"Liberals Sound Like Terrorists" and now full circle to "LiberalsSound Like Russians"

Once upon a not-so-long-ago Liberals were accused of "sounding like

Commies".

During the Bushannity Era it became "Liberals Sound Like Terrorists".

(

I have long waited for the exchange:

Hannity: Let me ask you a question.

Why do you think Liberals sound like terrorists?

Man On The Street: Why do Liberals sound like Bin Laden...

Why? Did Bin Laden call you a clown?

)

Get ready. We will soon go full circle with

"Liberals Sound Like Russians"

Article:

Russia-Backed Think Tank

To Study Western Democracy

ANDREW OSBORN / Wall Street Journal 18jan2008

....

Mr. Kucherena said the new organization would scrutinize U.S. election

law, the state of human rights, race relations and the American

response to terrorism. He said there were troubling questions in all

those areas. "The U.S. election system is intriguing," he said. "In a

country with such a democratic history it's interesting that the

outcome is decided by the electoral college and not by the people."

....

Mr. Putin has frequently lashed out at what he perceives as democratic

shortcomings in the West when faced with attacks on his own record.

Last month, he highlighted the problems of the 2000 U.S. presidential

election in an interview.

At the G-8 summit in 2006, he told President Bush that Russia didn't

need the kind of democracy being built in Iraq. He has also publicly

suggested that the White House engineered the dismissal of U.S.

reporters deemed overly critical of the war in Iraq.

....

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Full article is here:

Russia-Backed Think Tank

To Study Western Democracy

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2008/Russia-Democracy-Study18jan08.htm

ANDREW OSBORN / Wall Street Journal 18jan2008

MOSCOW -- A new Russian-backed think tank is being set up to publicly

critique the state of U.S. and European democracy as Moscow goes on

the offensive to counter what it views as unjustified Western

criticism of its own political system.

A prominent lawyer says President Vladimir Putin endorsed his plan to

open monitoring offices in New York and Paris to study the U.S. and

French political systems and recommend improvements.

Western criticism of what many see as Kremlin backsliding on

democratic principles has long rankled Mr. Putin and his allies.

Recently, Moscow has taken a more assertive stance, firing back at

countries whose governments have been particularly strident. The

skirmishing has deepened the chill in Russia's relations with the

West.

Those tensions were underlined yesterday as the British government

said it would suspend the work of two Russian offices of its cultural

arm, the British Council, citing "blatant intimidation" by Russian

authorities. Moscow accuses the organization of tax and legal

violations, charges London rejects. "We saw similar actions during the

Cold War, but frankly thought that they had been put behind us,"

United Kingdom Foreign Secretary David Miliband told lawmakers.

Seeking to deflect Western attacks on their repressive system, Soviet

propagandists frequently took the U.S. and its Cold War allies to task

for what Moscow called human-rights violations. This time, the new

think tank would provide "constructive" criticism, according to

Anatoly Kucherena, the pro-Kremlin lawyer.

"You can only be a pupil for so long," said Mr. Kucherena, a well-

known trial lawyer named by Mr. Putin in 2006 to a special advisory

body. Mr. Kucherena said he presented the idea to Mr. Putin at a

meeting at the president's official residence in May and won his

support.

A Kremlin spokesman couldn't be reached for comment. But Mr. Putin

publicly plugged the idea at a summit in Portugal in October, saying

European countries had long had such think tanks in Russia. "It is

high time, given our increasing economic and financial potential, that

the Russian Federation can do the same thing," he said.

Mr. Kucherena said the new organization would scrutinize U.S. election

law, the state of human rights, race relations and the American

response to terrorism. He said there were troubling questions in all

those areas. "The U.S. election system is intriguing," he said. "In a

country with such a democratic history it's interesting that the

outcome is decided by the electoral college and not by the people."

He questioned the compatibility of capital punishment in some U.S.

states with democracy and highlighted problems with America's police

and law-enforcement system. He cited the 1992 police beating of Rodney

King and the subsequent riots in Los Angeles as an example of

difficulties in race relations.

The New York and Paris offices of the Institute for Democracy and

Cooperation will open with small staffs within two months, he said.

Other offices in different European capitals will follow. Mr.

Kucherena said he has received no Russian government funding so far,

relying instead on contributions from local businessmen he declined to

identify.

Mr. Putin has frequently lashed out at what he perceives as democratic

shortcomings in the West when faced with attacks on his own record.

Last month, he highlighted the problems of the 2000 U.S. presidential

election in an interview.

At the G-8 summit in 2006, he told President Bush that Russia didn't

need the kind of democracy being built in Iraq. He has also publicly

suggested that the White House engineered the dismissal of U.S.

reporters deemed overly critical of the war in Iraq.

After European election observers criticized Russian votes in 2003 and

2004 as falling short of democratic standards, the Kremlin denounced

the monitors as biased. The observers canceled plans to study

December's parliamentary elections in Russia, blaming Russia for

setting up unprecedented obstacles to their mission.

Analysts say Moscow is keen to blunt what it sees as a constant

trickle of often-hypocritical criticism. U.S.-based organizations such

as Freedom House have regularly derided Russia's political system as

an imitation of democracy. This week, the Washington-based think tank

described Russia as having an "entrenched authoritarian leadership."

It rated Russia "not free," alongside Egypt, Angola and Tajikistan.

Mr. Kucherena denounced the Freedom House rankings as biased and said

his institute will strive to be more objective. For its part, Freedom

House director of studies Christopher Walker said, "We express deep

skepticism about this initiative given the profile of the organization

and who appears to be behind it."

On Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:05:15 GMT, "Freedom Fighter" <liberty@once.net>

wrote:

>CONSERVATIVES VS. LIBERALS: THE NATURE OF THE BEAST

>

>It all began a hundred thousand years ago on a ledge in front of a

>cave. A female homo sapiens walked by, attracting the attention of

>a male. The male stepped forward and smacked her over the head with

>his club. WHACK! He then dragged the unconscious female into his

>cave for sex.

Really now ?

Sounds like a good way to wake up Bobbited ...

>One day there were two males standing in front of a cave when a

>female walked by. The first raised his arm to club the female, but

>the second male communicated to him that clubbing females over the

>head to have sex was not nice. WHACK! WHACK! The first male stepped

>over the unconscious second male and proceeded to rape the female.

>On that day the first liberal paid the price for expressing a new

>idea.

And the moral of the story is that you'd better

be able to back up those "new ideas" with something

more than mere words.

Oh wait, that makes him a 'conservative' again ... :-)

ANYway ... you'd have been perfect for the Spanish Inquisition.

Anything 'right' of Babs Striesand = witch, monster, fascist,

heretic. Such tunnel-vision is just what every fanatic needs.

CONSERVATIVES VS. LIBERALS: THE NATURE OF THE BEAST

It all began a hundred thousand years ago on a ledge in front of a

cave. A female homo sapiens walked by, attracting the attention of

a male. The male stepped forward and smacked her over the head with

his club. WHACK! He then dragged the unconscious female into his

cave for sex.

One day there were two males standing in front of a cave when a

female walked by. The first raised his arm to club the female, but

the second male communicated to him that clubbing females over the

head to have sex was not nice. WHACK! WHACK! The first male stepped

over the unconscious second male and proceeded to rape the female.

On that day the first liberal paid the price for expressing a new

idea.

Things didn't change much for thousands of years until the advent

of projectile weapons. This was first symbolized by the David and

Goliath story in the Bible, where the big strong brute was laid

flat by the small but smarter boy. Once brute strength was no

longer the controlling factor in social interaction, liberal ideas

slowly gained a foothold in human culture, and civilization began.

Throughout human history, the price for advocating tolerance and

progressive change has been paid in threats, beatings,

excommunication, incarceration, torture, murder, assassination, and

execution. Countless liberals have paid the ultimate price for

their humanity. Though Jesus Christ is the most famous, names in

recent history that come to mind are Gandhi, Martin Luther King

Jr., John Lennon, and Robert Kennedy.

Today there are many conservatives - individuals, groups, and

nations - who use threats and violence to silence the voices of

reason, tolerance, and progress. Here in America it is seen in

racists and homophobes beating blacks and gays, sometimes to death,

not for money or out of anger generated by interactive cause, but

because of religious or racial intolerance and secular bigotry.

Alan Berg on talk radio was a strong voice against a conservative

organization called the Aryan Nation. For thus exercising his

freedom of speech, he was shot dead while walking his dog in front

of his house.

David Rice is a man on death row in Washington State who has no

remorse whatsoever for entering the home of a family of four and

carving out their living hearts only because he heard they were

"liberals." He got their names from a Democratic Party membership

list.

Right-wingers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols killed 168 men,

women, and children as an act of protest. What liberals have ever

committed such an abominable atrocity?

The most abominable atrocity in several decades is the 9/11

terrorist attacks in which thousands of innocent civilians were

murdered. The alleged perpetrators, Osama Bin Laden and the al

Qaeda-Taliban terrorists, epitomize the right-wing religious

fundamentalist mentality.

Some believe that the 9/11 attacks were deliberately allowed to happen,

exacerbated, or even perpetrated by radical right-wing elements within

our own government to further their fascistic agenda. Two buildings

were hit by planes, but THREE collapsed. The evidence that the three

collapsed buildings were brought down with demolition explosives put in

place BEFORE the attacks is very strong.

Arguing that such horrendous crimes are not political in nature or

that they are not done primarily by conservatives is utter

nonsense. Look back:

Who nailed who to a cross?

Who were the Loyalists to the totalitarian monarchy of King George?

Who started our Civil War to defend slavery?

Who fought to keep women as property, and now fights their

sovereignty over their own bodies in the freedom to choose

abortion?

Who fought against child labor statutes?

Who fought against the concept of free public education?

Who fought against the right of women to vote?

Who fought against anti-trust and anti-monopoly legislation?

Who fought against workers organizing?

Who fought against government controls on manufacturers of cars

"unsafe at any speed?"

Who killed several thousand innocent civilians in the 9/11

terrorist attacks?

Who started WW2, murdered 13 million and caused the death of 40

million more?

Who defended Jim Crow for a hundred years?

Who fought against voting rights, civil rights, social security,

health care for the elderly, and minimum wages?

Who fights against environmental protection statutes?

Who opposes equal rights for gays and other free-lifestyle

minorities?

Who cruelly opposes physician-assisted dying for suffering,

terminally ill patients soon to die anyway?

Who is sabotaging the separation of Church and State, and all our

other Constitutional rights, freedoms, and protections?

Who are the moralizing hypocrites forcing their puritanical

inhibitions and prohibitions on ALL Americans via legislation and

draconian, police-state enforcement practices?

Who always puts personal gain and corporate wealth and power above

the common good?

CONSERVATIVES OR LIBERALS?

The historic, undeniable truth is that these evils are THE NATURE

OF THE CONSERVATIVE BEAST!

Conservatives have distorted and demonized the word "liberal,"

whose true political meaning is favoring progressive change,

humanistic values, and opposition to authoritarianism. They

identify it with governmental waste and tolerance of criminality,

when in fact they themselves are guilty of abuses such as corporate

welfare bail-outs and tax evasion, fraud against investors, and

other white-collar crime. Conservatives fear and oppose all change

and progress beyond "what's in it for me?"

At the core of conservatism is the Machiavellian bully - the

despotic practitioner of "might makes right," craving wealth and

power, and willing to use any and all means to get them.

Conservatism is the philosophy of the caveman wearing a business

suit.

AND THE CAVEMENS' CLUBS CAN NOW DESTROY OUR EARTH!