Video: FMLN Vice President-Elect at pro-Al Qaeda rally

El Salvador's Vice President-Elect, FMLN Comandante Salvador Sanchez Ceren, is seen in this September 15, 2001 video celebrating the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks on the United States and issuing statements in approval of the vandalism and burning of the American flag. This after he visited the US Embassy to sign the condolence book.

Highlights of the video follow, with the number corresponding to the time on the video clip:

1:54 Headline in El Diario de Hoy, El Salvador’s largest newspaper: “A march in support of the terrorists.”

2:25 Politicians of all political factions in the National Assembly (unicameral parliament) go to the US embassy to sign a condolence book. Salvador Sanchez Ceren is chief of the FMLN faction of the National Assembly. He and the others express their condolences at the US Embassy, then go to a demonstration to accuse the United States and burn the American flag.

2:43. Salvador Sanchez Ceren: “The Frente we participate in this is a march to condemn the situation that the country is in, against dollarization, against privatization.” (Note: FMLN is the Spanish initials for Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front. Farabundo Marti was the founder of the Salvadoran Communist Party. The FMLN calls itself “Frente” or “Front” for short.)

Men in FMLN shirts are shown spray painting vandalism, equating US-backed privatization in El Salvador with terrorism. Salvador Sanchez Ceren defends these actions.

The FMLN issued a communiqué about September 11, proclaiming that world peace is in danger. A US embassy spokeswoman compares it to the rhetoric coming out of Taliban-run Afghanistan.

2:57 Announcer: “Despite the leftist party assuring that its participation was different from those of the supposed students who committed the vandalism on September 15, the spokeswoman of the American Embassy said that an FMLN communique concerning the terrorist attacks has a tone heard only from states like Afghanistan.”

3:17 Newspaper headline “Support for terrorism,” concerning the FMLN protests. I believe the paper is El Diario de Hoy.

3:28 Schafik Handal, head of the FMLN and a member of the National Assembly, speaks about terrorism, blaming the US and Israel, and equating the US preparations to attack the Taliban with the 9/11 attacks: “Terrorism also happens continually at all hours of the day and night by the government of Sharon in Israel against the people of Palestine. The government of the United States at this moment has taken a tolerant position on this, to say at least. All of this is terrorism. And now it’s starting to be carried out over Afghanistan. It’s the same kind of thing.”

4:01. Salvador Sanchez Ceren press quote, defending the “students” who committed vandalism and burned flags at the September 15 protest: “There was no disorder in the protest (in support of the attacks), ask the students.”

4:04. Headline: “That was not the intention.” Text: “For his part, the chief of the FMLN bloc [in the national legislature], Salvador Sanchez Ceren – who participated in the demonstration on Saturday – rejected that there was any disorderliness. ‘What happened was that they made use of the regular characteristics of a demonstration: placards and paint,’ he said.”

4:10. Image of FMLN Legislative letterhead headlined, “World Peace Is In Danger.” The text is not legible on my screen. The sidebar says: “In the lead of the communiqué, the FMLN maintained that the terrorist acts against New York and Washington composed ‘the use of the pretext of the violence of the United States and of anarchic groups.’”

“They [the FMLN] condemned terrorism of all kinds that attack civilian populations and promote economic policies that affect humanity and the [words illegible].”

“In point number three, they [the FMLN] ask the United States to resolve its conflicts through political means and through dialogue, as a sign of political goodwill, and that safeguards social, political and economic tranquility and stability of all peoples.”

4:13: Photo of FMLN leaders on the steps of the National Assembly building in San Salvador. Salvador Sanchez Ceren is seen applauding, standing in the light shirt between the paunchy man in the red vest and the woman in the white blouse. “ANDES” is the teachers’ union front of the FMLN. At right is the FMLN banner.

4:14: Press clip: “The chief of the FMLN faction [in the national assembly], Salvador Sanchez Ceren, says that conflicts should be resolved by the political route and dialogue, in order not to endanger world peace.”

4:21: Press clip with quote from parliamentary FMLN faction leader Salvador Sanchez Ceren: “World peace is in danger. The options are either revenge or promotion of a new order of peace.”

4:25: Announcer commentary: “The position of the Embassy of the United States of America accredited in our country, before the declarations of the FMLN, were delivered by means of a letter in which Ambassador Rose Likins tells Mr. Sanchez Ceren, ‘Concerning the aforementioned, one cannot but be surprised and offended that the Faction [FMLN] decided to compare these mass killings with unspecified ‘economic policies.’”

4:59: Salvadoran President Francisco Flores speaks out in support of the United States: “It’s important to signal that to make declarations that justify acts of terrorism, like the declaration by the FMLN, saying that the terrorism was justified by the brutality or the economic policies of the United States, or even more, making a public act by people of high level in the FMLN, the chief of faction, members of the mayors office of San Salvador, constitutes enormous damage to our country.”

Bush: “You are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Note how even the Democrats gave him a standing ovation.

FMLN invites Qaddafi emissary to observe election

The FMLN invited Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi's personal envoy to Nicaragua as an official observer for Sunday's election in El Salvador. Abdalla Mohamed Matoug was invited by FMLN International Relations Coordinator Blanca Flor Bonilla, El Diario de Hoy reports.

(Photo: Qaddafi and Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega renew old ties.)

FMLN links its own candidate to Chavez, Castro, Morales, Ortega

An FMLN student group has publicly linked its presidential candidate, Mauricio Funes, to Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega.

The students carried a banner featuring a montage of Funes with the Venezuelan and Cuban dictators, and the left-wing leaders of other Latin American countries.

AP photographer Esteban Felix snapped the photo at an FMLN student rally in San Salvador on October 31, 2008. From left to right, the figures on the banner are: Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa, the FMLN's Mauricio Funes, Bolivian coca grower-turned-President Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Brazilian President Lula da Silva, Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo and Nicaraguan Sandinista Comandante Daniel Ortega.

The slogan at the bottom shows the intended domino effect of the Chavez-backed Bolivarian revolution and of Farabundo Marti, founder of the Salvadoran Communist Party. The slogan says, "El Salvador will be the next sovereign country of the great fatherland of Marti and Bolivar."

Chavez propaganda echoes FMLN fraud line

The FMLN says that if it loses Sunday's presidential election it will denounce El Salvador's democratic process as a fraud.

The effort to discredit any loss is being echoed by FMLN supporters in other countries. Today, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez's satellite TV propaganda channel is echoing the FMLN call.

Telesur, the Chavez TV channel modeled after Al Jazeera, is issuing reports denouncing a "dirty campaign" against FMLN presidential candidate Mauricio Funes - this just days after Funes' vice presidential running mate, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, made an identical allegation in an interview with La Prensa Grafica.

Click here for a link to the Chavez channel to follow the line.

FMLN candidate won't appear in public with his running mate

FMLN presidential candidate Mauricio Funes is not appearing in public with his pro-Al Qaeda running mate.

Vice presidential candidate Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a militant who said that Al Qaeda was justified in attacking the United Sates on September 11, 2001, has become so controversial that the FMLN campaign has decided for "strategic" reasons not to have him appear in public with the moderate-looking Funes.

Sanchez Ceren admitted the strategy in an interview with the Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa Grafica, published March 10. (Click here for a video of the interview, in Spanish)

Known as Leonel Gonzalez during the war when he headed the militant FPL faction of the FMLN, Sanchez Ceren has admitted to killing his own comrades over policy disputes and is unrepentant about his communist ideology and his actions to try to turn El Salvador into a totalitarian revolutionary state. He continues to come under political fire for participating in a September 15, 2001 demonstration accusing the United States of terrorism and justifying Al Qaeda's attacks.

A group of US congressmen led by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) openly sympathizes with the FMLN and has raised no objections to Sanchez Ceren's candidacy or his stated support for terrorism.

FMLN front is coordinating phone calls into State Department; Propaganda campaign seeks State to issue neutrality declaration

A US front group for the FMLN is rallying supporters to flood the State Department with phone calls to echo the former guerrillas' demand for American "neutrality" concerning the March 15 elections.

The front group, founded in 1980 by Farid Handal, the brother of the late Salvadoran Communist Party chief and FMLN commander Schafik Handal, is known as CISPES.

CISPES has just sent out an "action alert" to flood the State Department's El Salvador desk and the American Embassy in San Salvador with phone calls, urging people to recite a scripted message.

"Take Action! Call the State Department to demand an immediate public declaration of US neutrality toward the Salvadoran election!" the CISPES website says. CISPES urges FMLN supporters to call the El Salvador/Nicaragua desk at State at 202-647-1510, and to call Chargé d'Affaires Robert Blau at the US Embassy in San Salvador at 011-503-2501-2999.

The CISPES phone script goes as follows:

"CALL SCRIPT: 'I am calling to urge Secretary Clinton to immediately make a public statement declaring that the United States will respect the results of Sunday's presidential election in El Salvador and seek a positive relationship with whoever is elected.'

"'On Wednesday, Members of Congress publicly threatened to revoke the immigration status of Salvadorans living here in the U.S. and outlaw the remittances they send back to their families. These threats have been extensively covered by the media in El Salvador. Without a statement by the State Department refuting these threats, the integrity and fairness of the Salvadoran election will be severely compromised.'"

CISPES has instructed FMLN supporters to call Blau at the American Embassy after calling the El Salvador desk at the State Department in Washington. The call script is as follows:

"CALL SCRIPT: 'I am calling from the United States to ask that the Embassy publicly declare that the U.S. government will respect the results of Sunday's election, and that the threats made by Members of Congress this week about immigration status and remittances are false.'"

The FMLN front group is upset by calls from Republican Members of Congress who are concerned that an FMLN government, with its terrorist sympathies, would force the US to invoke anti-terrorism legislation and clamp down on remittances to El Salvador. The lawmakers have been friendly to El Salvador's democratic development for decades, even when CISPES was supporting the FMLN's guerrilla and terrorist war against Salvadoran society.

FMLN candidate asks voters not to be violent

FMLN presidential candidate Mauricio Funes has made an unusual appeal to exhort his countrymen not to become violent during Sunday's election.

Funes made the statement in a report distributed by the Cuban propaganda agency Prensa Latina.

The statement comes as the FMLN faces the possibility of winning the presidency without resorting to violence. The FMLN is allied with street gangs, known as maras, which act as the party's local enforcers (click here for video).

The FMLN and the Cuban regime are accusing conservative ARENA party activists of isolated acts of harassment. Funes warned his supporters not to respond to what he called "provocations."

Max Manwaring, an El Salvador expert at the US Army's Strategic Studies Institute and a noted authority on the FMLN, reported in 2005 that the more sophisticated Central American gangs were becoming politically active in order to defend and expand their territories and illegal operations.