Sandy Garrett Blog - American History

After seizing power in a bloody CIA-backed coup, General Augusto Pinochet ruled Chile with a rod of iron for two decades, during which human rights violations became the norm of Chilean life.

Hailing from an upper-middle class background, Pinochet entered the military academy in Santiago at the age of 18, graduating three years later as a second lieutenant. By 1968 he had risen to the rank of brigadier general.

In 1970, Salvador Allende, a Marxist, became president of Chile with the backing of the Christian Democrats, and began restructuring Chilean society along socialist lines. In the process he expropriated the US-owned copper-mining companies, alienating the US government and foreign investors. He further annoyed Washington by establishing relations with Cuba and Communist China, which the United States did not recognise at that time. As a result, America imposed tough economic sanctions and the CIA spent millions of dollars destabilising the Allende regime, much of it going into Pinochet’s pockets.

By 1972, the Chilean economy had collapsed. With no foreign investment, production had come to a standstill. There were widespread strikes, inflation, food shortages and civil unrest. With the backing of armed forces, Pinochet staged a military coup on 11 September 1973. It was bloody even by Latin American standards. The navy seized the key port of Valparaiso, while the army surrounded the presidential palace in Santiago. Allende refused to step down. When the palace was overrun a few hours later, he was found dead. It appears that he shot himself rather than face inevitable torture and execution.

A junta took over and declared marital law. Those who violated the curfew were shot on sight. Pinochet was named president two days later. He broke off relations with Cuba &ndash Nixon had staged his famous rapprochement with China by then &ndash and moved against Allende’s supporters. Some 14 000 would be tried and executed or expelled from the country, while Pinochet claimed he was only trying to ‘restore institutional normality’ of Chile.

In June 1974 Pinochet assumed sole power, with the rest of the junta relegated to an advisory role. Under Pinochet’s tyrannical rule, it is estimated that 20 000 people were killed and torture was widespread.

While Pinochet continued to maintain tight control over the political opposition, he was rejected by a plebiscite in 1988. He eventually stepped down in 1990 after immunity from prosecution in Chile. He stayed on as army chief of staff. However, during a shopping trip to London in October 1998, he was arrested on a Spanish warrant charging him with murder. He was later accused of torture and human rights violations. For 16 months, he fought his extradition through the British courts, and then in January 2000, Home Secretary Jack Straw decided that he was too ill to stand trial and sent him back to Chile.

On October 1, I had the privilege to come to Rutgers to see a screening of 18 in '08, a documentary produced by David Burstein, a Haverford College freshman. The documentary's purpose: to get out the youth (18 to 24 year-old) vote and tell politicians how to make it happen.

Burstein and friends interviewed over 60 elected and former office-holders: Congressmen, Senators, Governors, mayors, state legislations and Presidential candidates, as well as activists, campus leaders, journalists and political consultants &ndash but thankfully, only one celebrity &ndash Richard Dreyfuss. If Burstein, et al. had to include a celebrity, Dreyfuss was an excellent choice; in Mr. Holland's Opus, he played a music teacher beloved by more than two generations of high school students.

18 in '08 is not a "Rock the Vote" appeal to youth. It includes the words of many current students and recent graduates of varied political persuasions; that makes it more real-life to college audiences than celebrity appeals. 18 in ’08 does an excellent job of explaining the obstacles to youth voting, which included:

• The right to vote is under-appreciated and taken for granted. Passed by Congress, the 18-year-old vote was signed into law by President Nixon in 1971. It was, oddly enough, a reaction to young people's complaints that if they were old enough to be drafted into the military service, they were old enough to vote.

• Politics offers little in the way of immediate gratification; you have to be involved or hold public office for a long time before you can achieve tangible accomplishments.

• Recent high school graduates, college students and recent college graduates are experiencing dramatic changes in their lives, such as a change in schools or move from school to work, so they lack the time to get involved or become more informed about political issues.

• Hassles in the absentee ballot process. College students and military personnel stationed far from home are not given clear information or direction on how to register to vote, or complete their ballot.

• Candidates talk down to young voters, or appear disinterested in "mainstream" issues such as terrorism, foreign affairs and affordable health care; younger voters are just as interested in these issues as their parents are.

• Young people do not believe that politicians are "interested" in them as voters, or as a voting bloc; some feel the two major parties ignore them, so therefore, an appeal to register by one party or the other means nothing.

Most amazing, this short (15-20 minute) documentary was directed and produced by a 16 year old; he and his friends believed strongly enough in the right to vote to contact and collect all of these interviews before they were old enough to vote. Burstein took a year off between high school and college to complete the project; it's a major sacrifice to delay personal life plans for personal convictions.

The hosts at Rutgers' Eagleton Institute of Politics had gathered some useful facts about the youth vote in the 2004 Presidential Election to complement Burstein's presentation. Most interesting was that 87 percent of students, registered voters, successfully cast a ballot on Election Day, while 13 percent tried to vote but were unable to or did not attempt to vote at all.

On a more positive note, 63 percent of students said they voted because they believed it was their duty as citizens. I hope this number increases; according to Young Voter Strategies, a non-partisan project at the George Washington University, potential Millennial Voters, ages 18-38 will become one-third of the U.S. electorate by 2015. It seems contradictory for a generation known to resist authority (positively and negatively) and challenge convention to leave the decision about 'who governs' to their elders.

I don't know if this was one of Burstein's intentions, but 18 in '08 made me realize that a career in politics progresses as swiftly as other paths. Elected officials and campaigns are chock full of activists, managers, researchers and opinion leaders under 30, especially in leadership positions.

Young elected leaders also have a history of advancement to higher office. According to my Rutgers' hosts, of the 19 men who served as President of the United States during the twentieth century, 12 held their first elective office at age 35 or younger. The same is true for 57 of the 100 men and women in the U.S. Senate in 2003 as well as 215 of the 435 members of the U.S. House and 25 of the 50 governors holding office that year.

Taking those numbers to heart, politics is a young person's game. That makes it more surprising that candidates have such a difficult time attracting more enthusiasm from young people; they have staff more than capable of designing the right message.

Watch 18 in '08; you'll see this is a challenge for political leaders of all persuasions; candidates have more control over an apathetic electorate than an active one, but all of the office holders who appeared in 18 in '08 preferred an electorate that was active and engaged. Party and ideology didn’t matter. Everyone felt the same.

If you're a parent, order a CD of the film at the 18 in '08 website (the url is 18in08 dot com). Watch it with your young voters. You won't need to persuade them to register to vote. They'll do it on their own accord.

On March 13, 1997, unexplained lights appeared over Phoenix, Arizona. I was in town when the mysterious event took place. While authorities would like you to believe that these were merely military flares, former Arizona Governor Fife Symington says there is much more to the story.

Symington now admits that he was among the hundreds of witnesses who saw a huge triangular object in the skies over Phoenix. The former Governor made a number of statements about the Phoenix Lights mystery to Leslie Kean, Special Correspondent to The Prescott Daily Courier. The statements were included in an article by Kean published in the Courier on March 18, 2007. In that article, the former Arizona Governor describes what he saw on March 13, 1997:

"It was enormous and inexplicable," he said. "Who knows where it came from? A lot of people saw it, and I saw it too."

Symington was referring to a V-shaped object with lights on it seen in the skies over Phoenix ten years ago. Some estimated the lights to be the size of a football field, while others said they could have been a mile long. He continued to describe his own sighting of the triangular object: "It was dramatic. And it couldn't have been flares because it was too symmetrical." The former Arizona Governor revealed the object to be a “craft of unknown origin.”

While Symington hasn’t been the only political figure in Arizona to comment on the Phoenix Lights, he stands alone in his admission that they were more than just flares. When asked to comment on the Phoenix Lights in 2000, Senator John McCain said, “That has never been fully explained.” He also quickly added, “But I have to tell you that I do not have any evidence whatsoever of aliens or UFOs.”

Fife Symington says he called the commander of Luke Air Force Base, the Arizona Department of Public Safety and a General with the Arizona National Guard back in 1997 to ask about the lights. None of them were able to provide him with any answers and seemed “perplexed.” One of the problems with the sightings were the multitude of explanations available at the time.

The V-shaped object with lights was seen in the sky around 8:30pm. The lights that were videotaped and seen around 10:30pm are what most people call the Phoenix Lights. These are often explained away as flares, but not everyone agrees. People that videotaped the 10:30pm event back in 1997 say the lights were in a triangular shape. Some of them had seen military flares being dropped on other occasions and say this was something completely different. However, authorities stayed with the flares explanation and explained the earlier events as a sighting of the Hale-Bopp Comet.

Synmington called for an investigation into the Phoenix Lights shortly after the sightings occurred, but the statement was a hollow one. Either he was not able to obtain cooperation from military authorities, or he never made much of an effort. However, with pressure mounting from the public, UFO researchers and news gathering organizations, he had to eventually take some action.

On June 19, 1997, Governor Fife Symington held a press conference in Phoenix. Dressing one of his aides up as an Alien, the Governor said that the Phoenix Lights were flares and nothing to get upset about. He also said that he was only joking when he ordered the Arizona Department of Public Safety (Arizona State Police) to investigate the sightings. Today, he still defends those actions.

"I wanted people to lighten up and calm down, so I introduced a little levity. But I never felt that the overall situation was a matter of ridicule," Symington says about the infamous press conference. But not everyone was laughing. Former Phoenix Councilwoman Frances Barwood made a serious effort to investigate the sightings in 1997.

According to her recent statements, Barwood was unable to convince federal authorities to interview even one of the seven hundred witnesses that she spoke to about the Phoenix Lights. Big surprise! Being an elected official isn’t enough when it comes to getting answers about UFOs from the Military. Just ask current Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano.

Janet Napolitano called for an investigation into the Phoenix Lights during her 1997 campaign to become Arizona Attorney General and was elected to that office in 1998. Despite her former position as a U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, we can assume that she was served the same plate of disinformation from the U.S. Military that the rest of us received. What does she think of Symington’s new revelation and the Phoenix Lights overall? We have asked and are awaiting her answer.

My own experience earlier that day was frightening and likely related to one or both the sightings of March 13, 1997. I was driving in from Flagstaff (north to south) on I-17 in the early afternoon. On a day when traffic was already heavy and almost at a standstill, State Patrol vehicles suddenly appeared and caused vehicles to pull over to the far right lanes. A few minutes later, military vehicles filled with troops and equipment covered by tarps went flying by at high speeds. The military procession lasted several minutes.

I was later told by other drivers who attended a seminar I was giving in Phoenix that the same thing happened that night and the next day. Others who attended my seminar reported being almost ‘buzzed’ by the lights while driving on various local roadways. They described huge balls of light which seemed to come down very low and keep pace with traffic. Apart from all the witness reports, more than a few people took photos and video of the Phoenix Lights.

Huge triangular objects have been a constant part of the UFO phenomenon from the very beginning. Some believe the triangle sightings date to prehistory and many point to sightings that may have occurred in the late 1800s. Most witnesses at that time assumed they were experimental kites of some sort. Then, there were all the unexplained triangle sightings in the 1950s, with and without lights. Two of the most famous involved the U.S. and British Military.

Beginning on September 13, 1952, Military Personnel aboard ships involved in NATO Operation Mainbrace saw and tracked a triangular shaped object flying at over 900 mph between Denmark and Norway. Witnesses said the object emitted a bright white light. There were additional UFO sightings during the NATO exercise as well which may have included saucer and cigar shaped crafts.

In July of 1955, a dark colored boomerang hovered completely still over Lasham Airfield, Hampshire, England, during the National Gliding Competitions. Seen by trained military observers, experienced civilian pilots and untrained spectators, the object hovered for thirty seconds before moving off to the southwest.

A triangular-shaped UFO captured the attention of the world’s press in November of 1989 when a huge, dark triangle with sparkling bright lights underneath was seen by citizens and police in Liege, Belgium. More sightings followed. In 1990, Belgium Military Officials announced that two F-16 jet fighters scrambled from a NATO base chased a triangular shaped object for over an hour. One jet locked the object in on radar. On the pilot’s screen it looked like a diamond.

There have been recent sightings of unexplained lights near Phoenix and triangular shaped craft over New Mexico and other parts of the Southwest.

The International Paranormal UFO Society asks anyone with information about the Phoenix Lights, triangular-shaped craft or other unexplained events related to the 1997 or current sightings to email us at ipusCanYouStandTheTruth.com or write to: IPUS, PO Box 203, Lebannon IN 46052. All confidentiality requests will be honored. You can also contact our Arizona Representative by email at billCanYouStandTheTruth.com IPUS is the International Paranormal UFO Society. Visit our website and sign up for our free newsletter at .CanYouStandTheTruth.com

President Bush came into office with great promise, and the reality has been one failure after another, and this is coming from a writer who was a conservative Republican before the President knew what the term meant. Let’s use former President Ronald Reagan’s requirements for a successful Presidency. Do you remember the last debate between then President Jimmy Carter and candidate Reagan? The former Republican Governor of California asked the American people in closing if they thought they were better off today in 1980, than they were when President Carter took office four years earlier in January of 1977. The following Tuesday, the American people threw the failed President from Georgia out of office in a landslide.

Here we are now six years into another Presidency, and the only thing that I believe has been successful about this Presidency is the fact that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is somewhat above the same level it was in 2000 when this President was elected. Let’s look at a few of the big issues this President has faced and to which he has reacted poorly in resolving.

1) The tragedy of 9/11 &ndash Six years later, Osama Bin Laden the direct murderer of almost 3000 Americans remains FREE, and unencumbered by the United States military. Do we still have military units assigned to hunting him down? There is not a word in the press about it if we do.

2) Making America SAFER in response to terrorism &ndash Do you really believe we are safer? I for one believe that no American passenger airplane will ever be taken hostage again by terrorists. I believe this only because of the American passengers on board who will react immediately to a hostage situation, not because of the marshal program but because Americans still remember how to defend themselves, and they will. As for planes crashing into buildings, do you really think all those FED EX, UPS, and US Postal Service planes are secure? Do you think private corporate aircraft are secure? What about the tens of thousands of private airplanes in America?

Recently a private airplane in NY flew up the East River, made a U-Turn and crashed into an apartment building on the East Side of Manhattan. Nobody realized what was going on until the crash occurred. As a result the government has not banned flights up the East River. It’s kind of late, don’t you think?

3)The Docks are not safe &ndash How difficult would it be for a terrorist group to sneak a low yield nuclear weapon into this country aboard one of the tens of thousands of merchant transport ships that bring cargo into this country each year? Only a small percentage of the cargo is inspected.

4) Subway and Bus System still completely exposed &ndash The terrorist acts in Madrid and London in the last several years exposed flaws in our own public transportation systems that have not been addressed. Do you really think that terrorists carrying backpacks with explosives in them would have any problem getting on a NYC bus or subway car, and committing their insane acts?

5) Hurricane Katrina &ndash This terrible tragedy exposed government ineptness, and lack of responsiveness. There were bodies of American citizens floating down the Mississippi River in the streets of New Orleans, and this is the 21st century. FEMA which is the Federal Emergency Management Association proved to be completely incapable of handling, or even helping in this crisis. Do you really believe that these inadequacies have been addressed? If chemical or biological warfare were used against the United States by terrorists, do you think that we would have anything approaching an adequate response to such an attack? I don’t believe it.

6) Initial Iraq decision making process &ndash You have got to be kidding us, Mr. President. We know in retrospect that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and Saddam Hussein posed no direct threat to America. In other words, he was not going to attack us. The basis for the war was in error, and I personally supported it. We have wasted 3000 American lives during the invasion, and 3000 subsequent to the invasion in ERROR, plus 30,000 men who have been injured including terrible losses of their limbs.

7) Post Invasion decision making - Wow, could it really have been worse? Could the people reporting to the President have done a poorer job in post war Iraq, if they had wanted to? We had the unnecessary disbanding of the Iraqi army, to the throwing out of the Sunni civil servants that knew how to run the day to day government operations. We then installed the Shia civil servants who had not run the government in several hundred years. The whole thing was a series of colossal, could have been ANTICIPATED mistakes. Our window of opportunity to do the right thing has now passed. The American electorate has lost its patience with this President, and this war. Our options are running out, and there is no good ending in site for us.

Largest deficits in American history &ndash You have got to be kidding when this man calls himself a conservative President. There is nothing conservative whatsoever about his spending policies. He has systematically outspent every one of his predecessors in history to the tune of trillions of dollars. He has not vetoed one Congressional spending act &ndash first time in history. His prescription drug bill for seniors is costing almost $50 billion dollars per year more than it should because he included overpayments to drug companies, and created unnecessary giveaways to insurance companies to act as intermediaries in the program. Who would have believed that a Republican President would do such a thing?

9) Tax policies that don’t make sense &ndash I believe in the lowest rate of taxation possible. I do not believe that you cut taxes for the rich in a time of deficit, borrow the money from Japan, China, and Europe to fund the deficits, and then send tax refund checks to the richest 2 percent of the population with the borrowed funds. Furthermore, I do not believe that the very rich in our society believe you should do this either. Yet, that’s what the President has done, an act of fiscal irresponsibility at best, and insanity at worst.

You figure it out for yourself. Look at the above and it equals a failed Presidency. All of this from a man who has never once consulted his father as to what he should do about Iraq. Both men have stated that they have not talked about it. This is a President that still can’t talk about issues, or give even a minor speech without READING the entire prewritten document. He is that uncomfortable in his own skin. How will we survive another two years of this kind of leadership?

Humans made monsters by inhuman treatment abound in literature. In "The Man Who Laughs", published in 1869, the French author, Victor Hugo (1802-1885), described the comprachicos thus:

"The comprachicos (child buyers) were strange and hideous nomads in the 17th century. They made children into sideshow freaks. To succeed in producing a freak one must get hold of him early; a dwarf must be started when he is small. They stunted growth, they mangled features. It was an art/science of inverted orthopedics. Where nature had put a straight glance, this art put a squint. Where nature had put harmony, they put deformity and imperfection. The child was not aware of the mutilation he had suffered. This horrible surgery left traces on his face, not in his mind. During the operation the little patient was unconscious by means of a stupefying magic powder.

In China since time immemorial, they have achieved refinement in a special art and industry: the molding of living man. One takes a child two or three years old and puts them into a grotesquely shaped porcelain vase. It is without cover or bottom, so the head and feet protrude. In the daytime the vase is upright, at night it is laid down so the child can sleep. Thus the child slowly fills the contours of the vase with compressed flesh and twisted bones. This bottled development continues for several years. At a certain point, it becomes an irreparable monster. Then the vase is broken and one has a man in the shape of a pot."

The Kyrgyz writer, Chingiz Aitmatov (or Aytmatov) (1928 - ) recounts in "The Day Lasts More than One Hundred Years" (1980) the legend of the Ana-Beiit cemetery and the zombies known as "mankurts".

According to tradition, the nomad Zhuan’zhuan, shaved the heads of the younger and more fit prisoners of war and wrapped their skulls in raw camel hide. The prisoners were then left to shrivel in the desert's scorching sun, without food or water. As the caps shrank around their heads, they perished in terrible agony. The survivors completely lost their memory. Their subsequent submissiveness and loyalty made them ten times more valuable than a regular slave and three times as precious as a free man (in terms of pecuniary damages when accidentally killed).

Native Americans are often cast in the role of victims of White aggression and unbridled avarice-driven or gratuitous violence, especially in the territories known collectively today as the United States. But the first massacre was perpetrated by Indians in the British colony Jamestown, in Virginia in 1622. They slaughtered 347 white men, women and children on that occasion.

Europeans are also accused of importing pathogens, disease causing agents, such as smallpox and measles, malaria and yellow fever. Indigenous people had no immunological resistance to these illnesses as they were never exposed to them.

But recent findings by a team of anthropologists, economists and paleopathologists who have completed a massive study of the health of people living in the Western Hemisphere in the last 7,000 years - suggest that Native American's health was severely run down long before the Europeans delivered the coup de grace.

The researchers analyzed more than 12,500 skeletons - half of them pre-Columbian - from 65 sites in North and South America for evidence of infections, malnutrition and other health problems.

The study - "The Backbone of History: Health and Nutrition in the Western Hemisphere", edited by Dr. Richard H. Steckel and Dr. Jerome C. Rose - discovered that the haleness of Native-Americans declined markedly in the 1000 years before Columbus "discovered" them.

The vast majority of the skeletons showed telltale signs of advanced degenerative joint disease, deteriorating dental health, stature, anemia, arrested tissue development, infections and trauma from injuries. These were attributed by the participants to limited diets and urban congestion. People became shorter and died earlier - on average at age 35 - as the centuries passed.

"Pre-Columbian populations were among the healthiest and the least healthy in our sample," Dr. Steckel and Dr. Rose said. "While pre-Columbian natives may have lived in a disease environment substantially different from that in other parts of the globe, the original inhabitants also brought with them, or evolved with, enough pathogens to create chronic conditions of ill health under conditions of systematic agriculture and urban living."

Moreover, there are signs that diseases hitherto thought to have been introduced by the white explorers were actually indigenous.1,000-year-old Peruvian mummies, for instance, were found to have been infected with tuberculosis in their lungs.

Writing about Wahabism and Salafi-Islam, could fill many books. I will however in this article, try to make clear why it is of tremendous importance in our time. Both movements are considered as the origin of Islamic terrorism. A lot of recent Islamic terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, and Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, have been inspired by Wahabism.

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703 - 1792 ) was an Arab theologian born in Saudi Arabia and can be considered as the founder of Wahabism. Wahab is considered by many to be a great reformer of Islam, and at the same time as the "father of Islamic terrorism. Iwill not go deeply into his teachings, but expose the teachings of two of his contemporary followers.

Salman bin Fahed al-Auda, in his book "The End of History", asserts that the solution to Islamic distress , that may bring about the fall of America and the Western world, "exists in one word which is Jihad". According to al-Auda, the meaning of jihad is much broader than fighting with a sword. Appealing to Muslims throughout the world, he wrote: "We should not simplify this issue and narrow its meaning to a restricted military battle in one of the Islamic regions or even to an all-out war against the West, which is possible and predicted and we assume is arriving... Life as a whole is a battlefield. The weapons are not only the rifle, the bullet, the airplane, the tank, and the cannon. Not at all! Thinking is a weapon, the economy is a weapon, money is a weapon, water is a weapon, planning is a weapon, unity is a weapon, and so there are many types of weapons." In "The End of History", al-Auda concluded that the West by itself was already in an advanced state of decay: "The West, and above all the United States, and Western culture, in general are undergoing a historical process that is deterministic. This process leads to its total collapse, sooner or later." His jihad was intended to accelerate that collapse. During the 1990's, he was regarded as the most influential preacher in Saudi Arabia and Osama Bin Laden often cites out of his work.

Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, lin his book "Democracy is a Religion", denies the traditional protection given by Islam to Jews and Christians. For al-Maqdisi, democracy is a prohibited innovation that contradicts Islamic values and embodies a new heretical religion. Its followers are "infidels" and "polytheists," even if they consider themselves as Jews or Christians by religion. Al-Maqdisi based his claim on the following arguments:

1. "Democracy gives legitimacy to the legislation of the masses or to the despotic regime. It is not the rule of Allah....Allah ordered his Prophet to execute the commands given to him and forbade him to follow the emotions of the nation, the masses, and the people."

2. "Democracy is the rule of the masses or the rule of paganism, which is conducted according to a constitution and not according Allah's laws....Democracy has become the mother of laws and is considered by as a holy book. The religion of democracy has no relation to Quranic verses or the Prophet's way of life and it is not possible to legislate according to them unless they are compatible with the holy book (the constitution)."

3. "Democracy is an outcome of despicable secularism and its illegitimate daughter, since secularism is a heretical school striving to separate religion from state and government."

Al-Maqdisi concludes: "Democracy is a religion that is not Allah's religion....It is the rule of paganism...it is a religion which includes other gods in its belief...the people represented in the religion of democracy by its delegates in the parliament...who are actually standing idols and false gods placed in their chapels and their pagan fortresses, namely, their legislative councils. They and their followers rule according to the religion of democracy and the constitution's laws upon which the government is based, and according to the paragraphs of their legislation....Their master is their God, their big idols who approve or reject legislation. He is their emir, their king, or their president

Wahabism (together with the related Salafi-movement), is not representing the majority of Islam. Actually, it is however the most aggressive teaching and it act as if it represents all Muslims. Many terrorist groupings such as Hamas, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Al Quaida, Abu Sayyaf...,are followers of Wahabism (or Salafi). Enormous quantities of money are funneled through Charity organisations to these terrorist groups. Most of the money is distributed by the Saudi Monarchy. The U.S. has already blocked many of these channels. New ways for financing the radicals, will however always be found.

The only way to stop terrorism is eradicating its roots and these roots are the teachings of Wahabism and the Salafi movement.These intolerant teachings have to be stopped. The House of Saud that has been connected to Wahabism since Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, must with the help of the moderate Muslims, renounce and forbid the Wahabi teachings and if necessary, banish the terror-preaching clergy. This is however an internal Muslim problem. The question is: has the moderate Muslim-world the wil and the strenght to realize this.

Meanwhile, the "West" has no other choice than continue it's "War on Terror"

.westernfreedom.com

I am a war criminal. Yes, you heard correctly&ndasha war criminal! Let me explain why.

In 1971, then Lt. (j.g.) John Kerry testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and portrayed American soldiers as murderers, rapists and torturers “who ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam . . . [and] razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.” I don’t know about the rape and torture part, but I do know that every time I took off on a mission in Vietnam I made a sacred vow that any Viet Cong or North Vietnam Army soldier I caught attacking or trying to ambush our troops on the ground was going to suffer a lot of pain and probably lose his life. Is that any different than razing a village where insurgents hid during the day and launched attacks at night? I don’t think so. As I see it, if the Americans who fought so valiantly on the ground during the Vietnam War are war criminals, then so am I.

Without question, John Kerry’s characterization of American soldiers “terrorists,” and the enemy as victims of a barbaric U.S. military which tortures and murders defenseless civilians was wildly popular with the likes of Jane Fonda and other members of the anti-war movement, and at the same time, launched a long and successful political career which culminated with his unsuccessful bid for the presidency.

But 1971 was a long time ago. Is it really important that we discuss this issue now? For a special group of American heros it is more important than ever, because they need to set the record straight. I am referring to those who were captured and held as prisoners of war. In 1971, many of our POWs were residing in conditions of unbelievable depravation in camps with euphemistic names like “The Hanoi Hilton,” and “The Zoo.” It was a life of misery, where torture and beatings were daily fare and many died of starvation and disease.

Most POWs never expected to be freed&ndashespecially since their captors told them that they would eventually be tried and executed for their war crimes. Imagine their despair when one of their own told the world that they were war criminals. The North Vietnamese government could not have asked for a better publicity agent than John Kerry!

I thought I would never say this, but here goes&ndashthank God we live in a litigious society! A group of POWs, veterans, and other like-minded citizens have formed an organization called Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation (VVLF).

The foundation recently filed a lawsuit on behalf of Carlton A. Sherwood, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, against Kenneth J. Campbell and Jon Bjornson, two associates and aides of Kerry’s during the 2004 presidential campaign, both of whom are Vietnam Veterans and longtime anti-war activists. The basis of the suit is too complicated to describe here, but you can read all the details on the VVLF web site, which is .vvlf.org/. In a nutshell, Mister Sherwood produced a documentary titled “Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal.” The film was never seen because Sinclair Broadcasting Company&ndashthe only network courageous enough to air the documentary&ndashwas force to withdraw after Kerry associates threatened them with libel suits and even loss of their broadcasting license. If the law suit proceeds as planned, details of this effort, plus Kerry’s activity in 1971 will be discussed in open court and become a matter of public record. And when that happens, a lot of liberals and antiwar activists are going to be very unhappy.

I am not an activist, much less a philanthropist. As a matter of fact, I am pretty much a political independent. But fair is fair, and when I learned that the VVLF is struggling to fund this extremely important and historical lawsuit I reached for my billfold and put my money in the pot. You can do as you like, but I think that as a minimum, every American should go to the VVLF web site and listen to their side of the story. It’s the right thing to do. Once again, their web site is .vvlf.org/.

The Civil War (1861-5) has spawned numerous myths and falsities.

The Republicans did not intend to abolish slavery - just to "contain" it, i.e., limit it to the 15 states where it had already existed. Most of the Democrats accepted this solution.

This led to a schism in the Democratic party. The "fire eaters" left it and established their own pro-secession political organization. Growing constituencies in the south - such as urban immigrants and mountain farmers - opposed slavery as a form of unfair competition. Less than one quarter of southern families owned slaves in 1861. Slave-based, mainly cotton raising, enterprises, were so profitable that slave prices almost doubled in the 1850s. This rendered slaves - as well as land - out of the reach of everyone but the wealthiest citizens.

Cotton represented three fifths of all United States exports in 1860. Southerners, dependent on industrial imports as they were, supported free trade. Northerners were vehement trade protectionists. The federal government derived most of its income from custom duties. Income tax and corporate profit tax were yet to be invented.

The states seceded one by one, following secession conventions and state-wide votes. The Confederacy (Confederate States of America) was born only later. Not all the constituents of the Confederacy seceded at once. Seven - the "core" - seceded between December 20, 1860 and February 1, 1861. They were: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.

Another four - Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas - joined them only after the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861. Two - Kentucky and Missouri - seceded but were controlled by the Union's army throughout the war. Maryland and Delaware were slave states but did not secede.

President James Buchanan who preceded Abraham Lincoln, made clear that the federal government would not use force to prevent secession. Secession was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court only in 1869 (in Texas vs. White) - four years after the Civil War ended. New England almost seceded in 1812, during the Anglo-American conflict, in order to protect its trade with Britain.

The constitution of the Confederacy prohibited African slave trade (buying slaves from Africa), though it allowed interstate trade in slaves. The first Confederate capital was in Montgomery, Alabama - not in Richmond, Virginia. The term of office of the Confederate president - Jefferson Davis was the first elected - was six years, not four as was the case in the Union.

Fort Sumter was not the first attack of the Confederacy on the Union. It was preceded by attacks on 11 forts and military installations on Confederate territory.

Lincoln won only 40 percent of the popular vote in 1860. Hence the South's fierce resistance to his abolitionist agenda. In 1864, the Republicans became so unpopular, they had to change their name to the Union Party. Lincoln's vice-president, Johnson, actually was a Democrat and hailed from Tennessee, a seceding state.

He was the only senator from a seceded state to remain in the Senate.

Reconstruction started long before the war ended, in Union-occupied Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Slave tax was an important source of state revenue in the South (up to 60 percent in South Carolina). Emancipation led to near bankruptcy.

The Union states of Connecticut, Minnesota, and Wisconsin refused to pass constitutional amendments to confer suffrage on black males. The Union army consigned black labor gangs to work on the plantations of loyal Southerners and forcibly separated the black workers from their families.

Contrary to myth, nearly two thirds of black families were headed by both parents. Slave marriages were legally meaningless in the antebellum South, though. But nearly 90 percent of slave households remained intact till death or forced separation. The average age of childbirth for women was 20.

Segregation was initiated by blacks. The freedmen lobbied hard and long for separate black churches and educational facilities. Nor was lynching confined to blacks. For instance, a white mob lynched, in September 1862, forty four Union supporters in Gainesville, Texas. Similar events took place in Shelton Laurel, North Carolina. The Ku Klux Klan was the paramilitary arm of the Democratic party in the South, though never officially endorsed by it. It was used to "discipline" the workforce in the plantations - but also targeted Republicans.

The Democrats changed their name after the war to the Conservative Party. By 1877 they have regained power in all formerly Confederate states.

The great beauty of a once-proud nation remains in its people and in the roots of its character. It also remains in its sense of idealism. For no matter how far current policy and practice have strayed from the attributes that were part of her founding vision, no matter how much America has ceased being a universal hope for all people, and no matter how far she has departed from her moral center, she remains, in the end, a nation built on the ideals that gave her birth.

These ideals were infused into the hearts of the founders at the time of America's beginnings, fostered by the Realms of Light that watch over each nation, and implanted into the receptive hearts of those who sought freedom and embraced hope. These higher Realms who guard the world and who insure the steady progression of humanity toward greater liberty and self-expression, strengthened the impulse toward freedom and democracy that burned so brightly within the hearts and minds of those who sought to establish a new republic. Though overshadowed in many respects today, this impulse continues to burn brightly within America's deepest heart.

For America's heart is not to be found in her present policies and tendencies. It is not to be found in her present practices concerning other nations. Rather it is to be found in the people themselves who live in small towns and villages, in large cities with busy streets, in spread out farming communities that grow food for a nation, and in all the many places in which life continues in the richness and diversity that has always characterized American life.

All that is noble about America remains in her heart, and yet her heart has become more separated from her outer behavior than ever before. And so those who seek to remain faithful to America's heart must remain in a period of mourning until such time as she can restore to herself the natural goodness that has been part of her heritage and outlook on the world, replacing the greed and self-interest that has so much become part of her present relationship with others.

This return to the moral goodness that remains within the heart of America shall happen inevitably, for it is not possible for a nation to entirely abandon its spiritual destiny. And yet in the meantime, there is much pain that has resulted from this wandering away from her center - both to those who have been disenfranchised at the hands of America's policies, and to those who watch on the sidelines, observing a course of action being taken that is distressing, yet feeling unable to significantly alter it.

Nevertheless, America's heart remains safe within her people. It remains the promise of hope and opportunity for all. It remains the source of generosity toward all and the wish that all be able to pursue the life that they desire and have chosen. This generosity of spirit, this wish for freedom and for the pursuit of happiness for all, characterizes America's heart and spirit. However clouded over it may be at present, the time of its return to a central place in America's relations with others will be, for the heart of America is carried on wings of light, and shall be protected from all that would diminish it or undermine its existence.