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Jimmy Carter: Profile In Incompetence: -Iran: Carter's Habitat For Inhumanity

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Leadership: In the name of human rights, Jimmy Carter gave rise to one of the worst rights violators in history — the Ayatollah Khomeini. And now Khomeini's successor is preparing for nuclear war with Israel and the West.

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When President Carter took office in 1977, the Iran of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was a staunch American ally, a bulwark in our standoff with the Soviet Union, thwarting the dream held since the time of the czars of pushing south toward the warm waters of the appropriately named Persian Gulf.

Being an ally of the U.S. in the Cold War, Iran was a target for Soviet subversion and espionage. Like the U.S. in today's war on terror, Iran arrested and incarcerated many who threatened its sovereignty and existence, mainly Soviet agents and their collaborators.

L: Iranian terrorists who held 52 Americans hostage in 1979 bragged that a U.S. led by Jimmy Carter could not "do a damn thing" about it. R: Wreckage of Carter's failed hostage rescue.

L: Iranian terrorists who held 52 Americans hostage in 1979 bragged that a U.S. led by Jimmy Carter could not "do a damn thing" about it. R: Wreckage of Carter's failed hostage rescue.

This did not sit well with the former peanut farmer, who, on taking office, declared that advancing "human rights" was among his highest priorities. The shah was one of his first targets. As he's done with our terror-war detainees in Guantanamo, Carter accused the Shah of torturing some 3,000 "political" prisoners. He chastised the shah for his human rights record and engineered the withdrawal of American support.

The irony here is that when Khomeini, a former Muslim exile in Paris, overthrew the shah in February 1979, many of the 3,000 were executed by the ayatollah's firing squads along with 20,000 pro-Western Iranians.

According to "The Real Jimmy Carter," a book by Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute: "Kho-meini's regime executed more people in its first year in power than the Shah's Savak had allegedly killed in the previous 25 years."

The mullahs hated the shah not because he was an oppressive dictator. They hated him because he was a secular, pro-Western leader who, in addition to other initiatives, was expanding the rights and roles of women in Iran society. Under Khomeini, women returned to their second-class role, and citizens were arrested for merely owning satellite dishes that could pick up Western television.

Khomeini established the first modern Islamic regime, a role model for the Taliban and jihadists to follow. And when the U.S. Embassy was stormed that November and 52 Americans taken hostage for 444 days, America's lack of resolve was confirmed in the jihadist mind.

On Nov. 4, 1979, some 400 Khomeini followers broke down the door of the embassy in Tehran, seizing the compound and the Americans inside. The hostage takers posed for the cameras next to a poster with a caricature of Carter and the slogan: "America cannot do a damn thing."

Indeed, America under Carter wouldn't do much. At least not until the 154th day of the crisis, when Carter, finally awakening to the seizure of U.S. diplomats and citizens on what was legally American soil, broke off diplomatic relations and began planning economic sanctions.

When Carter got around to hinting about the use of military force, Khomeini offered this mocking response: "He is beating on an empty drum. Neither does Carter have the guts for military action nor would anyone listen to him."

Carter did actually try a military response of sorts. But like every other major policy action of his, he bungled it. The incompetence of his administration would be seen in the wreckage in the Iranian desert, where a plan to rescue the hostages resulted in the loss of eight aircraft, five airmen [in memory of my best friend: Theofanis Mihailidis, Staff-Sargent - United States Air Force, the day you were killed I lost a part of me, this Memorial Weekend I pray for your soul and Thank you for your sacrifice - Brothers-in-Arms For Ever!] and three Marines.

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[To my Good Friends Josh and James serving currently their 2nd tour of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, my prayers are with you - Semper Fidelis - Come home safe. James keep your ass covered, I know it takes more than one IED to blow your ass from the humvee... No Repeates please!]

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
---John F. Kennedy

Lord, guard and guide those who fly
Through the great spaces in the sky;
Be with them traversing the air
In darkening storms or sunshine fair,

You who support with tender might
The balanced birds in all their flight.
Lord of the tempered winds, be near,
That, having you, they know no fear.

Control their minds with instinct fit,
What time adventuring, they quit
The firm security of land;
Grant steadfast eye and skillful hand.

Aloft in solitudes of space
Uphold them with your saving grace
O God, protect those who fly
Through lonely ways beneath the sky.

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Among the core group of hostage takers and planners of the attack on our embassy was 23-year-old Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who learned firsthand the weakness and incompetence of Carter's foreign policy, one that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid are now attempting to resurrect.

According to then-Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, Ahmadinejad was among the hostage takers and the liaison between them and prominent Tehran preacher Ali Khameini, later to become supreme leader of the Islamic Republic.

The shah was forced into exile and on the run from Morocco to Egypt, the Bahamas, Mexico and finally Panama. In July 1979, Vice President Walter Mondale and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told Carter they had changed their minds about offering the shah permanent asylum. Carter's response was: "F*** the shah. I'm not going to welcome him here when he has other places to go where he'll be safe."

In October 1979, the shah, gravely ill with cancer, was granted a limited visa for treatment at the Cornell Medical Center in New York. He would die in Cairo in July 1980, an abandoned American friend. Our enemies took notes.

If the shah remained in power, it isn't likely the Iraq-Iran War, with upward of a million casualties on both sides, a war that saw Saddam Hussein first use mass-murder weapons, would have taken place.

Nor is it likely there would have been a Desert Storm, fought after Hussein invaded Kuwait to strengthen his strategic position. That led to bases in Saudi Arabia that fueled Islamofascist resentment, one of the reasons given by Osama bin Laden for striking at America, the Great Satan.

Khomeini introduced the idea of suicide bombers to the Palestine Liberation Organization and paid $35,000 to PLO families who would offer up their children as human bombs to kill as many Israelis as possible.

It was Khomeini who would give the world Hezbollah to make war on Israel and destroy the multicultural democracy that was Lebanon. And perhaps Jimmy has forgotten that Hezbollah, which he helped make possible, killed 241 U.S. troops in their Beirut barracks in 1982.

The Soviet Union, seeing us so willingly abandon a staunch ally, invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, just six months after Carter and Russian leader Leonid Brezhnev embraced after signing a new arms-control treaty.

And it was the resistance to the Soviet invasion that helped give birth to the Taliban. As Hayward observes, the fall of Iran, hastened by Jimmy Carter, "set in motion the advance of radical Islam and the rise of terrorism that culminated in Sept. 11."

Writer Christopher Hitchens recalls a discussion he had with Eugene McCarthy. A Democrat and former candidate for that party's presidential nomination, McCarthy voted for Ronald Reagan instead of Carter in 1980.

The reason? Carter had "quite simply abdicated the whole responsibility of the presidency while in office. He left the nation at the mercy of its enemies at home and abroad. He was quite simply the worst president we ever had."

Quite simply, we concur

Jimmy Carter: Profile In Incompetence - Look Who's Talking

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Leadership: So Jimmy Carter calls the Bush administration "the worst in history." This from the man who wrecked the world's greatest economy and made a nuclear Iran and North Korea possible.


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We didn't think we'd see the day when a president-elect of France would be more appreciative of America's role in the world than one of our own former presidents.

But here is Carter telling the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that President Bush's "administration has been the worst in history," one that has "endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war even when our own security is not directly threatened."


Worst President in American history.

Later, Carter called his comments "careless or misinterpreted." But given a chance to retract, he didn't. Apparently the man whose idea of leadership was to sit in front of a fireplace and blame everything on America's "malaise" does not consider Islamofascists turning passenger jets into manned cruise missiles and flying them into skyscrapers a direct threat.

Nor does he consider himself responsible for the chain of events that gave us not only 9/11, but al-Qaida, the Taliban, Hezbollah and a nuclear Iran and North Korea.


Iran

On taking office in 1977, Carter declared that advancing "human rights" was among his highest priorities. America's ally, the Shah of Iran, was one of his first targets, with Carter chastising him for his human rights record and withdrawing America's support.

One of the charges was that the Shah had been torturing about 3,000 prisoners, many of them accused of being Soviet agents. Carter sent a clear message to the Islamic fundamentalists that America would not come to the Shah's aid. His anti-Shah speeches blared from public address systems in downtown Tehran.

The irony, as noted by Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute in his book, "The Real Jimmy Carter," is that the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini "executed more people in its first year in power than the Shah's SAVAK had allegedly killed in the previous 25 years." Khomeini's regime was a human rights nightmare.

When Khomeini, a former Muslim exile in Paris, overthrew the Shah in 1979, he established the first modern Islamic regime, a role model for the Taliban and the jihadists to follow. And when the U.S. embassy was stormed that November and 52 American hostages were held for 444 days, America's lack of resolve was confirmed in the jihadist mind.

The wreckage of Carter's foreign policy was seen in the Iranian desert, where a plan to rescue the hostages, a plan never formally presented to the Joint Chiefs, resulted in the loss of eight aircraft, five airmen and three Marines. The rest, as they say, is history.

Hezbollah

As we have noted, it was the Ayatollah Khomeini who introduced the idea of suicide bombers to the Palestine Liberation Organization and who paid $35,000 to PLO families who would offer up their children as human bombs to kill as many Israelis as possible.

It was Khomeini who would give the world Hezbollah to make war on Israel and destroy the multicultural democracy that was Lebanon. And perhaps Jimmy has forgotten that Hezbollah, which he helped make possible, killed 241 U.S. Marines in their Beirut barracks in 1982.

The Soviet Union, seeing us so willingly abandon a staunch ally, invaded Afghanistan, and it was the resistance to the Soviet invasion that helped give birth to the Taliban. The Iranian revolution led to the Iraq-Iran War that took a million lives and encouraged Hussein to invade Kuwait to strengthen his position.

That led to Operation Desert Storm and bases in Saudi Arabia that fueled Islamist resentment, one of the reasons given by Osama bin Laden for striking at America, the Great Satan. Now we're about to face a nuclear Iran as we are embroiled in a war on terror.

If we'd stuck by the Shah and his successors, the history of the last 25 years in the Middle East and here at home would have been very different. As Hayward observes, the fruits of Carter's Iran disaster are with us still, spawning the rise of radical Islam, terrorism, the Taliban and al-Qaida.

North Korea

When President Clinton first learned of the North Korean nuclear program in 1994, a surgical strike against its Yongbyong reactor might have sufficed to send Pyongyang a message that a nuclear North Korea was unacceptable.

Instead, Clinton allowed Jimmy Carter to engage in some private foreign policy and jet off to the last Stalinist regime on earth to broker a deal whereby North Korea would promise to forgo a nuclear weapons program in exchange for a basket of goodies that included oil, fool and, amazingly, nuclear technology.

Along the way, Carter praised North Korea's mass-murdering dictator as a "vigorous and intelligent man." And of North Korea itself, Carter said of this habitat for inhumanity: "I don't see they are an outlaw nation."


Cold War

Jimmy Carter also once challenged Ronald Reagan's "aggressive" and successful strategy for winning the Cold War. Perhaps he'd like to send one of his Habitat for Humanity crews to rebuild the Berlin Wall brick by tyrannical brick. The fact is that Jimmy Carter could not have done more to damage our national security had he been a hand-picked mole planted in the White House by the KGB.

When Carter left office, the Soviet Union was on the march from Grenada to Afghanistan, control of the strategic Panama Canal had been given away, our military had planes that couldn't fly and ships that couldn't sail for lack of trained crews and spare parts, production of the B-1 strategic bomber had been canceled and our economy was in no shape to resist Soviet expansion.

Jimmy Carter, the man who makes Neville Chamberlain look like Dirty Harry, made his remarks about President Bush while promoting his audiobook series of Bible lessons for children. Jimmy, thou shalt not bear false witness against your president and country. Haven't you done enough damage? If you want to see our worst ex-president, look in the mirror.

Next: How Carter ran the world's greatest economy into the ground.

Jimmy Carter: Profile In Incompetence - 'Malaise' Maestro

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Leadership: When it comes to economic performance, there's no contest: Apart from the early years of the Depression, Jimmy Carter's brief tenure as president was the worst in the 20th century.

Profile In Incompetence: Second In A Series
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Carter's rather smug attempt to rank President Bush as the worst president ever wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so wrong. The irony, of course, is that the peanut farmer from Plains, Ga., shares that distinction with a number of other presidential mismanagers of our nation's economy.

Carter apparently has gotten so used to being called the "greatest living former president" that he's forgotten to consult the record. And what the record shows is he inherited a bad economy and made it worse — much worse — before a man named Ronald Reagan came in and changed course.

Here's where things stood in 1980, Carter's last year in office, and in subsequent periods:

• Carter: Interest rate, 21%. Inflation, 13.5%. Unemployment, 7%. The so-called "Misery Index," which Carter used to great effect in his 1976 campaign to win election, 20.5%.

• Reagan's last year: Interest rate, 9%. Inflation, 4.1%. Unemployment, 5.5%. Misery Index, 9.6%.

• Bush today: Interest rate, 8%. Inflation, 2.6%. Unemployment, 4.5%. Misery Index, 7.1%.

It's not even close. The only question is: Why did things get so bad under Carter? And that's a long story. The fundamental reason, however, is he made mistake after mistake, blinded by the leftist rhetoric his party adopted after the infamous '72 Democratic Convention, when the so-called New Left seized control.

In office, Carter adopted the Keynesian economics of the time, buying into the theory that there was a reverse "trade-off" between inflation and unemployment — an idea that proved spectacularly wrong. The U.S. became mired in "stagflation," with both inflation and unemployment rising sharply.

As things grew worse, Carter sharply boosted government spending. When that didn't work, he blamed the American people. "I think it's inevitable that there will be a lower standard of living than what everybody had always anticipated," he told advisers in 1979. "The only trend is downward. But it's impossible to get people to face up to this."

Those remarks were followed by his now-famous "malaise" speech in which he unveiled six proposals — including import quotas, windfall profits taxes and increased spending on alternative fuels — to combat higher oil prices charged by OPEC. Nothing about tax cuts. Nothing about finding more energy. In short, he told Americans to consume less, but pay more.

"We have learned that 'more' is not necessarily 'better,' and that even our great nation has its recognized limits," Carter said, borrowing heavily from the "limits to growth" movement that swept liberal intellectual circles in the '70s.

With public anger growing and his own polls lagging, Carter started wearing sweaters and encouraging us to turn down the thermostat. But his big spending didn't work. The resulting budget deficit, 12 times bigger than the one President Nixon left, gave him a serious public relations problem.

On this score, Carter might have escaped his own malaise if he had cut taxes to get the economy going again. But even with marginal income tax rates at a hefty 70%, he accepted the common wisdom that a tax cut would boost inflation and lower government revenue. He was dead wrong.

As noted in "The Commanding Heights," a leading economic history of the last century, "Carter's attempts to follow Keynes' formula and spend his way out of trouble were going nowhere."

Eventually (but grudgingly), Carter did agree to slash the tax rate on capital gains to 28% from 40%. But that didn't kick in until 1979. By then it was too late to help him politically.

Two other moves have garnered Carter praise: setting deregulation in motion and naming Paul Volcker as Fed chairman in 1979. Carter did begin deregulation, for which he deserves credit. And to be sure, Volcker clamped down on the growth in money supply, bringing on a deep recession but also killing the inflationary spiral.

Inflation, however, was already easing when Carter entered office. It was only after he named a political supporter, the late G. William Miller, as Fed chairman that prices really took off. Miller, who served only a year, is now viewed as the worst Fed chief ever.

Volcker? He wasn't Carter's choice. He was nominated only after a contingent of Wall Street power brokers, alarmed at the economy's decline, went to the White House and demanded the appointment of the well-respected president of the New York Fed.

In his last years in office, Carter spoke of an "erosion of our confidence in the future." But his failure to support the Shah of Iran led to a takeover of that oil-rich republic by fundamentalist Muslims, and a second Mideast oil shock hammered the economy and pushed inflation to new highs.

Desperate, Carter tried "voluntary" wage and price controls. They didn't work. He tried credit controls. They didn't work. He kept oil-price controls mostly in place, and created a vast new bureaucracy — the Energy Department — that has since wasted tens of billions of dollars without creating a single drop of new energy.

The result can be seen in key indicators of American well-being. Real median after-tax income fell nearly 3% during Carter's last two years. For his entire term, productivity — the fuel for future growth in standards of living — rose a miserable 0.6% a year.

That's why, when candidate Ronald Reagan said, "Ask yourself if you're better off today than you were four years ago," the answer came back a resounding "No."

Carter Planted Seeds Of Al-Qaida - Profile In Incompetence

President Jimmy Carter and General Secretary of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev exchanged American-style handshakes and Russian-style embraces on June 19, 1979, after signing the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) Agreement. Six months later, the U.S.S.R. invaded Afghanistan.



By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Leadership: After being told over and over by President Jimmy Carter that America's ability to influence world events was "very limited," the Soviet Union believed him and invaded Afghanistan. And al-Qaida was born.

Profile In Incompetence: Third In A Series
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Carter had the perfect "anti-slogan" for a post-Watergate presidential campaign: "I will never lie to you."

Unfortunately, Carter based America's relationship with the Soviet Union on the delusion that the Russians would never lie to him. He infamously expressed shock that Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev lied to him during a "hot line" phone call following the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

But signals of weakness to the communists from the worst, most naïve president in American history began days after inauguration:

• "As I understand your highly important speech in Tula, the Soviet Union will not strive for superiority in arms," Carter wrote Brezhnev in January 1977, less than a week after his inauguration.

• In the same letter, Carter told the communist dictator of America's and the Soviet Union's "common efforts towards formation of a more peaceful, just and humane world," adding, "I hope that our countries can cooperate more closely in order to promote the development, better diet and more substantive life" of the world's poor.

Global diet, it turned out, was not Brezhnev's chief priority.

By the time Carter and Brezhnev were literally kissing and hugging one another at the signing of the SALT II accords in Vienna in June of 1979, there already had been a KGB-assisted communist coup in Afghanistan more than a year earlier.

But the U.S. under Carter wouldn't, and according to the Carter administration couldn't, act to change that or much of anything else in the world:

• Carter had already announced to Russia and the world in his June 1977 Notre Dame speech that "we are now free of that inordinate fear of communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear."

• The New York Times admiringly noted that "the Carter Administration has remained completely calm regarding the coup in Afghanistan, where the leaders of a small, communist party took power in Kabul," adding that, "Ten years ago, every communist victory was considered a clear defeat for the United States. Today, the majority of Americans believe the world is more complex."

Impotence, in fact, was a badge of honor in the Carter administration. According to British historian Paul Johnson, "The only point on which Carter's men agreed was on America's declining ability to control events." To whit:

• Cyrus Vance, Carter's first secretary of state and one of the architects of Vietnam policy in the Johnson administration, believed "we can no more stop change than Canute could still the waters."

• Carter National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski believed "the world is changing under the influence of forces no government can control."

• Carter himself, speaking to reporters in January 1979 about the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, a little less than a year before the Soviet invasion, assured the world, "Certainly we have no desire or ability to intrude massive forces into Iran or any other country . . ."

Carter promised: "This is something that we have no intention of ever doing in another country. We've tried this once in Vietnam. It didn't work, as you well know."

Even Democrats revolted. Shortly before the invasion, onetime Hubert Humphrey foreign policy adviser and future UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick formed the Committee on the Present Danger to warn America of the consequences of diminished U.S. power.

So setting the stage for the Russian invasion of Afghanistan was a president who:

• Repeatedly made it clear he blindly accepted Soviet lies.

• Declared over and over that the U.S. doesn't have the ability, never mind the will, to intervene militarily anywhere in the world.

• Proved America's weakness by allowing and assisting the fall of a pro-American regime in Iran, and doing nothing about the Soviet-backed April, 1978 coup in Afghanistan — plus withdrawing support for the Somoza regime in Nicaragua, leading to the Cuban-backed Sandinista revolution in July, 1979.

The Carter administration had made it crystal clear to the Kremlin that the U.S. would do little if anything to oppose the brutal influx of tens of thousands of Soviet troops that began moving into Afghanistan on Christmas Eve in 1979.

They were right. Carter's tepid response to the aggression was:

• An ineffectual grain embargo.

• A boycott of the Moscow Olympics that hurt American athletes more than anyone.

• An announcement from the president in an address to the nation shortly after New Year's in 1980 that "Fishing privileges for the Soviet Union in United States waters will be severely curtailed."

The invasion enraged Osama bin Laden, who went to Afghanistan to join the resistance. There, he met Palestinian radical Muslim scholar Abdullah Azzam, whose slogan was "Jihad and the rifle alone: no negotiations, no conferences, no dialogues."

According to author Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer Prize-winning history of al-Qaida, "The Looming Tower," "Bin Laden revered Azzam," who would travel to Saudi Arabia and hold "recruiting sessions in bin Laden's apartment, where he magnetized young Saudis with his portraits of the suffering of the refugees and the courage of the Afghan mujahideen."

Azzam "provided a model for the man (bin Laden) would become," writes Wright.

Together, bin Laden and Azzam founded the mujahideen base Maktab al-Khidamat, or the Afghan Services Bureau. Afghanistan is also where bin Laden met Ayman al-Zawahiri, who would help him found Maktab's successor group — al-Qaida.

Unintended consequences are a common feature of world history. As Jimmy Carter takes snipes at the current president, Americans should not forget that Carter's insistence that America must be weak led directly to Islamic mass murderers becoming powerful enough to slaughter thousands of innocent Americans — and to their current ambition to incinerate millions of us.

Know thy Enemy! - U.S. Selling Out Bosnian Christians to Muslims, Serb Leader Says...

Kenneth R. Timmerman
Thursday, May 24, 2007

The man who helped overthrow Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic says the State Department is pressuring him to hand over Christian Bosnia to its powerful Muslim neighbor, threatening the delicate balance that ended the Bosnian War.

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XXXX WARNING XXXX
THE FOLLOWING VIDEOS ARE EXTREMELY GRAPHIC. HOWEVER, WE FEEL IT IS NECESSARY TO PROVIDE THEM TO YOU IN ORDER TO SHOW YOU WHO THE ENEMY REALLY IS AND WHAT THEY ARE CAPABLE OF.

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The Bosnian Serbian entity was created under the 1995 Dayton peace accords.

"At the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo, I was threatened that if I did not agree to these U.S. demands, I would have problems," Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik told NewsMax in an exclusive interview.

In a meeting on Wednesday at the State Department, Dodik said that Assistant Secretary Daniel Fried didn't repeat the threats, but insisted that Dodik and the Christian Bosnian Serb government agree to dissolve its independent police force and parliament, and merge them into Muslim-majority federal institutions.

"The United States is trying to assimilate us into Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), which is a Muslim entity," Dodik said. Today, Dodik will be meeting with Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, who is expected to reinforce these demands. Dodik told NewsMax, "I will refuse."

Asked why he was coming to Washington if to be read the riot act, Dodik said it was "hard to refuse when you've been summoned."

Nearly 1.4 million Serbian Christians live in the Republic of Srpska, the autonomous Serbian entity that Serbs say was "forced down [their] throats" under the 1995 Dayton agreement.

Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. official who negotiated the 1995 agreement, told a forum marking the 10th anniversary of the Dayton accords in November 2005 that among his "mistakes" were the words "Republika Srpska." He called for the Serbian entity to be dissolved into Muslim Bosnia.

Dodik said that while 99 percent of Bosnian Serbs would prefer to live in an independent state, the Dayton accords had achieved a "balance" and that it would be a mistake to change them now.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey was taken by surprise when a reporter asked him at the daily briefing on Wednesday about the visit of Dodik and BiH president, Sulejman Tihic, a Muslim.

"I can confirm for you that we will have some Bosnian officials here in the building today," he said. "They'll be meeting here with Dan Fried. It's an opportunity for us to talk about our longstanding desire to see Bosnia move forward with some of the necessary constitutional reforms that we have long been advocating and that many Bosnian leaders have long recognized as being necessary for the country to finalize the Dayton process."

The only Bosnian leaders seeking the "reforms" Casey mentioned are Bosnian Muslim leaders, Dodik said.

"If the U.S. project of turning BiH into a single government controlled under one man one vote, in 10 years there will be no more Serbs in the area. All I want is for the U.S. to leave us alone."

Under the current arrangement, the Bosnian Serbs have 22 members of the federal parliament, and the Bosnian Muslims have 24 members. Simple majority rule, as advocated by the United States, would allow the Bosnian Muslims to transform the Bosnian federation into an Islamic Republic.

In addition, the assimilation of the independent Bosnian Serb police force into a single, federal force "would mean we must accept terrorists who have been recruited into the police by the Bosnian Muslims."

Dodik and several advisers who also spoke with NewsMax in Washington warned that Muslim Bosnia has become "a platform for attacking the United States and Europe using ‘white' Al Qaeda members who look like Europeans."

"When I was asked by [former State Department official] Bob Gelbard why we have to stay in Bosnia, I said it was to prevent the creation of a Muslim state in the heart of Europe," Dodik said.

Well before the Dayton accords, the Bosnian Muslim authorities forged a close relationship with Osama Bin Laden, even providing him a Bosnian diplomatic passport after his Saudi passport was revoked by the Saudi government.

Five of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were trained in Bosnian Muslim al Qaeda camps.

During the Clinton administration, "the U.S. gave its blessing as 4,400 jihadis came to Bosnia from Afghanistan," Dodik said.

"The areas where these jihadis operated were also the scenes of horrible crimes against Christian Serbs," he added. "Until now, there is no data on crimes against Serbs in the UN human rights data bases."

Only a handful of the jihadis who came to Bosnia during the 1990s have been extradited to the United States and imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. More than 700 of the original group of jihadis have been given Bosnian passports and are still based in the country, Dodik said. Among them are 87 Egyptians, 75 Algerians, 80 Jordanians, 28 Lebanese, and 108 Syrians.

Dodik acknowledged that the war between Muslims, Croats and Serbs took a heavy toll. "But the figure that you always hear – that 300,000 Bosnian Muslims killed – is just not true," he said. "Nevertheless, that has always been the basis for State Department policy."

The real casualty figures, he said, were closer to 56,000 Bosnian Muslims and 35,000 Bosnian Serbs.

Dodik also warned of the involvement of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran in Bosnia.

"The Saudis have funded and built more than 1000 new mosques" in the Muslim areas, he said. "These mosques serve as bases for training Muslim extremists."

Many of the humanitarian organizations funded by the Saudis in Bosnia have been identified as key elements of the Wahhabi jihadi movement. "Thirty percent of the Bosnian Muslims approve of or are directly involved in the Wahhabi movement," Dodik said.

Asked where Bosnian Serb military leader General Mladic, who is wanted for war crimes, Dodik said he would "like to get rid of this issue," but didn't have a clue where he was hiding.

"Nick Burns should ask our federal head of intelligence. He talks to the Americans more than he talks to me," Dodik said.

© NewsMax 2007. All rights reserved.

In Memory of Bon...

ONLY WE CAN EFFECT CHANGE...

AMERICA: "FREEDOM TO FASCISM" A MUST SEE MOVIE

F.Y.I Article Lost in the Past!

By Steven Yates
NewsWithViews.com

Imagine this scenario: you call your local Pizza Palace planning to order two large pizzas with meat toppings. A female voice identifies you by your 20-digit national ID number. She mentions where you work. You ask how she knows this. “We just got wired into the system,” she says. Whatever. You place your order. Suddenly she slaps you with a $20 surcharge. Aghast, you demand, “Why?” She tells you: “Your medical records show you have high blood pressure and extremely high cholesterol.” Where’d she get my medical records? Oh, yes. The system. She says she can deliver your meat pizzas anyway because Pizza Palace has a deal with your health care provider, but you must sign a waver absolving Pizza Palace of all liability in case you drop dead (nice of them), and there’s a fee for processing the waver (swell!). Then she adds a $15 fee to deliver to your house: “You live in an orange zone—another hold-up on your street just yesterday.” News to me! You gasp at the total price: $67! “You can afford it,” the girl says, “after all, you could afford to take your wife to Hawaii last year. Those plane tickets weren’t cheap.” You nearly choke. She knows I vacationed with my wife in Hawaii??? She also knows you checked out a book at the library on how to save money vacationing at the beach, though, and can name a magazine your wife subscribes to. You’re hungry, so finally you agree to all the terms and all the fees, just to get your food. “Uh-oh, looks like you’ve maxed out all your credit cards, though. Have cash on hand, okay?”

Is this where we’re heading?

Unless we stop our headlong rush towards a total surveillance / total information awareness society, it could happen within the next few years. Fortunately, there are whistleblowers working as hard as they can to warn us. The above is a (condensed—and embellished, here and there) transcription from a segment in Aaron Russo’s new film America: Freedom to Fascism (AFTF), to be released in five markets on July 28 and five more on August 4. Due to a handful of private screenings, news about AFTF has been circulating on the Internet. Viewers at the Cannes Festival gave it a standing ovation. Through a powerful presentation, told in the language of the man in the street, Russo connects the dots from the super-elite (international bankers, upper echelon politicians, globocrats, globalist intellectuals) all the way down to scenarios like the one above. His film has the best potential of anything I have encountered in ten years to awaken this sleeping nation. One reviewer (Todd David Schwartz, for CBS) has called it “the scariest d*** film you will see this year,” adding that it “makes Fahrenheit 9/11 look like Bambi.”

Russo is more than qualified for the role he’s assumed. An accomplished filmmaker with six Oscar nominations, a Tony, an Emmy, and three Golden Globes to his credit in multiple categories, his best-known films include Trading Places, The Rose, and Wise Guys. His promotional work put Bette Midler over the top. He was the first to book the British rock band Led Zeppelin in an American venue in 1968 when the group was almost unknown here. Having observed throughout the 1980s and 1990s where this country was heading and not liking what he saw, Russo began researching the causes of our headlong rush towards serfdom, and from there to political activity. He was a solid contender for the Libertarian Party’s nomination for President in 2004, and remains active despite an ongoing battle with bladder cancer.

Begin with the IRS—perhaps the most feared entity in the country. AFTF draws on the efforts of We The People, Robert Schulz’s organization, to encourage IRS officials to point to the specific statute that defines income and requires ordinary wage-earners to pay a direct unapportioned tax on their wages based on that definition. We now have comprehensive research casting doubt on the existence of such a statute as well as on the 16th Amendment (the income tax amendment) ever having been ratified Constitutionally. Russo shows how both the IRS and the courts evade questions, and dismiss as “frivolous” honest requests for specifics about the law. He also shows how tax dissidents are starting to be exonerated by juries when judges cannot produce the law. “Show me the law,” demands one interviewee after another, including former IRS employees who have researched the matter thoroughly (e.g., Bill Benson, author of The Law That Never Was). In fact, the progressive income tax comes right out of Marx & Engels’ Communist Manifesto, alongside calls for the confiscation of private property and for central banking.

This is hugely important because of the IRS’s willingness to use terror tactics against citizens not yet accused, much less charged with a crime. One of the film’s scariest segments relates how IRS agents raided the workplace and home of the Miller family of Virginia Beach, Va. The IRS sent heavily armed troops into the Jewish Mother Restaurant which Scotty Miller managed. During the raid, patrons minding their own business had silverware forcibly taken from their hands. The agents confiscated computers, cash registers, receipts, phone records, etc.—anything that wasn’t nailed down. Miller’s son Ricky related how he opened the front door and was slammed down by men with rifles at his head. The elder Miller, showering at the time, found himself staring down a gun barrel before he could cover himself with a towel. His daughter Jennifer and some friends that had slept overnight faced tense moments as IRS goons barged in on them before they could dress.

Another harrowing moment in AFTF occurs as we are shown a film clip of two cops using a Stun-Gun on a screaming woman—for driving with a suspended license. Accounts are circulating of dozens of citizens being Stun-Gunned in police custody, sometimes to death. A Stun-Gun will incapacitate you by sending a 50,000-volt electrical charge through your system. If you have, e.g., an undiagnosed heart problem, a blast like that can kill you.

These are tactics of a police state, not the country of Washington and Jefferson. This is what we mean by going from freedom to fascism. The difference is between rule of law and rule by arbitrary edict. The one works its effects through due process; the latter applies brute force. In the Jewish Mother Restaurant case, no charges were ever filed against Scotty Miller or the owner of the chain, John Colaprete. Later, they learned that an ex-employee fired for embezzlement had made malicious allegations. By that time, the small business was nearly destroyed. The IRS, true to form, never apologized.

The film moves into a discussion of the connections between the IRS and the Federal Reserve. Both came in 1913—arguably a pivotal year in U.S. history. The Fed’s dirty little secret, of course, is that it is not federal and has no reserves. It is not part of the federal government but a private corporation: according to its own literature, “independent within the government” (whatever that means). The full list of its owners/controllers is well-guarded, but includes the City of London’s N.M. Rothschild & Sons. The purpose of the international banking cartel has always been to impose a money system based on debt that would transform unknowing Americans into economic serfs. The Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Dept. print fiat money—currency backed by nothing except legal tender laws—to finance the functions of government, while our taxes go to pay the interest on the national debt. In other words, these institutions—created by immensely wealthy families (besides Rothschild, the names Morgan, Rockefeller, Schiff and Warburg come to mind)—staged what I elsewhere describe as the biggest swindle in modern times. In 1913, when President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act, the super-elite was able to impose its money system on the country. We’ve been losing our God-given rights and freedoms to this diabolical cabal ever since.

Such a system is bound to operate outside the rule of law. As the infamous remark attributed to Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1743–1812, founder of the House of Rothschild) goes: “Allow me to issue and control a nation’s currency, and I care not who makes the laws.”

Those staging this coup have hidden it by controlling the major media. How do you control the major media? Buy them! Aaron Russo missed this remark from the Congressional Record of 1917 by U.S. Congressman Oscar Calloway which is central to the story:

“In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press…. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. The 25 papers were agreed upon; emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international, of these papers; an agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers.”

In other words, we don’t read about the super-elite in the mainstream media because the super-elite owns the mainstream media, and has at least since 1915. For the same reason, you probably won’t see Aaron Russo’s film reviewed in many big-city newspapers. Fortunately, today we have the Internet. Google has posted an interview with Russo. I recommend it to your attention.

Still, there is probably no one alive who remembers a time when the present debt system and its encircling protections (governmental, media, academic, etc.) weren’t in place. But the effects of the Swindle of 1913 are all around us. We have, e.g., the inflation monster, which has resulted in the dollar losing 96 percent of its value since 1913—at a rate that has accelerated since Nixon took us completely off the gold standard and is continuing even now. Does reduced supply combined with increased demand explain today’s fuel costs, grocery bills, rent hikes, etc., or is it that our debauched dollars are buying less and less?

Russo observes how the U.S. was transformed from a nation of independent citizens to a nation of employees. Given that there were always more jobseekers than jobs, and given the attachment of benefits to jobs during the FDR era, webs of dependency were woven that led to a distinctively American “road to serfdom” as capitalism became corporatism (another word for which is soft fascism).

As the power elite grew wealthier and more powerful, and with new technology at its disposal, its capacity to destroy financial independence in this country grew steadily. With the loss of financial independence comes the loss of our liberties, and eventually the loss of our standard of living. In the past two decades, and especially since the start of the NAFTA era (1994), our manufacturing base has been decimated, our job market has collapsed (unless you are a technician, bureaucrat, waiter or waitress), and our savings rate has gone negative. Real, inflation-adjusted income for most Americans is dropping—rapidly. Families, now that both parents must work sometimes at two or more jobs to pay their taxes and make ends meet, are increasingly dysfunctional. Human beings, forced (often against their natural abilities and inclinations) into worker-bee status, are being driven to health-damaging levels of stress and exhaustion. Another poignant scene in AFTF shows our Bush-league president listening to a harried woman telling him how she is holding down three jobs to survive, and the most he can say is, “How uniquely American.”

How does this bring us to the scenario above? The answer: technology, and its capacity for surveillance and control. I have long emphasized that there is always a minority in any population that finds power fascinating. As far back as the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (The Republic), there were those who believed some were most fit to rule—or as we would say today, have the necessary knowledge and wisdom for comprehensive social and economic central planning, yielding a place for everybody and everybody in his place. The Hegelian model of society is based on this, and it has no place for individual liberties or private property rights. Comprehensive planning calls for a social philosophy of collectivism. Collectivism subsumes Nazism (hard fascism); socialism (Marxian, Fabian, Gramscian or otherwise)—and the globalist corporate-fascism of the public-private partnership and Anglo-American pseudo-privatization. Most actual movements and organizations consist of whatever blends of the above forms of socialism are deemed necessary given the perceived needs of the moment and what the masses have been conditioned to accept. The power-hungry pursue and subsidize collectivism because it is easier to rule tribes or collectives than individuals. Collectives can’t think; individuals can. Since Hegel, Marx, Ruskin, Comte, Wundt, the British Fabian Society, the Frankfurt School, Strauss, etc. ad nauseam, philosophical and sociological rationalizations for collectivism have been readily available. In our materialist age, the combination of money, power and technology is especially fascinating to those hungering for more power!

Thus AFTF moves swiftly to its frightening conclusion: if we do not stop this juggernaut, our remaining liberties will be extinguished in our lifetimes—possibly within the next few years! Our privacy has already almost disappeared already into government and corporate databases—which as recent news events have shown, are as vulnerable to hackers as they are to official abuse. The combination of legislative power, corporate money, and technology, equals fascism: big government and big business work together and ram policy down our throats. Russo shows how technology is becoming a dangerous enemy of liberty in the hands of government stripped of Constitutional controls and corporations whose CEOs couldn’t care less about liberty.

National ID—portrayed in the Pizza Palace scenario—is scheduled to go into effect May 2008 with the Real ID Act, passed by Congress last year (snuck into a larger bill) and signed into law by our Bush-league president. AFTF goes on to discuss RFID technology—created by private companies such as VeriChip and supported by globalist corporations (Wal-Mart, Proctor & Gamble, etc.). RFID technology—already being implanted in livestock and starting to be introduced into consumer goods such as blue jeans—goes beyond mere surveillance. Advocates of RFID technology would place sand-grain-sized computer chips in animals, goods, dollars—or people. A cashless society where your chip will be scanned with every transaction, and where your every move is monitored by “readers” will soon be technologically feasible!

All for your safety and convenience, of course!

And if your chip is turned off—or is hacked or becomes infected with a virus—you become a non-person—unable even to buy food! This isn’t science fiction. The technology to do this is being bankrolled to the tune of millions by transnational corporations. (Read Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan To Track Your Every Move With RFID, by Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre.)

Do I need to say it? No one, anywhere, has any business with this kind of power! Does anyone think this technology won’t be abused, if allowed to proceed unchecked into the mainstream of American life? What we ought to fear is that the sleeping sheeple, products of operant conditioning, will embrace RFID as soon as it is made convenient, and that official policy will move forward to coerce its general acceptance. Ride the public transit system, e.g.—but with the new “reader” installed, you can get on easily if you have been “chipped” (as opposed, say, to having to pay cash otherwise). Need to board a plane? Let us scan and log your chip—for security purposes, of course. Your SSN is practically a national ID number now. It is nearly impossible to drive or work legally or establish a bank account without one. The employment system is a good instrument of control—which is why the super-elite wanted a nation of employees instead of one of independent small business owners. Many employers now pay by direct deposit, which hard-wires employment into central banking. This could evolve easily into your being required to obtain the “Real ID” just to get paid! And given that physical ID cards can be lost, etc., and with RFID technology being developed rapidly, it will be a small step to “encouraging” everyone to be “chipped.” Your chip will enable the tracking not just of your education, medical history, work history, recreational habits, eating habits, etc., but potentially every detail of your life down to how many bowel movements you’ve had in the past 24 hours!

Do you get it?!

What can we do? With elections this fall, yet another opportunity is coming for thinking voters to toss out the useful idiots in the “major” parties and elect individuals who will pull the plug on this power system—by shutting down the Federal Reserve Corporation. Russo zeroes in on this like a laser beam, because this is something Congress has the power to do.

Ah-hah! There’s a catch! Electronic voting machines, which have appeared everywhere and become the subject of allegations that they enable the theft of major elections! In fact, there is now substantial evidence that the 2004 election might have been stolen for our Bush-league president by means of paperless voting machines owned by the politically connected Diebold Corporation. Read this carefully-researched, footnoted article. Accordingly, we also must get rid of paperless electronic voting and return to technology the results of which can be independently validated.

Then, if existing officeholders are unwilling to shut down the Federal Reserve, we send them packing. This probably means ending the reign of the Demopublicans. Viable alternatives may be Libertarians, from the Constitution Party, or entirely Independent but with a platform emphasizing God-given rights, restoring limitations on government, and ending the control over our economy by bankers and globocrats. It is time to end the phobia of “third parties,” and break the they-can’t-win hypnosis. Haven’t we’ve had enough hired Elephants and trained Donkeys, and haven’t we gone back and forth from one to the other enough times? I think it was Einstein who defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

As a last resort, there is civil disobedience. If nothing has changed when May 2008 gets here, we should simply refuse to get the “Real ID.” If tens of thousands—preferably hundreds of thousands or even millions refuse to allow themselves to be marked like cattle—the power elite will be compelled to back off. I doubt they can find enough goons to taser all of us, or herd all of us into prepared labor camps. I don’t think the elites want to do that. Something that draconian might alert even the TV-addicted crowd that something is massively wrong. And if the so-called “red state” crowd in rural America is roused, watch out! I’m referring here to the Joe Six-Packs in their ball caps who pack rifles on their pickups, often have Confederate flags on their bumpers, and are struggling to feed their families now that the local textile mill has closed and gone to China. They don’t have Ph.D.s but know they are being bullied and are getting sick and tired it. By sheer numbers if they get mad enough they are capable of putting the super-elite out of commission so fast the latter’s heads will swim.

Only we can change things—if we wake up! For the moment (thanks to the Internet) mainstream media corporations do not control the flow of information. Word about America: Freedom to Fascism is spreading. Thanks to a growing network, Americans will have the opportunity to see this film this summer in large numbers. It will open in selected theaters in New York, Chicago, Tampa, Kansas City, and Austin Texas beginning July 28. On August 4, it will open in five more markets: Los Angeles, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, Orlando and Miami. Details are on the website. Anyone living within easy driving distance of these locations ought to do it.

Then get your loved ones, friends, neighbors, fellow employees, bosses, bank tellers, those who sell you your groceries, those who sell you your gas, etc., to see it. College and university students should definitely see it, since if nothing changes they will graduate into the emerging brave new world of high-tech controls. Sign up as a volunteer. South Carolina’s coordinator tells me that the website has had 500,000 unique hits. If each of these 500,000 people sees this film and then takes appropriate action, we may just have a fighting chance at taking our country back. But we’d better get our derriers moving. In the early 1990s, with the EU in Europe and NAFTA here, the global power network began to tighten down the screws. Today, there is abundant evidence on official (not “conspiracy theory”) websites of entangling alliances that will gradually erode America’s borders and create a North American Union modeled on the EU (see, e.g., the SPP, or Building a North American Community on the Council on Foreign Relations site).

Wake up, America! Time is running out!

© 2006 Steven Yates - All Rights Reserved

Steven Yates earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1987 at the University of Georgia and has taught the subject at a number of colleges and universities around the Southeast. He currently teaches philosophy at the University of South Carolina Upstate and Greenville Technical College, and also does a little e-commerce involving real free trade. He is on the South Carolina Board of The Citizens Committee to Stop the FTAA.

He is the author of Civil Wrongs: What Went Wrong With Affirmative Action (1994), Worldviews: Christian Theism Versus Modern Materialism (2005), around two dozen philosophical articles and reviews in refereed journals and anthologies, and over a hundred articles on the World Wide Web. He lives in Greenville, South Carolina, where he writes a weekly column for the Times Examiner and is at work on a book length version of his popular series to be entitled The Real Matrix (hopefully!) to be completed this summer.

E-Mail: freeyourmindinsc@yahoo.com.



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THE IDENTITY OF MACEDONIANS

By NIKOS MARTIS, Former Greek Government Minister, President “Macedonian Hestia”

The Skopjeans adhere persistently to their usurped constitutional name “Macedonia”, because they want to be falsely considered as “Macedonians” and consequently descendants of Philip and Alexander the Great. Naming themselves “Macedonians”, they proceed as such with the haphazard actions of re-naming their two airports “Alexander the Macedonian” and “Apostle Paul” respectively. Furthermore in 2000 they published a voluminous book titled “28 centuries of glorious of Military History of the Macedonian people”, in which they mention their first victory against Greece in Chaeronia , their victories in Granicus and Issus etc! The said book is used in their military schools and since 2005 has been circulating in the English speaking worldwide.

The fact that the core of the problem with Skopje has always been the identity of the Macedonians, is not only proven by the above-mentioned actions, but also by the unanimous Resolution of the 15 European Nations, comprising the former European Market.

The late President of the Hellenic Republic Constantine Karamanlis in his letter of the 3rd January 1992 addressed to his colleagues of the other European countries, in which he requested Skopje not to be named “Macedonia”, remarked that he himself was Macedonian and that the Skopjeans are Slavs, Albanians etc, who have no relation whatsoever to the Macedonians.

The Lisbon Summit Meeting of June 1992 concerning the issue of identity, decided unanimously to admit Skopje, stipulating however that it should not contain the word “Macedonia”.

Greece (i.e. Greek Parliament - Greek Government - Greek Members of the European Parliament) should stress to the EU, which is solely responsible for this matter – and not the UN or any third parties – that the EU owes it to is authority, its Declarations and according to Articles 2 and 3 of the Stability Agreement of 2001, to state bluntly to the Skopjeans that they cannot be called “Macedonians”. In case the EU does not do so, it would seem to accept that the late Constantine Karamanlis, the present Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and more than two million Macedonians, are not Greeks; and that the cultural foundations of the Europeans are not based on the Greco-Roman civilization, but the one forged by our neighbors, the Skopjeans.

The false assertion of the Skopjeans that they represent the “Macedonian Nation”, that there are “Macedonian minorities” and that they are “Macedonians”, which is strongly rejected by the Greeks, the Bulgarians, the Albanians and the Serbs, constitutes the sole danger of destabilization of the area.

Those who call this Skopjean State “Democracy of Macedonia” and the Skopjeans “Macedonians”, should not forget that this Democracy was fabricated by Tito and Stalin in 1944, as a consequence of the Italian fascist attack against Greece in 1940 and the German in 1941. They should also remember that according the admission of Hitler and many others, it was the heroic struggle of the Greeks that prevented Hitler’s victory, contributed to his defeat in Europe and led to the final victory of the Allies in WW II.

In 1942 the Frenchman Pierre Bourdan talking to the BBC said “As time goes by it will become clear that following the action of England in 1940 it was the braveness of the Greek people which contributed most to the preservation of the European civilization. This is what they should bear in mind those form Europe today. Every act of ingratitude to Greece would equal an act of betrayal to Europe”.

H TAYTOTHTA TΩΝ ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΟΧΙ TΟ ΟΝΟΜΑ ΤΩΝ ΣΚΟΠΙΩΝ ΤΟ ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ

ΝΙΚΟΣ ΜΑΡΤΗΣ
πρώην Υπουργός

Η εμμονή των Σκοπιανών για το Συνταγματικό τους όνομα «Μακεδονία», είναι για να θεωρηθούν Μακεδόνες, απόγονοι του Φιλίππου και του Μεγάλου Αλεξάνδρου.

Οι Σκοπιανοί, αυτονομασθέντες Μακεδόνες προέβησαν ως Μακεδόνες και στις τυχοδιωκτικές ενέργειες της μετονομασίας των δύο αεροδρομίων τους σε «Αλέξανδρος ο Μακεδών» και «Απόστολος Παύλος», και της έκδοσης το 2000 πολυσέλιδου βιβλίου με τίτλο «28 αιώνων ένδοξη Στρατιωτική Ιστορία του Μακεδονικού Λαού», με πρώτη νίκη κατά των Ελλήνων στη Χαιρώνεια, τις νίκες τους στον Γρανικό και Ίσσο κλπ. Το βιβλίο από το 2000 χρησιμοποιείται στις στρατιωτικές σχολές και από το 2005 κυκλοφορεί στα αγγλικά σε ολόκληρο τον κόσμο.

Δεν επιβεβαιώνεται όμως μόνο από το ανωτέρω περιστατικό ότι το πρόβλημα με τα Σκόπια είναι η ταυτότητα των Μακεδόνων, αλλά και από ομόφωνη απόφαση της ΕΟΚ των 15.

Ο αείμνηστος Πρόεδρος της Δημοκρατίας Κωνσταντίνος Καραμανλής στην από 3.1.1992 επιστολή προς τους ομολόγους του, με την οποία ζήτησε να μην ονομαστούν τα Σκόπια «Μακεδονία», ανέφερε ότι ο ίδιος είναι Μακεδών και ότι η σύνθεση (δηλ. η ταυτότητα) των κατοίκων των Σκοπίων είναι Σλάβοι, Αλβανοί κλπ. που δεν έχουν καμία σχέση με τους Μακεδόνες.

Η Σύνοδος Κορυφής της Λισσαβόνας τον Ιούνιο του 1992 με κριτήριο την ταυτότητα, ομόφωνα αποφάσισε να αναγνωρίσει τα Σκόπια υπό τον όρο ότι δεν θα έχει τη λέξη «Μακεδονία».

Η Ελλάδα (Βουλή, Κυβέρνηση, Ευρωβουλευτές) να ζητήσει από την Ε.Ε. που είναι μόνη υπεύθυνη –και όχι ο ΟΗΕ ή τρίτοι-, χάριν του κύρους της, τις διακηρύξεις της και σύμφωνα με τα Άρθρα 2 και 3 του Συμφώνου Σταθερότητος του 2001, ότι οφείλει να δηλώσει στους Σκοπιανούς ότι δεν μπορεί να ονομάζονται «Μακεδόνες», διότι οι Μακεδόνες είναι Έλληνες.

Αν δεν το πράξει, συνομολογεί ότι ο αείμνηστος Κωνσταντίνος Καραμανλής, ο Πρωθυπουργός Κώστας Καραμανλής και ότι 2 πλέον εκατομμύρια Μακεδόνες δεν είναι Έλληνες, καθώς και ότι το βάθρο του πολιτισμού των Ευρωπαίων δεν είναι ο Ελληνορωμαϊκός Πολιτισμός, αλλά ο πλαστογραφημένος από τους Σκοπιανούς των γειτόνων τους.

Ο ψευδής ισχυρισμός των Σκοπιανών ότι εκπροσωπούν «Μακεδονικό Έθνος», ότι υπάρχουν «Μακεδονικές μειονότητες» και ότι αυτοί είναι «Μακεδόνες», που το αποκρούουν οι Έλληνες, οι Βούλγαροι, οι Αλβανοί και οι Σέρβοι, αποτελεί τον μόνο κίνδυνο αποσταθεροποιήσεως της περιοχής.

Οι ονομάζοντες την Δημοκρατία αυτή «Δημοκρατία της Μακεδονίας» και τους Σκοπιανούς «Μακεδόνες», δεν πρέπει να λησμονούν ότι η Δημοκρατία αυτή δόλια δημιουργήθηκε τον Αύγουστο του 1944 από Τίτο και Στάλιν, ως συνέπεια της Ιταλικής φασιστικής επιθέσεως κατά της Ελλάδος το 1940 και της Γερμανικής το 1941 και ότι, σύμφωνα με ομολογία του Χίτλερ και άλλων, ο αγώνας των Ελλήνων απέτρεψε την νίκη του Χίτλερ και συνετέλεσε στην ήττα του στην Ευρώπη και οδήγησε στη Νίκη των Συμμάχων κατά τον Β΄ ΠΠ.

Το 1942 ο Γάλλος Pierre Bourdan, ομιλών στο BBC είπε: «Με την πάροδον του χρόνου θα φανεί ότι μετά την απόφαση της Αγγλίας του 1940 ήταν ή ανδρεία του Ελληνικού λαού που συνέβαλε περισσότερο να σωθεί ο Ευρωπαϊκός Πολιτισμός. Πρέπει να το σκέπτονται αυτό όταν διαμορφώσουν την σημερινή Ευρώπη. Κάθε αχαριστία στην Ελλάδα θα ισοδυναμούσε με προδοσία προς την Ευρώπη».

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κλειστόν λόγω αυστηρής λογοκρισίας

Φαντάσου ότι είσαι ένας νέος 25 χρονών που μένεις σε μια χώρα, η οποία συστηματικά καταπιέζει την ελευθερία της έκφρασης. Οι περισσότερες ιστοσελιδες με θέμα τα ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα "μπλοκάρονται" από ένα εθνικό φίλτρο και δεν εμφανίζονται ποτέ στην οθόνή σου.

Θέλεις να επικοινωνείς με ανθρώπους από όλο τον κόσμο κι έτσι χρησιμοποιείς το PalTalk, ένα chat room που αν και η έδρα του είναι στην Νεά Υόρκη αλλά πολλοί χρήστες σου μιλάνε τη γλώσσα σου. Στην ουσία είναι το παράθυρο του απομονωμένου κόσμου σου.

Μια μέρα που έχετε μαζευτεί στο σπίτι σου με φίλους και μιλάτε με άλλους χρήστες στο chat room, εισβάλλουν ξαφνικά στις τρεις το πρωί 50 αστυνομικοί, σας χτυπάνε και σε φυλακίζουν σε πλήρη απομόνωση για 9 ολόκληρους μήνες χωρίς ποτέ να σου απαγγελθούν κατηγορίες.

Περνάνε αυτοί οι μήνες και αφήνεσαι «ελεύθερος». Δε φοβάσαι να κατακρίνεις δημόσια την κυβέρνηση και υποστηρίζεις την αναγκαιότητα ειρηνικής αλλαγής της πολιτικής κατάστασης (στη χώρα σου είναι νόμιμο μόνο ένα πολιτικό κόμμα). Περίπου έξι βδομάδες μετά όμως, εκεί που κάθεσαι σε ίντερνετ-καφέ παρέα με τον αδερφό σου και διαβάζεις τα email σου και ειδησεογραφικά sites, σε πλησιάζουν άντρες της Ασφάλειας, σου φοράνε χειροπέδες και σε αναγκάζουν να τους οδηγήσεις σπίτι σου, όπου βρίσκουν και κατάσχουν, μία κάμερα, ένα κασετόφωνο, 2 CD και ένα βιβλίο που για κακή σου τύχη είναι απαγορευμένο επειδή υποστηρίζει την αναγκαιότητα δημοψηφίσματος για πολυκομματισμό στη χώρα.

Αν σε έλεγαν Truong Quoc Tuan και έμενες στο Βιετνάμ, τι νομίζεις ότι θα συνέβαινε μετά;

Θα ήσουν σε ένα κελί σε πλήρη απομόνωση χωρίς καμιά επαφή με δικηγόρους ή συγγενικά πρόσωπα. Θα σε κατηγορούσαν για προπαγάνδα εναντίον του κράτους και θα αναρωτιόσουν, στα αλήθεια για ποιο λόγο και για πόσα κλικ του ποντικιού σου αντιμετωπίζεις 20 χρόνια κάθειρξη…

Ή φαντάσου να δουλεύεις ως δημοσιογράφος σε κινέζικη εφημερίδα.

Τις παραμονές της 15ης επετείου από τη σφαγή στην πλατεία Τιενανμέν, σε συνάντηση του προσωπικού της εφημερίδας, σάς δείχνουν ένα μέμο από το Κεντρικό Τμήμα Προπαγάνδας για το πώς θα πρέπει να καλύψετε τις επετειακές εκδηλώσεις. Σε αυτό δίνονται οδηγίες στους εργαζόμενους στα ΜΜΕ να «κατευθύνουν σωστά την κοινή γνώμη», να «μην δημοσιεύουν ποτέ απόψεις που δεν είναι σύμφωνες με την επίσημη πολιτική» και να καταδίδουν στις αρχές τυχόν υποψίες που έχουν για συναδέλφους τους που επικοινωνούν με δημοκρατικά στοιχεία στο εξωτερικό.

Εσύ κρατάς σημειώσεις από αυτό το μέμο και το στέλνεις με email από τον προσωπικό σου yahoo! λογαριασμό σε κάποιον γνωστό σου στην Αμερική που διαχειρίζεται ένα πολύ γνωστό κινέζικο website, το Δημοκρατικό Φόρουμ. Το email δημοσιεύεται την ίδια μέρα με το ψευδώνυμο "198964" στα ανεξάρτητα κινεζόφωνα websites του εξωτερικού που έτσι κι αλλιώς είναι απαγορευμένα στη χώρα.

Σε συλλαμβάνουν μερικούς μήνες αργότερα. Η εταιρία Yahoo! θα έχει πολύ απλά δώσει τα στοιχεία του λογαριασμού της ηλεκτρονικής σου διεύθυνσης και την ακριβή τοποθεσία από την οποία στάλθηκε το επίμαχο email.

Αν το όνομά σου ήταν Shi Tao και έμενες στην Κίνα, τι νομίζεις ότι θα συνέβαινε μετά;

Θα καταδικαζόσουν με την κατηγορία της προδοσίας κρατικών μυστικών σε 10ετή κάθειρξη. Η γυναίκα σου θα ανακρινόταν καθημερινά από τις αρχές και η δουλειά θα της πίεζε να σε χωρίσει, πράγμα που τελικά θα έκανε. Θα είχες ελάχιστη επαφή με την οικογένειά σου. Θα μεταφερόσουν σε φυλακές υψίστης ασφάλειας και θα σου απαγόρευαν γράφεις ή να διαβάζεις. Η Επιτροπή Προστασίας Δημοσιογράφων θα σου απένειμε το Διεθνές Βραβείο Τύπου για την Ελευθερία, το οποίο φυσικά δε θα μπορούσες να παραλάβεις.

Φαντάσου να μπορούσες να απελευθερώσεις τον Truong Quoc Tuan και τον Shi Tao. Μπορείς!

Μπες στο www.amnesty.org.gr και πάρε μέρος στην εκστρατεία της Διεθνούς Αμνηστίας για την ελευθερία της έκφρασης στο ίντερνετ!

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Με αφορμή την Παγκόσμια Ημέρα Ελευθεροτυπίας στις 3 Μαΐου, η Διεθνής Αμνηστία στέλνει μήνυμα συμπαράστασης σε δεκάδες ανθρώπους - θύματα καταπίεσης που βρέθηκαν σε εξοντωτικές συνθήκες κράτησης για μερικά λάθος κλικ που πάτησαν ή επειδή τόλμησαν να πούνε απλά τη γνώμη τους μέσω του διαδικτύου.
Στις 3 Μαΐου το ελληνικό τμήμα της Διεθνούς Αμνηστίας θα ενημερώσει το ευρύ κοινό για την καταπίεση στο ίντερνετ και θα ζητήσει να σταλούν email, μέσα από το site www.amnesty.org.gr, στις αρχές των χωρών που φυλακίζουν τους ακτιβιστές του ίντερνετ, ζητώντας την απελευθέρωσή τους.

Η εκστρατεία της Διεθνούς Αμνηστίας για την ελευθερία της έκφρασης στο ίντερνετ ονομάζεται irrepressible. info και χρησιμοποιεί τη δύναμη του ίντερνετ για να κινητοποιήσει ανθρώπους σε όλο τον κόσμο να πάρουν θέση εναντίον της καταπίεσης στέλνοντας μια ηλεκτρονική έκκληση.

Οσοι από σας δεν είχαν ειδοποιηθεί μέσω εμαίλς ας ανεβάσουν αυτό το κείμενο στα μπλογκς τους και ας στείλουν εμαίλ στην Διεθνή Αμνηστία.

activism@amnesty.org.gr

Μπορείτε επίσης να στείλετε επιστολές διαμαρτυρίας


Κίνα: Απελευθερώστε τον Shi Tao!

Βιετνάμ: Απελευθερώστε τον Truong Quoc Huy!

Αίγυπτος: Ο blogger Karim Amer καταδικάζεται σε 4 χρόνια φυλάκισης

Unfair, Unbalanced, Unmedicated

By Aleksandar Pavic

For more than 10 years, the term "Srebrenica" has been used to denote the slaughter of "innocent Muslims" at the hands of Christians – more specifically, the Bosnian Serb army, alleged to have slaughtered, according to the version currently accepted by most major media, "between 7,000 and 8,000 Muslims" when it captured that small town in eastern Bosnia in mid-July 1995. As the story goes, the Bosnian Serbs captured this "U.N.-protected zone" and proceeded to take away and execute thousands of men, women and children in the space of several days, subsequently burying them in mass graves that are still being dug up almost 12 years later.

Belgrade-based historian and researcher, Milivoje Ivanisevic, who has been documenting Yugoslavian civil war casualties for more than a decade, has recently challenged the claims in a new booklet, "The Srebrenica Identity Card," which documents hundreds of bodies buried at the Srebrenica Memorial that were not killed in July 1995, when the alleged genocide took place, including cases of people who died natural deaths a full 13 years before the event took place.

The newest evidence offered by Ivanisevic indicates a number of those buried at the Srebrenica Memorial Complex not only were not killed in July 1995, but actually died much earlier, even in the early 1980s – more than 10 years before the civil war in Yugoslavia even started.

According to Ivanisevic, as of March 2007, more than 12 years after the event, a total of 2,442 bodies have been buried at the Memorial. Among those, a total of 914, or over 37 percent, were on the voting lists for the 1996 elections in Bosnia – over a year after the alleged "genocide." The voting lists themselves were approved and checked by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which supervised the elections.

A second even more significant find involves the fact that "at least 100 people" buried at the Memorial died of natural causes. Ivanisevic claims that the numbers would be even larger if he'd been allowed access to the death books in Srebrenica and the surrounding towns. Nevertheless, several names with dates of birth, death and place of demise are provided: Fetahija (Nazif) Hasanovic, b. 1955 – d. Dec.15, 1996, Srebrenica; Sukrija (Amil) Smajlovic, b.1946 – d. May 2,1996, Zaluzje; Maho (Suljo) Rizvanovic, b.1953 – d. Jan. 3,1993, Glogova; Mefail (meho) Demirovic, b.1970 – d. May 10, 1992, Krasanovici; Redzic (Ahmet) Asim, b.1949 – d. April 22, 1992, Bratunac.

Thirdly, Ivanisevic charges that several hundred soldiers as well as civilians were transferred to the Srebrenica Memorial from other cemeteries and reburied, with Muslim burial rituals. One of these is the body of Hamed (Hamid) Halilovic (1940-1982), transferred from the nearby cemetery in Kazani, who apparently died a full 13 years before the Srebrenica "genocide." Other bodies transferred from Kazani to the Srebrenica Memorial include those of Osman (Ibro) Halilovic (1912-1989), Nurija (Smajo) Memisevic (1966-1993), Salih (Saban) Alic (1969-1992), Mujo (Hasim) Hadzic (1954-1993), Ferid (Ramo) Mustafic (1975-1993) and Hajrudin (Ismet) Cvrk (1974-1992).

Fourth, using captured records of the Bosnian Muslim Army, Ivanisevic lists more than a dozen names of soldiers whose families were granted housing and social benefits due to families of soldiers killed in action before Nov. 11, 1993, when the documents were captured by Bosnian Serb army forces.

Fifth, on the basis of similarly captured documents, Ivanisevic provides several dozen names of Bosnian Muslim army fighters killed before March 7, 1994.

Ivanisevic goes on to provide names of Bosnian Muslim soldiers buried at the Srebrenica Memorial who were implicated in numerous massacres of Serbian civilians in the vicinity between 1992-1995, in which a total of over 3,000 Serbs were killed. Interestingly, the commander of the Srebrenica Bosnian army forces, Naser Oric, was given a two-year sentence by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, or ICTY, in June 2006 for his participation in these killings, some of which he captured on video and showed to Washington Post reporter John Pomfret, who visited him inside the "U.N. Safe Zone" in 1994.

During the 1990s, the Clinton administration used the "Srebrenica genocide" claim to enter the Bosnian civil war on the side of the Bosnian Muslims and enforce the subsequent Dayton Peace Agreement for Bosnia-Herzegovina in November 1995, with mutual recognition between Yugoslavia (now Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia). More generally, Clinton's State Department bureaucracy used the "Srebrenica genocide" – as it has since been referred to as a result of controversial verdicts pronounced by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague – to justify its support for Muslim-dominated political movements not just in Bosnia but in Macedonia and Serbia's Kosovo region, which is currently seeking independence. And, since most of Clinton's State Department appointments, headed by Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, have continued running the U.S. Balkan strategy, the policy has remained intact to this day.

Thus, even as the current Kosovo Albanian independence drive is provided heavy U.S., British and German support, the Bosnian Serbs, unhappy at the prospect of being locked inside a Muslim-dominated Bosnia, are being denied independence, with the "Srebrenica genocide" being used as the chief argument – i.e., that wartime gains achieved through "genocide" cannot be sanctioned. Many observers, including a recent G2 Bulletin analysis, link Western support of Balkan Muslims at the expense of Christians as part of a broader policy of appeasing "moderate" Sunni-controlled regimes in the Middle East, as part of an anti-Iranian Shiite coalition.

Among radical Bosnian Muslim elements, the Srebrenica narrative has been used not only to rally support to the general cause of jihad, to arouse Muslim feelings of having been oppressed and persecuted by non-Muslims, but to build what some have called the "first Muslim shrine in Europe," a gathering place for Muslims from the world over with anti-Western, anti-European and anti-Christian grievances. The Memorial Complex in Srebrenica now serves as a place of pilgrimage, where Muslims can see firsthand the results of what they believe is an unprecedented atrocity against their fellow believers.

The entire Srebrenica narrative has been provided key support by Western mainstream media, headed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and the mainstream British, German and French media, who have laced their Balkan reporting throughout the years with references to the "Srebrenica genocide," calling it, among other things, the "worst atrocity in Europe since World War II," a "stain on the conscience of the West," etc.

From the very beginning, numerous dissenting voices both in the West and in ex-Yugoslavia have contested both the Western mass media claims and the ICTY Srebrenica-connected verdicts, but have received almost no publicity whatsoever.

In the summer of 2005, on the 10-year anniversary of the event, the "Srebrenica Research Group," composed of mostly American and British media and academic figures, as well as former U.N. civil officials and military observers with ex-Yugoslavia experience, put up a website in which the entire "Srebrenica massacre" account was reconsidered and demystified. Instead of the 7-8,000 figure, U.N. officials and U.S. Congress experts were quoted giving figures of "700-800," "the low hundreds," "about 2,000 Muslims and Serbs total," etc. Henry Wieland, head of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, who spent days interviewing Srebrenica refugees in July 1995, is quoted as saying that he did not find "anyone who'd seen any atrocity committed with their own eyes."

The forensic findings were taken to task as well, with claims that the entire process of excavation and identification of bodies was controlled by an organization founded by the late Bosnian Islamist leader, Alija Izetbegovic. And, a Canadian international law professor deconstructed the Srebrenica-connected verdicts at the ICTY, showing, among other things, that Bosnian Serb Gen. Radoslav Krstic, sentenced by the court to a 46-year term, was, in the court's own verdict, absolved of participation in – or even knowledge of – the alleged massacre, instead being sentenced according to the ICTY's own construction of "command responsibility." The prosecution's star witness, Drazen Erdemovic, a Bosnian Croat who mysteriously appeared in the ranks of the Bosnian Serb army after previously fighting in the Bosnian Muslim army ranks, claimed participation in the execution of 1,200 Srebrenica Muslims, was exempted from cross-examination, deemed by the court itself as "mentally unstable" and, ultimately, given a five-year sentence for his "cooperation." Yet, the mass media, without exception, have ignored the group's findings, even those quoting the very same mass media's own reports from the ground at the time.

The Netherlands Institute for War Documentation issued an extensive report in 2002, "Srebrenica, a 'Safe' Area," detailing, among other things, that Srebrenica, although declared a "U.N. Safe Zone," was in fact never demilitarized, and that several thousand armed Bosnian Muslim troops were stationed in it between 1992-1995, organizing numerous lethal raids against Serbian villages in the vicinity. This claim was additionally corroborated by the U.N. secretary-general's report to the U.N. General Assembly of Nov. 15, 1999.

Ivanisevic's book will soon to be translated into English. It remains to be seen whether the Western corporate mass media will continue ignoring this and other evidence debunking the claim that an anti-Muslim "genocide" took place in Srebrenica in July 1995. Some public figures in the Balkans have called for an international commission on Srebrenica, which would re-examine the evidence and make a new, more balanced and independent assessment of what took place in eastern Bosnia during the last stages of its civil war, in the summer of 1995.


Message from the blog owner:

Normally I will not post or write about non greek related subjects. But times have changed and the Wind of Time will eventually bring back to Greece what has happened to our 'brothers' in the Balkans. Only a small note, History and its lessons tends to creap upon us when we choose to ignone it...