Christine Leunens Quotes

The quotation is notable as it illustrates the great difficulty that modern democracies have with extreme Islamic fundamentalists. Their very perception and world view is so different that often we think of the extremists as insane and they often feel the same way about us.

Russia then had designs on Afghani Territory. About a century later, Russia Invaded Afghanistan and tried to impose a communist government. It failed and the Afghans drove out the Russians.

Bush was addressing all countries in the wake of the September 11 attack on New York and Washington.

The immediate crisis had been averted and no more nuclear missiles would enter Cuba. But we had no leverage to get the few that were already there removed and it would be politically very difficult for the Kennedy administration to get the public to accept ANY nuclear missiles in Cuba. Hence, Stevenson’s statement. See {634554}. Neither side had great intercontinental ballistic missile capability at the time, and we had placed a large battery of missiles in Turkey very close to the Russian border. This gave the U. S. a major military advantage. We could deliver many more nuclear warheads to Russia than they could to the United States. The Russians with this proposal hoped to even the capability. The military advisers and the security and State Department advisors all thought that the U. S. should not give up its nuclear superiority. However, we had no international legal basis for denying the Cubans the right to locate any weapons on their soil, so to prevent the Communists from having nuclear missiles in Cuba we would have to use force which could easily escalate into a nuclear war. Kennedy and McCone both thought that since we had intercontinental ballistic missiles in production and coming on line and would not need the Turkey Missiles to strike all over Russia. So giving up our missile advantage for a short time would not expose us to any undue risk. The other advisors worried that the production of the ICBMs could be delayed—weapons systems were (and are) notoriously longer in production than estimated or planned. They also thought that the morale of the military and civilian population would suffer when they learned that we had given away our military advantage. There was a macho element in their thinking in that we would be giving in to intimidation and look like we were afraid to fight. Last, the political advisors thought that the right wing hawks would pillory the administration for its cowardice in allowing itself to be intimidated by the Russians. Their doctrine was that when faced with force, the Communists will always back down. In the final deal we agreed to remove our missiles from Turkey in 6 months and this would be done in complete secrecy and the Russians would keep the deal secret. That way, Kennedy got 6 more months of production which turned out to have been enough. The public would never know till years later and the Conservatives would not be able to publicly castigate Kennedy. Meanwhile, the conservatives would continue to believe that the Russians backed down in the face of force—the naval blockade as this was ‘proved’ their doctrine when the Russians had not backed down at all. The strategy and tactics of the Kennedy administration are still analyzed and argued about today with many Americans just realizing that we did not intimidate the Russians with force or the threat of force to remove their Cuban missiles.

Bunch was the undersecretary-general of the United Nations who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his mediation efforts in the Middle East. Archie Roosevelt and his extreme right wing associates thought that anyone who worked in the UN was a communist and had no respect for the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee. In the spirit of Archie Roosevelt’s father, the Theodore Roosevelt made the award to Buche and ignored Archie’s slanderous attack. Surprising to most people who know of President Theodore Roosevelt’s general liberal views, his 4th son was an ultraconservative who founded and joined racist, anti-Semitic, right wing organizations, and to the distress of many in the family and without lent his name to many of the most extreme right wing causes and organizations.

Israel started it nuclear weapons program under Perez’s leadership. They do not admit that it is even in existence. Yet all their potential enemies in the Middle East realize that they have enough nuclear weapons capacity that if they are in danger of being overrun, they can literally destroy the attacking nation and all the countries that might be assisting that nation. Before Israel had developed this capability, some in the Middle East had as their objective to destroy the state of Israel and “drive the Jews into the sea”. No one believes that it is now possible to militarily defeat Israel without the attacking nations also being destroyed. For years, Israel has had the military might to conquer any nation in the Middle East and use their nuclear shield to protect them from any interference, but they have not done so demonstrating that the Israeli governments will not use nuclear weapons for any other purpose.

Russia, from the old Soviet Union days, had the only gas pipeline into Lithuania and took advantage of their monopoly by charging the Lithuanians 15 percent more than they charged other European nations where the Russians had some energy competition. The Lithuanians, decided to tie up a very large vessel at an island in their harbor to which Liquid Natural Gas (LGN) could be delivered by ship and converted to gaseous form and piped onto the mainland to provide competition for the Russians. However, the island was a bird sanctuary that was not supposed to be used for anything that might change the ecological balance of the island. This quotation shows that in some circumstances, environmentalists are willing to compromise to balance the benefits and costs.

This is a very important historical quotation. Nixon, who was himself a strong right-winger for his entire career, and campaigned using the Red Scare smear tactics of the right wing in his entire career, found that there was a Tea Party type ultra right wing who were critical of him, not because of his sleazy politics, his lies, or his crimes, but because he was not conservative enough for them. In democratic politics, in most times there are ultra rightists and ultra leftists who are critical even of the rightists and leftists who did not share the extremist ideology.

“The word “monitoring” is a polite diplomatic word for “spying on”. She made this statement in July of 2014 when the Germans discovered that the United States was spying on their government and ejected key Americans from the country. Albright was explaining that this is extremely common and “normal” between allies. See {640830} for more on this subject.

An assassin had tried to kill the archduke and failed. In response to the complaints the mayor changed the archduke’s route the following day when he was successfully assassinated provoking World War I.

The 1st the CIA ever had. Popov was, in the 1950s, considered the CIA’s most valuable agent. He was motivated by deeply felt anger at Soviet exploitation of Russian peasants, including his family. He was caught and executed by Russian authorities in 1960. The quotation illustrates just how simple was his initial communication for spying.