement.

Non-Communist International Brigaders, believing the slogans of anti-fascist unity, were dismayed by Communist hatred of Leftist allies, but party members swallowed the line of the Moscow show trials that "“Troskyist-Fascists"” were secret Gestapo agents. Stalinist paranoia was exported to Spain, yet Russian historians are starting to believe that the conspiracy theories manufactured in Spain served to accelerate the purges in the Soviet Union.

The greatest shock for these "“volunteers for freedom"”, as the International Brigaders were called, came with the Soviet style of discipline, selecting men at random and shooting them through the back of the head. When one division retreated during the Segovia offensive, General Walter also ordered "the machine-gunning of those who pull back, executions on the spot, and the beating of stragglers"”. Even the elite Spanish Communist formation, the 11th Division, was not spared. After it collapsed during the Battle of Brunete, the chief Soviet adviser reported to Moscow: "“Lister'’s division lost its head and fled. We managed with great difficulty to bring it back under control. The toughest repressive measures had to be applied. About 400 of those fleeing were shot on 24 July."”

It's rather amazing how a totalitarian state like the Soviets, Nazis, and Chicoms seems to be at keeping records of their horrible crimes committed against their fellow man. Thankfully, historians have decided to dive head-first into these massive files to reveal the true nature of these regimes. So enjoy reading the true history of the Soviet regime during its eighty year reign. You'll learn a lot.

**Check out Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, Beevor's The Battle for Spain, and Ronald Radosh's Spain Betrayed.

Sino Spy Games

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Even as the White House, Pentagon, National Security Council, and the various intelligence agencies in this nation are expending their brains and braun in a effort to take down Islamic fundamentalists throughout the dark corners of the world, we also have to watch our backs for state actors like China. According to this piece by John Diamond in USA Today, the Chinese government is hell-bent on learning and obtaining highly classified information on our various weapon platforms and strategic/tactical details about our military forces. Hopefully the powers that be are ensuring such assets are being secured from our enemies and potential enemies before things get too out of control. Time is not on our side.

A Historian's View On Illegal Immigration

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Richard Brookhiser( a darn good historian on the Founding Fathers) has a good piece in the New York Observer which puts the whole issue of illegal immigration in greater context. I think the following paragraphs sums everything up:

Still, there is a danger to unchecked immigration (and illegal immigration is by definition unchecked). America's immigrant experience has been a success; one of the reasons is the rhythm at which it has unfolded. Like a beast of prey, we gorge, we slumber, we gorge again. In the past, our periods of digestion were supplied by external events, chiefly European wars that interrupted trans-Atlantic travel. As time passed, we took a hand in the process, engineering pauses by means of restrictive laws. Racism and nativism played a role in these efforts, which makes us feel guilty now. Tell that to the rest of the world today, which maintains similar policies (Mexico does not allow unrestricted immigration). The net result of our systole and diastole was to give an opportunity for the newcomer who hoped to become an American, or hoped only to make a buck or to flee the cops, actually to become one.

Assimilation is a mighty engine, doing its work whether we pause for it or not. You see it pounding away in Queens, or in any story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. "“Over the rooftops an airplane thundered past, flashing a string of lights and roaring ferociously. Young men yelled, young women giggled. Above the cinemas, blazing lights shone on posters of monsters, harlots, cutthroats…So this was America." Fight that, you Mexicans. But when immigrant communities are continually refreshed with new faces, and when many of those faces have begun their lives here by breaking the law, the process of assimilation does slow down.

It's always refreshing to read a piece by Brookhiser. By the way, check out his new book What Would the Founders Do?. Here a review from the Washington Times.

Immigration Problems Plagues Spain

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It looks like there's some other nations in the world that are having a hard time with a massive influx of illegal aliens.

Don't feed Crocodiles

Fire of Liberty

The Europeans and the UN are so willing to give Iran the kitchen sink in an effort to dissuade the mullahs from building the bomb that they make Neville Chamberlain look like a steel giant. For me, holding talks with individuals, offering them light-water reactors or the mention of eliminating sanctions is pretty much like feeding Churchill's proverbial crocodile hoping it wont bite you back. Well one individual that seems to share such sentiments is David Frum who has some things to say about the futility of holding direct talks with Iran in his most recent column in Canada's National Post. Though I recommend you read Frum's wonderful piece in its entirety, I figured you'd prefer a mere sampling. Here's a look:

1. The United States will learn nothing from direct negotiations with Iran that it does not already know. Three European governments--Britain, France, and Germany--have been negotiating directly with Iran since October 2003. The U.S. has repeatedly and publicly authorized these so-called "EU-3" governments to speak on America's behalf. The governments have reported back every Iranian demand. If the world is heading for a crisis over the Iranian nuclear program, it is not for lack of information about Iranian demands.

2. The Iranians do not negotiate in good faith. I had a chance a little while ago to talk to one of the senior EU-3 negotiators. He described how at the end of one intense bargaining session, he asked his Iranian counterpart to sign the minutes of their talk, so there would be no mistake when they resumed the next morning. The Iranian signed--and then next morning claimed that the minutes were erroneous and that the signature was a forgery.

3. For the Iranians, the main purpose of negotiations is delay. They hope to run out the clock on the Bush Presidency, in the belief that any Bush successor will revert to the Clinton-era policy of accommodating the mullahs. If the U.S. takes over the talks from the EU-3, it risks finding that it must start again from zero--and that Iran has gained three risk-free years for nuclear research.

4. The Iranians will score a propaganda victory. If the U.S. replaces the EU-3 across the negotiating table from Iran, what had been an Iran vs. the world confrontation will be transformed into an Iran vs. the United States confrontation--allowing Iran to present itself to the Muslim world (and indeed to radical anti-Americans everywhere) as a victim of American bullying.

And to think that there's a large part of the US foreign policy community that's actually calling on us to talk directly with the mullahs in Tehran. Thank G-d there's folks like Frum, the Weekly Standard, National Review, Commentary, as well as think-tanks like AEI and Heritage seeing the light on the regime in Iran.

The Deadly Nature of Saddam

Fire of Liberty
Gerard Alexander has a good piece in the Weekly Standard that shows probably one of the biggest reasons why I've been a vocal proponent for taking down the vile regime of Saddam for the last ten years.

Progressive Idols?

Fire of Liberty

While I'm not of the same political leanings of Ian Buruma, I do agree with his most recent piece in The Sunday Times in which he points out how people of the left tend to celebrate some of the worst dictators of the world for the sake of pushing progressivism (This is what liberals call themselves today). For those who are perplexed with college students, intellectuals, Hollywood stars and the rest of the lot who carry the banner for these individuals then this is a must read.

A Vigilant Champion of Freedom

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While most elite colleges throughout the country will more than likely invite some of America's prominent leftists and supporters/apologists for some of the vile dictators of the world (Castro, Mugabe, Chavez, Assad, Mao, Che and various others of the left) to speak to their graduating classes, there's also some colleges that have decided to honor individuals that fight the good fight against such individuals. One college that seems to be going against the tide is Columbia University which invited Cuba's Oswaldo Payá (A Human Rights activist whose sitting in a Cuban jail for standing against Castro) to receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree and speak before the class. Now while Paya couldn't attend the ceremony, the Wall Street Journal has a good piece out today that provides some details on what Columbia's President had to say about Payá and his brave stand against Castro. Here's a sample:
Instead, as the university community looked on, Columbia's President Lee Bollinger read the citation that Mr. Payá would have heard:

"Engineer, journalist, activist, tireless campaigner for human rights and advocate for the people of Cuba, you represent the aspirations of millions around the world yearning for freedom and democracy. Based on the Cuban constitution itself, your Varela Project -- a peaceful civic initiative to gather signatures across Cuba for the establishment of a free and democratic citizenry -- is a model of civic activism. At great personal sacrifice and despite nearly constant surveillance and harassment, you have remained committed to nonviolent dissidence and political change. . . ."

Someday, Mr. Payá hopes to receive his award in person. But he was there in spirit yesterday. And, he suggested in a letter to Mr. Bollinger, so were "all of my colleagues who are now in prison for defending the rights of Cubans, and all those in Cuba who struggle peacefully for democracy, reconciliation and the guarantee of the rights of all people. . . .

"Always under repression, but with the participation of brave citizens, we manage to define our own path of peaceful change toward a rule of law, justice and democracy," Mr. Payá's letter continued. "Friends of the University of Columbia, thank you for increasing the hope of freedom and justice."

So three cheers to the folks at Columbia University. Here's hoping other schools will also follow suit.