The Jade Steps Chapter Twenty: The Legend in Cuba “Señor Aguilar!” Malinali shouted with a bright smile. She had spotted him sitting under a large ceiba tree at the edge of Tlaxcala’s market eating his mid-day meal. He returned her smile. “Doña Marina!” he called back. “Would you care to join me?” She sat down next to him. “It seems so long since I saw you last,” she said. “Yes – well, you learned Spanish so fast, while I have been slow at learning Nahuatl, that there was little need to help you translating for Captain Cortez,” came his reply. “What I really needed to do was learn to be a soldier again after being a Mayan slave for those long eight years. So I have been with the soldiers.” “Would you like to learn Nahuatl?” she asked. “I can teach you.” Aguilar considered it for a moment, then answered, “I would like that – Nahuatl is very different from Mayan, but I should try. If I can find the time, that is, for a soldier is kept very busy.” “You don’t look very busy to me,” came a nearby voice. “Bernal!” both Malinali and Aguilar exclaimed at the same time. “Do I understand that now Doña Marina is going to be your teacher instead of the other way around?” Bernal asked Aguilar with a grin. Aguilar shook his head. “I’m afraid so.” They chatted happily for a while, then Malinali had a thought. “Bernal, I have a question for you.” Her eyes had a mischievous twinkle. “Why are Captain Cortez and Diego Velasquez – the governor, as you call him, of your island of Cuba – enemies?”

Last week a man who had been deputy chief of Saddam Hussein's air force claimed Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war began. Special Republican Guard brigades loaded yellow barrels with the skull and crossbones sign on each barrel onto two airliners from which the seats had been removed, Georges Sada said. There were 56 flights in all. Mr. Sada's is only the most recent of a series of accounts by people in a position to speak with authority who say (some of) Saddam's chemical and biological weapons wound up in Syria.

Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), who chairs the House Subcommittee on Human Rights, is so mad at Google for capitulating to the Chicoms he is going to hold hearings next month on the operating procedures of US Internet companies in China. He can expect to be getting a call from CIA Director Porter Goss politely requesting that he shut up. He’ll tell Smith he can vent for a little while longer, enough to make Google execs sweat and be receptive to the call they’ll be getting from Langley. But as soon as the Google boys turn cooperative, Smith had better turn quiet. Google’s Chicom Collaboration presents a marvelous intelligence opportunity.

It was no way to treat a lady. Washington Post ombudswoman Deborah Howell wrote a column praising her paper for exposing lobbyist Jack Abramoff. She was deluged with so much obscene email from outraged liberals the Post had to shut down one of its Web sites. Mr. Abramoff pled guilty earlier this month to defrauding his clients (Indian tribes who owned casinos) and the Internal Revenue Service. Ms. Howell's critics were in high dudgeon over a distinction without a difference. In the 7th paragraph of her story lauding reporter Susan Schmidt, she wrote: "And (Abramoff) had made substantial contributions to both major parties." "I heard that I was lying, that Democrats never got a penny of Abramoff-tainted money, that I was trying to say it was a bipartisan scandal," a stunned Ms. Howell wrote in her column last Sunday. All of Mr. Abramoff's personal contributions went to Republicans. But the big money was what Mr. Abramoff directed his clients to contribute.

We’ve gotten a number of queries regarding the corporeal status of Osama Bin Laden, given that Michael Ledeen, in Who’s An Iraqi?, reported that OBL croaked in December, yet he came out with an audiotape in January. Here’s the deal.

Suppose you were appointed global economic czar, and your task was to bring the world's per capita income up to the level of Ireland – which is almost that of the US. Would you: (A) Insist the world's rich nations transfer substantial wealth though massive foreign aid to the poor nations? (B) Insist all nations adopt policies that would make them as economically free as the top 10 freest economies today?

The world’s wealthiest exiles are the Iranians – folks who fled Iran after Jimmy Carter betrayed the Shah and let him be overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini. The Cubans who fled after Castro took over Cuba and amassed fortunes in Miami are financial pikers compared to the Iranians. Cumulatively they are worth billions. There are thousands of millionaires among them. And they are the stupidest millionaires on the planet. Because of their stupidity, they now face the extinction of their country.

In an audiotape broadcast Thursday on al Jazeera, Osama bin Laden said al Qaeda is preparing to strike the United States again. Last month Italian authorities arrested three Algerians with al Qaeda connections. They were plotting attacks on ships, railway stations and stadiums in the United States, said Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu. Some Democrats think President Bush should be impeached for trying to keep them from succeeding. Like Al Gore.

Here’s a question: Would you go shopping for shoes at a grocery store? Why not? Oh, yes, grocery stores don’t sell shoes. You only go to a particular store because it’s selling what you want to buy. You don’t go to a store that doesn’t sell what you want to buy. Right, boys and girls? This Kindergarten lesson came to mind when I saw the Democrats over at the Library of Congress yesterday (January 18) ostentatiously signing what they called their “Declaration of Honest Leadership and Open Government.”

The good news is we're unlikely to be as obsessed with the war in Iraq in 2006 as we were in 2005. The bad news is we may soon have much more to worry about. Mahmoud Amadinejad is the president of Iran, picked by the aging mullahs of the Guardian Council who hold the real power in the land. Since his election last August, Mr. Amadinejad has been replacing elderly clerics in senior government positions with colleagues from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Iranian version of the Nazi SS, which he once commanded. Mr. Amadinejad is a thug, a religious lunatic, and may soon be armed with nukes.

The Jade Steps Chapter Nineteen: The Marriage of Teculehuatzin For more than two weeks, every day in Tlaxcala seemed more enjoyable to the Spaniards than the previous. The friendship shown to them by the Tlaxcalans was overwhelming. Children were constantly giving them flowers. Everywhere they went in the city, they would be invited into homes to share a meal. Older women, Señoras, were always bringing them food in their quarters, and there seemed to be a never-ending number of young ladies, Señoritas, desiring to share their quarters with them. One reason for such an abundance of hospitality was the Spaniards’ strict obedience to Cortez’s stern command to take nothing – nothing – from the Tlaxcalans except what was given to them. They vividly remembered when Cortez caught a soldier named Mora stealing a turkey from a village on the way to Tlaxcala and ordered him hung. Mora would have died had not Pedro de Alvarado cut the rope with his sword at the last moment. While the men were enjoying themselves, Cortez spent as much time as possible with King Xicotencatl and Chief Maxixcatzin teaching them about Christianity.

Ever since I beat Vladimir Putin in an arm-wrestling match (yes, it’s a true story, told in Arm Wrestling With Russia), I haven’t had a high opinion of him. He was an officer in the KGB, and bemoaned that the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century” (no, Pootie-Poot, the existence of the USSR was the century’s greatest calamity.) But not until now has it become fully apparent how stupid he is. As we saw last week in The Next War In Europe, Pootie tried to screw Ukraine for bolting from his imperial clutches in the Orange Revolution. I predicted this would fail if Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko stood up to him and called his bluff. Sure enough, once Viktor did so, and showed the Euroweenies what it looks like to be a mensch with a backbone, Europe exploded in anger against Putin. Big mistake, Pootie.

In a documentary broadcast in Berlin Friday, German filmmaker Wilfried Huismann added a new twist to an old controversy. In Dallas on Nov. 22nd, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, who himself was killed days later by small time mafioso Jack Ruby. The following September, a commission chaired by then Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded Oswald had acted on his own. This finding was unsatisfying to millions of Americans, who didn't want to believe that so beloved a president could have his life snuffed out just because, the Warren Commission surmised, a fruitcake loser wanted some attention. There had to be more significance to the act. There had to be a deeper, darker conspiracy.

Rep. John Murtha probably wasn't on President Bush's Christmas card list, but Democratic political analyst Charles Cook thinks he should have been. Mr. Cook noted in the president's popularity started to rebound almost immediately after the Pennsylvania Democrat made a speech urging immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. While a majority of Americans now think it was a mistake to have gone into Iraq in the first place, a larger majority thinks it would be a bigger mistake to cut and run. Rep. Murtha took the spotlight off the president and focused it on the Democrats, who have no "plan" for Iraq other than preemptive surrender. He focused it further this week by making the extraordinary public statement that if he were a young man now, he would not join the military – a statement guaranteed to further to diminish Democrats’ popularity.

In addition to two religious nutcases – senile Pat Robertson and terrorist Ahmadinejad – there are large numbers of ordinary Israelis who are pleased about Ariel Sharon’s incapacitating stroke. Robertson announced that Sharon’s stroke was “God’s punishment” for withdrawing from Gaza, while Iran’s Ahmadinejad announced he was “praying to Allah” for Sharon’s death. While most all Israeli citizens aren’t this crazy or ghoulish, a lot of them think that Sharon’s passing will be, in the words of one Israeli friend of mine, “better for the future of Israel.” Let’s call these folks Chinese Israelis. The Chinese have an ancient proverb: Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. The reality is that Sharon’s passing is a disaster for the state of Israel.

It isn't absolutely necessary to be a hypocrite in order to be a liberal, but it sure helps. During the first week in December, ten thousand people gathered in Montreal for a UN-sponsored conference on global warming. Rex Murphy of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. thought the size of the gathering inappropriate: "Just think of the Montreal summit's ecological footprint," he said. "Is there really a need to fly ten thousand people from 189 countries to a cold city to exchange ideas? Is there no email? Are the phone lines down?" Then Mr. Murphy answered his own question: "I suppose...ecology is not really different from politics. High on sermons, low on example."

The Jade Steps Chapter Eighteen: The Tale of Taclaelel They arose the next morning at dawn. Cortez ordered a small altar be put up in the plaza, where the padres performed a Mass for the Spaniards. He returned to his quarters to find King Xicotencatl and a very dignified elderly man, at least as old as the king. “Malinche,” the king said through Malinali, “this is Chief Maxixcatzin (max-eeks-cot-zin, Ring of Cotton), lord of our region of Ocotelolco, and the military leader of all Tlaxcala who has protected us from the Mesheeka for many years.” Malinali’s eyes widened at the introduction, and took it upon herself to expand Cortez’s brief greeting of welcome.

Andrei Illarionov resigned just in time. As an admirer of the capitalist philosophy of Ayn Rand and the laissez faire economics of Ludwig Von Mises, his resignation this week as Vladimir Putin’s chief economic advisor is a disaster for Russia. But his announcing that “Russia is no longer a democracy,” serves to keep intact the record of there never being a war between two democracies should war break out between Russia and Ukraine. For the day of Illarionov’s resignation (Tuesday, December 27), the Russian Defense Minister threatened to invade Ukraine.

Finally, some good may come from the Valerie Plame kerfuffle -- if President Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez have the stones to do what's right. A grave crime was exposed Dec. 16th when New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau published a story revealing President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to listen in on conversations between al Qaeda suspects abroad and people in the United States without first obtaining a warrant. "We're seeing clearly now that (President) Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator," wrote Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. But the scandal was not the program Risen and Lichtblau wrote about. The scandal is that they wrote about it.

Last week was Europe. This week it’s Asia. I’ve been giving speeches and meeting with folks in Hong Kong, Singapore, and now here in Taiwan about how to democratize China. The text of one of these speeches, delivered at Chung Hsing University in Taichung, Taiwan, is a companion article following this, entitled, Freedom and Peace in China. The meetings with democracy activists discussed the extraordinary urgency in transforming dictatorship in China to democracy within the next 15 to 18 months. For that may be all the time Taiwan has before China attacks, and the US is drawn into a full scale war that could go all-out nuclear. The Beijing Olympics are to be held in the summer of 2008. That’s 32 months from now. For all the saber-rattling China has indulged in over Taiwan, most Taiwanese figure they’ve got until after 2008 before the Chicoms will consider a military assault upon them. It really startles them to hear they may have only months and not years to go.

There hasn't been a successful terrorist attack in the United States since Sep. 11th, 2001. Congress may be about to change that. Several critical provisions of the Patriot Act will expire at the end of the year, because a Democratic filibuster in the U.S. Senate blocked their renewal. Without these provisions, the FBI will lose most of its ability to track terrorists, the head of the FBI's national security division told the Washington Times. The most important of these provisions is for roving wiretaps, said Gary Bald. "We've had that capability for years on the drug side of the ship and frankly what it does is it cuts out the requirement for us to go back to a judge every time a drug dealer throws his cell phone into the river and gets another one." Before denying those who are trying to protect us from terrorists the tools law enforcement has had for years to wield against less dangerous criminals, Congress – thanks to Senator John McCain – moved to make it unlikely we will ever again get useful information from interrogation of terror suspects.

How upset are you over the CIA “secret prison scandal”? Maybe you said, “What scandal?”, or maybe you’ve glanced at stories about it carried in the back pages of your newspaper. Here in Europe, it’s the giant screaming front page headline story on every paper you pick up from England to Germany. The Europeans are in a state of high emotional froth over CIA “renditions” of Moslem terrorists seized in one of their countries and taken to a “secret prison” in Poland or elsewhere. The Euroweenies are far more concerned with the “human rights” of the terrorists than they are about the threat of terrorists to kill them. If you think all of this is just an excuse to bash the CIA and indulge in anti-Americanism, you’re right – just as planned by the weasels. Everyone on the right, it seems nowadays, from the editorials in the Wall Street Journal to conservative columnists like Mona Charen and bloggers like John Hinderacker, are issuing calls to “Investigate the CIA!” They have been suckered by the left. They should instead be demanding, “Investigate the weasels, not the agency!”

The Jade Steps: Chapter Seventeen:  Fortes Fortuna Adiuvat When they arrived at the city of Tlaxcala[1], there was an enormous welcoming party to greet the Spaniards. Different clans of Tlaxcalans dressed in differing colors, their maguey or henniquen cloaks all painted and embroidered. A contingent of priests with their burning copal performed fumigations, wearing long white hooded robes, their hair long and blood-encrusted, blood oozing from their ears, and with fingernails several inches long. The streets and rooftops were thronging with smiling Indians who showered the Spaniards with roses of varying hues. When they reached the central plaza, King Xicotencatl took Cortez by the hand and led him to a palace, explaining, “This shall be your home in Tlaxcala for as long as you wish.” He assured Cortez that all his men, all the Totonacs and Xocotlans, and even the Mesheeka nobles, would be well housed. Upon his signal, hundreds of servants began streaming into the plaza bearing cooked turkeys, maize cakes, fruits and vegetables for all. The soldiers all agreed it was the best they had eaten since leaving Cuba. With everyone so joyously happy, Cortez and Malinali retired to their quarters. They had not had any time together since Zautla – so they did not waste any time now, making love fiercely and quickly. Afterwards, noticing Malinali was staring into space, Cortez asked her what she was thinking about. [1] September 18, 1519.

On August 2nd, Dafna Linzer of the Washington Post reported that: "A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years." On December 5th, the Jerusalem Post reported that Mohammed el Baradei, chairman of the International Atomic Energy Agency, "confirmed Israel's assessment that Iran is only a few months away from creating an atomic bomb. "My, how time flies. It hasn't seemed as if ten years have elapsed since last summer. The CIA could be right, and Mossad and the IAEA could be wrong. But given the CIA's forecasting record -- it missed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Islamic revolution in Iran, the warning signs of 9/11, and Saddam's WMD -- that's not the way to bet. Intelligence analysis isn't the only thing the CIA does sloppily.