Vade retro TERRORISTAS!!

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Postby tgarcia » 07 Nov 2006, 11:37

O Garotinho poderia ir até lá para apoiá-lo também!!! :cool:
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Postby Rafael » 07 Nov 2006, 23:13

Duas coisas... a primeira séria: o que ele quer? qual a reivindicação? de repente tão proibindo de falar com o advogado dele... blz... tão deixando ele sem comida... tá certo... agora, grave de fome porque colocaram grades? porra, ele está na cadeia... ué?!!?!?

A outra é me solidarizar a ele e ao Fabriss...
É isso aí Marcola... Não desista... vá até o fim...
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Postby mends » 30 Nov 2006, 18:37

Lula, Gaddafi e um lamento: é uma pena que o Profeta não proíba tintura de cabelo...

É uma pena que o Islã não proíba tintura de cabelo. Seríamos, assim, poupados daquela basta cabeleira negra do ditador líbio Muammar Gaddafi, que deve aparecer nos jornais brasileiros desta sexta ao lado de Lula, o Babalorixá de Banânia. Mais negra do que a de Iracema, Mais negra do que as asas da graúna. A cara está um pouco amarrotada. Lula poderia lhe falar das virtudes esteticamente saneadoras do Botox. Não alisa o caráter, mas as faces ficam parecendo bumbum de bebê. Ao eliminar a expressão, também poupa constrangimentos.

Em três anos, este é o segundo encontro do presidente brasileiro com o que a imprensa, à falta de melhor epíteto, chama “líder líbio”, um assassino de comprovada reputação, agora se fingindo de reformador.

Lula e Gaddafi se reuniram de manhã em Abuja, na Nigéria, onde acontece um encontro de países africanos e latino-americanos. Metade dos chefes de Estado não deu pelota para a cúpula. Defendendo a sua agenda, o Apedeuta afirmou que a Líbia “tem caminhado para um processo de democratização”. Não tem. Só decidiu, acho que por razões de mercado, ficar fora da rota do terror da Al Qaeda.

E Lula foi adiante: “Quando o primeiro-ministro britânico se reúne com o Gaddafi, todo mundo acha o máximo, mas, quando eu me reúno com ele, todos criticam". “Todos” quem, cara pálida? A resposta à tolice está contida na sua própria afirmação: ele não é o primeiro-ministro britânico. Aquele é protagonista da luta contra o terrorismo islâmico, e lhe basta — e basta mesmo! — que Gaddafi não seja um lacaio da Al Qaeda. Lula poderia explicar por que se encontra duas vezes com um terrorista, ora aposentado, e nenhuma com um governante de Israel por exemplo. Por que não segue, nesse caso, o exemplo britânico?

A política externa brasileira é uma piada. Numa moção de censura contra uma milícia islâmica homicida do Sudão, o Brasil se absteve, alegando que seguia o voto dos EUA. Ocorre que os americanos o fizeram para ganhar tempo, até retirar de lá seus cidadãos. Não se tratava de nenhuma acomodação. Já o Bananão não queria comprar briga com o governo sudanês porque contava com o apoio daquele país, em seu terceiro-mundismo militante, para integrar o Conselho de Segurança da ONU. Mais um palpite feliz de Celso Amorim, suponho.

Em suma: Blair se encontra com Gaddafi por bons motivos, e Lula, por maus.

Reinaldo Azevedo
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Postby mends » 07 Dec 2006, 17:59

Don't do it

Dec 7th 2006
From The Economist print edition


The Baker-Hamilton group wants to set a date for leaving Iraq. George Bush should say no





IT IS not quite a coup d'état. But seldom before has the American Congress—or, more correctly, a bipartisan committee of wise men and women reporting to Congress—put a wartime president in such an awkward predicament. James Baker, Lee Hamilton and their Iraq Study Group said this week that if George Bush adopted their 79-point plan for Iraq, the bulk of America's fighting troops could be out of the country by the first quarter of 2008—that is to say within 15 months or so.

This is not, the wise men said, a policy of cutting and running. On the contrary, Mr Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman, said as he presented the report that the group supported Mr Bush's declared aim of creating an Iraq that is able to govern, sustain and defend itself (see article). Mr Baker, a former secretary of state and a long-time friend of the Bush family, acknowledged that a precipitous withdrawal could cause a bloodbath inside Iraq and perhaps provoke a wider regional war. But the wise men also say—and who could disagree?—that America's army should not remain in Iraq indefinitely, in an “open-ended” commitment. So the idea of leaving by early 2008 is a compromise.


The Baker-Hamilton analysis of what has gone wrong feels right. It is that Iraq is sliding into a sectarian war mainly because its fractious politicians have not been willing to make the concessions needed to achieve national reconciliation. In particular, the Shias and their Kurdish allies have not done enough to allay the fears of the previously dominant Sunni minority that they are being excluded and disadvantaged under the new order. But the group strays on to much more treacherous ground when it proposes a way to correct this.



Do what we say or we go (but we're going anyway)
Its central recommendation is that America should use its muscle in Iraq to put pressure on its elected government to make concessions to the Sunnis. Indeed, the group wants Mr Bush to give Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, a list of reconciliation “milestones”, such as softening the rules on de-Baathification, agreeing on a fairer way of sharing oil revenues and revising Iraq's new constitution in ways that allay the other fears of the Sunnis. The wise men say that if the Iraqi government fails to make substantial progress on this, and on improving its performance generally, America should reduce or remove its political, economic and military support.

Fine, in principle. Having spent so many lives and dollars on Iraq, why shouldn't America shove its government towards reconciliation? That is what America's energetic ambassador in Baghdad has been trying to do behind the scenes for many months. The odd thing about the Baker-Hamilton group's idea is that it wants Mr Bush to do this shoving after he has already thrown away his principal means of persuasion.

If Mr Bush adopts the plan, Iraqis will know that the bulk of America's forces will be out by early 2008. If opinion polls are to be believed, that will delight many Americans as well as many people in Iraq. By thinning out its army, America will reduce the Iraqis' sense that they are under occupation, and so suck some of the oxygen out of the anti-American insurgency. But the Baker-Hamilton group is surely wrong to believe that announcing the army's departure will strengthen America's leverage over the internal politics of Iraq. The opposite is likelier. Mr Bush, a lame-duck president, would be a lame-duck president presiding over a lame-duck occupation.

In fairness, the group is not advocating a complete withdrawal. Some 15,000 American soldiers would stay behind to train the Iraqis, as would some rapid-reaction troops, and special forces to lead the hunt for al-Qaeda. If the Iraqi government performs, it will still receive political and economic support. The wise men hope these will be inducement enough for Mr Maliki to do as America says. Hope is all it can be. At present, the American army is the only strong military force capable of holding the ring in Iraq. Pulling it out may merely encourage a vicious fight to fill the vacuum.



But at least it's a plan
The best argument for the Baker-Hamilton report is that the present strategy is failing. It will soon be four years since the invasion. Iraq is now so violent that many Iraqis think life was better under Saddam Hussein. Robert Gates, Mr Bush's own choice to replace Donald Rumsfeld as defence secretary, said candidly to Congress this week that America wasn't winning. Haunted not only by their losses—nearly 3,000 soldiers dead—but a sense of being unwelcome and making matters worse, the American people are aching to put the whole misadventure behind them. Now that a powerful, bipartisan committee has dangled the possibility of doing just that within little over a year, it would take extraordinary stubbornness—or courage—from Mr Bush to ignore it.

He should not ignore it. The report contains many useful recommendations. These include the proposals to enlist the help of Iraq's neighbours and for bolder peacemaking in Palestine. It would be a mistake to expect instant results. For example, Baker-Hamilton proposes talks between Israel and those Palestinians who recognise its right to exist—but the Palestinians' present Hamas government refuses to recognise Israel's right to exist. As for Iran and Syria, they have little reason to help an America that insists rightly on preventing Syria from intimidating Lebanon and Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. All the same, it does no harm for America to be seen to be working with an open mind and flexible diplomacy.

What will not help is scuttling from Iraq before exhausting every possible effort to put the country back together. The Baker-Hamilton group is right to say that America should neither leave precipitously nor stay forever. Leaning harder on Iraq's politicians is an excellent idea. But setting an arbitrary deadline of early 2008 for most of the soldiers to depart risks weakening America's bargaining power, intensifying instead of dampening the fighting and projecting an image of weakness that will embolden enemies everywhere. On this recommendation, Mr Bush needs to insist on his prerogatives as custodian of America's foreign policy and just say no.
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Postby junior » 10 Dec 2006, 09:47

Desenho animado recria Bush criança para criticar o estilo do presidente

VINÍCIUS QUEIROZ GALVÃO
DE NOVA YORK

Condoleezza Rice é apaixonada por George W. Bush, que faz dela um capacho. Richard Cheney e Donald Rumsfeld são comparsas subservientes de um líder centralizador e autoritário.

A ficção acima, com personagens reais, é o mote do desenho animado "Lil" Bush: Resident of the United States" (Bushzinho: Residente dos EUA, numa tradução literal), que estréia no início de 2007 na TV americana com escárnio do presidente republicano.

Dono de "South Park", "Casa Animada" e "Reno 911", o canal Comedy Central encomendou seis episódios ao roteirista e produtor Donick Cary, de "Os Simpsons".

A história é assim: Bush é um aluno malcomportado da escola primária, só tira nota baixas, é propositadamente displicente e desatento e faz tudo em nome de Deus. Seus desafetos: Kim Jong-il, o ditador norte-coreano, Saddam Hussein, líder deposto do Iraque, e os democratas John Kerry e Hillary Clinton.

Bombardeia todos, ao brincar com os amigos no salão oval da Casa Branca, à época comandada por Bush pai. Antes, exige de um imaginário presidente francês a entrega urgente de um carregamento de batatas fritas ("french fries", em inglês, para fazer sentido o trocadilho) ou detonará armas atômicas no país. "E isso não é uma negociação", alerta.

Tortura

Num dos programas piloto, a cantina da escola serve falafel, em vez de cachorro-quente, na hora da merenda. Lil" Bush e turma torturam os funcionários da cozinha com métodos iguais aos que foram revelados em fotos durante o escândalo da prisão de Abu Ghraib. Ao final, é instituído o dia do cachorro-quente na escola. "Consegui de novo", diz Lil" Bush.

Em outro episódio, o futuro presidente, que "tem talento", no dizer do pai, recebe uma mensagem de Deus, a quem revela não querer aprender nada e enxota a chutes. Na sala de aula, manda Lil" Condi fazer suas lições de casa "até o fim da faculdade".

"Lil" Bush" começou em setembro como seis clipes com duração de cinco minutos e meio cada um oferecidos pela Amp'd Mobile, um serviço de wireless que inclui programação de entretenimento em vídeo com serviços de telefonia celular.

O desenho já está em sites de compartilhamento de vídeos, como o YouTube (http://www.youtube.com). Os episódios originais foram vistos mais de 230 mil vezes.

Em 2001, a Comedy Central havia produzido a sátira "That's My Bush", de Trey Parker e Matt Stone ("criadores de "South Park"), seriado inteiro dedicado a zombar de Bush.

Com a saída de Donald Rumsfeld do governo, o produtor Donick Cary disse nesta semana que está em "processo de convencimento" para que o ex-secretário da Defesa dê voz ao seu próprio personagem no desenho animado.

Até agora, a Casa Branca não se manifestou. Segundo Cary, Lil" Bush é a melhor notícia que os republicanos receberam desde a invasão do Iraque.
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Postby junior » 10 Dec 2006, 09:53

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Postby mends » 11 Dec 2006, 09:15

o que vai abaixo é o verdadeiro perigo da guerra. quando ocorreu a mesma coisa em 69-70, o mundo começou a se ferrar: as despesas cresciam, não dava pra aumentar imposto pq a guerra havia se tornado impopular, chegou em um momento que os eua abruptamente aboliram o padrão ouro, dando espaço pra cirse do petróleo.

e isso é "cagacionismo": tinham que ter seguido a doutrina Powell, que o Colin Powell escreveu justamente pra evitar coisas como essa. Os eua devem entrar em uma guerra com força TOTAL, acabar com a parada, e sair. Força total, sem essa de integrar polícia iraquiana blábla´bla. Mas advinha se os "pacifistas" do mundo aceitariam os eua lutando com força total?



Despite Its $168 Billion Budget,
The Army Faces a Cash Crunch
After Years of Gearing Up
For High-Tech Warfare,
Service Is Short on Basics
Humvees Rise to $225,000
By GREG JAFFE
December 11, 2006; Page A1

FORT STEWART, Ga. -- With just six weeks before they leave for Iraq, the 3,500 soldiers from the Third Infantry Division's First Brigade should be learning about Ramadi, the insurgent stronghold where they will spend a year.

Many of the troops don't even know the basic ethnic makeup of the largely Sunni city. "We haven't spent as much time as I would like on learning the local culture, language, and politics -- all the stuff that takes a while to really get good at," says Lt. Col. Clifford Wheeler, who commands one of the brigade's 800-soldier units.


Instead, the troops are learning to use equipment that commanders say they should ideally have been training with since the spring. Many soldiers only recently received their new M-4 rifles and rifle sights, which are in short supply because of an Army-wide cash crunch. Some still lack their machine guns or long-range surveillance systems, which are used to spot insurgents laying down roadside bombs. They've been told they'll pick up most of that when they get to Iraq.

The strains here at Fort Stewart -- one of the busiest posts in the U.S. military -- are apparent throughout the Army. They spotlight a historic predicament: The Iraq war has exposed more than a decade's worth of mistakes and miscalculations that are now seriously undermining the world's mightiest military force.

In the 15 years after the Cold War, senior military planners and civilian-defense officials didn't build a force geared to fighting long, grinding guerrilla wars, like Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead they banked on fighting quick wars, dominated by high-tech weapons systems.

The result: At a time when the war in Iraq is deepening, and debate over pulling out the troops is intensifying, the rising cost of waging the fight is outpacing even the Army's huge budget. The financial squeeze is leaving the Army short of equipment and key personnel.

The situation has the Army seeking billions more for next year, even as younger officers, frustrated with the pace of change, say that any improvements depend more on how the money is spent than on how much is spent.

From 1990 to 2005, the military lavished money on billion-dollar destroyers, fighter jets and missile-defense systems. Defenders of such programs say the U.S. faces a broad array of threats and must be prepared for all of them. High-tech weaponry contributed to the swift toppling of the regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, but has been of little help in the more difficult task of stabilizing the two countries.

Of the $1.9 trillion the U.S. spent on weaponry in that period, adjusted for inflation, the Air Force received 36% and the Navy got 33%. The Army took in 16%, it says. Despite the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both dominated by ground forces, the ratio hasn't changed significantly.

Overly optimistic predictions by the Bush administration -- and the Army -- have made the Army's budget crunch worse. Both assumed troop numbers in Iraq would drop significantly by 2006 and the Army wouldn't need as much money as it initially requested. Instead, costs have soared, forcing front-line commanders and Pentagon generals to try to meet an ever-growing list of demands with insufficient resources.

"Our ground forces have been stretched nearly to the breaking point," warned the bipartisan Iraq Study Group in its recent report. "The defense budget as a whole is in danger of disarray."

FIGHT FOR IRAQ



See continuing coverage of developments in Iraq, including an interactive map of day-to-day events in Iraq. Plus, see a tally of military deaths.
• White House Debates Iraq Strategies
12/10/06

• Iraqi President Disparages Baker Report
12/10/06

• Iraq Nears Pact on Oil Revenue
12/09/06

It may seem hard to believe that a country which allocated $168 billion to the Army this year -- more than twice the 2000 budget -- can't cover the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the two pillars of the Army, personnel and equipment -- both built to wage high-tech, firepower-intensive wars -- are under enormous stress:

The cost of basic equipment that soldiers carry into battle -- helmets, rifles, body armor -- has more than tripled to $25,000 from $7,000 in 1999.

The cost of a Humvee, with all the added armor, guns, electronic jammers and satellite-navigational systems, has grown seven-fold to about $225,000 a vehicle from $32,000 in 2001.

The cost of paying and training troops has grown 60% to about $120,000 per soldier, up from $75,000 in 2001. On the reserve side, such costs have doubled since 2001, to about $34,000 per soldier.

At Fort Knox, Ky., the cash crunch got so bad this summer that the Army ran out of money to pay janitors who clean the classrooms where captains are taught to be commanders. So the officers, who will soon be leading 100-soldier units, clean the office toilets themselves.

"The cost of the Army is being driven up by [Iraq and Afghanistan]. That's the fundamental story here," says Brig. Gen. Andrew Twomey, a senior official on the Army staff in the Pentagon. The increased costs are "not from some wild weapons system that is off in the future. These are costs associated with current demands."

Senior Army officials concede they mistakenly assumed prior to the Iraq war that if they built a force capable of winning big conventional battles, everything else -- from counterinsurgency to peacekeeping -- would be relatively easy. "We argued in those days that if we could do the top-end skills, we could do all of the other ones," says Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the deputy commander of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command. Iraq has proven that guerrilla fights demand different equipment and skills. "I have had to eat a little crow," says Gen. Metz.

Army officials say they are doing their best to ensure that Iraq and Afghanistan-bound brigades have all the equipment they need when they arrive in the war zone. But to do this, they have had to take equipment from units training back home, which are now short of even the most basic gear, such as body armor and rifles.

The equipment shortages explain why Gen. John Abizaid, the top commander in the Middle East, recently told lawmakers that the U.S. couldn't maintain even a relatively small increase of 20,000 soldiers in Iraq for more than a few months. "The ability to sustain that commitment is simply not something that we have right now," he testified in November.

The other big strain on the Army is a shortage of people. The Army has made much of the fact that it met its recruiting goals for 2006, bringing in 80,000 soldiers. But meeting those goals has come at a heavy cost. The Army spent about $735 million on retention bonuses in 2006 to keep battle-weary troops in the service, up from about $85 million in 2003. And it had to pay about $300 million more on recruiting this year compared to the year before.

The extra cash didn't stop the Army from having to lower standards. Although the quality of the force is still considered good, 8,500 recruits in 2006 required "moral waivers" for criminal misconduct or past drug use -- more than triple the 2,260 waivers the Army issued 10 years ago. The Army also took in more troops who scored in the bottom third on its aptitude test.

As it has brought in more borderline recruits, the Army has found itself short of officers and sergeants. Today, it is down about 3,000 active-duty officers, a deficiency that it says will grow to about 3,700 in 2008. It is short more than 7,500 reserve and National Guard officers, according to internal Army documents.

One of the most pressing personnel problems is the lack of sergeants, the enlisted leaders who do most of the day-to-day supervising of the rank-and-file soldiers.

At Fort Hood, Texas, the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, which returned from Iraq in March, has about 75% of the soldiers it needs to fill its ranks, but only about half of its sergeants. The 5,000-soldier unit likely will go back to Iraq in the fall of next year, and leaders in the regiment say they will get more sergeants before they deploy, but not as many as they would like.

"The sergeant is the one that the soldiers take after," says First Sgt. James Adcock, who oversees about 130 of the unit's soldiers. "He can make or break how effective the privates are."


The large number of young soldiers in the unit combined with the shortage of sergeants has led to problems, say the regiment's leaders. Some also blame the Army's decision to scale back recruiting standards and push more troops through basic training. In May 2005, about 18% of Army's recruits were asked to leave before completing initial training. Today, only about 6% of recruits fail to make it through.

The troops who a year ago might have flunked out of basic training seem to stick with their units, according to Army statistics. But some sergeants say they also seem to cause more problems. Sgt. First Class Rajesh Harripersad, who oversees a 30-soldier platoon, says two of his soldiers were caught using marijuana and methamphetamines. Other leaders have seen an increase in accidents on and off the base. "Discipline has been worse for me this time," says Sgt. Harripersad.

Once units deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army-wide shortage of officers and sergeants is felt even more acutely. Teams focused on key jobs, such as reconstruction and Iraq governance, are "woefully undermanned," Col. Bill Hix, a senior Pentagon strategist, recently wrote in the Hoover Digest, a Stanford University policy journal. Multiple internal Army studies have concluded that the military advisory teams, charged with developing Iraqi Army forces so U.S. troops can go home, need to be doubled or tripled in size.

Often, the soldiers who serve on these undermanned teams finish their year-long deployments wondering what they have accomplished. "I would say we're an effective force for good, but we're struggling in a sea of meaningless slaughter -- along with everyone else with a job to do here," says Sgt. Mastin Greene, who serves on a reconstruction team in Baghdad.

Some of the Army's problems are a product of its failure to prepare for a guerrilla fight in which there are no front lines. Just prior to the Iraq war, the Army was buying body armor at such a slow rate that it would have taken 48 years to outfit the entire force. It invested huge sums in the years leading up to Iraq in Humvees with canvas doors that are useless for war today.

"The fact that we had certain grim realities that were inescapable for anyone who wore a uniform in a combat zone just wasn't something that was driving our weapons programming," says Maj. Gen. Stephen Speakes, who oversees equipping Army units. Army officials now say that they entered the war short of about $56 billion of essential equipment.

The Humvee stands as a metaphor for the problems the Army faces. First fielded in the early 1980s, it was designed to ferry soldiers around behind the front lines of a conventional war. In recent years, the vehicle, which troops drive on the streets of Iraq, has been modified countless times. The Army has bolted layers of armor onto it to protect troops from roadside bombs. It has added sophisticated electronic jammers, rotating turrets, bigger machine guns, satellite navigational systems and better radios.

The result is a Humvee that is much better than the version the Army took to Iraq in 2003. But the add-ons have driven up its cost. The modified vehicle is top heavy and tends to tip over at high speeds. Army officials say they can't add more weight without overwhelming the engine or breaking the axle.

"The Army recognizes that the Humvee has reached a limit of our ability to improve it for the current fight," Gen. Speakes says.

What the Army says it really needs is an all-new vehicle, designed to better withstand roadside bombs that have become part of life in Iraq. But such a vehicle likely won't be ready until 2010 or 2012, Army officials say. In the interim, the Army wants to buy something on the commercial market -- South Africa, Turkey and Australia all make alternatives. Yet it's not clear whether the Army, which is struggling to equip the current force, has the money.

The Army has told the Bush administration it needs about $24 billion more to pay its bills in 2007. Some key lawmakers, such as Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, have called for a bigger Army. But there are also pressures to restrain spending.

Covering Shortfalls

To cover cash shortfalls, Army posts around the country this summer laid off janitorial crews, closed swimming pools and didn't cut the grass.


In the Pentagon, Army generals cut $3 billion in 2005 and 2006 from programs for weapons that are in heavy use in Iraq, such as armored patrol vehicles, trucks, radios and unmanned surveillance planes, according to Army documents. In June, for example, the Army set aside about $50 million to buy more long-range radios, which are used heavily in Iraq. One month later, Army officials, who were short about $1.5 billion to make end-of-year payroll, took the money back. Army brigades are supposed to have about 1,300 radios. Today, the average brigade makes do with about 1,100.

The shortages have been especially hard on the National Guard, which in some states has only about 40% of the authorized equipment for homeland defense missions, says Gen. Speakes.

Active-duty troops preparing to go off to war at bases such as Fort Stewart, Ga., feel the crunch as well. First Sgt. Bradley Feltman, who will leave in January for his second year-long tour in three years, says his troop was short of Humvees to train on and had only 25% of the mounts it needed for its machine guns. The lack of equipment hindered the unit's ability to train as an entire 130-man unit. Instead, they trained one 30-soldier platoon at a time.

"We got training, but not graduate-level training. In a couple of months, my guys are going to be busting down doors, and it will be the first time they see some of their equipment for real," he says.

At Fort Hood, the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, which returned from Iraq in March and will go back in fall 2007, is already worried about time to prepare. The regiment will spend most of the winter receiving new soldiers, fielding new equipment and learning to use it. The regiment left most of its tanks and Humvees in Iraq for follow-on units.

That means troops won't have much time to train for other critical tasks. Junior leaders need to know everything from how to assess a water plant to the tribal politics of the area where they are deploying, says Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, the unit's deputy commander. They must know enough Arabic to interact with locals.

'Incredibly Frustrating'

"It is incredibly frustrating for combat veterans to return to Iraq for the third time with only minimal training on the skills we know are essential, like language, culture, intelligence and local security force development" Col. Yingling says. "Army units don't fail to train on these tasks because we're stupid or lazy; we fail because we don't have the time to do it right."

What kind of Army emerges from its searing experience in Iraq will depend, in part, on how long the U.S. stays there and the foreign-policy goals that civilian leaders set in its aftermath. President Bush has said that the best way to protect the nation is to spread democracy. The experience in Iraq demonstrates that such a strategy requires a bigger Army that is more skilled in tasks such as building indigenous forces, fostering local government and economic development. "Revolutionary approaches require a lot of resources," says Conrad Crane, the lead author of the Army's new counterinsurgency doctrine.

A less-ambitious foreign policy that seeks to promote stability and preserve the status quo could reduce the pressure to build a bigger Army with a broader array of skills.

The other big variable is how the Army -- particularly officers now in their 20s and 30s -- reacts to the traumatic experience in Iraq. "We as an Army tend to learn generationally," says Col. Michael Meese, who heads the department of social sciences at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Today's four-star generals, who joined the service in the early 1970s, spent most of their careers rebuilding an Army that had been badly damaged by Vietnam. Officers who came of age in the 1980s and are now colonels and generals were shaped by the Cold War. Their focus was on how to defeat a Soviet-style army.

Today's younger officers, whose defining experiences have been in Iraq and Afghanistan, see the world differently. The gulf was clear last month in their reaction to the dismissal of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Many senior officers quietly celebrated his departure. Like the retired generals who earlier this year called for Mr. Rumsfeld to be fired, they placed the blame for the Army's failures in Iraq largely on his shoulders.

Junior officers were more indifferent. They tended to view Mr. Rumsfeld as "part of a larger problem that hasn't been solved yet," says Kalev Sepp, a former Special Forces officer who worked extensively in Iraq. Among many of these officers, there is great frustration not just with the defense secretary but also with the generals who serve above them.

"Junior officers know that success in these wars is about a lot more than killing the enemy. It depends on providing security for the people, finding friends and fixing infrastructure," says Maj. John Prior, who served as a company commander in Baghdad. "A lot of senior officers just don't get it."

While the Army's new draft counterinsurgency doctrine sounds these same themes, senior commanders in Iraq have been slow to embrace them. The doctrine says troops must live among the Iraqi people, on small bases run by junior leaders. But since 2004, commanders have consolidated U.S. troops on 55 large fortified bases, down from about 110 a year ago.

The new doctrine says that when battling an insurgency, reconstruction dollars are as important as ammunition. In recent months, though, more restrictions have been placed on how junior leaders can spend money in their sectors. "What's funny is that all politics and services are local, so the [junior] commanders need the greatest flexibility" said Brig. Gen. Ed Cardon, who returned from Iraq this year, in an interview compiled by the Army for its oral-history archives. "Why don't we just trust the commander who said he spent $100?"

Some question how quickly the Army will be able to shift its thinking. "All our organizations are designed around the least important line of operations in these fights -- combat operations," says Col. Yingling. "If you spend your whole career in tanks, you tend to see the solution to every problem as a tank."

Write to Greg Jaffe at greg.jaffe@wsj.com
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Postby mends » 11 Dec 2006, 09:17

Whose War Crimes?
December 11, 2006; Page A18
A few scenes from modern warfare:

Mohammad Abd al-Hamid Srour moved missiles across southern Lebanon under cover of a white flag. Hussein Ali Mahmoud Suleiman used the porch of a private home to fire rockets. Maher Hassan Mahmoud Kourani dressed in civilian clothes, hid his Kalashnikov in a tote bag and stored anti-aircraft missiles in the back of a green unmarked Volvo. The three men, all members of Hezbollah, were captured by Israel during last summer's war.

Now their videotaped interviews form part of a remarkable report by retired Lieutenant Colonel Reuven Erlich of Israel's Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. Relying heavily on captured Hezbollah documents, onsite and aerial photography and other first-hand evidence, the report shows how the Shiite group put innocent civilians at risk by deliberately deploying its forces in cities, towns and often private homes.

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, has accused Israel's military of "indiscriminate warfare" and "a disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians." Mr. Erlich demolishes that claim, and in the process shows the asymmetric strategy of Islamist radicals.

The most persuasive evidence here is photographic, so we urge readers to access the report itself on the Web site of the American Jewish Congress (ajcongress.org). Hezbollah's headquarters in Aita al-Shaab, for instance, sits in the heart of the village. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's office and home are in a densely built neighborhood of Beirut. In the town of Qana -- site of an Israeli bombing on July 30 that killed 28 and that Hezbollah's apologists were quick to label a "massacre" -- an arms warehouse can be seen adjacent to a mosque. There are photographs of rockets in the back seats of cars, missile launchers adjacent to farm houses, storage bunkers hidden beneath homes. There is also a trove of before-and-after photography demonstrating the precision of most Israeli bombing.

The report also shows how the use of civilian cover was explicitly part of Hezbollah's strategy. "[The organization's operatives] live in their houses, in their schools, in their churches, in their fields, in their farms and in their factories," said Mr. Nasrallah in a TV interview on May 27, several weeks before the war. "You can't destroy them in the same way you would destroy an army."

Exactly what Mr. Nasrallah means is illustrated in the testimonials of the captured fighters. Asked why Hezbollah would risk the destruction of civilian areas by firing from them, Mr. Suleiman replied that while in theory private homes belonged to "the residents of the village . . . in essence they belong to Hezbollah."

Perhaps that's true; if so, then Human Rights Watch has no grounds to accuse Israel of atrocities when Mr. Nasrallah has effectively declared everyone and everything in southern Lebanon to be his fief. Our sense, however, is that not all southern Lebanese were delighted to have their livelihoods appropriated for Hezbollah's political purposes, even if they were too intimidated to register a protest. Either way, it is Hezbollah, not Israel, that is guilty of war crimes here.

Beyond the war in Lebanon, these images suggest how Islamists seek to use the restraint of Western powers against them. They shoot at our civilians from the safety of their own civilian enclaves that they know we are reluctant to attack. Then if by chance their civilians are killed, they call in CNN and al-Jazeera cameras and wait for the likes of Mr. Roth to denounce America or Israel for war crimes.

None of this means the U.S. shouldn't continue to fight with discrimination and avoid civilian casualties. But it means our political leadership needs to speak as candidly as Israelis now are speaking about this enemy strategy, so the American people can understand and be steeled against this new civilian battleground.
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Postby mends » 29 Dec 2006, 09:10

An L.A. Police Bust
Shows New Tactics
For Fighting Terror
Officers Use Local Laws
To Arrest Small Offenders
With High-Risk Potential
Foiling a Chechen 'Charity'
By ROBERT BLOCK
December 29, 2006; Page A1

LOS ANGELES -- In September 2004, just days after Chechen rebels raided a school in Beslan, Russia, killing 331 men, women and children, the Los Angeles Police Department summoned senior officers to its decaying downtown headquarters. The issue on the table: What would they do if a similar attack took place here?

Most of the talk that morning was about where to deploy SWAT teams if terrorists ever took over a local school. Detective Mark Severino, one of the city's counterterrorist investigators, then asked his colleagues: "Do we even have Chechen extremists in Los Angeles?" Blank stares and silence filled the room. His boss at the time, Deputy Chief John Miller, told him to go find out.


Within weeks, Detective Severino, working with a team of LAPD intelligence analysts, tapped Russian underworld informants, and uncovered an international car-theft ring that wound its way from the streets of Los Angeles to the Chechens' doorstep in the Republic of Georgia. The California racket was disguised as a charity group sending aid to the region. Based on other information, Detective Severino suspected that the operation was more than just a fraud scheme. His theory: The proceeds from stolen cars might somehow be financing Chechen terrorist operations around the world.

On Feb. 15, 2006, the LAPD busted eight people for fraud in connection with the alleged scam and issued arrest warrants for 11 others. Chechen terrorist financing was never mentioned in the indictments or in the press release that trumpeted the takedown of the operation. There were no news conferences claiming victory in the war on terror. Yet Russian police, U.S. intelligence and State Department officials familiar with the case today all say that they believe the LAPD's breakup of the ring was a setback to international terrorists.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, America's entire approach to security has changed. Intelligence agencies were revamped and a new government bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security, was created.

Now local police are getting more involved too. Increasingly, the job of detecting would-be terrorists and their support networks in the U.S. is falling to America's 800,000 state and local police. They far outnumber federal agents, and their eyes and ears are attuned to know more about what's suspicious in their own communities. Los Angeles has created one of the most active counterterrorist police departments in the country, often reacting to overseas attacks with its own contingency planning.

But it's not just big-city forces that are stepping in to counter terrorism. Police departments in smaller cities like Charlotte, N.C., and Providence, R.I., are also following suit. Over the past few years, state and local police have been taking millions of dollars from state and federal funds to open so-called fusion centers -- high-tech offices where local cops and officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security share and analyze information about crimes and terrorist groups. Currently there are about 40 such centers around the country with many more under development.

The Los Angeles police's low-key strategy is to use local laws -- from parking ordinances to antifraud statutes -- to crack down on suspected terrorists. It's akin to the tactic the federal government used in the 1930s when going after gangster Al Capone: He was indicted for tax evasion instead of murder.

Los Angeles police say that since 9/11 they have arrested nearly 200 people, both American citizens and foreign nationals, with suspected ties to terrorist organizations. These included a group of North Africans that LAPD and federal officials are convinced were part of an al Qaeda support cell living in Los Angeles. The charges against them have ranged from marriage fraud to identity theft to illegal weapons possession.


Each arrest was the result of a conventional criminal investigation using California state law with no need for warrantless phone taps or secret court orders. None of the cases ever mentioned terrorism at all. Trials are still pending in many cases but there have been dozens of guilty pleas. In some cases, suspected foreign terrorists arrested on fraud charges have been scooped up by federal agents and deported on separate federal immigration charges before their criminal trials got under way.

At a time when the FBI and other Washington agencies are coming under growing criticism for terrorism cases that often fall apart in the courts, the Los Angeles police approach using conventional crime cases is gaining attention as an alternative.

"What the LAPD is doing with a straightforward crimes approach is upholding the integrity of the justice system and showing that when used correctly it is powerful and effective," says Karen Greenberg, executive director of New York University's Center on Law and Security. The think tank has been tracking the government's prosecution record of domestic terrorism cases since 9/11.

Some civil-rights groups and Muslim organizations are concerned about putting too much counterterrorism responsibility in the hands of local police.

Hamid Khan, the executive director of the South Asian Network, a local civil-rights group representing many Islamic community groups, says that many Muslims are fearful of the LAPD's reputation for excessive force and view much of its policing efforts in Muslim migrant areas of the city as insensitive.

Shiu-Ming Cheer, a community activist with the South Asian Network, says that she was aware of two cases in which Muslim women called the police to report domestic abuse only to be ridiculed by the responding officers. "The women said the police told them: 'Isn't wife beating part of your culture? Why are you bothering us?' "

LAPD officials say they are mindful of the concerns of ethnic groups and sensitive about collecting intelligence about people who might not be directly related to a crime under investigation. At the same time, however, the force is pushing state officials for permission to retain information on suspected terrorist cases for longer than the 12-month limit currently imposed by state law. The LAPD's approach to counterterrorism has its roots in the policing model known as "No Broken Windows." Under this approach, police actively move against small crimes and in the process find out information about bigger crimes. Subway turnstile jumpers in New York, for instance, have often been found to be purse snatchers or drug runners, and their arrests have in some cases led to information about much more aggressive street crimes.

The method was pioneered by LAPD's chief of police, William Bratton, when he served more than a decade ago as the commissioner of the New York Police Department. It was one of the strategies he brought with him when he took over as the Los Angeles police chief in October 2002, inheriting a department beset by soaring crime and steeped in scandal and racial tension.

Chief Bratton reorganized the department and took hundreds of cops out of administrative jobs and put them on the streets. He then began strictly enforcing quality-of-life crimes, going after graffiti vandals, purse snatchers and prostitutes, figuring that stopping small crimes creates a less criminal-friendly environment. With more than 650 murders in 2002, Los Angeles had more homicides in that year than any other city in the nation. A year later, the murder rate was down almost 25% and overall crime was down by more than 4%.

Now, Chief Bratton is adapting the same model to terrorism, calling it intelligence-led policing. "Where as once we would have caught a robber red-handed and that would have been enough to satisfy the legal case, we now have to stop and ask ourselves, who is this robber?" Chief Bratton explains. "Is he stealing to feed a drug habit? OK, who is he buying his drugs from? Or is he robbing to raise funds to buy guns for a gang? Which gang? Who are his associates? Or is he part of organized crime or something else? The aim is to drill down into crime to get a complete picture of the crime landscape in your community."

That's what happened in the Chechen probe. Sitting around the table on the sixth floor of the Parker Center, the LAPD's 1950s-era headquarters, after the dust settled on the Beslan massacre, LAPD's Counterterrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau met to discuss what would happen if a similar attack had taken place in Los Angeles.

At first, they looked at the attack only tactically, talking about how they would move SWAT teams around the city and put together crowd-control contingencies. But then Detective Severino began pushing the thinking toward intelligence. Was Los Angeles ready for Chechen terrorism in general? And were there Chechen rebel links to the city that they didn't know about?

After being given the nod to investigate by his bosses, Mr. Severino put together a team of 11 detectives. The first thing they did was visit informants they had developed in Russian and Armenian organized-crime gangs from earlier investigations.

The inquiries pointed the investigators to a Chechen businessman affiliated with an organization billing itself as a charity called Global Human Services, or GHS. The group claimed to be sending large shipments of humanitarian aid regularly to Russia, Armenia, Georgia and Jordan.

Several things during the investigation immediately caught Detective Severino's attention. The first were photos prominently displayed in the businessman's home of him standing alongside Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, known during his lifetime as the "Butcher of Beslan." The second was the fact that GHS's license had been revoked by the state of California in February 2004 for failure to file a 2003 income-tax return. Moreover, it turned out that GHS was incorporated in November 1999 as a regular business and wasn't registered as a nonprofit charity.

For Mr. Severino, those facts sent alarm bells ringing. The investigators continued to dig. The LAPD informed the Department of Homeland Security that the group was sending aid overseas despite having lost its license.

In June 2005, Immigration and Customs Enforcement inspectors in Houston pulled two GHS shipping containers in for inspection. Inside they found some cartons of women's shoes -- and two expensive, late-model sport-utility vehicles hidden behind a false wall of each container. The cars were legally registered to Los Angeles residents. After the ships set sail, their owners reported the vehicles stolen to collect insurance money. The containers and their cargo were destined for the Republic of Georgia.

Mr. Severino and his team went to the FBI requesting funds and support to follow the shipments to Georgia, saying that they suspected that the racket was part of a Chechen rebel funding scheme. The FBI at first refused, saying that all they saw was a car-theft ring. "Then I showed them the picture of our businessmen with Basayev," Mr. Severino says. The FBI approved the trip. "It became clear to the FBI that the LAPD was onto something," says Mr. Miller, now an assistant FBI director in Washington.

Once in Georgia, the LAPD worked with Georgian authorities and the FBI, seizing another 14 stolen cars listed on customs manifests as "aid."

Back in Los Angeles, police started to investigate the cars' owners. What they pieced together was an alleged scheme in which GHS enticed owners to give the group their vehicles and report them as stolen. GHS would then ship the cars overseas. According to the LAPD, once the vehicles were in transit, the owners would report the cars stolen and collect the insurance money. In Georgia, Chechens close to the banned rebel groups would sell the cars at several times their U.S. value. In all, the LAPD detectives identified 200 such shipments to Georgia over the past few years, worth at least $5 million. That figure doesn't include losses to the insurance companies due to fraudulent claims.

Russian authorities have since arrested one Chechen allegedly linked to the scheme who now faces charges of fraud and possible support for terrorism in Russia. The trial of the U.S. suspects is continuing in Los Angeles County Court. Lawyers for the 17 defendants now in custody haven't indicated how they would plead and have said their clients were unaware of any links to the Chechen extremists. No charges were filed against the Chechen businessman.

"This case was a breakthrough in that what we found didn't look like terrorism: it looked like regular criminal activity but when we followed it long enough it developed what we believed [was] a nexus to terrorism. But it is important to note we never made a terrorism case out of it," Detective Severino says.

Write to Robert Block at bobby.block@wsj.com
"I used to be on an endless run.
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I have been blessed with the power to survive.
After all these years I'm still alive."

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Postby Danilo » 02 Jan 2007, 23:03

O secretário Nacional de Segurança, Luiz Fernando Corrêa, chegou ao Rio de Janeiro na noite desta terça-feira para participar de uma reunião com o novo secretário de Segurança Pública do Estado, José Mariano Beltrame. Os dois devem decidir a presença da Força Nacional de Segurança (FNS) no Rio de Janeiro, como medida preventiva depois dos ataques ocorridos na semana passada.
(noticias.terra.com.br)

A maioria das autoridades se conforma com uma resposta padrão, sem imaginação: as Forças Armadas estão preparadas para a guerra. Já por aqui...

Um nova suspeita de bomba no metrô de São Paulo acionou o Grupo de Ações Táticas Especiais (Gate) da Polícia Militar e provocou a evacuação de um vagão na noite desta terça-feira. Segundo a PM, um indíduo havia deixado uma sacola em um dos carros da Linha 3-Vermelha, na estação Anhangabaú. Os funcionários foram avisados, retiraram as pessoas do vagão e o removeram para a Barra Funda, onde existe um local de segurança. O Gate foi acionado por volta das 20h, mas constatou que a sacola trazia apenas retalhos. Outra suspeita havia sido registrada na manhã desta terça-feira.
(noticias.terra.com.br)

Caramba... isso não vai parar não?
>:(
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Postby tgarcia » 03 Jan 2007, 07:22

Danilo wrote: O Gate foi acionado por volta das 20h, mas constatou que a sacola trazia apenas retalhos. Outra suspeita havia sido registrada na manhã desta terça-feira >:(


O Gate foi chamado para "abrir uma sacola de bananas.....". :shy:
Bem emblemático.
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Postby mends » 04 Jan 2007, 18:40

Spain and ETA

Bombers return

Jan 4th 2007 | MADRID
From The Economist print edition


By returning to violence, ETA has scuppered lingering hopes of peace

EPA


Surveying the peace process



DIEGO ESTACIO had nodded off in his car on December 30th at Madrid's Barajas airport, where his girlfriend was meeting relatives off a flight from Ecuador, when a nearby van, packed with perhaps 500kg of explosives, blew up. The blast did more than end the 19-year-old Ecuadorean's life; it destroyed hopes of peace with the Basque separatist group, ETA, which seems to have been responsible.

Far into the middle of the week rescue workers were still searching for Estacio's remains after they had found those of a second victim, Carlos Palate. Meanwhile José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the prime minister, was wondering if anything could be salvaged from the wreckage of a peace process that began when ETA declared a “permanent ceasefire” last March.

The prospects are bleak. Mr Zapatero's repeated insistence that the peace process remained on track now looks foolish. He has used up a lot of political capital trying to solve the country's most obdurate regional terrorist problem. His reward is the first killings by ETA in more than three years. And his political position is worse than that implies. The opposition People's Party leader, Mariano Rajoy, consistently gave warning that ETA should not be trusted. The bombers have handed the PP a particularly valuable new-year gift.


ETA has had little regard for the constraints under which Mr Zapatero must operate. A PP demand that ETA be forced into unconditional surrender may be unrealistic, but adding two more to the roll-call of 800 victims killed in the past four decades can only increase its appeal. Some insist that ETA still wants to talk. But the interior minister, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, declared this week that the peace process was “broken off, liquidated, finished”.

So what happens if Mr Zapatero gives it up? One possibility is that ETA will split. Some of those who have pushed for peace, including many of the several hundred ETA prisoners in Spanish jails, have lost their taste for violence. But a hard core can always be counted on to keep reaching for the bomb or the bullet. After the theft of 350 pistols and large quantities of ammunition in a raid on a French arms supplier in October, the group is not thought to be short of weapons. And there is enough grassroots support among radicals in Basque cities and hill towns to keep the hard core supplied and protected.

Does it matter? ETA is now a pale version of the efficient, and terrifying, killing machine of the 1970s and 1980s. It had failed to kill anyone at all in the 34 months before the ceasefire. It poisons the political atmosphere in the Basque country, but its political impact elsewhere has diminished over the past 15 years.

The biggest fall-out from the bomb will be felt in the Basque region itself. Basques are divided between traditional Spanish centralists and those favouring more self-rule or even independence. Moderate Basque nationalists have spent much of the past decade trying to wean ETA off violence. They have paid a heavy political price, losing opportunities to negotiate greater self-rule. Last year Mr Zapatero conceded new powers of self-government to Catalonia and Andalusia. The moderate nationalists running the Basque region may now opt to join the queue and abandon ETA, still treated by some as a prodigal son, to the police. The police have proved remarkably efficient in pursuing ETA over the past decade, partly thanks to better co-operation with their French counterparts.

ETA may have hoped that its airport bomb would not kill anyone, allowing the peace process to be kept alive. It telephoned three warnings in the hour before the explosion. But bombs are lethally unpredictable. Now the goodwill generated by the ceasefire has been blown away. If ordinary Spaniards shun peace, Mr Zapatero will not try to push them there. It took considerable political courage to travel as far as he already had. ETA is, at best, drinking in the last-chance saloon. More likely, Mr Zapatero may have already walked out of the bar.
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Postby junior » 05 Jan 2007, 08:24

ETA may have hoped that its airport bomb would not kill anyone, allowing the peace process to be kept alive. It telephoned three warnings in the hour before the explosion. But bombs are lethally unpredictable. Now the goodwill generated by the ceasefire has been blown away. If ordinary Spaniards shun peace, Mr Zapatero will not try to push them there. It took considerable political courage to travel as far as he already had. ETA is, at best, drinking in the last-chance saloon. More likely, Mr Zapatero may have already walked out of the bar.


Desnecessário dizer que por aqui isso é assunto todo o tempo...

Parece que foram três "gatos pingados" ultra extremistas, que sequestraram um mano francês, roubaram a furgoneta dele, encheram de bomba e deixaram no estacionamento de Barajas, o aeroporto de Madrid...

Até onde eu sei, a "direção" (whatever that means) do ETA não assumiu, mas tampouco criticou!! O seu "braço legal", que é o "partido nacionalista Vasco" (não me pergunte como um bando de terroristas pode ter um braço legal e um partido que apóie suas ações...), deu declarações dizendo que o processo de paz não está parado (ahã....), mas também não criticou o atentado.

Ou seja, independente se foram ou não meia dúzia de loucos, seguramente acabou com qualquer possibilidade de paz, o que pode ser bom, se vc quiser evitar surpresas como a do dia 30, ou ruim, se vc quiser evitar surpresas como a do dia 30...

É verdade que o Zapatero é meio (ui!) "mole", mas também é que o PP (Partido Popular, um bando de ex-franquistas conservadores) é cheio de fdp, e mais do que resolver o processo e conseguir paz, querem tirar proveito político de toda essa situação. Como diz o texto, sim, foi um presente de ano novo... E não me surpreenderia que por baixo dos panos eles estivessem somehow "em contato". Enfim...[/quote]
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Postby mends » 05 Jan 2007, 08:56

considerando que a direção do partido nacionalista Vasco inclui o Eurico Miranda, não me surpreende o posicionamento deles. ;(
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Postby junior » 05 Jan 2007, 09:05

Estão aqui "os mano" Eurico Miranda:

Batasuna (Unidad en euskera; pronunciado Batásuná) es un partido político vasco que se autodenomina independentista, socialista, feminista y ecologista


http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batasuna
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