What a brilliant idea! Let's redo the failed 1968 revolution, but let's get it right this time now that the fellow travelers have arrived through the institutions ...
The Guardian/The Observer: "Greece will be a war zone, Sect of Revolutionaries warns tourists"
Security forces fear wave of terror as austerity programme provokes strikes, protests, violence – and assassination
Greek security forces have warned of a wave of violence reminiscent of the terror that stalked Italy in the seventies after urban guerillas threatened last week to turn the country into a "war zone".
"Greece has entered a new phase of political violence by anarchist-oriented organisations that are more murderous, dangerous, capable and nihilistic than ever before," said Athanasios Drougos, a defence and counter-terrorism analyst in Athens.
"For the first time we are seeing a nexus of terrorist and criminal activity," he said. "These groups don't care about collateral damage, innocent bystanders being killed in the process. They are very extreme."
The threats came from a guerrilla group called the Sect of Revolutionaries, as it claimed credit for the murder of Sokratis Giolas, an investigative journalist. Giolas was shot dead outside his Athenian home on 19 July, in front of his pregant wife. (...) >>>
"We don't do politics, we do guerrilla warfare"
"The Coming Insurrection", by The Invisible Committee
Right-click on the document to change the orientation clockwise.
Related dossiers
- "The Urban Guerrilla"
- "Assault of the New Storm Troopers"
- "Delete the Border"
- "Narco Wars"
- "Doing a Maggy"
- "Terror in Greece"
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
The Revolutionary Brigades for Collective Salvation
Saturday, January 17, 2009
The Burning Streets: How We Got Here
Seldom was an assumption as naive as the idea prevailing since 1989 that political radicalism was over, just because the major agitator - the Soviet Union - had collapsed under its own weight.
This notion in the heads of security services, politicians and the general public supports the evidence that the West swallowed Communist disinformation and propaganda, hook, line and sinker. Here's one that pervades Western popular thinking to this very day.
Also on the level of ideas 'Leftism' and its origins, has been very badly understood.
The first harbinger of a better understanding was posited by philosopher and historian Sir Isaiah Berlin who coined the term, the Counter-Enlightenment in his book "Against the Current" in 1979 (Hogarth Press). In all probability this trouveille can be attributed to Nietzsche, who used the term "die Gegenaufklärung" at the end of the nineteenth century.
Objectivist philosopher Stephen Hicks has explained the origins and history of the anti-modern Counter-Enlightenment movement very succinctly in his 2004 tome "Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault".
More recently Richard Wolin in "The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism" bridged the gap even further, showing how an amalgam of Left and Right collectivism resurfaced in Postmodernism. (Here's a sample chapter available from Princeton University Press.)
The reactionary movement sought to counter and destroy the rational and humanistic ideals of the Enlightenment, modernism. The first anti-modernist is the erroneously classified hero of the Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He broke with reason and individualism, in effect laying the groundwork for Socialism and the notion that a collective has a 'will' of its own.
After Rousseau, the influential anti-philosophers Kant and Hegel furthered the anti-modernist cause against reason. Kant was remarkably effective in isolating the mind within the confines of the skull, rendering it practically useless as a tool for exploring knowledge and the universe. Precursing Orwell, he typified it as Pure Reason.
From Kant onwards, the avant-garde considered man incapable of knowing anything. Kant's irrational theories are the greatest disaster in the history of the post Renaissance world. They are responsible for all pernicious ideas about the nature of thought that persist to this day.
It opened up the field for Marxism (Left collectivism), National Socialism (Right collectivism), currently culminating in Postmodernism. The latter think of the human species as a whole as a collective, a idea of Kantian origin.
Humanity as a collective is pushed today by swathes of world elites, from the transnational "one world" movement, to multiculturalists and Postmodern anti-globalists.
The Greeks identify the latter by their proper name, anarchists. The rest of the W est knows them as the squatter movement, animal rights activists, radical environmentalists, and anti globalists. They are not anti globalism as such, but just anti Western dominated globalism.
After Left and Right collectivism were dealt with through the realities of history and Francis Fukuyama briefly enjoyed "The End of History and the Last Man" the storms of Islamic radicalism were already brewing in the Middle East and spilling over on the streets of the countries favored by Muslim migrants.
The onset of the 21st Century saw a revival of Leftist radicalism. While the old 1968 hippy generation saw it's ideals drowned in a cesspool of drugs and experiments in social licentiousness, Postmodernism has shed itself of all values: life is futile, man's efforts are absurd in their presumptiousness and arrogance.
This radical Left movement is just as ready for a scorched earth as radical Islamism is. Whereas the former have nothing left to lose after their ideals collapsed over their ears, the latter are urged to self-sacrifice for a global victory of the collective Ummah. It is a marriage quite literally made in hell: both are negators of the life-force, but for different reasons.
A culture's implicit sense of life is all-pervasive. Theirs has translated into the negative territory of nihilism and death-worship. For Muslims man is a mere plaything in the hands of a fickle God. To Postmodernists man is a drifter in a purposeless, unknowable universe whose fate is determined by chaos and glandular secretions.
And this is how we got here.
World Security Network: "Urban Radicalism in Europe and Terrorism", by Ioannis Michaletos
Urban radicalism in Europe as portrayed by the recent riots in Athens is a constant worry of the European security services, since there is ample evidence of wider connections between radicals and terrorists.
There are two major themes to be looked upon. Firstly the relationship between the extreme-leftist terrorist groups that operate in the so-called "Mediterranean axis" - France, Italy, Greece and Spain - and secondly, the connection of these groups to Islamic extremists.
The radical - anarchist movement in Europe is pretty strong and well organized with thousands of loyal supporters. Back in 2005, the riots in Paris proved that the radicals and second-generation Muslim immigrants in France were able to form the political agenda of that time, although they were not successful in preventing Sarkozy’s ascendance to power 18 months later.
In June 2008, the French authorities and in particular the Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure (French Directorate-General for External Security or DGSE) announced that French anarchists were behind the attempted sabotage of the TGV railway, that if successful could have killed hundreds of people. It was also revealed that the anarchist group labeled "The Invisible Committeel" was in contact with other Italian and Greek groups over the previous period. (...)
Get it all, read the latest revelations by Greek intelligence analyst Ioannis Michaletos >>>
- Filed on Articles in "The Unholy Alliance" -
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Riots in Greece: What Is Not Reported
From the desk of Ioannis Michaletos
The International Analyst Network website has as a main aim to inform a specialized and enlightened audience of the undercover nature of events within the global security and intelligence sector.
In this case, an alternative point of view is going to be presented which derives from careful analysis and observation of the riots in Greece and reliable information streaming from domestic security circles. For obvious reasons, matters concerning operational or intelligence procedures will not be mentioned or quoted.
The riots have been orchestrated since late summer 2008. There were reports within the Greek police that the riots would commence by the Christmas period at the latest; the location and the justification was not known, but any event could have caused them. This is a copycat case of what happened in France in October 2005.
The culprits on the higher levels are Islamic networks in the Middle East, who go hand-in-hand with corrupt western officials, who are selling their services to the highest bidder.
The purpose is to destabilize Greece, the “weakest link” in the Euro zone countries. The ultimate goal is the creation of a European space, suitable for expansion of the Middle Eastern networks. For the moment the latter use a variety of techniques to bolster their aims: terrorism, disinformation, psyops, bribing officials.
They are trying to pit the US against Russia on the one hand, and to disrupt the Euro-American alliance on the other. They were also responsible for the Greek wildfires (pyro terrorism) in summer 2007 in an operation some call “the Ibrahim Project”, reminiscent of the type of havoc wreaked on the same region by Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt during the Greek revolution in the summer of 1827.
The existence of more than obvious links between renegade intelligence officers of western origin and anarchist-radical movements, in order to destabilize European countries is a major issue nowadays.
The anarchist-radical network of disenfranchised youths is very strong in Europe as the riots in 2005 showed, when radicals and Muslims joined forces and failed to damage French President Sarkozy’s image. In France it was announced recently by the Ministry of Interior that French anarchists are in contact with their Greek and Italian counterparts in trying to sabotage the High Speed Railway Network (TGV trains).
The inability of western governments to comprehend what is really at stake has already grave consequences for Europe. Moreover, the deals between European and Russian energy companies will increase natural gas imports by the former, will greatly diminish the influence of the Saudis in Europe, along with their long-term income.
The new American administration should really understand that it has been used for a number of years by Riyad (and others) who have managed to throw American forces into the Iraqi and Afghan battlefields, where the new 21st century Mujahedeen forces are being forged. They will be used against Europe in a few years, in a wargame that will surpass the abilities of Western capitals.
Back in Greece the riots are being executed with the use of the Internet and other new media techniques, such as instant messaging (IM) from mobile phones to web pages, Indymedia, along with the use of CB’s, Facebook pages, walkie-talkies, computer mass generated SMS, Twitter, and the construction of “flow-networks” and already established “dark networks” within the city.
The French government has already called for tough action by the Greek administration, whilst the intelligence apparatus of the former provides assistance to the latter. Over the coming days it seems that all the known security forces in the world will either try to take advantage of the situation, or take the side of the Greek government.
In a concluding remark, the author emphatically notes that the responsibility of the western capitals is of historical proportions. Rioting by “radical youths” will become an everyday reality on the continent in the coming years and the security forces should look further than their noses in assessing the situation.
A 4th World War erupted in 2001 and there are enemy collaborators within our ranks. Before any victory can be called, they should be removed and punished accordingly. The riots in Greece are just one small incident in the ongoing war, that may last longer than the previous ones; it is a struggle which all-encompasses national, social, and economic structures.
Interested readers should not forget that the first “Little War” of the Cold War started on Greek soil in 1946. Back then the enemy was clear and present. Now he is not, and the effort therefore will be much harder.
Post Scriptum: Quite a few Greek radical groups have adopted Arabic noms de guerres; they promote illegal immigration of Muslims into Europe, and call for the destruction of Western civilization. They are part of an almost global network that acts as a “soft power” element of the hard one, as envisaged by Al Qaeda. It has to be stressed once more that rogue elements of western security forces protect them. They have to be dealt with as soon as possible.
- Filed on Articles in "Terrorism in Greece" -
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Georgian Crisis: "Russia is Blowing Up Europe"
With Russia taking up the Soviet habit of invading sovereign nations, and the ineffectual response by the world's international organizations, we have reached a preliminary pit where moral relativism may take us. How much deeper into the mire the debilitating mind-set eventually may lead, becomes clearer by the day.
The situation warrants a serious wake-up call, as the Lithuanian MEP, former President Vytautys Landsbergis has done today.
NATO stands accused of bias by the Russians. NATO, not being a neutral arbiter but a defense organization, is supposed to be biased on the side of the good guys! The bizarre condemnation by Russia is cunningly calculated to appeal to the morally relativized masses in the West.
At the root of the moral paralysis lurks the toxic philosophy of relativism, the notion that there is no objective truth and that therefore any opinion is as good as any other. In this scenario there are no good or bad guys, just narratives in the form of personal perspectives. This pernicious philosophy is imposed on us by our intellectual elites and useless idiots through the pressure of petty political correctness.
Europe has lost sight of the fact that we aren't neutral bystanders, but partisan members of a defense organization. This excerpt from World Politics Review marks the postmodern corruption: "While the United States (...) condemn Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the Europeans have tried to maintain a delicate balancing act between the two belligerents. The French were even-handed (...)" This is abdicating the moral stance required as a member of NATO.
What's worse, many of Europe's politicians - to the Left as well as to the Right - have now adopted as their default attitude the philosophy of Pragmatism, another off-shoot in the Relativist school of thought. The result is well described in this Times Online article, "Georgia: Europe wins a gold medal for defeatism."
This defeatism is the result of a will, crushed by the conclusion that truth is unattainable: objective realism thus shunned, leads to moral agnosticism. In the absence of truth, it follows there is no right or wrong.
In times of peace and stability we can perhaps afford the luxury of an intelligentsia dabbling in suicidal mind-games, but right now it's becoming apparent that it rots away at our resolve and putrifies survival instincts. Our weekness invites adventurism on the part of the more absolutist. In short, there is a mounting requirement to raise awareness of the problem.
The former President of Lithuania, Vytautys Landsbergis knows the Russian capacity of constructed reality as no other. In 1991 he fought off a bloody attempt by the Soviets to overthrow his Government. He is presently a Member of the European Parliament for the conservative EPP-ED group.
Today he tolled the knell in that hapless institution by handing out a pamphlet in which he outlined his urgent caveats. It can be read on the site of EUX.TV but given its prime importance we reproduce it here below. This article on National Post goes deeper into the division between the old and the new Europe.
A concerted, undivided effort to regain control over reality-based thinking is long, long overdue. Even now - after the assault on Georgia - common denial is setting in. After Islamization failed to alert us to the existential danger of our own making, we now have the benefit of the omens emanating from the reconstituted Evil Empire. We must awake from the relativist stupor! Russia is playing us like a violin, and to all but NATO's Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, it's business as usual.
Here's Vytautys Landsbergis' interview with EUX and the text of his burning missive.
EUX.TV: "Landsbergis: Russia is Blowing Up Europe"
The gloomiest premonitions are short to become true. Europe divided, and unfortunately toadying is at last giving into Russian aggression. This was manifested by EU leaders' inefficiency even to state that a power having crossed the frontiers and raved within a sovereign country's community, nor the immobilized United Nations, dared to demand that invaders' armed forces as well as the supreme commander in chief in the Kremlin responsible for the ongoing violence and plunder get out immediately. Calls to stop crimes bring about nothing, neither does ineffective parlance on Russia's 'inadequate means'.
One seems as if expected to perceive - were the Russian bombers targeting fewer bombs on homes, exploding fewer bridges, had they sunk only two offshore patrol boats, not three, were they to have killed not two pressmen in Gori - only one instead, perhaps, those means would look acceptable.
The German proposals to stabilize the situation under the Russian occupation were just similar. To those unaware about the importance of the wording, Moscow has imposed to continue with the misconcepted usage of 'peace keepers' for invaders and, besides, an empty, time-wasting dissension on the future of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, whilst both Georgia's and Europe's future remain at stake.
The only credibility test for EU and NATO today is to request Russia's armed forces to be withdrawn immediately and unconditionally. Preventing it, Russia simply denounced any full withdrawal. Shut up your mouths, Europeans. Is that language addressed to Mr Sarkozy?
Whoever does not demand unconditional withdrawal, not 'stepping back' - actually justifies the incursion as well as the sea blockade, plundering, rape, total destruction of communications and economy infrastructure, if Georgians are not, at least, pushed to guerilla warfare in their sovereign land. Russia succeeded in 'balkanizing' South Ossetia - village against village, so, the destruction may now go deeper into Georgia. The new Georgian site, the town Akhalgori, is already occupied by 'independent Ossetians.' The mockery goes on.
Appeasing European leaders imperceptibly are becoming accomplices in total wrongdoing.
Russia in its line happily discloses itself as a medieval state-conqueror, to whom do belong all the goods taken from those defeated. "Our trophies." This is a quotation.
We have seen it all in Lithuania - the outright Soviet cynicism, ideological demagoguery, accompanying the violence of the military and chekist atrocities.
They began by accusing Lithuania to be the aggressor in 1940; the occupation was followed by the Red Terror, and they, by the use of specially re-dressed assault troopers, applying total warfare to peasants thrown out of their homes and land, well until the 12 March 1990.
This is being done currently in Georgia, while terrorists brought in from North Caucasus are also allowed to demonstrate how impotent the Tblisi government is, as it has agreed even not to undertake responsibility of protecting its own people. Europe de facto approves of free hands on this 'solution' and the fixed agreement. You don't resist, agreed Mr. Sarkozy. We'll not protect you either, only by statements. Let the Georgians retreat to the places of their dislocation. As to Russia's units' whereabouts or whenever they were to leave, it was left to be guessed. The Kremlin is free to tell lies every day. The Georgians will be requested, the Russians only suggested to. In response, they are already dictating the winners' conditions.
Hypocricy has been admitted: as if the bandits who followed the invaders' forces did not belong to the Russian units. Just so it was to be presented to us in 1991; portraying USSR interior OMON gangs as 'local forces' assigned to protect the local Poles from the Lithuanians. A bit later the whole so-called Baltic regional military structure (Russian, of course) was declared "local public force" which was provided to take part in determining the future "status" of the three Baltic States! President Boris Yeltsin behaved honestly, so the threatening GRU bubbles proved to be empty in the end.
Prior to it, we saw in Lithuania the night of 13 January 1991, which might be descending in Georgia presently. I can well remember the horrible sensation; we were butchered, looted, exposed to anything on their minds while the whole world stayed silent. It was only Boris Yeltsin who responded, as I later found out, by sternly warning Mr Gorbachev. But Gorbachev was by then already hostage of the crime perpetrated with his consent. And as the bloody morning drew closer, the West's protests were already heard.
The Soviet generals, however, were off the edge being prevented from "completing the job". It seems that around Tblisi things are alike. The Russians are mocking President Sarkozy and State Secretary Rice by distancing a little bit when they are in the city, and coming back nearer after the guests leave.
Georgia does not see the dawn, and Europe allows it to be so.
This might suggest the beginning of the pre-planned decline of the European Union and cataclysm of that ancient civilization. Speaking frankly, morally Europe already capitulated 
way back in Chechnya. Any simplified, primitive and artificial justification for that punishing Chechen genocide, the second after Stalin's one in 1944, was accepted. Now the berries are ripe. >>>
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Cultural Jihad, a.k.a. "The Project" - Updates
There's important, new material available. On the Articles file:
Front Page: "The Origins of the Muslim Brotherhood “Project”," by Patrick Poole
In May 2006, when I first introduced American readers to the Muslim Brotherhood strategic plan known as “The Project” (including the first complete English translation of such, published here at FrontPage), very little was known about the document beyond what had been reported in the European press and Swiss journalist Sylvain Besson’s book, La conquête de l'Occident: Le projet secret des Islamistes (Paris: Le Seuil, 2005). (...)A new book, however, sheds fresh light on the background of “The Project” and offers new details on the fundamental realignment of Muslim Brotherhood strategy and doctrine that it represents. >>>
Update:
Memri: "Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide: Bin Laden is a Jihad Fighter"
On May 22, 2008, the reformist Arab website http://www.elaph.com/ posted a comprehensive interview with Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Muhammad Mahdi 'Akef. In the interview, 'Akef (...) expressed support for the resistance in Iraq and Palestine, and for the activities of Al-Qaeda. 'Akef's statements evoked harsh criticism among clerics and politicians both inside and outside Egypt (...) The following are excerpts from the interview (...) >>>
Update: New! Music for Liberty: WMD (Weapon of Musical Defense)
Atlas Shrugs: "Weapon of Musical Defense" (WMD)
Last night I made good on my promise on my new radio show Voices of Freedom on KFNX to play new and original music with a message, a counter jihad message. Great rockin' tunes. Several concerned and talent rock stars got together and put to music everything they had learned about Islam after 9/11. What took years to learn has been put to fabulous music. They are currently producing a CD of roughly 22 songs which will be available on itunes.
Last night I played the world premiere of Appeasement (minute 5 on the show Download 2nd_Show_July_24.mp3 ) and promised Atlas listeners the opportunity to download two songs for free. GO HERE FOR THE FREE DOWNLOADS.
Appeasement
What happens when a desire for peace at at any price meets an insatiable desire for world conquest?
Best Nation
is about the tacit acceptance of the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam by the UN. We think it's a pretty shocking document and more people would be shocked by it, if only they knew about it.
From the new website:
We're getting ready for a forthcoming web launch. We know it's a mysterious name but you'll just have to wait. (...)
Update:
WMD’s knowledge repository is open: If you’ve heard our songs (which you can do via our home page), you’ll know that the lyrics are packed with more information (...) When everything is ready we will have a full reference site (...) For now we’re opening up a tiny portion of what we call “The Library“. We have one article up at the moment which is a side by side comparision of the full text of the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is the very heart of our song Best Nation. (...) >>>
Update: Pat Condell weighs in:
- Filed on Articles in "The Project" -
Friday, February 8, 2008
The German Revolution
The present is a review of an episode in "The Orientalist" by Tom Reiss, a thoroughly and uniquely researched work that accounts hitherto less known historical and personal facts. Set during the interbellum, it chronicles a fascinating and remarkable story, encompassing four empires, three continents, three religions, two revolutions and two world wars. Earlier posts were "History Class: of agit-prop, revolution and terror!"
On Monday, 11th November 1918, delegates from the new Social Democratic government of Germany officially signed the armistice, ending Germany's part in the Great War 1914-1918. The Kaiser moved to comfortable exile in The Netherlands.
But mob rule reigned Germany. Leftist leader Emil Eichhorn, self-appointed chief of the People's Revolutionary Berlin Police Department - personally freed 650 prisoners from police headquarters at the head of a mob. Others seized newspaper offices, government buildings, stores, and telegraph offices.
The demobilising army agreed not to oppose the government, in exchange for a free hand in quelling the revolutionary unrest. The government took the responsibility and the blame for the humiliating surrender, while simultaneously delegating political power - the state's monopoly of force - to Rightist officers.
As the army demobilised in Berlin, all moral constraint melted away. Here's an account of artist George Grosz: "The city was dark, cold and full of rumours. The streets were wild ravines haunted by murderers and cocaine peddlers ... People denied all knowledge but whispered about secret manoeuvres by the Black Reichswehr or a newly formed Red Army." Bursts of machine-gun fire and hand-grenade explosions were common. Grosz: "Inhabitants (...) went up on the roof to shoot pigeons and people. Their sense of proportion (...) got misplaced."
Three hundred people perished each day from influenza alone. Demobilised soldiers started selling their weapons on the streets. Those who held on to their arms followed their unit commanders into Mafia-style, loosely connected militias, known as the Freikorps (Free Corps), a proto type of the later Waffen SS, but originally consisting of volunteers in the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon in 1813-1815.
It was more than just the Red menace which motivated the Freikorps, their originators being the ancestors of all guerilla fighters and revolutionary insurgents of the next century. An even earlier connection identified them with the Teutonic Knights. They were anxious to prove themselves worthy of the medieval battles in the East against Poles and Tartars.
The Western powers restricted the German military, but motivated by fear of the Soviet revolutionary threat, refrained from disarming and restraining the Freikorps. In 1919 the Freikorps spontaneously and without orders moved against Poland, Lithuania and Latvia - the same countries the Nazis re-invaded in 1941.
Despite their symbolism and ancestry the Freikorps did not succeed in turning the tide of the Whites against the Reds and descended on a city in chaos, armed to the teeth, wreaking havoc on the new republic.
The revolutionary neighbourhoods were attacked without restraint. The front was brought to civilian society. This maintained the fantasy that the war had not really ended. Unarmed civilians had become the enemy. It "was a lesson in local brutality and cold-bloodedness that prepared many of them for work as storm troopers or concentration-camp guards in the years to come."
A footnote provides an important psycho-pathological context: "Many returning soldiers, no matter their political disposition, would display signs of sociopathy. Homicides and rapes became commonplace in postwar Berlin, brutal acts committed by men with no previous criminal record (...)"
"The panic evoked in Germany by the fate of Russia drove so deep into the psyche of ordinary Germans that they could not see that the forces of the new Right were equally hostile to bourgeois values like law, order and moral restraint. The Freikorps ethic, every bit as revolutionary as that of the Bolsheviks, masqueraded behind a false aura of conservatism and pacification.
Real conservatives believed in the value of traditions, but the Freikorps believed exactly the opposite - for them, the Great War had proved that the morality and social structure of peacetime were corrupt and meaningless. The politics behind the war had been a fraud, but the fighting had been real, and in this reality, the 'New Man' of the Right-wing revolution was born."
Author of 'Storm of Steel' and 'Battle As Inner Experience' Ernst Jünger hailed the 'storm soldier': "the coming of a whole new race, smart, strong and filled with will, to save Europe from its liberal delusions". "For this New Man, as for the Red revolutionaries, the legal and moral foundations of society were mere bourgeois squeamishness. At the front, only the fundamental values of bravery, ruthlessness, and camaraderie mattered - and the fundamental precept of Freikorps ideology: all society is the front."
The more the Freikorps suppressed the revolution, the faster it spread. Bolshevik cells and councils (Soviets) sprang up in towns and cities across Germany. The Munich Soviet was led by a former mental patient who wrote threatening letters to the Pope and declared war on Switzerland for failing to provide a shipment of locomotives.
In April 1919 the Bolshevik triumvirate led by Lenin associates made an attempt to launch Red Terror. Bourgeois and local aristocrats (every locale was supposed to have one, in the absence of which the village headmaster was supposed to volunteer) were jailed, property was confiscated, opposition presses smashed and schools shut down - "though this was not a real Red Terror but more of Red Terror manqué. But in the event of insufficient ruthlessness on the part of the German Left, the German Right was only too happy to fill the void."
The Freikorps attacked Munich as if it were a foreign city. The Reds held the town for three days, at the end of which more than a thousand were shot, including seminary students.
The next year saw a coup by Dr Kapp and General Ludendorf. According to an anecdote Corporal Hitler came too late to join it. The ousted Social Democratic government being unable to turn out the Freikorps against the Freikorps, called for a general strike. This succeeded, sending the putschists fleeing to Sweden, upon which the Spartacists raised a 80,000 strong 'Red Army of the Ruhr' in order to seize the mining and heavy industry in that area. The reinstated Social Democratic government retaliated by setting the Freikorps loose on Berlin. The Reds in the Ruhr were crushed.
"Finally, the major disturbances ended, though street battles and small uprisings continued to break out in towns across the fatherland. In the spring of 1921" as the protagonist of "The Orientalist" crossed the border into Germany, the country had fallen into uneasy quiet ...
- More excerpts from Tom Reiss' "The Orientalist" on the history of the two Socialist movements in next posts.
- Up next: Both Sir Winston S. Churchill in "Memoirs of the Second World War" and Tom Reiss' in "The Orientalist" touch on one of the most colourful people of the interbellum, Hitler's Master of Ceremonies.
- Filed on Articles in "History Compiled", cat. Culture, Art, History -
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Kurdistan: the Plot Thickening
Turkey's parliament voted overwhelmingly today to approve an offensive against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, authorizing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to order the Turkish military to cross into Iraq over a one-year period. Yesterday we already mentioned that the plot in the region is thickening amidst moves in the U.S. to complicate matters even further, quite unnecessarily so, one might add.
While NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and other diplomats are falling over one another to press upon Turkey to pull punches, Turkish leaders have stressed that the vote would not mean there would be an immediate cross-border attack on members of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. Over the summer period Turkey has amassed forces along the border that far outnumber the American troops in Iraq.
For your convenience above historical map from this source, which just might raise a few eye brows in the region.
- "Kurdish Rebels Strike Iran"- "Kurdish rebels based in the rugged mountains along Iraq’s northeastern border with Iran told Newsmax in exclusive interviews at secret guerilla bases that they have killed 200 Iranian Revolutionary Guards troops during clashes over the past two months. Guerilla leaders of the Party of the Free Life of Kurdistan, PJAK, said they have clashed with Iranian forces 21 times during this time. Iran has not admitted to the losses. The intense fighting began on Aug. 16, when Iran and Turkey began jointly shelling villages inside Iraq where rebels from those countries have their bases. Both Iran and Turkey are currently massing troops on their sides of the border with Iraq, in preparation for a ground and airborne assault on the rebel bases inside Iraq, according to published reports and information from local sources. >>>
- "Turkey Forms Alliance With Iran Against Kurds" - "U.S. ally Turkey and U.S. arch-enemy Iran have formed a military alliance to drive opposition Kurds from bases in northern Iraq they have used since 2004 to launch guerrilla operations inside Iran, rebel leaders told Newsmax at a secret base in the Qandil mountains. Both Iran and Turkey have vowed to send troops into northern Iraq, but until now evidence of active military cooperation between them has remained a closely-held secret. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stepped up political and diplomatic threats in recent days, telling the United States he would cut off U.S. access to the strategic Incirlik airbase in eastern Turkey if the U.S. tried to prevent Turkey from sending troops against the Kurdish bases in northern Iraq." ...
"The goal of the Iranians is to drive us from the border area,” rebel leader Biryar Gabar told Newsmax. “They want to turn this area into a no-man’s land, so they can use it to smuggle weapons and Islamist guerillas into Iraq to fight the Americans. He called the Iran-Turkey entente “an anti-American alliance,” not just an anti-Kurdish agreement, and said that it resulted from deliberate decisions from the ruling Islamist AKP party of Prime Minister Erdogan to transform Turkey into an increasingly Islamist state."
"A senior European official, who was involved in talks to bring Turkey into the European Union, told Newsmax recently he had been “stunned” by the hard-line toward the Kurds taken by AKP party leader Abdullah Gul, now Turkey’s president. “He was totally uncompromising,” the official said. “He took a harder line than the Turkish military.” Iran has been offering Turkey an economic agreement with Iran in July to build a strategic pipeline that will bring Iranian natural gas to Europe, in defiance of a U.S. led effort to increase the economic squeeze on Iran." >>>
Keeping you posted.
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