State Department Supports Marxist Opposition

J. Michael Waller over at PoliticalWarfare.Org carried a story last month I wish I'd seen a lot sooner.

Apparently the State Department gave a high-level reception to the opposition from El Salvador. No big deal, right? We believe in democracy and meet with opposition politicians all the time.

Except that the opposition in El Salvador is not democratic; it's the Marxist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). We've seen these guys before; we fought them during the Cold War. They murdered US Marines in the Zona Rosa massacre. (A colleague of mine lost scores of friends to the FMLN's guns, which hardly endears me.) During the Cold War they were backed by the Soviets and today they continue to work with the FARC narcoterrorists of Colombia, Fidel Castro, and Palestinian terrorists. Their current attempts to unseat the Salvadorian government are being bank-rolled by Hugo Chavez.

But who exactly is this government that the FMLN is trying to overthrow? Well, for starters, it's the only country in the Western Hemisphere that still has troops in Iraq. And this is how we reward them? Meanwhile, Mauricio Funes, the FMLN's presidential candidate, has been busying himself endorsing folks for the up coming US elections.

Soviet Thug Suppresses Azeris

A few months ago I had the opportunity to hear Mikhail Gorbachev give a lecture at the University of Dallas. I think he was expecting a warmer welcome than he received. Not that the UD community was rude, but no one seemed to buy this line that Gorbachev is a great democratic reformer who brought down Communism. In fact, he was a thug who tried to save the Party and failed.

Today is an important anniversary that underlines that point. On this day in 1990, President Gorbachev ordered the Red Army into Soviet Azerbaijan to put down civil unrest. Azerbaijan's President Elmira Kafarova and Communist Party politician Boris Yeltsin both condemned the move.

Blackwater Rescues Volunteers

The Grand Rapids Press has reported that three American orphanage workers in Kenya - Aubrie Vander Mey, 19, Jamie Cook, 20, and Brittanie Vander Mey, 21 (pictured above) - were rescued from post-election violence by Blackwater Worldwide.

[Dean] Vander Mey [Brittanie and Aubrie's father] said he started calling government officials, congressmen -- whomever he could think of to get his daughters and their friend home.

"I was not getting whole lot of answers," he said. "They said, 'Stay safe; don't move.' I wasn't satisfied with the 'stay put.' That's what they were telling us: 'You're in harm's way, but don't move.'"

Hiring a helicopter wasn't an option. Vander Mey said he was told it would $20,000 to rent one for 30 minutes, and news stations and the Red Cross had already rented most of those available.

Vander Mey said he recalled relatives were friends with the family of Blackwater founder and Holland native Erik Prince and decided to give the company a call.

"They had internal contacts and everything," Vander Mey said. "They had people who could help."

He said Blackwater lined up a 10-person plane, rescued the women and other international workers and flew them to Nairobi. The three women then began the trip to Grand Rapids on Sunday afternoon.