Libya, the country with the laziest flag, have always been seen, and rightly so, as a nation state sponsor of terrorism. This was especially true in the 1970 and 80s and the West never did more than lob a few missiles at Gaddafi, which missed, before they welcomed him back into the worlds community as he came bearing gifts of oil for a Prime Ministers brother. It is acceptable to remove some leaders and fight some wars than others.

With Mister 8 going AWOL, I thought I would take an extract of Ion Pacepa from his book Red Horizons about Gaddafi.

….When the two leaders had finished their scheduled time together, Ceauşescu informed Gaddafi that his personal aide-de-camp and his presidential aeroplane had to fly back to Romania and return the night to bring him an important document.

The next morning Gaddafi arrived punctually, an unusual occurrence in those days. When the two leaders came together, Ceauşescu had a large, antique, chased silver box in his hands. Opening it, he took out a very old, handwritten book. “This is the original manuscript of the first translation of the Koran into the Romanian language, made hundreds of years ago. We have only this one copy, but I only have one real brother. It is for you to keep, my brother.”

Colonel Gaddafi dipped greedily into the beautiful old book. Visibly moved, he literally could not speak. Eventually he managed to stammer, “My brother! You are my brother for the rest of my life!” at the same time vigorously embracing Ceauşescu.

The Koran manuscript was the gift Ceauşescu had planned all along for Gaddafi. “Going by the feel I’ve gotten for Gaddafi, there’s nothing that would hook him better than our antique manuscript of the Koran,” he explained to Nicolae Doicaru and me. Doicaru was the chief of the DIE at the time, and he was personally running the operation. “And nothing,” Ceauşescu continued “would impress him more than for me to present it to him spontaneously, as if in reaction to the force of his personality.” The scenario for transporting the Koran to Tripoli during the night had been worked out long before Ceauşescu left Romania.

According to wikipedia, the source of all truth - “In September 1978, Pacepa received two death sentences from Communist Romania, and Ceauşescu placed a bounty of two million US dollars on his head. Yasser Arafat and Muammar al-Gaddafi set one more million dollars reward each. In the 1980s, Romania’s political police tasked Carlos the Jackal to assassinate Pacepa in America in exchange for one million dollars.”

Enclosed is a clip of some Libyan terrorists trying execute a thief.

In our first post of the Terrorist Thursday series, The Stasi is kicking off with Leonard Cohens classic First We Take Manhattan which has been interpreted as referring to the Red Army Faction aka the Baader-Meinhof Group.
The song features in the movie The Watchmen (on some of the movie soundtracks but not all of them) and it also qualifies for Terrorist Thursday as the Red Army Faction received support from the East Germans.

(Radio announcer’s voice)
Was die Attentäter betrifft, die in Berlin den Anschlag auf die Deutsch-Arabische Gesellschaft verübt haben, ist die Polizei einen Schritt weiter gekommen. Die jetzt nach dem Anschlag…

Ah remember me, I used to live for music
Remember me, I brought your groceries in
Well it’s Father’s Day and everybody’s wounded
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

However, it has been argued by xymphora (warning link contains very very graphic image) and I quote ”
……..and it is clearly an anthem to Jewish supremacism. It was first recorded in spring 1986 by Jennifer Warnes, so I assume was written in the preceding year. The lyrics are fairly clear:

1. It begins with a recording of a German radio news broadcast on an attack on a German-Arab Society in Berlin.
2. “They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom For trying to change the system from within” – this refers to Jonathan Pollard, who had been arrested (in November 1985) but not yet sentenced, so Cohen was just guessing at twenty years (Pollard in fact received life).
3. “I’m guided by a signal in the heavens I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin” – ‘birthmark’ is obviously a concentration camp tattoo.
4. “I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons” – Israeli weapons.
5. “I’d really like to live beside you, baby I love your body and your spirit and your clothes” – the song is directed to the United States, and refers to the comfort of Jews living in the United States.
6. “But you see that line there moving through the station? I told you, I told you, told you, I was one of those” – Jews can never live in true comfort in the United States, as they are “that line there moving through the station”, i. e., a line boarding the trains for the concentration camps.
7. “Ah you loved me as a loser, but now you’re worried that I just might win” – no comment needed.
8. “You know the way to stop me, but you don’t have the discipline” – wow! spot on!
9. “And I thank you for those items that you sent me The monkey and the plywood violin I practiced every night, now I’m ready” – a reference to the Jewish entertainment/media monopoly, and its use for Jewish supremacist goals.
10. “Well it’s Father’s Day and everybody’s wounded” – obscure, but the song may refer to Father’s Day, 1985, in the middle of the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 (U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem was killed the day before Father’s Day 1985, and the other passengers were still in hijacker custody on Father’s Day).
11. “First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin” – Manhattan has already been taken with the complete Jewish control over American politics and media, and I can only conclude that “take Berlin” refers to the eventual Israeli nuclear attack on Europe – don’t scoff, it has already been threatened – as part of the uncompleted revenge for the Jewish holocaust.”

I’ve thought long and hard about including the above quotation as it could be classified as racist and hate speech but I think overall it is the right thing to do as it gives a different interpretation of the song, admittedly an extreme interpretation and I fully believe in Ewelyn Beatrice Hall writing in The Friends of Voltaire (1906) “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” yet Voltaire said “Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours”.

Anyway, enjoy the video and like me, don’t read into the lyrics as we can all twist or interpret things into what matches our views (esp. the Bible) and instead enjoy the music.

It’s a Terrorist Thursday (sung to the tune of Manic Monday) is a new once every so often a review of Cold War books/film or music where the opposition was state supported terrorists.

Terrorism, especially state sponsored terrorism was a huge factor during the Cold War as it wasn’t just spy v spy, or submarine v submarine. In fiction there are plenty of books where the secret service is involved in tracking down terrorist who are supported by a State. One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter…. so how does one classify books where the West is helping the Taliban against the Soviet Occupation in Afghanistan? Or the IRA versus MI5? Or the CIA arming dissidents in Poland? Terrorist actions draw State resources away from fighting the main enemy head on and so a lot of these books can be classified under the Cold War Fiction banner of this site. When its just a bloke in a cave going I must bomb the US or an peat-bogger shooting his Armalite and there is no state sponsorship of the actions then these books and films will be ignored. On the subject of the IRA, didn’t they start out as a Marxist organisation and their doctrine reflected that?

In the support of Soviet sponsoring freedom fighters Stalin on the 12th of May 1917 said:

“There is at present a movement in Finland for securing national freedom, and is there is also the fight waged against it by the Provisional Government. The question arises, whom are we to support? Either we favour the policy of the Provisional Government, the forcible retention of Finland and the reduction of her rights to a minimum — in which case we are annexationists, for we are bringing grist to the mill of the Provisional Government –or we favour independence for Finland. We must express ourselves definitely one way or the the other; to limit ourselves to a statement of rights is impossible.

We must support every movement directed against imperialism. Otherwise what will the Finnish workers say to us? Pyatakov and Dzerzhinsky say that every national movement is a reactionary movement. That is not true, comrades. Is not the Irish movement against British imperialism a democratic movement which is striking a blow at imperialism? And are we not to support that movement?”