Through a myriad of «civil society» organizations, the United States has been financing Chechen groups inside the autonomous republic, in Russia, and abroad. However, large portions of U.S. assistance money has «bled» over to support Chechen and other North Caucasus terrorist groups, which the U.S. State Department and U.S. intelligence agencies insist on referring to as «separatist guerrillas», «nationalists», «insurgents», and «rebels», instead of terrorists.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Boston Echoes in Finland
From: Strategic Culture
What happened in Boston is still rather opaque, but new facts are being revealed. The terrorists from «Iranian branch» of Al Qaeda are on the wanted list in Canada for allegedly trying to do the same thing there. The Tsarnaev brothers have hit the pages of world media. The messages are coming in with reports on Chechen terrorists leaving traces in this or that country. (1) It’s impossible to predict how the events are going to unfold, especially in view of uninterrupted supplies of arms and money to terrorist international in Syria. Still, it’s not excluded that the attention will be shifted from the Middle East to the north-eastern Caucasus as a «hotbed» of instability slipping out of Russia’s control.
Germany’s Political Parties Prior to the Bundestag Elections
From: Strategic Culture
In its 150th anniversary year, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) is preoccupied with the election campaign. Opening the Party Congress on 14 April, its candidate for chancellor, Peer Steinbrück, began his speech decisively: «I want to become Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany».
According to the polls, the SPD is noticeably losing votes to the Christian Democrats. At present, with less than six months to go before the election, 40-41 percent of voters are planning to vote for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Socialist Union (CSU) and 23-27 percent for the SPD. In the last Bundestag elections in 2009, the SPD collected 23 percent of the votes. The conservatives (Christian Democrats), having taken an historic gamble transforming themselves into a centrist party, did not lose out. They managed to push aside the Social Democrats who are now only able to oppose the CDU/CSU in alliance with the Greens. This alliance outmanoeuvred the conservatives in the January (2013) state elections in Lower Saxony, however. The Social Democrats are also being encouraged by their success in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein (elections were held in these states in May 2012). Theoretically, this could also work in the Bundestag elections, but let’s not forget that voting is set to take place in the Landtag of Bavaria a week before Germany’s general election, where the Social Democrats and the Greens are doomed to remain in opposition.
The French Government’s Exquisite Bullying
From: Testosterone Pit
The French government is saddled with enough problems; in theory, it no longer needs to create new ones. But now it wrote another excellent chapter in its tome on how to interfere with private-sector businesses, hamper entrepreneurs, and encourage them to start up their operations elsewhere instead of creating jobs in France.
Yet, President François Hollande had declared on May 1, after the rolls at the unemployment office had swollen 11.5% in 12 months to an all-time record of over 3.2 million people, that the policies the government was implementing had "only one goal: to win the battle of employment.”
Bahrain first Arab country to designate Hizbullah a terrorist organisation
From: Al-Shorfa
The Bahraini interior and foreign affairs ministries, along with the kingdom's legislative authority, are currently formulating a legal framework to govern the inclusion of Lebanon's Hizbullah on the country's list of terrorist organisations. This comes after parliament in late March approved a proposal to put Hizbullah on Bahrain's list of terrorist organisations "to safeguard the domestic front against foreign intervention". The Bahraini cabinet then announced on April 7th it had tasked the interior and foreign ministries with implementing the decision, making Bahrain the first Arab country to take such action against Hizbullah. According to the proposal, the legislation falls in line with action taken by other countries including Canada, the Netherlands and Australia, and comes as a result of "Iranian-backed Hizbullah's increased activities and flagrant interference in the internal affairs of the countries of the region, becoming the arm Tehran uses to export its revolution." Bahrain has said multiple times it has evidence confirming Hizbullah members are training Bahrainis and inciting them to use violence against security personnel in the kingdom, funded by Iran. The parliament submitted the proposal along with evidence it says incriminates Hizbullah in this regard, most notably the arrest of an eight-member cell in Bahrain whose members had links with Hizbullah.
The Bahraini interior and foreign affairs ministries, along with the kingdom's legislative authority, are currently formulating a legal framework to govern the inclusion of Lebanon's Hizbullah on the country's list of terrorist organisations. This comes after parliament in late March approved a proposal to put Hizbullah on Bahrain's list of terrorist organisations "to safeguard the domestic front against foreign intervention". The Bahraini cabinet then announced on April 7th it had tasked the interior and foreign ministries with implementing the decision, making Bahrain the first Arab country to take such action against Hizbullah. According to the proposal, the legislation falls in line with action taken by other countries including Canada, the Netherlands and Australia, and comes as a result of "Iranian-backed Hizbullah's increased activities and flagrant interference in the internal affairs of the countries of the region, becoming the arm Tehran uses to export its revolution." Bahrain has said multiple times it has evidence confirming Hizbullah members are training Bahrainis and inciting them to use violence against security personnel in the kingdom, funded by Iran. The parliament submitted the proposal along with evidence it says incriminates Hizbullah in this regard, most notably the arrest of an eight-member cell in Bahrain whose members had links with Hizbullah.
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