>Asia File: Shanghai Cooperation Organization members China and India ink military cooperation agreement

>The Indian Government cannot succeed in suppressing the armed revolution of India’s Maoists.
— Zhang Zheng, CPC Mao Loyalist, 2005

And so, despite official denials, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Eurasia’s new communist bloc, is in fact supporting an international military superstructure. Bear in mind that Maoist guerrillas hold one quarter of Indian territory and that communists hold the balance of power in India’s parliament . . .

India and China signs military agreement to move towards a NATO-style Asian military alliance
Media Release
May 29, 2006

India and China Monday [29 May] signed an historic MoU to institutionalise exchanges in military training and exercises with a view to adding more content to their building strategic relations.

The Memorandum of Understanding was signed after visiting Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee and his Chinese counterpart, General Cao Gangchuan held over two hours of talks here at the Central Military Commission headquarters. The MoU envisages other contacts between the Armed Forces and Defence Officials and experts of the two countries. The MoU is also expected to serve as an instrument for a regular and sustained dialogue on defence and national defence issues between the two countries. Earlier, Cao accorded a red carpet welcome to Mukherjee and welcomed him to China for a six-day official visit. “It is my great pleasure to host the welcoming ceremony for you from India, a friendly neighbouring country,” he said after a ceremonial welcome and guard of honour by a triservice Chinese military marching contingent. “Your visit is a big event in the exchanges and cooperation between the militaries and also an important event in the China-India Friendship Year this year,” Cao said in his initial comments. “Your visit this time will deepen our mutual understanding and mutual cooperation between the armed forces of the two countries,” he said while describing the Indian defence minister as an “esteemed guest.”

Reciprocating the warm sentiments expressed by the Chinese General, Mukherjee said that the visit has given him “an opportunity to visit your great country.”

“I have heard a great deal about China’s achievements. This visit has allowed me to see for myself the achievements. We greatly admire your achievements,” he said. “I am bringing greetings from the Indian armed forces to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. I am also conveying the greetings from the people of India to the people of this great nation,” Mukherjee said.

Mukherjee also described his meeting with Chinese Foreign Minster Li Zhaoxing as “very productive.”

Link: India Daily

>USSR2 File: British Arabic newspaper reports: Soviet Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov advocates world government and convergence of USA and USSR2

>World government is the communist solution to all of the supposed ills of capitalism and the bourgeois nations. The Soviet hierarchy has pleaded for the cause of convergence since the Bolshevik Revolution and for that reason they established the world government’s provisional committee, the United Nations, with a little help from Soviet agent and FDR advisor Alger Hiss, the UN’s first general secretary. In his first, ground-breaking book, New Lies for Old (1984), KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn writes:

In the new worldwide communist federation the present different brands of communism would disappear, to be replaced by a uniform, rigorous brand of Leninism. The process would be painful. Concessions made in the name of economic and political reform would be withdrawn. Religious and intellectual dissent would be suppressed. Nationalism and all other forms of genuine opposition would be crushed (pages 346-347).

One is immediately reminded of the politically correct communism that pervades the New European Soviet, especially in the endeavor to crush opposition to “same-sex” marriages and sexual perversion in general, the destruction of the natural family being an integral element of the centuries-old communist agenda.

In new communist states–for example, in France, Italy, and the Third World–the “alienated classes” would be reeducated. Show trials of “imperialist agents” would be staged. Action would be taken against nationalist and social democratic leaders, party activists, former civil servants, officers, and priests. The last vestiges of private enterprise and ownership would be obliterated. Nationalization of industry, finance, and agriculture would be completed. In fact, all the totalitarian features familiar from the early stages of the Soviet revolution and the postwar Stalinist years in Eastern Europe might be expected to reappear, especially in those countries newly won for communism (page 347).

Soviet Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s call for world government appears to have been delivered at the NATO Foreign Ministerial held in Sofia, Bulgaria, on April 27 and 28, 2006.

Lavrov is a trusted career Communist. He was originally dispatched to the Soviet Embassy in Sri Lanka, in 1972; assigned to the Department of International Organizations of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) between 1976 and 1981; assumed the offices of First Secretary, Councilor and Second Councilor at the Permanent Representation of the Soviet Union to the UN between 1981 and 1988; and appointed Deputy Head of the Department of International Economic Relations of the Soviet MFA between 1988 and 1990. Be assured, Lavrov is a key component in the Leninist cabal guiding the world communist movement from the Kremlin.

Cold War Talk Prompts Russian Call for ‘World Government’

According to this news article from Britain’s Arabic-language Elaph newspaper, recent talk of a new Cold War has prompted Russia’s foreign minister to broach the subject of bringing together a ‘chorus’ of major nations into a world government.

By Faleh Al Hamrani
Translated By Nicolas Dagher
May 7, 2006
U.K. – Elaph – Original Article (Arabic)

Russian Foreign Secretary Sergueii Lavrov called for the establishment of a world government, bringing together the United States and Russia. Lavrov’s call comes at a time of a chilling of relations between Moscow and Washington and amidst signs of a new Cold War. Moscow is wary of the establishment by America of a front of “New Democracies” in Eastern Europe, Ukraine and Georgia to counter “the Russian Bear,” which is powerfully awakening.

In an interview granted to the magazine “Russia in Global Politics,” Lavrov said that bringing together a “chorus” of major nations into a world government will eliminate the jockeying for power that creates imbalances. Lavrov was certain that “most countries will welcome such a grouping of leadership.”

He also said that there is no place in Russian politics for animosity toward the U.S., and that the basic goals of American and Russian foreign policy were nearly identical. He made clear that the policies of both countries are to create a more secure and predictable world.

From Lavrov’s point of view, the political differences between Moscow and Washington are essentially philosophical. He explained that the apparent difference in opinion concerning the emerging international system is due to mutual misunderstanding. He added that this misunderstanding is far less significant than that which existed during the previous era, when there was a “negative stability” between two poles, namely the United States and the Soviet Union.

Lavrov pointed out that “absolute security” cannot be achieved through excessive military superiority, and he pointed out that in special cases, differences in interests are completely natural.

Link: Watching America

Golitsyn’s reference above to the seizing of Italy for communism is frightening in light of current events. The “post-communist” communists and their leftist cohorts briefly controlled Italy between 1996 and 2000. As of April 2006, Prime Minister Romano Prodi, a former president of the European Commission and alleged KGB agent, led his communist-leftist coalition known as the Union, formerly the Olive Tree, to a dubious victory. I cannot imagine the communists forming a democratically elected government in Cold War Italy when the US Central Intelligence Agency was propping up the Christian Democratic regime with millions of dollars. But now that communism has “evaporated,” Gramsci and Togliatti’s disciples have no difficulty deceiving the Italian electorate and the world.

>Final Phase Backgrounder: KGB financed Poland’s "post-communist" social democratic parties, youth movements in "post-Cold War" Hungary and Italy

>Left-wing ideas have positive associations in places where they have not been directly contradicted by the truth.
— Axis Information and Analysis, May 22, 2006

In The Perestroika Deception (1995, 1998), KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn describes in a series of memoranda to the US Central Intelligence Agency the methods by which “post-communist” Russia continues to manipulate politics in its Not-So-Former Soviet satellites. Following the KGB-managed “collapse” of communism “ex”-communists morphed into overnight social democrats, while controlled dissidents who were formerly languishing in gulags were bumped into center stage. Golitsyn writes:

The [Soviet] Communists have succeeded in concealing from the West that this so-called “political opposition” of “dissidents” has been created, brought up and guided by the [Soviet] Bloc’s parties and security services during the long period of preparation for “perestroika” (page 85).

Even so-called free-elections do not present a problem for the Communist Parties. Because of their secret partnership with the “opposition,” the Communist Parties are always in a winning situation. It is their candidates–Communist or “non-Communist”–who always win (page 87)

The scandal with the Soviet special services’ sponsoring Polish left continues
23.05.2006
Eurasian Secret Services Daily Review
AIA staff

As AIA informed, Minister of Justice of Poland transferred to the journalists about 2500 pages of documents on investigation of the so-called “Moscow’s loan”. As it became known to the public, in 1990, the Polish post-Communists have received from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union a huge multi-million loan for creation the pro-Soviet Social-Democratic party of Poland and supporting of the main printed edition of post-Communists – “Tribune” daily.

As Radio Free Europe informs, the money was not transferred from the Soviet Union to Poland through bank accounts. They were brought in three huge bags by plane from Moscow to Warsaw by the Soviet special services, agents of which carried it straight to the building of the Central Party’s Committee. As nobody in the airport checked these bags, the import of money was illegal. The former secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and future Prime Minister Leshek Miller was involved in the money transfer.

In 1993, after coming to power in Poland Social Democrats decided to cut short the investigation of the “Moscow’s loan”. By 1995 they managed to achieve that. Leshek Miller claims he never heard of the “Moscow’s loan”, however the investigation has proved (due to the former employees of the KGB) that Miller was the one who partially tried to return the loan paying Moscow $ 600 thousand. It is unknown where the rest of the money went.

Current functionaries of the ” Union of the Left Democrats” deny any connection of the party with the “Moscow’s loan”, despite the fact that Miller and other representatives of the former Communist party nomenclature of the Polish National republic are still among their ranks, Radio Free Europe reported.

Link: Axis Information and Analysis

Ex-Communists win in European elections due to the KGB related Youth movements
22.05.2006
Eurasian Secret Services Daily Review
AIA staff

The electoral success of the Ferenc Gyurcsany’s Hungarian Socialist Party, and the rehabilitation of the Italian communists, show that organization and focus are not a reflection of ideology, and that left-wing ideas have positive associations in places where they have not been directly contradicted by the truth, Hungarian hvg.hu reports.

In Rome on 10 May, the two houses of the Italian parliament elected the 81-year-old Giorgio Naplitano as president of the Italian Republic. The former partisan has already served as president of the Italian house of representatives and was minister of the interior in the first Prodi government. Massimo d’Alema, another former communist, also won a job in Romano Prodi’s new government. By doing this, the centre-left coalition has made a point of accepting former communist politicians into its ranks.

As newspaper notes, “a former Young Socialist activist, Ferenc Gyurcsany was secretary of the Pecs city Young Socialist committee from 1984 to 1988, and chairman of the Young Socialist Students’ association from 1984 to 1989. Both Napoletano and d’Alema had also participated in their country’s communist youth movement, one in the 50s, the other in the 70s.

What must they have learned, what kind of a network must they have built up on both sides of the Iron Curtain to have remained popular among the political elites and the masses? It is hard to give a straight answer, but the work of Joel Kotek, a Belgian historian, might provide some insights. It emerges that the world communist movement, which collapsed with the Soviet Union, had one highly successful and ‘exportable’ branch, flourishing in a world of globalising capitalism. This was the youth movement – more precisely, the World Organization of Democratic Youth and the International Student Association. Both were based in Prague, the “communist Geneva”. These two organizations, which organized world youth meetings and supported the third world, became very popular among young people. Of course, few knew that both had extensive links with the KGB and other East European secret services”, the edition notes.

It was the legendary Willi Munzenberg, who befriended Lenin in Switzerland, who devised the tactic communists used to gain political success within democratic societies. It was his idea to establish ‘shop-window organizations’, which influenced a broad swathe of left-wing groupings. They grew in popularity when they called for a united front against fascism. These communist activists, found in trade unions and youth movements, easily outmaneuvered their less well organized and divided rivals. The Soviet secret services were generous in their material support for the Western communist organizations.

At the end of the 1920s, Munzenberg showed how a vast capitalist press and media organization could be set up in the Weimar Republic to propagate the party’s views. But his life took a sad turn. His outrage is shown by his famous aphorism: “All news is lies, but propaganda is presented as news.” He confronted Stalin, having understood the bloody dictator’s true aims. He was excluded from the Party, accused of being a Trotskyite. He died in suspicious circumstances in June 1940 in the forest of Le Caugnet. He was probably killed by the Soviet NKVD.

The World Organization of Democratic Youth was established in November 1945 in the Royal Albert Hall in London by the youth organizations of 63 countries. The Association, supported by the Soviet secret services, survived the collapse of the Soviet empire. Even now, the forces of the past have great power, influencing the internal and external power relationships in which we live”, the newspaper concludes.

Link: Axis Information and Analysis

>Feature: Young pro-communist Spanish Freemason reestablished Order of Bavarian Illuminati in 1995; supports North Korean regime

>The great strength of our Order lies in its concealment; let it never appear in any place in its own name, but always covered by another name, and another occupation.
— Adam Weishaupt, Founder, Order of Bavarian Illuminati

The modus operandi of the original “Enlightened Ones” of eighteenth-century Bavaria provided a blueprint, as most students of communism will observe, for the so-called communist “front organization.” The American Civil Liberties Union’s litigous rampage against public expressions of Christianity and ANSWER’s anti-war demos are perfect examples of this tactic.

The objective of the original Illuminati parallels that of all communists since then. This was John Robison’s discovery in Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe (1798):

Their first and immediate aim is to get the possession of riches, power, and influence, without industry; and, to accomplish this, they want to abolish Christianity; and then dissolute manners and universal profligacy will procure them the adherence of all the wicked, and enable them to overturn all the civil governments of Europe; after which they will think of farther conquests, and extend their operations to the other quarters of the globe, till they have reduced mankind to the state of one undistinguishable chaotic mass (page 121, Western Islands edition).

In the right column of this blogsite we issue the following disclaimer: “This blog does not propagate “New World Order conspiracy theories.” We acknowledge that the Western capitalist elite have organized themselves into a number of clandestine and semi-clandestine transnational associations committed to the utopian ideal of world government. By asserting that these organizations are the true threat to the West, however, the Left and the Faux Right are parroting the Leninist lies of Pravda, the organ of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and KGB/FSB-disseminated propaganda.”

In general we shy away from New World Order conspiracy theories on this blogsite because they promote anticapitalism and communism.

Notwithstanding these caveats, we have long recognized the ideological continuity between Adam Weishaupt’s notorious Bavarian Illuminati, established in 1776, and Karl Marx’s League of the Just, the predecessor of the Communist League, established in 1836. While we have never located a single, historically continuous organization between the eighteenth-century Illuminati and contemporary communists, the “re-establishment” of the order in 1995 by a young pro-communist Spanish Freemason, Gabriel López de Rojas (pictured above), is most intriguing. Rojas, which means “red” in Spanish, refers to his atheistical and egalitarian ideology as “Redism”, the objectives of which he juxtaposes with those of Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism and neo-Templarism, which acknowledge a Supreme Being:

Besides, Redism Philosophy crowns Redism with its equalitarian and anarchistic message, being the philosophy of action and postmodernity that formulates again socialism and converts Redism in postmodern. At last, scientific psychology is also the tool that makes possible to understand the gradual evolution of Redism for high degree initiated ones.

In Redism, initiated developes since esoteric and initiatic non demonstrated idealism to materialism, the absolute rejection of existance of the whole gods, the atheism, the atheistic reason, the science, the rigour…

Masonry, Rose-croix, Templars… also begin in idealism, but, opposite of Redism, they remain in it eternally, leading their members to fictitious ‘heavens’ and to the most absolute unreality.

Rojas admits that Illuminized Freemasonry played an important role in fomenting the revolutionary socialism of the French Revolution: “It can be declared that the Illuminati sowed the seed of revolution in France, getting see an important part of their ideas, but not at all.”

In the January/February 2005 bulletin of the Korean Friendship Association, based in Catalonia, Spain, Rojas’ homeland, this self-described postmodern Illuminatus writes favorably of the communist regime of North Korea:

The Juche philosophy of the DPRK promotes an independent and creating spirit. So, the DPRK decided to create nuclear weapons for self-defense. This is a legatine decision and it’s not a threat. The real threat comes from USA, a nation that attacks, invades and destroys other nations.
— Gabriel Lopez de Rojas, KFA-Spain

In the early 2000s Rojas contested the leadership of the original Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), the Grand Master of which between 1923 and 1947 was infamous occultist Aleister Crowley. Failing to secure the same office, Rojas formed a splinter group under an identical name.

The Illuminati Order maintains lodges throughout Latin America, where neo-communism is advancing rapidly, as well as Europe, Australia and the USA. You can visit Rojas’ website here. Yes, even the much-dreaded Illuminati has a website! So much for secrecy in this secret society. Reality is catching up with conspiracy theories . . .

Several other quasi-masonic organizations, such as the Grand Lodge Rockefeller, OTO, which features a US Grand Lodge and a UK Grand Lodge, and Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, claim ideological descent from the Bavarian Illuminati. The Grand Lodge Rockefeller in New York offers the following evaluation of Rojas’ revived Illuminati and its fraternal organizations in the USA:

The leaders of the Grand Lodge and others paramasonic and illuminati organisations –The Order, Skull and Bones and The Shriners- have moved ourselves a little away the anarchistic and equalitarian beliefs of Bavarian Illuminati.

In 1994, the Spanish Gabriel López de Rojas contacted with the Grand Lodge. In 1995, he founded Illuminati Order in Barcelona (Spain). Then, he recovered the Rite of Bavarian Illuminated with the name Operative Rite of Bavarian Illuminated of Illuminati Order.

Founded in 1785 as the Columbia Lodge of the Order of the Illuminati, the Grand Lodge Rockefeller’s most illustrious members included New York Governor De Witt Clinton; Clinton Roosevelt, an ancestor of Franklin Delano Roosevelt; Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune; and John D. Rockefeller, the only member of the Rockefeller dynasty to apparently affiliate with this lodge of Illuminized Freemasonry.

Neo-Illuminatus Rojas also identifies Skull and Bones at Yale University as a chapter of the Illuminati, a juicy morsel that researchers Antony Sutton and Yale alumnus Ron Rosenbaum exposed more than 20 years ago. Would Bonesman George W. Bush care to offer his opinion on this subject? Probably not.

>USSR2 File: Georgian parliamentarian: "Communism is a latent virus in Eastern Europe, but forces are bent on seeing it become active again"

>They dream of restoring the Soviet Union to all its crumbling, dysfunctional glory. They dream of seeing the United States under a red flag (seriously).
— Tsotne Bakuria, Visiting Scholar, George Washington University

Comrades Zyuganov and Putin, two key players in the restored/continuing Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its long-range strategic deception, are pictured here.

Standing up to Russia
May 18, 2006

I first met Vice President Dick Cheney two weeks ago at a crowded party. When he found out I was from the Republic of Georgia, he said, “What can I do for you?” I answered quickly: “Defend my country from Russia.”

We talked about the fact Russia was muscling the former Soviet countries in Eastern Europe, Ukraine, the Baltic States and Kazakhstan. On the eve of his five-day trip to Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Mr. Cheney told me the United States would do its best to encourage democracy and freedom in the post-Soviet era. He knew how millions of people were suffering under a modern version of the “Iron Curtain.”

In his speech in Vilnius last week, the vice president voiced the harshest criticism of Russia from a U.S. official since Cold War ended. Russia’s withholding oil and natural gas from its neighbors was unacceptable. “Tools of intimidation,” he said. And of course Moscow denied it.

But the vice president is correct. Russia is bent on punishing several post-Soviet countries, struggling with their infant democracies but determined to conduct a free and open society.

Russia is trying to break the back of freedom with economic sanctions bordering on the bizarre. Several months ago, Russia banned all wine from Georgia. More than 97 percent of Georgian wine was sold to Russia.

The Russian government claimed the world-famous wine — of which I consumed my fair share over the years — was tainted, a ridiculous excuse at best. (Imagine the East Coast banning California Chardonnay.) Desperate winemakers in Georgia are scrambling to find international buyers, and the economy has already taken a direct hit. Which is, of course, what the Russian government wanted all along.

Calling home to my brother and family, I receive more bad news every day. There is no economy. Unemployment is high. Russia is strangling my country for one reason: America backs the Georgian people and its decision to become a democracy.

Last week, the Russian government also prohibited importing Georgian bottled spring water — arguably the best in the world, but I’m biased — sending the economy even deeper into depression.

This winter, Russia cut off gas and oil supplies to both Georgia and Ukraine. How many innocent Europeans suffered for that act, universally condemned as a cruel form of blackmail?

Russia is a bully, punishing its smaller neighbors with gross pettiness and petulant behavior. President Vladimir Putin — who is well educated — needs to take control. Many people assume he is a strong leader within the Kremlin. But in fact, he is not. The ultranationalists, led by head of the liberal union Vladimir Zhirinovski, the corrupt, homophobic, billionaire Moscow Mayor Yuri Lushzkov and leftist, the so-called “Black General” Albert Makashov, as well as the head of the Communist Party in Russia Genadi Zuganov are behind the crackdown on democracies, even inside the country.

They dream of restoring the Soviet Union to all its crumbling, dysfunctional glory. They dream of seeing the United States under a red flag (seriously). Communism is a latent virus in Eastern Europe, but forces are bent on seeing it become active again. (Why else would Moscow reward the corrupt dictatorship in Belarus and punish others who don’t fall in line?) In Washington, Russian ambassador Yuri Ushakov — a talented diplomat — is bewildered by the recent turn of events. He told me last week during a daylong seminar with American-Russian business leaders at the Russian Embassy, that he doesn’t understand the chauvinism of a few select politicians. He is of course, of a younger generation, as am I.

I grew up under communism and its harsh, vicelike grip on my country. Drinking Coca-Cola was prohibited. Watching Hollywood movies might land you 12 years in a Siberian gulag. Reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn? You might as well drink arsenic the next morning and get it over with.

A schoolmate of mine showed up one day in a pair of new Nike sneakers. For the next three weeks, he was mysteriously absent from school. The local police took him in for days of questioning. What connections did his family have in America to send him such a decadent present?

Torturing journalists. Killing opposition voices. I remember listening to the Soviet-scrambled Voice of America in a musty, dank basement, afraid we would go to jail. Cars stopping in the night; KGB officers in black leather coats branding Kalashnikovs, taking innocent people away in the dark. My own mother and father were arrested for something I had written against the government, and taken to jail. They let my mother go but kept my father in a cell with dozens of other prisoners forced to sleep standing up. He died of a heart attack a week later.

My grandfather was executed in the Soviet Union during Stalin’s reign of terror. Do gambling-crazed, oil-rich, nightclub hopping Russian citizens really yearn for their ignoble past?

I was amazed the other day watching Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld field questions about Iraq, and watching protesters politely escorted out of the hall. In my day, they would have been executed in two hours as traitors by the Troika.

After my talk with Mr. Cheney, I was relieved to discover he knew what to do. I applaud his recent visit to Lithuania and standing up to the Russians. And I often wonder what became of that criminal pair of Nikes.

Link: Washington Times

>Communist Bloc Military Updates: Chavez to visit Russia; Venezuela stages mock foreign invasion

>Venezuela is the USSR2’s newest outpost in the Western Hemisphere, expanding the original Moscow-Havana Axis into an aggressive tripartite arrangement: Moscow-Havana-Caracas. In all likelihood, the steady drumbeat of military preparations emanating from the Bolivarian Republic portends not a US preemptive strike against the oil-rich South American state but, rather, the Communist Bloc’s drawing of the noose around North America. Like the new Sino-Soviet military coordination, the Communist Bloc is hiding its war preps in the open.

Comrades Chavez and Putin exchange fraternal greetings during 2004 meeting, pictured above.

Venezuelan president to visit Russia – diplomat
May 19 2006

MOSCOW. May 19 (Interfax) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is planning to visit Russia at the end of August – beginning of September, Venezuelan ambassador to Russia Alexis Navarro Rochas told Interfax.

“President Chavez has approached the Russian leadership asking to visit Moscow at the end of August – the beginning of September. We are awaiting a reply from the Russian side. President Chavez likes visiting Russia,” he said.

Link: Interfax

Venezuela stages mock foreign invasion
Thu May 18, 6:41 PM ET
By Ana Isabel Martinez

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has for years predicted that a foreign army would attack the South American nation to snatch its vast oil reserves. A simulation conducted this week showed how it might happen.

A naval landing craft made landfall on the shores of Western Falcon state carrying troops and over a dozen camouflaged tanks. The “invading” army then took over the massive Paraguana Refining Complex, a key asset of the world’s No. 5 crude exporter.

The “occupation” is part of a military exercise to train troops and communities to repel a foreign invader.

The Chavez government said it is preparing citizens to fight a guerrilla war to repel a possible Iraq-style invasion by U.S. troops. The Bush administration insists the invasion paranoia is nothing more than leftist saber-rattling, but for Chavez supporters the threat is real.

“They’ve already invaded us, now the invading forces are controlling certain strategic objectives,” said Rear Admiral Zahin Quintana, a squadron commander, after disembarking from a warship as part of the exercise. “Now begins the resistance by our troops together with our people.

“The tanks began circulating through the streets, and units of mock invading soldiers launched smoke bombs to clear the way. But local residents, organized and trained by military authorities, resisted the assault by blocking roads with rusting cars and burning tires.

“We’re willing to go anywhere to defend our homeland,” said Rosmery Trujillo, a participant in the operation, told state television. “This country will never again be put under the boot of the North, thanks to our President Chavez.

“The simulated attack is part of a military operation called “Operation Patriot 2006” being carried out this week.

PREPARING FOR A FIGHT

Venezuela’s government has created community organizations called “Local Defense Councils” that would provide support during a potential invasion by hiding weapons deposits, relaying messages or sabotaging water and power services.

Quintana said the mock attack involved nine warships, three combat planes and four helicopters — two of which are Russian-made models Chavez started acquiring after the U.S. thwarted his attempts to acquire American technology.

On Friday, the mock invasion force is scheduled to be repelled by Venezuelans trained to defend the nation’s strategic assets including oil terminals, fuel filling stations and tanker trucks.

Chavez, a former paratrooper turned populist politician, is locked in a heated war of words with Washington. The State Department describes him as a threat to democracy in the region, and this week said it would no longer sell weapons or military equipment to the South American nation.

Chavez describes the United States as a decadent empire accustomed to having sway in Latin America, and has called Bush everything from “assassin” to “donkey.”Despite U.S. criticism, Chavez is expected to easily win a reelection bid this December as massive social spending and the widely popular anti-American discourse have kept his approval ratings high.

Critics in Venezuela say Chavez is squandering record oil wealth on improvised social programs and creating an artificial conflict with the United States.

But with oil prices surging and anti-American sentiment high, many Venezuelans see the invasion threat as a reality.”If oil goes to $100 per barrel?” said one high ranking officer. “Who knows? Anything could happen.”

Link: Yahoo.com

>Latin America File: Primeiro Comando da Capital gang coordinated Sao Paulo crime spree with Basque terrorists and Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement

>Updated: May 25, 2006

Yes, Latin America turned out to a kind of “Left Cemetery”: all the leftist trash buried here become alive again.
— Luís Afonso Assumpção, Brazilian blogger

The communist insurgents of Spain’s Basque Country (ETA) and the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), according to conservative blogger Luís Afonso Assumpção, who cites Brazilian Internet sources Alerta Total and Blogs Coligados, provided logistical support for Brazil’s terrorist criminal formations, Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho, in their current terror spree in Sao Paulo.

And what of Brazil’s Red government, consisting of the Workers’ Party and Communist Party of Brazil? Is the far left in South America’s largest country fomenting revolutionary tension prior to this year’s general election in which Sao Paulo Forum founder Lula da Silva’s likelihood of holding onto the Brazilian presidency is dubious? Brazilian commentator Olavo de Carvalho’s take on the PCC’s government-sponsored insurgency can be found at FrontPageMagazine.com, where he writes:

It is absolutely inconceivable for a war operation of colossal proportions, involving three subversive organizations of the magnitude of the PCC (First Command of the Capital), the MST, and the FARC, to have been prepared without any news about it ever reaching the strategic coordination of the Left in the continent, the São Paulo Forum, whose founder and chronic president—on temporary leave—is better known nowadays as the President of Brazil but who has never ceased to work for that organization.

Police backlash lifts Brazil toll
Tuesday, 16 May 2006

The death toll from four days of gang attacks and a police backlash in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo has risen to 115, said police.

They say 33 suspected gang members were shot by police in the 24 hours until Tuesday lunchtime.

Transport and other services in Sao Paulo have been restored, but the authorities are carrying out hundreds of arrests as they pursue the gang.

The wave of violence seems to have been ordered by gang leaders inside jail.

State authorities have strongly denied local newspaper reports that they struck a deal with the gang – the First Command of the Capital (PCC) – to put an end to attacks.

‘Civil war’

Calm was returning to Sao Paulo city, Brazil’s industrial capital, amid a heavy presence of police who frisked motorcyclists and drivers and checked ID cards.

On Monday, a string of attacks on police posts, banks and buses sent citizens scurrying home before nightfall.

Shops, offices and schools were open again on Tuesday, but many residents said they remained frightened.

“It’s a civil war,” Manuela Nascimento, a newsstand worker, told news agency AP.

“Now I leave my house scared and go to work scared.”

The attacks were launched on Friday, apparently in retaliation for the transfer of 765 jailed PCC members to a maximum-security prison.

Over the weekend inmates of more than 70 prisons revolted, taking some 200 hostages, and suspected gangsters on the streets launched the mass attacks.

The revolts have now been quelled and the hostages released.

On Monday, police said 38 police and prison guards had been killed along with 39 suspected gangsters and four civilians.

The figure of suspected gangsters dead had jumped to 71 on Tuesday.

That increase has prompted concern among human rights groups, says the BBC’s Steve Kingstone in Sao Paulo.

They say the earlier attacks on officers cannot be interpreted as a licence to kill and are calling for the names and details of all victims to be made public.

In addition to the 115 reported dead by police, it is thought that some 13 inmates caught up in the prison revolts were also killed.

Truce claims

Meanwhile, leading local newspapers say a deal struck between the PCC gang chief and authorities explains Tuesday’s dip in attacks against police.

State Governor Claudio Lembo rejected the allegations, saying there would be “no concessions” to criminals, and the state organised crime unit has also denied the claims.

The PCC was formed in Sao Paulo by prisoners who survived one of Brazil’s worst jail massacres in the early 1990s, when the police killed 111 inmates to put down a riot.

It is involved in drugs and arms trafficking, kidnappings, bank robberies, and prison breaks and rebellions, police say.

The gang’s power has been heightened in recent years by the availability of mobile phones, smuggled through prison security, enabling members to run criminal activities from their cells.

Link: BBC News

>USA File: President Bush to deploy up to 6,000 National Guard troops to Mexican border

>We do not yet have full control of the border and I am determined to change that.
— President George W. Bush, May 15, 2006

While the White House’s proposal is apparently designed to stem the invasion of criminal aliens from Mexico, it could also be a ploy to terminate Minuteman operations and other privately sponsored civil defense initiatives.

Expect the Faux Right to spin any domestic deployment of the National Guard into some New World Order conspiracy to establish a fascist police state in the USA.

Chris Simcox’s reaction to President Bush’s gesture to secure the USA’s southern border can be found at Minuteman Bl0g Central. Simcox is the President of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.

Bush to Send Up to 6,000 Troops to Border
May 15, 11:09 PM (ET)
By NEDRA PICKLER

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush said Monday night he would order as many as 6,000 National Guard troops to secure the U.S. border with Mexico and urged Congress to give millions of illegal immigrants a chance at citizenship, as he tried to build support for a major overhaul of the nation’s tattered immigration laws.

“We do not yet have full control of the border and I am determined to change that,” the president said in pressing for his $1.9 billion plan in a 17-minute prime-time address from the Oval Office.

Bush gave strong support to a plan that would give many of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States an eventual path to possible citizenship – a move derided by some conservatives in his own Republican Party as amnesty. He rejected that term.

“It is neither wise nor realistic to round up millions of people, many with deep roots in the United States and send them across the border,” he said. “There is a rational middle ground between granting an automatic path to citizenship for every illegal immigrant and a program of mass deportation.”

The Guard troops would mostly serve two-week stints before rotating out of the assignment, so keeping the force level at 6,000 over the course of a year could require up to 156,000 troops.

Still, Bush insisted, “The United States is not going to militarize the southern border.”

The White House wouldn’t say how much the deployments would cost, but said the troops would paid for as part of $1.9 billion being requested from Congress to supplement border enforcement this year.

The president timed his speech hours after the Senate began intense debate on an immigration bill that has been getting increasing attention in a year when all House seats and one-third of Senate seats are up for election. The rare televised, prime-time Oval Office address signified the high stakes for Bush, who has been asking for an immigration overhaul since his the 2000 campaign.

House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., indicated Bush may have some trouble getting some conservatives on board with his overall plan.

“While I appreciate the president’s willingness to tackle big problems, I have real concerns about moving forward with a guest worker program or a plan to address those currently in the United States illegally until we have adequately addressed our serious border security problems,” Blunt said.

Bush said the National Guard troops would fill in temporarily while the nation’s Border Patrol force is expanded. He asked Congress to add 6,000 more Border Patrol agents by the end of his presidency and to add 6,700 more beds so illegal immigrants can be detained while waiting for hearings to determine that they can be sent home.

For many years, the government has not had enough detention space to hold illegal immigrants, so they were released into society and most did not return for their court date. “This practice, called catch and release, is unacceptable and we will end it,” Bush said.

The Border Patrol would remain responsible for catching and detaining illegal immigrants, with National Guard troops providing intelligence gathering, surveillance and other administrative support. Yet the National Guard troops would still be armed and authorized to use force to protect themselves, said Bush homeland security adviser Fran Townsend.

They are to come from the four border states – California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas – but those states’ governors may also seek Guard troops from other states. Reaction was mixed among the nation’s governors.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said troops might provide short-term relief but he did not believe border protection was an appropriate role for the National Guard. California has thousands of Guard troops in Iraq and might need them in case of earthquakes, floods or other emergencies, he said.

“So if you have 6,000 in Iraq and send another 6,000 to the border, what do we have left?” Schwarzenegger asked.

But another Republican border state governor, Rick Perry of Texas, said he was glad the administration had decided the Guard had a role to play along the border. “We have the ability to multitask,” Perry said.

The White House hopes deployments to the border will begin in early June.

Many congressional Republicans said they supported Bush’s plan to use National Guard troops at the border. But he ran into criticism from Democrats and some other Republicans.

“Democrats are willing to support any reasonable plan that will secure our borders, including deploying National Guard troops,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. “But Americans don’t want a plan that’s been cobbled together to win political favor. This cannot turn into another long-term military deployment with no clear plan.”

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said Bush “got off to a good start tonight, but now he must stand up to right-wing members of his own party who are working to block Senate action.” He called on Bush to “denounce the misguided approach of House Republicans” who won passage of a a tough immigration bill that would erect fences along the Mexican border and treat people who sneak across as felons to be deported.

Bush said the nation has more than doubled the size of the Border Patrol during his presidency and has sent home about 6 million people entering the United States illegally. Still, he said, that has not been enough.

“For decades, the United States has not been in complete control of its borders,” the president said. “As a result, many who want to work in our economy have been able to sneak across our border, and millions have stayed.”

He called for enactment of a guest worker program to allow immigrants to take low-paying jobs, and he said employers must be held to account for hiring illegal immigrants. He said that a tamperproof identification card for workers would “leave employers with no excuse” for violating the law.

And he stressed that those who want to earn citizenship should have to assimilate into society, learn English, pay fines for breaking the law and pay back taxes.

“What I have just described is not amnesty,” Bush said. “It is a way for those who have broken the law to pay their debt to society and demonstrate the character that makes a good citizen.”

The president’s call for tougher border security is part of a broader plan to overhaul a system that he has described as inhumane, with desperate foreigners risking their lives for a chance to earn U.S. wages. The issue raises emotions on all sides, with many Americans and influential conservatives in Congress angry that foreigners are taking jobs and draining resources across the country.

The White House hopes that the tougher security will be enough to get House conservatives to support the work permits and citizenship proposals that they have been opposed to. A bill that passed the House last year ignored those ideas and instead would increase criminal penalties for illegal immigrants and construct 700 miles of fencing.

Bush addressed some of his comments to lawmakers, calling on the Senate to act by the end of the month so a compromise can be reached with the House. “I want to speak directly to Members of the House and the Senate: An immigration reform bill needs to be comprehensive, because all elements of this problem must be addressed together, or none of them will be solved at all.”

Link: My Way News

>Latin America File: MI6 report exposes global Islamo-Marxist network: Al Qaeda in league with Chavez, FARC and Mexico’s Popular Revolutionary Army

>No surpise here, really. The Islamo-Marxist network is alive and well in the Western Hemisphere with a little help from that globe-trotting agent of the Russian Federal Security Service, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

FARC’s commitment to establishing a communist republic in Colombia is well known.

Mexico’s Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), although less well known, announced its existence in 1996, has conducted most of its military operations in the southern Pacific state of Guerrero, operates through a front called the Popular Revolutionary Democratic Party, and is overtly Marxist-Leninist. The communist symbolism of EPR’s flag, shown above, is obvious.

While both insurgent armies disavow any connection to the other, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) in the state of Chiapas also employs communist symbolism in its flag, shown at left.

Intriguingly, Mexico’s neo-communist insurgencies emerged after the staged collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. One suspects that communist revolution south of the Rio Grande would prompt less concern among US policymakers in our “post-communist” world than in the hottest days of the Cold War.

In an earlier blog, we posted an article written by a Mexican journalist that exposes Comrade Chavez’s financial support for the EPR and other far-left outfits in Mexico. Following the 911 attacks, Hugo directed US$1 million to the Al Qaeda-harboring Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Hence, we see that Venezuela’s neo-communist dictator, in particular, occupies a critical hub in the global Islamo-Marxist network.

It is ironic that neo-communist Mexican presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador refers to Vincente Fox as George W. Bush’s “puppy.” Frankly, considering the Mexican Government’s logistical and moral support for the illegal alien invasion of the USA and Washington’s tepid response, I would imagine Bush is Fox’s “puppy.”

Osama’s exploits south of border
Al-Qaida in league with Mexican radicals in plot to penetrate U.S., says MI6 report
May 10, 2006
By Gordon Thomas

LONDON – Britain’s secret intelligence service, MI6, has established the first proof al-Qaida is playing a major role in the new Cold War between North and South America – with Osama bin Laden’s terror network seeing itself in league with Mexican subversives in infiltrating the U.S. border.

The evidence emerged as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez swash-buckled into London after scoring a win in yet another venomous battle with Washington for influence and economic advantage across the Latin American continent.

Chavez is in London to meet the capital’s anti-Bush mayor, Ken Livingstone, and other prominent British opponents of the war in Iraq. His arrival coincides with the downward spiral politically of Prime Minister Tony Blair – largely over his continued support for Bush.

Downing Street will monitor the Chavez visit closely – not least because he controls the western hemisphere’s largest supply of oil reserves. As oil prices soar, Chavez has used the extra profits to reinforce his position with his electorate. He said last week he would seek “indefinite” re-election beyond the constitutional limit of 2014.

Chavez, a 51 year-old paratrooper, descended on London this week and was boosted by the knowledge that his rapidly expanding clout in Southern America could soon see a dramatic shift of power after elections in Peru, Nicaragua and Mexico.

This would result in a standoff between Western oil companies worried about rising oil prices and South American oil producers’ new-found enthusiasm for threatening foreign companies with a further hike.

In the words of a MI6 memo, the situation “is a new and dangerous threat to stability that is also being exploited by al-Qaida.”

Details of al-Qaeda’s penetration into Latin America emerged from documents discovered during recent anti-terrorist operations in Pakistan to try and locate Osama bin Laden.

The documents included evidence that al-Qaida has established links with the Colombian terror group, FARC, and the Shining Path, SL, in Peru. They also reveal al-Qaida’s links with thousands of Muslim students in the Dominican Republic.

Another Pakistani document shows the links between al-Qaida and Mexico’s Popular Revolutionary Army, EPR. The documents reveal that al-Qaida sees EPR as collaborators in attacks in Mexico on foreign targets – “especially those of the United States and Britain.” It also says that EPR can play a key role in allowing al-Qaida operatives to enter the United States through the busiest land crossing in the world – Tijuana.

Another document reveals that along Peru’s border with Chile “a large Arab community is providing substantial sums of money for al-Qaida.”

But the closest links al-Qaida has are with Venezuela. Exploiting Chavez’s latest tirade against the Bush administration, al-Qaida is firmly entrenched in the country.

Before flying to London, Chavez said: “The axis of evil is Washington and its allies around the world who go about threatening, invading and murdering. We are forming the axis of good.”

The godfather of that axis is Fidel Castro, Cuba’s leader for 45 years. But in support is Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia who last week promised: “I am going to be a nightmare for Washington.”

In coming presidential elections the candidates are Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Peru’s Ollanta Humala and Andres Lopez of Mexico. The Mexican populist likes to see himself as a mirror image of Chavez and has labelled the country’s outgoing president, Vincente Fox, “a puppy of Bush.”

The documents discovered in Pakistan have become of prime concern to MI6 – given Britain’s substantial holdings in Latin America. These could be seriously damaged by what one MI6 officer called “Chavez and his rogue’s gallery of sinister wannabees and corrupt opportunists.”

Chavez has so far spectacularly avoided Washington’s efforts to curb his ambitions. He has warned Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, “I sting those who rattle me.”

It is over threats like that MI6 analysts try to decipher how far Chavez will allow al-Qaida to be his sting master.

Already MI6 say that Venezuela is now one of the main conduits for trafficking drugs to Europe – and al-Qaida is a major player.

From Venezuela the drugs are taken by high-speed ocean-going boats to Africa’s West Sahara. The cargoes are run ashore north of the town of Dakhia and trucked overland through Morocco into southern Spain. From there they are smuggled into France, Germany and Britain.

Deep inside their headquarters overlooking the River Thames, the MI6 analysts work in a room that is accessed by a swipe card, the codes of which change regularly.

The room houses the Terrorist Attack Assessment Center. Inside its computer-lined walls and state-of-the-art communications, analysts sit at workstations around the clock. TAAC is directly linked to the Pentagon and the CIA. Both have their versions of TAAC.

The MI6 department regularly updates its director general, John Scarlett. He is the quintessential English spymaster. In his customized suits and hand-stitched cotton shirts, he has a touch of the James Bond about his sartorial elegance.

He is taking a close interest in the documents that indicate how al-Qaida sees Latin America as a continent where it can expand its activities.

MI6 analysts have established that the documents are the work of Ayman al-Zawahiri, a founder member of al-Qaida and accepted by Western intelligence services as its prime strategist next to bin Laden.

Al-Zawahiri studied in Paris and London to become a recognized authority in behavioral psychology. After graduating from Cairo University he traveled widely.

An MI6 file confirms a Mossad profile of the heavily bearded psychiatrist – that he is arrogant and takes an obsessive pleasure watching film of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 – when he first emerged from the shadows to sit alongside bin Laden.

Both MI6 and Mossad believe al-Zawahiri made several visits to Latin America during the last decade.

As Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin first reported in 2003, Pentagon officials have confirmed human smuggling rings in Latin America are attempting to sneak al-Qaida operatives into the U.S.

Before the U.S.-led coalition attacked Iraq, the U.S. State Department offered congressional testimony that both al-Qaida and the Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah were taking firm hold in “America’s backyard.”

Mark F. Wong, the State Department’s acting coordinator for counterterrorism, told the House International Relations Committee about the threat posed by both groups in Latin America.

Yet, then the matter seems to have been dropped – perhaps for diplomatic reasons, perhaps for political reasons.

But in 2003, G2 Bulletin reported authorities in Silvio Pettirosi International Airport in Asuncion, the Paraguayan capital, reported the arrival of a growing number of visitors carrying European passports, but undoubtedly appearing to be more Middle Eastern than anything else.

Some of these “Europeans” could not even speak the language of their so-called mother land.

There was very little doubt most of these visitors went on to find their way to the triple border region where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet. This region, often described as a lawless area, is nicknamed by some intelligence station agents as “The Muslim Triangle meeting zone.”

Intelligence experts have been warning since the late 1990s they had noticed a tendency among Islamic terrorists to operate from Paraguay, a landlocked country in the heart of South America, with a territory slightly smaller than California, and with geographic extremes perfect for hiding illegal activities.

G2 Bulletin reported in 2003 the terrorists using Argentina are organized in active cells around the country with safe houses in neighboring Paraguay. An Argentinean document seen by G2B describes part of the drug-smuggling trail, as well as that of weapons and people. These elaborate trails run through a web of border crossings pointing also to the complex cooperation between various “smuggling experts.” These belong to jihadi organizations such as al-Qaida, joining forces with local drug lords, developing and oiling their smuggling mechanism all the way to Mexico aiming ultimately to hit the U.S.

The Argentinean intelligence service assessment, privy among others, to European and Middle Eastern agencies, has reached a significant and grave conclusion, according to G2 Bulletin. It claims since 9/11 and the partial success in the war against terrorism, mainly in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Central Asia, the jihadi pendulum is tilting more and more toward South America. The reason terrorist cells in Paraguay, whether active or dormant, can continue to grow and flourish, is because of widespread corruption in South America.

The lawlessness and disorder in Paraguay, enabled operatives of such terrorist groups as al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas to feel safe, even in the heart of Asuncion. These organizations, and probably more, turned Paraguay into a logistical base, as one local journalist told G2 Bulletin: “It’s easy. At this stage our country is not engulfed in a civil war or guerrilla campaign and, therefore, security forces are more prone to financial kickbacks.”

The terrorists even get some official support in Latin America, according to some sources. As WorldNetDaily reported, a Venezuelan military defector claims Venezuela’s Chavez developed ties to terrorist groups such as al-Qaida – even providing it with $1 million in cash after Sept. 11, 2001.

Air Force Maj. Juan Diaz Castillo, who was Chavez’s pilot, told WorldNetDaily through an interpreter that “the American people should awaken and be aware of the enemy they have just three hours’ flight from the United States.”

Diaz said he was part of an operation in which Chavez gave $1 million to al-Qaida for relocation costs, shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

Link: WorldNetDaily

>Africa File: Nigeria’s communist insurgents continue attacks against oil installations and personnel

>Although Nigerian rebel leader Asari, a self-admitted Islamo-Marxist, has been jailed since September 2005, insurgents continue to bomb oil-producing facilities and murder and kidnap petroleum workers and managers. The last car bombing occurred on April 29.

The shape-shifting Nigerian insurgency, the nom de jour of which is the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), issued the following email ultimatum to the Nigerian Government, the evil multinational corporations exploiting Nigeria’s fossil fuels and, most intriguingly, the pseudo-capitalist regime in China, which is still openly committed to advancing Marxism-Leninism-Maoism:

We wish to warn the Chinese government and its oil companies to steer well clear of the Niger Delta. Chinese citizens found in oil installations will be treated as thieves. The Chinese government by investing in stolen crude places its citizens in our line of fire.

At the same time Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Abuja and conferred with his Nigerian counterpart Olusegun Obasanjo on the subject of more extensive Chinese investment in the oil-rich West African country.

On May 10 a motorbike-riding gunman assassinated an executive working for the Texan oil services company Baker Hughes. The gunman carried out the hit in coordination with a car that blocked the executive’s chauffeur-driven vehicle.

The next day gunmen kidnapped an Italian and two other foreign oil workers as they commuted by bus in Port Harcourt. MEND dispatched an email to the Associated Press to reassure the oil-dependent West that the incident was not, we repeat, not terrorism, which will especially console the US Federal Bureau of (Non?)Investigation.

Another MEND missive, directed to Reuters on May 12, threatened to blow up the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) facility:

We will destroy that plant, but I promise you, we will carry out a terrible unannounced attack on an oil installation as a prelude to the NLNG attack and a warning to all to vacate that gas plant.

The same day more than 200 people perished when a pipeline exploded in southwestern Nigeria.

As many as two hundred dead after Nigerian pipeline explodes
Dulu Mbachu
Canadian Press
Friday, May 12, 2006

LAGOS, Nigeria — A ruptured pipeline exploded Friday in southwestern Nigeria as villagers rushed to collect fuel gushing from it and the Red Cross said many people perished in the flames. A local TV station said up to 200 people were feared dead.

Firefighters were on the scene of the explosion at Ilado, a village about 40 kilometres east of Nigeria’s main city of Lagos, and Red Cross workers were helping survivors.

”There was a big fire and quite a number of people died,” Red Cross spokeswoman Okon Umoh said. Many of the bodies had fallen into the water of the coastal village. She gave no further details.

The blast came as villagers flocked to the ruptured conduit to scoop up fuel that was gushing out. Nigeria’s Channels Television reported that up to 200 may have perished in the explosion, but that couldn’t immediately be confirmed.

Nigeria is Africa’s leading oil producer, the world’s seventh-biggest exporter and fifth-biggest source of U.S. oil imports.

Despite the oil riches, most of Nigeria’s population remains impoverished and people often tap into pipelines crossing their lands, seeking fuel for cooking or resale on the black market. The highly volatile petroleum can ignite, incinerating those collecting it.

In September 2004, a pipeline exploded near Lagos as thieves tried to siphon fuel from it, with up to 50 people perishing in the flames. A 1998 pipeline blast killed more than 1,000 in southern Nigeria.

Most of Nigeria’s oil is pumped in the southern Niger Delta region, far from the village. But pipes carry the crude to refineries across the vast country.

Link: Canada.com

The oil-rich crypto-communist regime in the Russian Federation, which owns nearly 800 gas stations throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and the oil-rich neo-communist regime in Venezuela, with which the USSR2 is in an anti-US strategic partnership, now hold the West by its economic throat. The communist insurgency in Nigeria has assumed an important support role for the Moscow-Caracas Axis and its “anti-imperialist” imperialist energy strategy.

>USA File: US Border Patrol informing Mexican Government of Minuteman patrol locations

>And so the elite-facilitated self-implosion of the USA proceeds in the direction of the “former” Soviet Union . . .

U.S. tipping Mexico to Minuteman patrols
By Sara A. Carter, Staff Writer
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
Ontario, CA, 5/11/2006

While Minuteman civilian patrols are keeping an eye out for illegal border crossers, the U.S. Border Patrol is keeping an eye out for Minutemen — and telling the Mexican government where they are.

According to three documents on the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations Web site, the U.S. Border Patrol is to notify the Mexican government as to the location of Minutemen and other civilian border patrol groups when they participate in apprehending illegal immigrants — and if and when violence is used against border crossers.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman confirmed the notification process, describing it as a standard procedure meant to reassure the Mexican government that migrants’ rights are being observed.

“It’s not a secret where the Minuteman volunteers are going to be,” Mario Martinez said Monday.

“This … simply makes two basic statements — that we will not allow any lawlessness of any type, and that if an alien is encountered by a Minuteman or arrested by the Minuteman, then we will allow that government to interview the person.”

Minuteman members were not so sanguine about the arrangement, however, saying that reporting their location to Mexican officials nullifies their effectiveness along the border and could endanger their lives.

“Now we know why it seemed like Mexican officials knew where we were all the time,” said Chris Simcox, founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. “It’s unbelievable that our own government agency is sending intelligence to another country. They are sending intelligence to a nation where corruption runs rampant, and that could be getting into the hands of criminal cartels.

“They just basically endangered the lives of American people.”

Officials with the Mexican consulate in Washington, D.C., could not be reached for comment Monday.

Martinez said reporting the location of immigrant apprehensions to consulate representatives is common practice if an illegal immigrant requests counsel or believes they have been mistreated.

“Once an illegal alien is apprehended, they can request counsel,” he said. “We have to give their counsel the information about their apprehension, and that includes where they are apprehended, whether a Minuteman volunteer spotted them or a citizen.”

Martinez said Mexico’s official perception of the civilian groups is that they are vigilantes, a belief the Border Patrol hoped to allay by entering into the cooperative agreement.

One of the documents on the Web site, “Actions of the Mexican Government in Relation to the Activities of Vigilante Groups,” states that Mexican consulate representatives stay in close contact with Border Patrol chiefs to ensure the safety of migrants trying to enter the U.S., those being detained and the actions of all “vigilantes” along the border.

“The Mexican consul in Presidio also contacted the chief of the Border Patrol in the Marfa Sector to solicit his cooperation in case they detect any activity of `vigilantes,’ and was told to immediately contact the consulate if there was,” according to the document.

“Presidio” refers to Presidio County, Texas, which is in the Big Bend region and a gateway to northern Mexico.
The document also describes a meeting with San Diego Border Patrol sector chief Darryl Griffen.

“(Griffen) said that the Border Patrol will not permit any violence or any actions contrary to the law by the groups, and he is continuously aware of (the volunteer organizations’) operations,” according to the document. “Mr. Griffen reiterated to the undersecretary his promise to notify the General Consul right away when the vigilantes detain or participate in the detention of any undocumented Mexicans.”

The documents specifically named the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and its patrols, which began monitoring Arizona’s southern border in April 2005, as well as Friends of the Border Patrol, a Chino-based nonprofit.

TJ Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, a union representing more than 10,000 Border Patrol agents, said agents have complained for years about the Mexican consulate’s influence over the agency.

“It worries me (that the Mexican government) seems to be unduly influencing our enforcement policies. That’s not a legitimate role for any foreign nation,” Bonner said, though he added, “It doesn’t surprise me.”

Border Patrol agents interviewed by the Daily Bulletin said they have been asked to report to sector headquarters the location of all civilian volunteer groups, but to not file the groups’ names in reports if they spot illegal immigrants.

“Last year an internal memo notified all agents not to give credit to Minuteman volunteers or others who call in sightings of illegal aliens,” said one agent, who spoke on the condition he not be identified. “We were told to list it as a citizen call and leave it at that. Many times, we were told not to go out to Minuteman calls.”

The document also mentions locations of field operations of Friends of the Border Patrol, which patrolled the San Diego sector from June to November 2005. Mexican officials had access to the exact location of the group founded by Andy Ramirez, which ran its patrols from the Rough Acre Ranch, a private property in McCain Valley.

Ramirez said that for safety reasons, he disclosed the location of his ranch patrol only to San Diego Border Patrol and law enforcement officials. The group did not apprehend or spot any undocumented migrants in that area.

“We did not release this information … to the media or anyone else,” Ramirez said. “We didn’t want to publicize that information. But there it is, right on the Mexican government’s Web site, and our government gave it to them.”

Visit the Mexican Government’s Secretary of Foreign Relations Web Site. Third Report on the Activities of Vigilantes. http://www.sre.gob.mx/eventos/minuteman/reporte3.htm

Link: DailyBulletin.com

>Red World: Asia, Part 2: Communist, "ex"-communist, and socialist regimes dominate world’s largest continent into twenty-first century

>Republic of Cyprus (1960)
Type of state: Multiparty with democratically elected communist government
President of Cyprus: Dimitris Christofias (Progressive Party of Working People, AKEL): February 29, 2008-present (previously President of House of Representatives, 2001-2008)
Communist government:
1) Progressive Party of Working People, 2001-present
2) Presidency of George Vasiliou (independent candidacy in 1988 supported by AKEL), 1988-1993
3) Presidency of Archbishop Makarios III (“Castro of the Mediterranean,” pro-communist, pro-Non-Aligned Movement, independent), 1960-1974
Socialist International presence: Movement for Social Democracy (supported Christofias’ 2008 presidential bid)
Communist parties: Progressive Party of Working People
Communist insurgency: none
Important notes:
1) During the 2001 parliamentary election the Marxist-Leninist Progressive Party of Working People obtained the largest number of seats and AKEL General Secretary Dimitris Christofias was elected President of the House of Representatives. Christofias was re-elected to this post in 2006 and remained in this office until he was elected President of Cyprus in February 2008. AKEL holds membership in the Coordinating Committee of Communist Parties in Britain, a bureau of the Communist Party of Britain. Educated in the old Soviet Union, President Christofias is pro-Moscow, as the following Voice of Russia report from March 26, 2008 reveals: “President of Cyprus Dimitris Christofias believes that exemplary relations have been adjusted between Cyprus and Russia. In an interview with Hellas journal published in Russia he expressed gratitude to Russian leaders for continuous support in the Cyprus issue. Since 1974, after the Turkish troop invasion, Cyprus was divided into two parts.”
2) George Vasos Vasiliou, President of Cyprus between 1988 and 1993, founded the United Democrats, a merger of the Movement of Free Democrats and ADISOK, which consisted of “former” AKEL members. Vasiliou’s father Vasos sat on the Central Committee of AKEL and fought on the side of the rebels in the Hellenic Civil War, in which communist insurgents attempted to take over Greece following the Second World War. After the civil war, Vasiliou’s family settled in Eastern Europe.
3) Several parties operating in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), which was created by Turkey in 1983 and is recognized only by that country, appear to have a communist orientation, including the Communal Liberation Party, New Cyprus Party, and Republican Turkish Party, which presently controls the TRNC government. Following the Turkish invasion in 1975, the TRNC was known as the Turkish Federative State of North Cyprus. Cypriot President Christofias advocates the reunification of the northern and southern sections of the island.

Republic of India (1947)
Type of state: Single-party dominant state with democratically elected communist government
Prime Minister of India: Manmohan Singh (Indian National Congress): May 22, 2004-present
President of India: Pratibha Patil (Indian National Congress): July 25, 2007-present
Communist government:
1) United Progressive Alliance (consisting of Indian National Congress (social democratic), Rashtriya Janata Dal, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Nationalist Congress Party, Pattali Makkal Katchi, Telangana Rashtra Samithi, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Lok Jan Shakti Party, Indian Union Muslim League, Jammu and Kashmir People’s Democratic Party, Republican Party of India (Athvale), Republican Party of India (Gavai), All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimen, and Kerala Congress (split from INC)), with support from Left Front (consisting of Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India, Revolutionary Socialist Party, and All India Forward Bloc), 2004-present
2) National Front (consisting of Janata Dal with support from Bharatiya Janata Party and Communist Party of India (Marxist)), 1989-1991
Socialist International presence: Janata Dal (observer)
Communist parties: Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India, Revolutionary Socialist Party, All India Forward Bloc
Communist insurgency: Communist Party of India (Maoist) (“Naxalites”), numerous other Marxist groups
Important notes:
1) The Left Front supports the Indian Government through the United Progressive Alliance-Left Coordination Committee, and governs the states of West Bengal and Tripura.
2) In West Bengal the Left Front consists of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India, Revolutionary Socialist Party, All India Forward Bloc, Revolutionary Communist Party of India, Marxist Forward Bloc, West Bengal Socialist Party, Democratic Socialist Party, and Biplobi Bangla Congress.
3) The Left Democratic Front (LDF) is one of the two major alliances that dominates politics in the state of Kerala. Since 2001 the LDF has been in opposition in the state legislative assembly. The LDF consists of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India, Janata Dal, Revolutionary Socialist Party, Kerala Congress (Joseph), and National Congress Party.
4) The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam was formerly allied with Sri Lanka’s insurgent Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
5) The Pattali Makkal Katchi holds membership in the Tamil Nadu-based political front Democratic Progressive Alliance, in which the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Indian National Congress, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India, and Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) are also members.
6) The IUML joined other parties in deposing the first communist government in Kerala in 1959. In 1967, however, the IUML entered a regional united front led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which governed the state of Kerala. Additional members of the front included the Communist Party of India (CPI), Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), Peasants’ and Workers’ Party, Kerala Socialist Party (KSP), and Samyukta Socialist Party. In 1969 the IUML left the CPI-Marxist-led government and participated in the formation of a new government led by the CPI, along with the RSP, KSP, and Kerala Congress.
7) Indian intelligence and Maoist leaders estimate that the Maoist insurgency in India, which operates under the command of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), boasts as many as 20,000 guerrillas who are active in 13 states from the southern tip of India to the border of Nepal, where another Maoist insurgency is raging. Maoist insurgents hold territory in approximately 150 of India’s 600 districts. A communist rebellion occurred in the Indian town of Naxalbari, in 1968, but was suppressed. India’s current Maoist insurgency is known as the Naxalite Movement and its members as Naxalites.
8) According to the South Asia Intelligence Review, Nepalese Maoists established links with the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) People’s War, or People’s War Group, and Maoist Communist Centre in India in or before 1989. Together they established the “Revolutionary Corridor” or “Compact Revolutionary Zone” (CRZ), which extends from Nepal across six Indian states, including Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh. The CRZ was organized in 2001 by Nepalese and Indian members of the Naxalite Movement in a meeting at Siliguri, West Bengal.
9) Founded in 2001, the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organizations of South Asia includes the following Indian communist parties: Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (Naxalbari), Maoist Communist Centre (MCC), Revolutionary Communist Centre of India (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist), Revolutionary Communist Centre of India (Maoist) (RCCI(M)), and Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) People’s War (CPI(M-L)(PW)), or People’s War Group. In 2003 the RCCI(M) and the MCC merged and became the MCCI. The following year, the MCCI and the CPI(M-L) (PW) merged and became the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

Republic of Indonesia (1949)
Type of state: Multiparty with history of military dictatorship prior to 1998
President of Indonesia: Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (Democratic Party, pancasilaism): October 20, 2004-present
Vice President of Indonesia: Jusuf Kalla (Golkar, pancasilaism): October 20, 2004-present
Communist government:
1) Indonesian National Party with support of Communist Party of Indonesia, 1960-1965
Socialist International presence: none
Communist parties: banned
Communist insurgency: Communist Party of Indonesia (defunct)
Important notes:
1) Founded in 1914 as the Indies Social Democratic Association, the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) was banned in 1927 by the Dutch colonial administration, emerged from hibernation after the Japanese military occupation in 1945, and joined nationalist leader Sukarno in the overthrow of the colonial government in 1948.
2) The People’s Democratic Front (FDR), consisting of the PKI, Socialist Youth of Indonesia (Pesindo), which was the armed youth wing of the PKI, Socialist Party of Indonesia, Labour Party and the Farmers’ Union participated in the anti-colonial Indonesian National Revolution, as well as the Madiun Uprising. After the signing of the Renville Agreement in 1948, in which The Netherlands recognized the new Republic of Indonesia, the PKI’s guerrilla units and militias were ordered to disband. In Madiun, East Java, one PKI militia unit refused to disarm and was destroyed by the new Indonesian army. The incident incited a violent uprising among leftists. According to official military sources, on September 18 the PKI had proclaimed a “Soviet Republic of Indonesia” with PKI leader Musso as its president and FDR member Amir Sjarifuddin, who was in fact briefly prime minister of the new republic after independence, as its prime minister.
3) Nationalist leader Sukarno was an advocate of “guided democracy” and pancasilaism, which is essentially Indonesian national communism, consisting of “five pillars”: nationalism, internationalism, representative democracy, social justice with a Marxist orientation, and theism with a secular orientation. Pancasilaism is the official ideology of the Republic of Indonesia. Today the ruling Democratic Party and Party of the Functional Groups (“Golkar”) embrace pancasilaism.
4) In August 1959 Sukarno addressed the PKI congress in which he invited communist participation in the government of Indonesia. During his speech, Sukarno promoted the slogan “Nasakom,” an abbreviation of “nasionalisme” (nationalism), “agama” (religion) and “comunisme” (communism). Between 1962 and 1965 Sukarno formally welcomed PKI members into his government. Sukarno forged alliances with the People’s Republic of China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and opposed the British-sponsored Federation of Malaysia.
5) Rightist elements in the Indonesian Armed Forces, however, feared an incipient communist insurgency. On September 30, 1965 six of Indonesia’s generals were murdered. To this day communist sympathizers contend that the deaths of these generals, an incident known as the September 30 Movement and popularly abbreviated as “G30S,” were in reality a military provocation. At the time 2,000 PKI cadres were in fact training at Halim Air Force Base, allegedly for the purpose of opposing Malaysian independence. On September 8 PKI demonstrators orchestrated a two-day siege of the United States consulate in Surabaya.
6) A military coup under the leadership of Major General Haji Mohammad Soeharto promptly rebanned the PKI and tens of thousands of communists and their supporters were executed in what some observers label a “genocide.” Soeharto governed Indonesia as president from 1968 to 1998. As of 2004 the ban against communism in Indonesia was still effective. Prior to its second suppression, the PKI was the third largest communist party in the world, after the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of China. In the 1955 parliamentary election, the PKI came fourth with 16 per cent of the votes, winning 39 out of 257 seats.
7) In 2003 President Megawati Sukaroputri of Indonesia, the daughter of President Sukarno, visited Moscow and signed a Declaration on the Basic Principles of Friendly Relations of Partnership between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Indonesia. The joint construction of the Biak Island rocket base is probably a development flowing from the strategic partnership between Russia and Indonesia.

Republic of Iraq (1932)
Type of state: Multiparty with democratically elected Islamo-leftist government under US and allied military occupation
Prime Minister of Iraq: Nouri al-Maliki (Islamic Dawa Party): May 20, 2006-present
President of Iraq: Jalal Talabani (Kurdistan Democratic Party, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan): April 7, 2005-present
Communist government:
1) Kurdistan Regional Government, under control of Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan (consisting of Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (Socialist International), Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq (Socialist International), Kurdistan Communist Party, Kurdistan Islamic Union, Kurdistan Democratic Socialist Party, Kurdistan Democratic National Party, Democratic Baith-Nahrain Party, Assyrian Patriotic Party, Chaldean Democratic Union, and Kurdistan Toilers’ Party (split from Kurdistan Socialist Party of Iraq)), 2005-present
2) Iraqi Governing Council, including Iraqi Communist Party member Hamid Majid Mousa, 2003-2004
3) National Front, consisting of Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party and Iraqi Communist Party, 1973-1979
4) Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, 1968-1973, 1979-2003
5) Military officer Abdul Salam Arif with support of Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party and party ideologist Ali Salih al-Sa’di, a pro-Soviet Marxist, 1963
6) Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim’s (Nasser-inspired) Free Officers Movement overthrows Iraqi monarchy in July 14 Revolution, supported by Iraqi Communinist Party, 1958-1963
Socialist International presence: Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (observer), Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq
Communist parties: Iraqi Communist Party, Kurdistan Communist Party (regional)
Communist insurgency: Kurdistan Workers’ Party (camps based in northern Iraq)
Important notes:
1) The United Iraqi Alliance consists of the Islamic Da’awa Party (IDP), Islamic Virtue Party, Centrist Coalition Party, Bader Organization, Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Turkman Islamic Union of Iraq, Justice and Equality Assembly, Iraqi Democratic Movement, Movement of Hizbullah in Iraq, Turkmen Loyalty Movement, Saed Al Shuhada Islamic Movement, Al Shabak Democratic Gathering, Malhan Al Mkoter, Islamic Da’awa Party-Iraq Organization, Reform and Building Meeting, Al Sadriah Advertising, Justice Community and Iraq Ahrar. The current Prime Minister of Iraq is Ibrahim al-Jaafari of the IDP.
2) The Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan consists of the PUK, Kurdish Democratic Party, Islamic Group of Kurdistan, Kurdistan Communist Party, Kurdistan Democratic Socialist Party, Chaldean Democratic Union, Kurdistan Toilers’ Party and Iraqi Turkmen Brotherhood Party. In December 2005 the Kurdistan Islamic Union, which is the Kurdish branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, defected from the alliances. The current President of Iraq is Jalal Talabani of the PUK.
3) As of March 2006 the future of Iraq is uncertain as the country faces civil war between Sunni and Shia Muslim Iraqis, and a sustained insurgency directed against the US-led military occupation and supported by Iran, Syria and the Russian Federation.
4) Founded in 1934, the ICP suffered a split in 1967 when the ICP-Central Command defected and instigated an armed struggle against Ba’thist regime. The ICP entered into the National Front coalition with the Ba’thist regime between 1973 and 1979. Subsequently the ICP endured regular persecution until the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in 2003. Hamid Majid Mousa, a member of the ICP, sat on the Iraqi Governing Council between 2003 and 2004. The ICP holds membership in the Coordinating Committee of Communist Parties in Britain, a bureau of the Communist Party of Britain.

Republic of Korea, or South Korea (1948)
Type of state: Multiparty democracy with history of single-party nationalist dictatorship under US military occupation
President of Republic of Korea: Lee Myung-bak (Grand National Party, center-right): February 25, 2008-present
Prime Minister of Republic of Korea: Han Seung-soo (United New Democratic Party, center-left): February 29, 2008-present
Socialist International presence: none
Communist parties: Anti-Imperialist National Democratic Front (banned)
Important notes:
1) The current President of the Republic of Korea Lee Myung-bak supports engagement with the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea), as well as strong relations with the USA. The previous President Roh Moo-hyun was committed to advancing the Sunshine Policy, which was formulated by his predecessor Kim Dae-Jung and constitutes the South Korean Government’s foreign policy towards North Korea. Implemented in 1998, the Sunshine Policy promotes peaceful cooperation between the two states within the framework for reunification in the future. Critics contend that the policy naively overlooks the essentially belligerent character of the communist regime in North Korea and has done little more than continue to breathe life into the paleo-communist regime of Kim Jong-il.
2) North Korea is committed to the unification of the two Koreas on communist terms. The two Koreas are still in a state of war, the 1953 armistice not in itself being a peace treaty. The Demilitarized Zone is often touted as the last frontier of the Cold War. The Korean War was in effect a proxy war between, in the one camp, the United States and its allies, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the Philippines, all of which operated under the aegis of the United Nations, and, in the other camp, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Soviet Union and North Korea. The PRC supported the North Korean Armed Forces with its People’s Volunteer Army, a euphemism for the People’s Liberation Army.
3) The Anti-Imperialist National Democratic Front (AINDF) is an illegal South Korean front for the Workers’ Party of Korea, the ruling communist party in North Korea. In 1964 the party was founded as a preparatory committee, in 1969 the Revolutionary Party for Reunification was organized, and changed its name in 1985 to the National Democratic Front for South Korea after merging with the Strategic Liberation Party of South Korea. The AINDF, as well as all other communist activities, are banned under South Korea’s National Security Law, but the AINDF maintains a mission in Pyongyang, as well as in Japan.
4) Chun Doo-hwan was the President of South Korea between 1980 and 1988. During Chun’s visit to Rangoon, Burma, now Yangon, Myanmar, in 1983, four remote-controlled bombs exploded at the Martyrs’ Mausoleum. The explosions killed 13 of Chun’s top aides and four cabinet ministers, who had already arrived at the site, while Chun himself narrowly escaped death. An elite unit of North Korean military intelligence, members of which were apprehended as they endeavored to flee Burma, was implicated in this terrorist attack that almost entirely annihilated the South Korean Government.

Republic of Lebanon (1943)
Type of state: Multiparty with democratically elected communist government, and long history of civil war and Syrian and Israeli military occupation
Prime Minister of Lebanon: Fouad Siniora (Future Movement, March 14 Alliance): July 19, 2005-present
President of Lebanon: Michel Suleiman (independent, pro-Hezbollah, former commander of Lebanese Armed Forces): May 25, 2008-present
Communist government:
1) March 14 Alliance (including pro-Moscow Progressive Socialist Party and Democratic Left, splinter group from Lebanese Communist Party), 2005-present
2) Syrian-backed National Salvation Front, organized by Prime Minister Rashid Karami (Sunni Muslim; Nasserist, pro-Palestinian), Suleiman Frangieh (ex-Lebanese Forces, pro-Syrian), and Walid Jumblatt (leftist); supported by Christians loyal to Frangieh, Progressive Socialist Party, Lebanese Communist Party, Syrian Social Nationalist Party, and Lebanese Resistance Detachments (“Amal,” Shia Muslim), 1984-1987
3) Soviet-backed governments of leftist Prime Minister Rashid Karami, 1975-1976, 1969-1970, 1966-1968, 1965-1966, 1961-1964, 1958-1960, 1955-1956
Socialist International presence: Progressive Socialist Party
Communist parties: Arab Socialist Action Party-Lebanon (radical left), Democratic Left, Lebanese Communist Party, Popular Democratic Party, Progressive Socialist Party, Syrian Social Nationalist Party (neofascist with Marxist wing), Union of Communists Marxists-Leninists, numerous Nasserist (Arab socialist) groups
Communist insurgency: Revolutionary Communist Group, Organization of Communist Action in Lebanon (linked to Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine)
Important notes:
1) Prior to the Lebanese Civil War between 1975 and 1990, Lebanon was a peaceful country known as the “Switzerland of the Middle East” and its capital Beirut as the “Paris of the Middle East.” Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, however, more than 110,000 Palestinian refugees settled in Lebanon and by 1975 they numbered more than 300,000. Egyptian-born KGB agent Yassir Arafat’s communist-dominated Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) assumed control of the settlers’ political and military activities.
2) During the civil war two political blocs were initially engaged in combat, the United Christian Lebanese Front (UCLF) and the secular-Islamic Lebanese National Movement (LNM), both of which initially opposed the influx of Palestinian refugees. Syria, like Israel, initially supported the UCLF, although the Ba’athist regime in Damascus generally sympathized with the Palestinian cause vis-à-vis Israel. The UCLF later disintegrated due to factional fighting between the Phalangists and Marada Brigade. The conflict’s “left-right” ideological schism replicated that of the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.
3) Founded in 1969, the LNM evolved from the Front for Progressive Parties and National Forces, a leftist organization that embraced parties and organizations opposing the Maronite Catholic-dominated political system of Lebanon. In general, Druze and Sunni Muslims supported the LNM and sympathized with the Palestinian refugees. The LNM operated under the leadership of Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) founder Kamal Jumblatt until his murder in 1977. Jumblatt’s death is attributed to the neofascist Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), acting on behalf of Syrian intelligence, even though Jumblatt, acting as Prime Minister Karami’s Interior Minister legalized both the SSNP and Lebanese Communist Party in 1970. Following Jumblatt’s murder the LNM disintegrated. However, initially it consisted of the PSP, SSNP, Lebanese Communist Party, Organization of Communist Action in Lebanon, Lebanese Ba’ath Party (neofascist), Independent Nasserite Movement, and two members of the Rejectionist Front, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was later renamed the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The INM’s paramilitary wing was the al-Murabitun Militia. As fighting escalated, the LNM affiliated with the PLO.
4) One cached online source relates that during Prime Minister Karami’s seventh government (1975-1976), formed shortly after the civil war erupted in April 1975: “The Soviet ambassador to Lebanon met almost every day with [Interior Minister] Kamal Jumblatt, George Hawi, president of the Lebanese Communist Party, Mohsen Ibrahim, chairman of the Organization of the Lebanese Communist Action and Inaam Raad, leader of the Marxist wing of the PSNS [Syrian Social Nationalist Party]. Later Kamal declared: “Our friendship for the USSR and the communist world was unwavering . . . The Soviet Union remains for us the only guarantee of an independent Lebanon, the faithful support of the Palestinian movement, and also the defender of the Liberation movements around the world, including our Lebanese National Movement.”
5) The UCLF consisted of the neofascist Kataeb (Phalangist) Party, under the leadership of Pierre Gemayel (Maronite Catholic), the Marada Brigade under the leadership of Suleiman Franjieh (Maronite Catholic), the National Liberal Party (NLP) under the leadership of Camille Chamoun (Maronite Catholic), and the neofascist Lebanese Renewal Party (LRP) under the leadership of Etienne Saqr. The Lebanese Forces (LF) were the military wing of the UCLF, while the Phalangists were specifically the militia of the Kataeb Party, the Tigers specifically the militia of the NLP, and the Guardians of the Cedars, which attracted Maronite Catholics, Druze, and Shia Muslims, specifically the militia of the LRP.
6) In 1976 the Maronite Catholic-dominated government faced overthrow by the invading Palestinian forces. President Suleiman Frangieh called for Syrian intervention. Syrian forces occupied northern Lebanon in 1976, while Israel briefly invaded Lebanon in 1978 and then reinvaded and occupied the southern part of the country in 1982. Israel withdrew her troops in 2000, while Syria withdrew her troops in 2005.
7) The Taif Agreement in 1989 brought the civil war to a near cessation, but Hezbollah, a Shia Muslim group that organized during the course of the war, instigated a campaign of terror against the Israeli occupation of Lebanon. It is estimated that more than 100,000 people died in the Lebanese Civil War, another 100,000 were handicapped by injuries, as many as 900,000 people were displaced from their homes, and 250,000 people emigrated.
8) Postwar Lebanon’s political parties are, like prewar politics, confessional-based. The Kataeb Party, National Bloc, National Liberal Party, Lebanese Forces (which is now a political party), Free Patriotic Movement, and Guardians of the Cedars (which is banned), attract support from Maronite Catholics and other Christians. Amal (Lebanese Resistance Detachments) and Hezbollah (Party of God) attract support from Shia Muslims, while the Progressive Socialist Party attracts support from the Druze. Sunni Muslims generally support the Independent Nasserite Movement, Tawhid (Islamic Unification Movement), Ahbash (Association of Islamic Charitable Projects), and various Ba’athist, socialist, and communist parties.
9) Former enemies in the Lebanese Civil War are currently operating in political alliances. The ruling March 14 Alliance, for example, consists of the Future Movement, Progressive Socialist Party, Lebanese Forces, Qornet Shehwan Gathering (itself consisting of the Kataeb Party, Maronite League, National Liberal Party, Independence Movement, and independents), and the Tripoli Bloc (itself consisting of Democratic Renewal, the Democratic Left and independents). The Democratic Left, in turn, consists of dissenters from the Lebanese Communist Party. Amal, Hezbollah, and the SSNP are currently allied under the Resistance and Development Bloc. The Free Patriotic Movement, Skaff Bloc, and Murr Bloc form the Change and Reform Bloc, the third and last bloc in the Lebanese National Assembly, last elected in June 2005.
10) In 2005, after a decade of relative political stability, several assassinations occurred in Lebanon. On February 14 former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri died in a car-bomb explosion, widely attributed to Syrian military intelligence. On June 2 journalist and historian Samir Kassir, founding member of the “ex”-communist Democratic Left, was assassinated by a car bomb. Less that one month later, on June 21, George Hawi, former secretary general of the Lebanese Communist Party, was also assassinated by a car bomb.
11) The last President of Lebanon, General Émile Geamil Lahoud, who stepped down in November 2007, is considered by some to be a Syrian puppet.
12) From the 1948 to 1965 the Lebanese Communist Party was banned, but in the latter year joined the Front for Progressive Parties and National Forces, which evolved into the LNM in 1969. The LCP was slavishly pro-Soviet and, despite its Christian membership, supported the Palestinian cause. Apart from its participation in the civil war with its well-trained militia, the Popular Guard, the LCP’s influence has waned in Lebanon since the 1980s.

Republic of Maldives (1965)
(formerly Sultanate of Maldives before 1968)
Type of state: Single-party dominant
President of Maldives: Mohamed Nasheed (Maldivian Democratic Party): November 11, 2008-present
Socialist International presence: No legal parties before 2005
Communist parties: No legal parties before 2005
Communist insurgency: none
Important note:
1) The Maldives’ current nonpartisan national legislature was elected on January 22, 2005. The parliament voted unanimously for the formation of a multiparty system on June 2. Four political parties are registered in the Maldives: Maldivian People’s Party (MPP), Maldivian Democratic Party, Islamic Democratic Party (Maldives) and Justice Party (Maldives). The chair of the MPP is Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who has been President of the Maldives since 1978.

Republic of The Philippines (1946)
Type of state: Unstable multiparty democracy with past history of dictatorship
President of The Philippines: Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (Struggle of Democratic Filipinos, Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats, Kabalikat ng Malayang Pilipino; center-right): January 20, 2001-present
Vice President of The Philippines: Noli de Castro (Coalition of Truth and Experience for Tomorrow, including Kabalikat ng Malayang Pilipino; independent): June 30, 2004-present
Socialist International presence: Akbayan! Citizens’ Action Party (consultative), Philippine Democratic Socialist Party (consultative)
Communist parties: Communist Party of the Philippines-1930 (original party, PKP-1930), Communist Party of the Philippines (Maoist split from original PKP), National Democratic Front of the Philippines (PKP front)
Communist insurgency: New People’s Army (armed wing of PKP)
Important notes:
1) The original Communist Party of the Philippines (PKP) was founded in 1930 as a split from the Progressive Workers’ Party. Between 1932 and 1937 the PKP was banned but later merged with the legal Socialist Party in 1938. PKP candidates participated in the Popular Front in order to contest the 1940 municipal elections. The PKP elected six mayors on the island of Luzon.
2) During the Second World War the PKP organized the working and peasant classes in an armed resistance against the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. The insurgent army was known as the Hukbalahap (“People’s Army Against Japan”). Following the defeat of the Japanese Empire in August 1945, the PKP formed the Congress of Labor Organizations and the PKP participated in the 1946 presidential elections as part of the Democratic Alliance.
3) Banned again in 1948 the PKP redirected the focus of its insurgent activities away from the Japanese occupiers and toward the US-supported Philippine Government. In 1950 the PKP formed the People’s Liberation Army (Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan, or “Huk”), consisting of 10,000 guerrillas. In the same year authorities arrested the secretariat of the PKP Central Committee, including General Secretary Jose Lava, who was incarcerated for 20 years. As a result of the armed resistance, the PKP and the Huk sustained numerous casualties and by 1954 the insurgency was effectively suppressed.
4) While the PKP was pro-Soviet, in 1968 a pro-Beijing faction established another group, also called the Communist Party of the Philippines, displacing the original PKP in terms of popularity. The original but smaller pro-Soviet faction is now known as PKP-1930. The newer and larger PKP is a member of the Maoist International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations and it directs a broad revolutionary organization, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). The first PKP leader was Jose Maria Sison, who lives in exile in the Netherlands. Dutch police arrested Sison on August 28, 2007 on the charge of masterminding the murder of two former leaders of the New People’s Army, but was subsequently released.
5) The PKP’s armed wing is the New People’s Army (NPA), which replaced the old Huk resistance movements of the Second World War and postwar eras. The NPA gained impetus during the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos (1965-1986), who campaigned under the banner of the Nationalist Party. Between 1972 and 1981 Marcos implemented martial law and assumed dictatorial powers to suppress the communist insurgency.
6) The Philippine Government and other major Western governments classify the NPA as a terrorist organization. The NPA operates primarily in the countryside and targets for assassination politicians, military and police officers, landlords and business owners, and sometimes US citizens residing in the Philippines. In 1989 the NPA claimed responsibility for the murder of US Army Colonel Nick Rowe, who was part of a military assistance program to the Philippine Armed Forces. On September 5, 2007 President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed Amnesty Proclamation 1377 for members of the PKP, the NPA, the NDFP, and other communist rebel groups.
7) Along with the PKP and the NPA, the NDFP consists of the Revolutionary Council of Trade Unions, National Association of Peasants, Patriotic Youth, Patriotic Movement of New Women, Cordillera People’s Democratic Front, Christians for National Liberation, Association of Patriotic Teachers, Artists and Writers for the People, Patriotic Government Employees, Patriotic Health Association, League of Scientists for the People, Federation of Labor Organizations, Council of Lawyers for the People, Moro Revolutionary Organization, and Revolutionary Organization of Lumads.
8) In addition to the NPA, several Islamo-Marxist insurgent armies operate in the Philippines, including the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG). The latter is linked to al-Qaeda and Indonesia’s Jemaah Islamiyah.
9) Terry Nichols, who along with Timothy McVeigh, was convicted for plotting the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, travelled on many occasions to the Philippines. Nichols renounced his US citizenship and married a Filipina, Lana Padilla, whose family was known to have connections with the ASG. McVeigh was executed in 2001.
10) Writing in The New American (July 1, 2002), William F. Jasper exposes Nichols’ connections to the ASG and Ramzi Yousef, the convicted mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing:

“According to the signed statement of confessed Abu Sayyaf terrorist Edwin Angeles, he met in Davao City on the Philippine island of Mindanao in 1991 with Nichols, Yousef and other co-conspirators in the 1993 WTC bombing. Angeles, aka Ibrahim Yakub, a co-founder and second-in-command of the Abu Sayyaf Group, said in his handwritten statement: ‘I certify that Terry Nichols was known to me personally during our meeting with Abdul Hakim Murad, Wali-Khan and Ahmed Youssef [Ramzi Yousef] in [unintelligible] Davao City on Nov. 1991; Aim to establish a group and organize a Muslim and non-Muslim youth for a cause; we will also to [sic] plan for following: bombing activities; providing firearms and ammo; training in bomb making and handling . . .’”

Republic of Singapore (1965)
(formerly a state in the Federation of Malaysia, 1962)
Type of state: Single-party social democratic dictatorship
Prime Minister of Singapore: Lee Hsien Loong (People’s Action Party): August 12, 2004-present
President of Singapore: Sellapan Ramanathan (civil servant): September 1, 1999-present
Socialist International presence: People’s Action Party (former member)
Communist parties: undetermined
Communist insurgency: none
Important notes:
1) Like the Kuomintang in Taiwan, the PAP is a nationalist authoritarian party that was originally organized along Leninist party lines. The PAP’s communist-leaning faction was expelled from the party in 1958 and subsequently the PAP moved toward the center and then to the right. The Socialist Front, another leftist faction, defected from the PAP in 1961. Although formerly allied with communists, the PAP is now vehemently opposed to communism.
2) Between 1963 and 1965 Singapore was a state in the Federation of Malaysia. During that period PAP operated as a Malaysian party. The prospect that the PAP might form the government of Malaysia troubled the PAP’s relations with United Malays National Organization, which is Malaysia’s dominant party.
3) In 1976 the Dutch Labour Party proposed the expulsion of the PAP from the Socialist International. The four major ideologies of the PAP are pragmatism, meritocracy, multiracialism and Asian communitarianism. Ideological communitarianism is a radical centrist ideology that is characterized by an emphasis on community, socialist economic policies and conservative social policies.

Republic of Turkey (1923)
(formerly part of Ottoman Empire)
Type of state: Multiparty democracy with history of single-party Kemalist and military dictatorships
Prime Minister of Turkey: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (National Salvation Party (banned), Welfare Party (banned), Justice and Development Party, conservative, pro-Islamist): March 14, 2003-present
President of Turkey: Abdullah Gül (National Turkish Students’ Union (Islamist), Welfare Party (banned), Virtue Party (banned), Justice and Development Party): August 28, 2007-present
Socialist International presence: Republican People’s Party, Democratic People’s Party (observer)
Communist parties: Communist Party of Turkey (founded 2001), Communist Party of Turkey (Workers’ Voice), Revolutionary Communist Party of Turkey (TDKP), Party of Labour (TDKP front), Revolutionary Communist Party of Turkey-Socialist Unity, Communist Workers’ Party of Turkey (formerly Revolutionary Communist Party of Turkey-Leninist Wing), Communist Workers’ Movement of Turkey, Revolutionary People’s Movement, Socialist Democracy Party (far left), Workers’ Party (Turkey), Freedom and Solidarity Party (formerly Socialist Unity Party and then United Socialist Party; including members of Communist Labor Party of Turkey, Revolutionary Path, United Communist Party of Turkey, and New Way (communist)), Communist Labor Party of Turkey/Leninist, Socialist Labor Movement, Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front
Communist insurgency: Kurdistan Workers’ Party (banned)
Important notes:
1) Although most of Turkey is located in Asia, specifically the Anatolian Peninsula, or Asia Minor, four provinces are located in Europe, specifically the Balkan Peninsula. Turkey is like the Russian Federation in that it spans two continents.
2) Kemalism, the founding ideology of modern Turkey, is based on republicanism, populism, secularism, revolutionism, nationalism and statism. The Republican People’s Party (CHP), which is both nationalist and social democratic, is the largest opposition party in Turkey and the political heir of Kemalism.
3) The nationalist Marxist Kurdistan Workers’ Party is committed to establishing an independent Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey and is associated with the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, based in Iraq and Iran. The party is listed as a terrorist organization throughout the European Union and in the USA.
4) At various times, the PKK has received support from Syria, Greece, Iran, Cyprus, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. Until 1998 Syria harbored the leader of PKK, Abdullah Öcalan. After the Turkish Government openly threatened Syria over its support for the PKK, Öcalan fled to Russia, Italy and then Greece. Öcalan was captured in 1999, in Kenya, by a joint operation of the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Turkish National Intelligence Agency (MIT). Since then he has been held under solitary confinement on Imrali Island, located in the Sea of Marmara. Initially sentenced to death, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2002, when Turkey abolished the death penalty.
5) The PKK has operated through a succession of pro-Kurdish front parties, including the banned People’s Democratic Party, the Democratic People’s Party beginning in 1997, and the Democratic Society Party beginning in 2005.
6) Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, established the Communist Party of Turkey (Official) in 1920 to counter the influence of the original Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), also formed in that year. There is no continuous organization between the original TKP and the party established in 2001. TKP (2001) traces its origins to the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TIP), which was banned in 1971, through the Party for Socialist Power, which was founded in 1993. The relationship between the TIP and the current Workers’ Party (Turkey), which is a nationalist Maoist organization linked to Aleksandr Dugin’s International Eurasianist Movement and the Communist Party of China, is not known. Dugin drafted the constitution for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

Republic of Yemen (1990)
(union of Yemen Arab Republic (YAR, North Yemen) and People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY, South Yemen))
Type of state: “Post”-communist single-party nationalist dictatorship
Prime Minister of Yemen: Ali Mohammed Mujur (General People’s Congress): March 31, 2007-present
President of Yemen: Ali Abdullah Saleh (General People’s Congress): May 22, 1990-present; previously President of Yemen Arab Republic, July 18, 1978-May 22, 1990
Communist government:
1) Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP), government of Democratic Republic of Yemen, 1994 (failed secession)
2) Yemeni Socialist Party, government of People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, 1970-1990
3) National Liberation Front, government of People’s Republic of South Yemen, 1967-1970
Socialist International presence: Yemeni Socialist Party (observer)
Important notes:
1) The People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) was the only openly communist country in the Arab world. Yemeni reunification in 1990 facilitated the infiltration of Yemeni society and institutions by South Yemeni communists.
2) Following reunification, YAR President Ali Abdullah Saleh became president of the new Republic of Yemen, while the communist leader of the PDRY, Haidar Abu Bakr al-Attas, became prime minister of the new republic. Before reunification, al-Attas served as the PDRY’s Prime Minister between 1971 and 1986, and Chair of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Council between 1986 and 1990.
3) The short-lived, unrecognized Democratic Republic of Yemen in southern Yemen, with its capital in Aden, seceded from the Republic of Yemen between May 21 and July 7, 1994. YSP members Ali Salim al-Baidh and al-Attas assumed the presidency and premiership, respectively, of the seceding Marxist state. Al-Baidh fled to Oman after the failed secession. The result of the 1994 civil war was to marginalize the “former” South Yemeni communists. YSP members are frequently detained and tortured by authorities and, following the 2003 parliamentary election, the party has been irrelevant in terms of electoral support.
4) President Saleh’s personalist General People’s Congress has dominated Yemeni politics since reunification.

Socialist Republic of Vietnam, including North and South Vietnam (1945)
(formerly Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) before 1976)
Type of state: Paleo-communist single-party dictatorship
Prime Minister of Vietnam: Nguyen Tan Dũng (Communist Party of Vietnam): June 27, 2006-present
President of Vietnam: Nguyen Minh Triet (Communist Party of Vietnam): June 27, 2006-present
Communist government:
1) Communist Party of Vietnam in collaboration with Vietnamese Fatherland Front, 1945-present (conquered South Vietnam in 1976)
Socialist International presence: none
Important notes:
1) The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) traces its origins to a 1930 conference that merged three communist organizations: Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), An Nam Communist Party and Indochinese Communist League. Ho Chi Minh, a trained communist revolutionary, spent many years in Moscow, participated in the Communist International, and assisted in the founding of the French Communist Party in the 1920s and the ICP in Hong Kong, in 1930. In 1941 Ho returned to French Indochina where he established the Viet Minh, or Vietnamese Allied, a broad front for national liberation. In order to disguise its communist orientation, the CPV was officially dissolved in 1945 and its operations were conducted through the Marxism Research Association and Viet Minh.
2) In 1951 the CPV was openly reestablished as the Workers’ Party of Vietnam and in 1960 the party institutionalized the task of building socialism in the DRV and exporting communist revolution to the South. After the Vietnam War and the reunification of the two Vietnams, the party’s name was changed to the Communist Party of Vietnam.
3) During the Second World War, Japan occupied Vietnam, but after the war France endeavored to reassert control over its Southeast Asian colonies. In 1945 the Viet Minh organized the August Revolution, a series of coordinated rebellions across the country. As a result, Emperor Bao Dai willingly abdicated and transferred his authority to the Viet Minh under the leadership of Ho. In northern Vietnam the DRV was proclaimed. Southern Vietnam was liberated from Japanese control by British forces.
4) During the First Indochina War, also called the French Indochina War, the Viet Minh under Ho’s leadership continued to resist the French presence in Southeast Asia. The French were finally defeated at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and the failure to unify northern and southern Vietnam in 1956 led three years later to the formation of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, popularly known as the Viet Cong, which instigated an insurgency against the Republic of Vietnam.
5) The combatants of the Second Indochina War, also called the Vietnam War, featured, in the one camp, the DRV, allied with the Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China, and, in the other camp, the Republic of Vietnam, allied with the USA, Australia and the Republic of Korea.
6) US military intervention began in May 1961 when President John F. Kennedy authorized the deployment of 400 Green Beret “Special Advisors” to South Vietnam to train that country’s armed forces in counterinsurgency tactics.

State of Brunei, Abode of Peace (1984)
Type of state: Absolute Islamic monarchy with only one legal party
Sultan and Prime Minister of Brunei: Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah: October 5, 1967-present
Socialist International presence: none
Communist parties: Brunei People’s Party (possibly; banned 1962)
Communist insurgency: none
Important notes:
1) The sultan has an enormous private fortune and was at one time the richest man in the world.
2) The politically irrelevant Brunei Solidarity National Party is the only legally recognized party in Brunei.

State of Israel (1948)
Type of state: Multiparty democracy
Prime Minister of Israel: Ehud Olmert (Gahal, Likud, Kadima): January 4, 2006-present
President of Israel: Shimon Peres (Haganah, Mapai, Alignment, Labor, Kadima; leftist Zionist): July 15, 2007-present
Socialist International presence: Israeli Labor Party, Meretz-Yachad (containing former members of Communist Party of Israel)
Communist parties: Communist Party of Israel (CPI, formerly New Communist List, which defected from original CPI), Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (“Hadash,” front for CPI)
Important notes:
1) Kadima (“Forward”) is a new centrist party formed in 2005 by defectors from the rightist Likud (“Consolidation”) Party.
2) Historically, communists and other leftists worldwide, including Jewish communists, have been resolutely opposed to Zionism since it is a form of nationalism. The Israeli Labor Party and Meretz-Yachad, however, are committed to both Zionism and “social democracy,” an ideological position that properly categorizes these parties, like many other non-communist socialist parties, as national socialist.
3) The CPI (“Maki”) was founded in 1948 from remnants of the Palestinian Communist Party (PCP), founded by Jews and Arabs in 1919. The PCP is not to be confused with the Palestinian People’s Party’s predecessor of the same name, founded in 1948 by the Jordanian Communist Party and currently holding membership in the Palestine Liberation Organization.
4) After the Prague Trials of 1953 purged Jewish members from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the Marxist-Zionist United Workers’ Party (“Mapam”) abandoned its pro-Soviet position, prompting a number of Mapam members to defect to Maki. The show trials wrongly implicated Mapam’s envoy in Prague, Mordechai Oren, as party to a Zionist conspiracy.
5) In 1965 the CPI divided into two factions. The first faction was a largely Jewish group under the leadership of Moshe Sneh, a former member of Mapam, which recognized Israel’s right to self-determination and objected to the Soviet Union’s anti-Israel policy. The second faction was a largely Israeli Arab group that opposed Israel’s right to self-determination. Sneh’s faction retained the name Maki while the anti-Zionist faction formed the New Communist List (“Rakah”), which was recognized by the Soviet Union as the “official” CPI. Beginning in 1973 the original Maki merged with successive leftist parties, such as Moked, Shelli Camp, Ratz, Meretz and eventually Meretz-Yachad. In 1989 Rakah officially assumed the name Maki and is the dominant party in the leftist anti-Zionist front organization Hadash, which means Democratic Front for Peace and Equality.
6) Until the late 1980s the leader of the largely Arab CPI was Meir Vilner, the pseudonym of Ber Kovner (1918-2003), a Polish Jew who was the youngest and longest living signatory to the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, promulgated in 1948. Kovner began his political career in the Marxist-Zionist Young Guard (Hashomer Hatza’ir) and then, disenchanted with Zionism, gravitated to the underground Polish Communist Party. In 1938 he emigrated from Poland to the Palestinian British Mandate where he joined the PCP.

State of Kuwait (1961)
Type of state: Constitutional Islamic monarchy with no legal parties
Prime Minister of Kuwait: Nasser Al-Mohammed Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah: February 7, 2006-present
Emir of Kuwait (Head of State): Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah: January 29, 2006-present
Socialist International presence: none
Communist parties: none
Communist insurgency: none
Important notes:
1) Following the 2003 parliamentary election, Kuwaitis elected 21 Islamists, 13 government supporters, three liberals and 12 other nonpartisan members.
2) Between 1990 and 1991 Iraq, in an operation covertly supported by the Soviet Union, invaded, occupied and annexed Kuwait after the President of Iraq Saddam Hussein claimed the emirate as a long-lost Iraqi province.

State of Qatar (1971)
Type of state: Absolute Islamic monarchy with no legal parties
Prime Minister of Qatar: Hamad ibn Jaber Al Thani: April 3, 2007-present
Emir of Qatar (Head of State): Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani: June 27, 1995-present
Socialist International presence: political parties banned
Communist parties: political parties banned
Communist insurgency: none
Important notes:
1) In 2004 two agents of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), formerly known as the Committee for State Security (KGB), were convicted in a Qatari court of assassinating the former president of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Zelimkhan Abdumuslimovich Yanderbiyev, who was then living in exile in Qatar.

Sultanate of Oman (1971)
Type of state: Absolute Islamic monarchy with no legal parties
Sultan and Head of Government: Qaboos bin Said bin Taimur Al ‘Bu Saidi: July 23, 1970-present
Socialist International presence: political parties banned
Communist parties: Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman (dormant)
Communist insurgency: defunct
Important notes:
1) The Dhofar Rebellion was a communist insurrection in the province of Dhofar that endeavored to overthrow the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman. Hostilities raged between 1962 and 1975. In 1962, a disaffected tribal leader, Mussalim bin Nafl, created the Dhofar Liberation Front (DLF), obtained arms and vehicles from Saudi Arabia, and recruited former soldiers of the Sultan of Oman’s Armed Forces and the Trucial Oman Scouts in the United Arab Emirates. From the very beginning of the rebellion, Nasserites and other leftists in Yemen and Aden gravitated to the DLF.
2) Following the creation of a communist state in South Yemen in 1967, the Dhofar rebels established bases in the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY). Hard-core revolutionaries such as Mohammad Ahmad al-Ghassani renamed the DLF as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Arabian Gulf. Insurgents in northern Oman created a related organization called the National Democratic Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Arabian Gulf. In 1974 the rebel movement consolidated and renamed itself as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman. Government forces finally suppressed the rebellion in 1975 and the remaining fighters surrendered or fled to the PDRY.

Syrian Arab Republic (1949)
(known as United Arab Republic until 1961; unified under that name with Egypt between 1958 and 1961)
Type of state: Socialist dictatorship supported by communist-dominated political front
Prime Minister of Syria: Muhammad Naji al-Otari (Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party): September 10, 2003-present
President of Syria: Bashar al-Assad (Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party): July 17, 2000-present
1) National Progressive Front (consisting of Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party (Arab neofascist) in constitutional leading role, Syrian Social Nationalist Party (Arab neofascist), Arab Socialist Union Party, Arab Socialist Party, Syrian Communist Party (Yusuf Faisal), Syrian Communist Party (Khalid Bakdash), Union Socialist Party, and Union Socialist Democratic Party), 2005-present
2) National Progressive Front (as above, with exclusion of Syrian Social Nationalist Party), 1972-2005
3) Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, sole legal party, 1963-1972
Socialist International presence: none
Communist parties: Syrian Communist Party (Yusuf Faisal), Syrian Communist Party (Khalid Bakdash)
Communist insurgency: Syrian Democratic People’s Party (banned)
Important notes:
1) In 1986 the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party sent a delegate to the Ninth Congress of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, the ruling communist party of East Germany. The Syrian Communist Party (SCP) also sent a delegation.
2) Founded in 1932 as a pan-Syrian fascist party, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) boasts a swastika-like flag, operates in both Syria and Lebanon, is the largest Syrian party after the Ba’athists, and was legalized and admitted to the Syrian government in 2005. The SSNP moved leftward in the 1970s when its leadership embraced Marxism. In the Lebanese Civil War SSNP militias fought along side the Lebanese Communists and Ba’athists against the Phalangists and their allies. The Lebanese rightists represented a more traditional neofascist ideology based on José Antonio Primo de Rivera’s Spanish Phalanx. SSNP supporters disavow any connection to fascism.
3) In 1949 Husni al-Za’im seized power in a bloodless coup d’etat with the discrete assistant of the SSNP, although al-Za’im is not known to have been a member of that party. The military officers who supported his ascent to power, Adib al-Shishakli and Sami al-Hinnawi, were known SSNP members. The same officers were responsible for ousting al-Za’im only months later. Al-Shishakli was briefly President of Syria between 1953 and 1954. President Shishakli’s regime was overthrown in a coup plotted by the SCP, disaffected Druze officers and Ba’thists.
4) The clandestine Syrian Democratic People’s Party was founded in 1973 when a faction defected from the SCP over the communist leadership’s decision to join the Ba’thist-led NPF. Until 2005 the SDPP was known as the SCP (Political Bureau) or SCP (Riyad al-Turk).

Union of Myanmar (1948)
(formerly Union of Burma before 1989)
Type of state: Socialist military dictatorship
Prime Minister of Myanmar: General Thein Sein (State Peace and Development Council): April -October 24, 2007 (acting), October 24, 2007-present
Chairman of State Peace and Development Council: Senior General Than Shwe: April 23, 1992-present
Communist government:
1) State Peace and Development Council (military junta) with support of National Unity Party (formerly Burma Socialist Program Party) and state-organized Union Solidarity and Development Association, 1997-present
2) State Law and Order Restoration Council (military junta) with support of National Unity Party and state-organized Union Solidarity and Development Association, 1993-1997
3) State Law and Order Restoration Council (military junta) with support of National Unity Party: 1988-1993
4) Military junta with support of Burma Socialist Program Party, 1962-1988
5) Union Party under Prime Minister U Nu, 1960-1962
6) Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League under Prime Ministers U Nu and Ba Swe, 1948-1960
Socialist International presence: none
Communist parties: National League for Democracy (possible front for Communist Party of Burma)
Communist insurgency: Communist Party of Burma
Important notes:
1) Between the founding in 1944 of the AFPFL to oppose the Japanese occupation and 1949, a number of leftist groups, including the Burma Red Flag Communists, Burmese Socialists, White Band PVO, Revolutionary Burma Army and Burma White Flag Communists, defected from this organization.
2) Nationalist leader General Aung San negotiated Burma’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1947. Between 1946 and his assassination in the following year, only months before official Burmese independence, the general was President of the AFPFL, which was also known as the Socialist Party. General Aung San was also the first General Secretary of the CPB. During the BSPP era, the CPB was the largest of the banned political parties.
3) In 1990 military-sanctioned parliamentary elections yielded a resounding victory for the National League for Democracy (NLD), which won 485 or 80.8 per cent of the available seats. The NLD is a member of Burma’s government in exile, the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB), which is based in Rockville, Maryland, USA. Internationally renowned Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi is the NLD’s General Secretary.
3) There is evidence to indicate that the NLD is a front for the CPB, although the NLD leadership has protested that such assertions are merely propaganda emanating from the military junta. First, Suu Kyi is the daughter of General Aung San who, as noted above, was the first General Secretary of the CPB. Second, Suu Kyi has admitted that some of her advisers are “former” members of the CPB. Third, the name and flag of the NLD are evocative of a communist front organization.

United Arab Emirates (1971)
Type of state: Federation of seven emirates
Prime Minister of UAE: Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum: February 11, 2006-present
President of UAE: Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan: November 3, 2004-present
Socialist International presence: political parties banned
Communist parties: political parties banned
Important notes:
1) The seven emirates include Abu Dhabi, Ajmān, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah and Umm al-Qaiwain.
2) The Presidency of the UAE is de facto hereditary to the Al-Nahyan clan of Abu Dhabi, while the Premiership is hereditary to the Al-Maktoom clan of Dubai.
3) In December 2005 Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahayan, President of the UAE, announced that one half of the members of the Federal National Council would be elected, while the other half would remain appointed.

>Red World: Asia, Part 1: Communist, "ex"-communist, and socialist regimes dominate world’s largest continent into twenty-first century

>Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea (1948)
(formerly Japanese colony 1905-1945; Kingdom of Korea prior to 1905)
Type of state: Paleo-communist single-party dictatorship
Premier of DPRK: Kim Yong-il (Workers’ Party of Korea): April 11, 2007-present
Chairman of National Defence Commission (Head of State): Kim Jong-il (Workers’ Party of Korea): April 9, 1993-present
Communist government:
1) Workers’ Party of Korea, operating through Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland, which includes Korean Social Democratic Party and Cheondoist Chongu Party, 1948-present
Socialist International presence: none
Communist parties: Workers’ Party of Korea
Important notes:
1) In the 1930s the Korean Communist Party (KCP), founded in 1925 by Korean exiles living in the Soviet Union, entered an alliance with the Communist Party of China, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Japanese Army then occupying the Korean peninsula. Kim Il-sung became one of the party’s guerrilla leaders.
2) In August 1945, the Red Army invaded northern Korea on the pretence of liberating the peninsula from the Japanese colonial administration. At the time nearly all members of the KCP, which was banned by Japanese authorities, were in the Soviet Union or southern Korea, which was occupied by the United States Armed Forces.
3) In accordance with the practice employed in other Soviet satellite states, a united front of leftist parties was formed in the Soviet-occupied region of Korea. The Communist Party of North Korea, New People’s Party, Democratic Party, and Party of Young Friends of the Celestial Way merged to form the United Democratic National Front and then the Workers’ Party of North Korea (WPNK). A similar party was founded in South Korea but was banned by the US occupational government. In 1949 the WPNK merged with the Workers’ Party of South Korea to form the Workers’ Party of Korea
4) In 1950 the Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China sponsored North Korea’s invasion of the South. An armistice terminated military hostilities, but since no peace treaty was signed at the end of the Korean War in 1953, the two Koreas are still technically in a state of war in 2006. The Korean Demilitarized Zone is considered the “last front” of the Cold War. The Joint Security Area in the village of Panmunjeom is the only location where representatives of the two Koreas occasionally meet for official state business.
5) Both Koreas are committed to reunification but on their own terms. The communist regime in the North is constantly involved in subversive activities in the South for the purpose of undermining the Republic of Korea’s democratic institutions and foreign alliances, as well as eroding its military capacity to repel a Northern invasion.

Democratic Republic of East Timor (2002)
(independence from Indonesia initially declared 1975)
Type of state: Multiparty state with democratically elected communist government
Prime Minister of East Timor: Xanana Gusmão (Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction): August 8, 2007-present (president of East Timor, 2002-2007)
President of East Timor: José Ramos-Horta (Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, independent): May 20, 2007-present
Communist government:
1) National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (ex-FRETILIN) in alliance with Timorese Social Democratic Association-Social Democratic Party and Democratic Party, 2007-present
2) Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, 2002-2007
Socialist International presence: Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (consultative)
Communist parties: Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor
Important notes:
1) Originally known as the Timorese Social Democratic Association, the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (FRETILIN) is one of several communist insurgent armies, including MPLA in Angola and FRELIMO in Mozambique, that resisted the colonial administrations of Portugal in the 1970s.
2) The military wing of FRETILIN was called the Armed Forces of National Liberation of East Timor (FALINTIL). In 2001 FALINTIL was transformed into the government Defense Force of East Timor, a process that has occurred in other former European colonies in which victorious insurgent armies become the new regime’s regular armed forces.
3) On November 28, 1975, FRETILIN declared the independence of Portuguese Timor as the “Democratic Republic of East Timor.” Xanana Gusmão, the current President of East Timor, filmed the ceremony. Nine days later Indonesian forces invaded the tiny country. Between 1993 and 1999 Indonesian authorities imprisoned Gusmão, who received at least one visit from fellow communist Nelson Mandela. Indonesian troops withdrew from East Timor in 1999 and the tiny country was recognized as an independent state in 2002.
4) During the Indonesian occupation, the current Prime Minister of East Timor, Marí bin Amude Alkatiri, lived in exile in Angola and Mozambique, both communist states that were formerly part of the Portuguese Empire.
5) The design of the East Timorese flag is obviously influenced by the party flag of FRETILIN.

Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (1948)
(formerly Free, Sovereign and Independent Republic of Sri Lanka prior to 1978)
Type of state: Multiparty state with democratically elected communist government
Prime Minister of Sri Lanka: Ratnasiri Wickremanayake (Sri Lanka Freedom Party): November 19, 2005-present, August 10, 2000-December 9, 2001
President of Sri Lanka: Mahinda Rajapaksa (Sri Lanka Freedom Party): November 19, 2005-present
Communist government:
1) United People’s Freedom Alliance (consisting of Sri Lanka Freedom Party (democratic socialist), People’s Liberation Front (nationalist Marxist), Sri Lanka People’s Party, Muslim National Unity Alliance, Mahajana Eksath Peramuna, Democratic United National Front, and National Liberation People’s Party), with formal support from Communist Party of Sri Lanka and Ceylon Equal Society Party (Trotskyist), 2004-present
2) People’s Alliance (consisting of Sri Lanka Freedom Party, Communist Party of Sri Lanka, Ceylon Equal Society Party, Sri Lanka People’s Party, National Liberation People’s Party, Democratic United National Front , and Mass Freedom Front), 1994-2004
3) Sri Lanka Freedom Party, 1975-1977
4) United Front (consisting of Sri Lanka Freedom Party, Ceylon Equal Society Party, and Communist Party of Sri Lanka), 1970-1975
5) Sri Lanka Freedom Party-Ceylon Equal Society Party coalition, 1964-1965
6) Sri Lanka Freedom Party, 1956-1960, 1960-1964
Socialist International presence: none
Communist parties: Ceylon Equal Society Party, Communist Party of Sri Lanka, New Left Front (consisting of Democratic Left Front, National Democratic Movement, Nava Sama Samaja Party (Trotskyist), and New Democratic Party), People’s Liberation Front, Revolutionary Workers’ Party (practically defunct), United Socialist Party (Trotskyist)
Communist insurgency: Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, with political front Tamil National Alliance (consisting of All Ceylon Tamil Congress, Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front, Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization, and Tamil United Liberation Front)
Important notes:
1) The Ceylon Equal Society Party (LSSP), which evolved from Ceylon’s Youth Leagues in 1935, was the first party to demand Ceylon’s independence. As a result of the general election of 1947 the LSSP emerged as the main opposition party. Wijeyananda Dahanayake (1902-1997) was the Prime Minister of Ceylon between 1959 and 1960. Prior to joining the government of Solomon Bandaranaike, prime minister and leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), Dahanayake was a member of the LSSP.
2) A staunch socialist, Sirimavo Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike (1916-2000) was Prime Minister of Sri Lanka between 1960 and 1965, between 1970 and 1977, and between 1994 and 2000. Sirimavo was the world’s first female prime minister, a leader of the SLFP and wife of Solomon, SLFP founder.
3) The JVP defected from the current coalition government in 2005.
4) The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is a communist insurgent army committed to establishing an independent Tamil state in northeastern Sri Lanka. In a 1984 interview long-time Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran described his organization as advocating revolutionary socialism. However, like many other “born-again” communist groups, the Tamil Tigers now apparently advocate capitalism, as indicated in a 2002 media conference by Tamil Tiger ideologue Anton Balasingham. Prabhakaran faces extradition by India over his alleged role in the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. As of December 2005, the Tamil Tigers control the northernmost region of Sri Lanka, as well as enclaves along the east coast of the country.
5) Founded in 2001, the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organizations of South Asia includes the Ceylon Communist Party (Maoist).

Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal
Type of state: Multiparty state with democratically elected communist government
Prime Minister of Nepal: Madhav Kumar Nepal (Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist-Leninist): May 25, 2009-present
President of Nepal: Ram Baran Yadav (Nepali Congress): July 23, 2008-present
Vice President of Nepal: Parmanand Jha (Madhesi Janadhikar Forum; ethnic regional party consisting of ex-members of Nepali Congress and Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist)): July 23, 2008-present
Communist government:
1) Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) in coalition with Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), Madhesi Janadhikar Forum, and 18 other partners: 2008-present
2) Eight Party Alliance (consisting of Nepali Congress, Nepali Congress (Democratic), Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), Nepal Workers’ and Peasants’ Party, Nepal Goodwill Party, United Left Front, People’s Front, and Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)), 2006-2008
3) Seven Party Alliance (consisting of Nepali Congress, Nepali Congress (Democratic), Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), Nepal Workers’ and Peasants’ Party, Nepal Goodwill Party, United Left Front, and People’s Front), 1999-2006
4) Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) in coalition with Rashtriya Prajatantra Party (monarchist) and Nepal Sadbhavana Party (regional, democratic socialist): 1997
5) Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist)): 1994-1995
Socialist International presence: Nepali Congress
Communist parties: Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), Nepal Workers’ and Peasants’ Party, People’s Front (consisting of Communist Party of Nepal (Unity Centre) and Communist Party of Nepal (Masal)), United Left Front (consisting of Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Centre), Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist), and Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist))
Communist insurgency: Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (suspended since formation of current government)
Important notes:
1) King Gyanendra assumed the throne in 2001 after his nephew Crown Prince Dipendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev murdered most of his immediate family, including Dipendra’s father King Birendra, and then committed suicide in what most reports describe as a drunken rage. Controversy surrounds the murder-suicide since, among other unexplained circumstances, Crown Prince Dipendra was right-handed but the self-inflicted shot that killed him was in his left temple. Gyanendra was visiting another town at the time of the massacre.
2) Nepal was a constitutional monarchy between 1990 and 2002. As a result of the Nepal Civil War, King Gyanendra dissolved parliament in 2002 and has ruled by decree under a state of emergency since 2005. On April 24, 2006, after 19 days of mass protests, the king summoned parliament to reassemble on April 28, but it is unlikely that this concession will appease the Maoist insurgents. The Nepali monarchy was abolished on May 28, 2008 by the democratically elected, Maoist-dominated Constituent Assembly.
3) The Nepal Civil War pits a bewildering array of rebel Maoist groups against the government of Nepal, and was launched by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) in 1996. The objective of the communist rebels, who control large swathes of territory, is to establish a “People’s Republic of Nepal.” In 2001 King Gyanendra began to deploy the armed forces against the insurgents, whereas before the government had only employed the police forces. More than 11,500 people have perished in the insurgency, while anywhere from 100,000 to 150,000 people have been displaced within Nepal. Notwithstanding these security measures, the Nepalese monarchy is under imminent threat of collapse.
4) Founded in 1991 the CPN(UML) is the largest communist party in Nepal and was formed by a merger of the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist).
5) Founded in 2002 the United Left Front-Nepal (ULF-N) is a joint front of communist parties opposed to the Nepalese monarchy. The ULF-N originally consisted of the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist) (CPN(M)), Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist) (CPN(ML)), Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) (CPN(MLM), Nepal Samyabadi Party (Marksbadi-Leninbadi-Maobadi) (NSP(Malema)) and Communist Party of Nepal (United) (CPN(U)). The CPN(MLM) and NSP(Malema) later merged to form the CPN(UMLM), while the CPN(M) and CPN(U) merged to form the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist) (CPN(UM)).
6) Founded in 2001, the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organizations of South Asia (CCMPOSA) includes the CPN(M).

Federation of Malaysia (1957)
Type of state: Constitutional monarchy with single-party dominant system
Prime Minister of Malaysia: Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (United Malays National Organization): October 31, 2003-present
Yang di-Pertuan Agong (King of Malaysia, Supreme Head of State): Mizan Zainal Abidin, Sultan of Terengganu: December 13, 2006-present
Socialist International presence: Democratic Action Party
Communist parties: Malaysian People’s Party, Malaysian Workers’ Party, Socialist Party of Malaysia (banned)
Important notes:
1) The National Front coalition of parties has ruled Malaysia without interruption since independence. The United Malays National Organization, the front’s largest party, follows a nationalist and Islamic secularist line.
2) The Alternative Front consists of the Islamic Party of Malaysia, which is motivated by Islamic fundamentalism, and People’s Justice Party.
3) The Democratic Action Party was originally the Malaysian branch of the long-ruling, ex-communist Singaporean People’s Action Party. However, Singapore seceded from the federation in 1965, only two years after the territories had merged.
4) The Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) was founded in Singapore in 1930 with a largely ethnic Chinese membership. The military wing of the CPM was the Malayan People’s Liberation Army, which terminated guerrilla operations in 1960. The CPM was officially dissolved and disarmed following a peace treaty with the governments of Malaysia and Thailand in 1989. The Communist Party of Malaya/Revolutionary Faction, now defunct, defected from the CPM to enage in an armed struggle. Formed in 1970, the Communist Party of Malaya/Marxist-Leninist is another defunct splinter group that conducted an armed struggle against the Malaysian government from bases in southern Thailand.

Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (1946)
Type of state: Constitutional monarchy with multiparty system
Prime Minister of Jordan: Nader al-Dahabi (monarchist): November 25, 2007-present
King of Jordan (Head of State): Abdullah II bin al-Hussein: February 7, 1999-present
Socialist International presence: Jordanian Democratic Party of the Left (observer)
Communist parties: Jordanian Communist Party, Jordanian Democratic People’s Party, Jordanian Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party (neofascist), National Socialist Party (defunct)
Communist insurgency: Palestine Liberation Organization
Important notes:
1) Jordanian political parties were legalized in 1992. Ninety per cent of the deputies in Jordan’s elected Chamber of Deputies are nonpartisan allies of King Abdullah II.
2) The Islamic Action Front, which won 20 out of 84 seats in the Chamber of Deputies in 2003, is reported to be the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan.
3) Founded in 1948, the nonparliamentary Jordanian Communist Party (JCP) transformed its West Bank branch into the Palestinian Communist Party, which later became the Palestinian People’s Party and joined the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The original Palestinian Communist Party, formed in 1919 with both Jewish and Arab members, transformed itself into the Israeli Communist Party in 1948. The nonparliamentary Jordanian Democratic People’s Party was formed in 1989 when the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a member of the PLO, transformed its Jordanian branch into a separate party.

Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (1919)
Type of state: Post-communist multiparty state with resurgent elements of old regime under US and allied occupation
President of Afghanistan: Hamid Karzai (Mujahideen, Taliban, supported by elements of Northern Alliance/United National Front): December 22, 2001-present
First Vice President of Afghanistan: Ahmad Zia Massoud (Mujahideen, Jamiat-e Islami, Northern Alliance/United National Front): October 9, 2004-present
Chief of Staff of Commander in Chief of Afghan National Army: General Abdul Rashid Dostum (communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan, Northern Alliance/United National Front): March 1, 2005-February 19, 2008 (removed over Akbar Bai kidnapping), October 30, 2008-present (reinstated)
Communist government:
1) United National Front, consisting of most elements of Northern Alliance, including National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan (“ex”-communist), supported by Russia, 2006-present
2) United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan (“Northern Alliance,” consisting of Islamic Party of Afghanistan, Islamic Unity Party of Afghanistan, National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan (“ex”-communist), Islamic Movement of Afghanistan, and Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan), supported by Russia, 2001-2006
3) Jamiat-e Islami under Mujahideen President Burhanuddin Rabbani, supported by Russia: 1992-1996, 1996-2001 (government in exile)
4) People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, supported by Soviet Union and Russia, 1989-1992
5) People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan under Soviet military occupation, 1987-1989
6) People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, sole legal party, under Soviet military occupation, 1979-1987
7) People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, sole legal party, 1978-1979
Socialist International presence: Afghan Social Democratic Party (observer status under application)
Communist parties: Democratic Watan Party of Afghanistan (faction of formerly ruling People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan), Communist Party of Afghanistan (Maoist, Afghan section of Revolutionary Internationalist Movement)
Communist insurgency: Afghanistan Liberation Organization (Maoist) with two front groups, Afghanistan People’s Liberation Organization and Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
Important notes:
1) The National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan, which was represented in the Moscow-backed Northern Alliance and more recently the United National Front, operates under the leadership of General Abdul Rashid Dostum. Dostum is presently Commander in Chief of the Afghan National Army. He formerly sat on the Executive Council of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan and was defense minister under communist President Muhammad Najibullah, deposed in 1992. Dostum defended Afghanistan’s Soviet-backed communist regime against the US-backed Mujahideen and was an ally of Afghan Marxist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar after the Mujahideen ousted Najibullah. Since the demise of the Najibullah regime, neo-Soviet Russia has controlled both sides of the Afghan Civil War by openly supporting the Northern Alliance and covertly arming the Taliban.
2) In Ghost Wars Steve Coll writes that in the 1960s former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani studied at Al-Azhar University in Cairo where he came under the influence of “radical Egyptian Islamists.” Returning to Kabul, Rabbani in turn influenced Mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, who joined the youth section of Professor Rabbani’s Jamiat-e Islami. Massoud was assassinated on September 9, 2001. It is believed by some terrorism experts that Osama bin Laden ordered Massound’s assassination. In any event, his death was overshadowed by the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, DC two days later.

Islamic Republic of Iran
Type of state: Islamic theocracy with multiparty system divided between religious conservatives and reformists, initially supported by Iranian communists but later purged
Supreme Leader of Iran: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: June 4, 1989-present
President of Iran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, Islamic Society of Engineers, supported by Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran): August 3, 2005-present
Communist government:
1) Islamic Republican Party in collaboration with communist Tudeh Party of Iran, 1979-1982
2) National Front of Iran in partnership with Tudeh Party of Iran, 1951-1953
Socialist International presence: Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran
Communist parties: Communist Party of Iran (founded 1920, refounded 1984), Komalah, Tudeh Party of Iran, Worker-Communist Party of Iran (founded 1991 from Communist Party of Iran faction), Worker-Communist Party of Iran-Hekmatist (founded 2004 from Worker-Communist Party of Iran faction), Workers’ Left Unity Iran, Tudeh Party of Iran
Communist insurgency: People’s Mujahedin of Iran, with political front National Council of Resistance of Iran
Important notes:
1) The Islamic Republican Party, which was dissolved in 1987, contained leftist and rightist camps. The former consisted of the Militant Clerics League and Revolution’s Mujahidin, while the latter consisted of the Militant Clerics Association, League of the Teachers of the Qom Seminaries, and Islamic Coalition Association.
2) Although the Islamic revolutionary government in Tehran has maintained a close political, military, scientific and technological alliance with the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation since its installation, communism has been officially banned in Iran since 1982.
3) The original CPI was founded in 1920 and banned the next year. Heidar Amou Oghly, secretary general of the CPI, was one of the leaders of the Constitutional Revolution of Iran, which challenged the reign of the Qajar dynasty between 1905 and 1911.
4) The second CPI was founded in 1984 by a faction of Komalah and the Communist Militias Union. Komalah still operates as a distinct party supporting the independence of Iranian Kurds.
5) The Tudeh Party of Iran, which maintained close relations with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was founded in 1941 from remnants of the original CPI. In 1949 the Tudeh was blamed for a failed assassination attempt against the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and banned. The party was shortly thereafter unbanned and in 1951 socialist Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh established a close partnership between his governing party, the National Front of Iran, and the Tudeh, leading to his removal by a jointly sponsored Anglo-American coup d’etat.
6) After participating in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which deposed Mohammad Reza, the Tudeh collaborated with the ruling Islamic Republican Party until it was again banned in 1982 and driven into exile. The Tudeh is a member of the Coordinating Committee of Communist Parties in Britain, a bureau within the Communist Party of Britain that confers with overseas communist parties that have memberships in Britain. Other foreign member parties include the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of Bangladesh, Communist Party of Chile, Iraqi Communist Party, Sudanese Communist Party, Cypriot Progressive Party of Working People (formerly Communist Party of Cyprus), and Communist Party of Greece.
7) The PMOI is an Islamo-Marxist party that was supported by the former Ba’thist regime in Iraq and, like the Tudeh, after participating in the 1979 Iranian Revolution was banned in 1982 and driven into exile. The PMOI is also known as the Mujahideen-e-Khalq Organization (MKO) or Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK). The military wing of the PMOI is the National Liberation Army of Iran (NLAI).
8) The PMOI later joined other exiled Iranian political and social groups to form the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which considers itself the country’s government-in-exile. The NCRI consists of five opposition parties, including the PMOI and the Fedaiin, another Marxist organization, and military officers of the NLAI. In addition the council features more than 550 political, cultural, social and professional personages. One half of the council’s members are women. The USA classifies both the PMOI and the Fedaiin as terrorist organizations.
9) The Persian Socialist Soviet Republic, also known as the Soviet Republic of Gilan, was a short-lived Soviet republic in the Iranian province of Gilan, which borders the Soviet Union proper, that existed between 1920 and 1921. Mirza Kouchek Khan Jangali, leader of the Foresters Movement, established the republic with the assistance of the Red Army. Jangali was also a leader of the Constitutionalist Movement of Gilan, which lasted between 1914 and 1921, and was a regional extension of the Constitutional Revolution of Iran.
10) The founder of the PDKI, Qazi Muhammad, was president of the unrecognized Soviet-supported Republic of Kurdistan (or Mahabad) in Iranian Kurdistan, which existed between 1946 and 1947.

Islamic Republic of Pakistan (1947)
Type of state: Multiparty state with democratically elected socialist government and history of military dictatorships
Prime Minister of Pakistan: Yousaf Raza Gillani (Pakistan People’s Party): March 25, 2008-present
President of Pakistan: Asif Ali Zardari (Pakistan People’s Party, widower of Benazir Bhutto): September 9, 2008-present
Communist government:
1) Pakistan People’s Party in coalition with Pakistan Muslim League (N), Awami National Party (leftist), Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Islamist), and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (liberal), 2008-present
2) Pakistan People’s Party in coalition with Pakistan Muslim League (J) and other parties, controls presidency and/or parliament, 1993-1997
3) Pakistan People’s Party in coalition with Refugee People’s Movement and other parties, 1988-1990
4) Pakistan People’s Party controls presidency and/or parliament, 1971-1978
Socialist International presence: Pakistan People’s Party (including People’s Party Parliamentarians and Marxist rank and file)
Communist parties: Communist Party of Pakistan (Khaskheli faction), Communist Party of Pakistan (Thaheem faction), Communist Mazdoor Kisan Party, National Awami Party, Pakistan People’s Party (communist infiltrated)
Communist insurgency: undetermined
Important notes:
1) In 1948 the Second All India Conference of Communist Party of India resolved to form a separate communist party in the new state of Pakistan, which then consisted of West Pakistan (Pakistan) and East Pakistan (Bangladesh).
2) Following the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case in 1951 many leading CPP members were convicted and incarcerated. In general, successive Pakistani governments suppressed communism. Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, agitated on behalf of the CPP, leading to the release of the most well-known CPP leaders and their seeking refuge in India. In 1954 the CPP was banned and the party formed the Azad Pakistan Party (APP) in West Pakistan and in 1957 the CPP and other leftists formed a legal party called the National Awami Party (NAP). The APP eventually merged with the NAP. In 1966 the fabricated Sino-Soviet split affected the CPP. In 1970 the Mazdoor Kisan Party (MKP) defected from the CPP in West Pakistan, while a pro-Chinese faction defected from the CPP in East Pakistan.
3) The fourth party congress in 1968 resolved that a separate communist party should be constituted for East Pakistan. Thus the Communist Party of East Pakistan was established and later became the Communist Party of Bangladesh. The CPP organized a militant and armed peasants struggle in Patfeeder, Baluchistan.
4) In 1995 the MKP remerged with the CPP to form the Communist Mazdoor Kisan Party (CMKP) and in 1999 a faction defected and reorganized the CPP. In 2002 the CPP divided again, generating two separate CPPs, one under the leadership of Maula Bux Khaskheli and the other under the leadership of Khadim Thaheem.
5) The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) was founded in 1967 by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who became its first chairman. The party creed is: “Islam is our faith; democracy is our politics; socialism is our economy; all power to the people.” During Zulfikar’s tenure as president and then prime minister, the PPP government pursued an aggressive policy of economic nationalization and the weaponization of Pakistan’s nuclear power program. The rank and file of the PPP are heavily penetrated by trenchant Marxists who advocate socialist revolution, but have been thwarted by the coalitions that the party leadership has been forced at times to negotiate in order to govern the country. Zulfikar was deposed by a military coup d’etat in 1977, tried for the murder of another politician, and executed in 1979. His daughter Benazir was twice prime minister in the late 1980s and mid-1990s, and twice dismissed on corruption charges. After eight years in exile in Dubai and London, Benazir returned to Pakistan on October 18, 2007, but was assassinated slightly more than two months later, on December 27.

Japan
Type of state: Constitutional monarchy with single-party dominant system
Prime Minister of Japan: Taro Aso (Liberal Democratic Party): September 24, 2008-present
Emperor of Japan (Head of State): Akihito: January 7, 1989-present
Communist government: none
Fascist government:
1) National Defense State under militarist-socialist government of Imperial Rule Assistance Association: 1940-1945
Socialist International presence: Social Democratic Party (formerly Japan Socialist Party, revolutionary)
Communist parties: Japanese Communist Party, Green Niigata (regional communist; formerly Niigata New Party for People)
Important notes:
1) The Japanese Communist Party (JCP) is the second-largest non-ruling communist party in the world, boasting about 400,000 members in 25,000 branches. In the 2005 parliamentary election, the JCP attracted 5,000,000 voters, or 7.3 per cent of the electorate. The JCP is a “nonrevolutionary” Leninist party. Since Japan’s new major opposition party, the Democratic Party, founded in 1998, differs in its platform only slightly from the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), leftists have no other option than to vote for the JCP.
2) The Japanese Red Army (JRA) is a largely defunct terrorist cell founded in 1971 after defecting from the Japanese Communist League-Red Army Faction. Throughout the 1970s the JRA boasted only about 40 members, but was one of the most dreaded terrorist cells in the world. During the early 1980s the JRA received much of its funding, training and armament from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which holds membership in the Palestine Liberation Organization. After residing in exile in Lebanon for nearly 25 years, Fusako Shigenobu, the founder of the JRA, secretly returned to Japan in 2000, but was arrested by authorities. In February 2006 she was sentenced by a Tokyo court to serve 20 years in prison.
3) According to a New York Times article published in the mid-1990s, between the 1950s and 1970s, the US Central Intelligence Agency supported LDP campaigns with millions of dollars in an attempt to marginalize Soviet-supported parties such as the JSP and JCP. Since 1955 the LDP has enjoyed an uninterrupted control of the Japanese Parliament, with the exception of a brief interregnum between 1993 and 1996 when the country was governed by a coalition of the Japan Renewal Party, Japan Socialist Party, Democratic Socialist Party, Clean Government Party and United Social Democratic Party.
4) There is reason to believe that the Hindu-Buddhist cult Aum Shinrikyo, founded by Shoko Asahara in 1987 and registered with the Japanese government in 1989, was coopted by the KGB while the Soviet Union was in the midst of “collapsing” and transformed into a tool for Moscow-sponsored international terrorism in general and destabilizing Japan in particular. Japan and Russia are still technically in a state of hostilities following the Second World War.
5) On March 20, 1995, one month before the Oklahoma City Bombing, which boasts a definite Middle Eastern and by extension possible Soviet Bloc connection, Aum members attacked the Tokyo Subway System with the nerve gas Sarin. Twelve commuters died, while several thousand others suffered from the gas’s after-effects. Since 2000 the monastic order has been known as Aleph and maintains a website where the cult endeavors to distance itself from its criminal past.
6) Aum’s KGB connection is addressed by William Norman Grigg in “Cult of Terror” (The New American, November 11, 1996). Grigg writes: “Aum’s direct involvement with Soviet political and intelligence elites began in December 1991, when a representative of the cult met with Oleg Lobov, head of the Russian Security Council and a trusted aide to President Yeltsin. Also present at that meeting was Vladimir Muranyov, vice president of Moscow’s Russia-Japan University, an institution that was Lobov’s pet project. During Asahara’s ‘Russia Salvation Tour’ in early 1992, the Aum guru was granted generous time for a personal interview with Lobov. Aum left behind its “Construction Minister,” Kiyohide Hayakawa, to supervise arms acquisitions and recruitment of technical specialists.”

Kingdom of Bahrain (1971)
Type of state: Constitutional monarchy with multiparty system
‎Prime Minister of Bahrain: Khalifa ibn Salman Al Khalifah: August 15, 1971-present (longest-serving prime minister in the world)
King of Bahrain (Head of State): Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa: March 6, 1999-present
Socialist International presence: none
Communist parties: Democratic Bloc (formerly Communist Party of Bahrain), National Democratic Action (alliance of Maoists, socialists, and Arab nationalists), Progressive Democratic Front-Bahrain (communist), Nationalist Democratic Rally Society (formerly Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, neofascist)
Important notes:
1) Founded in 2002 the Progressive Democratic Front-Bahrain is the legal political wing of the underground National Liberation Front-Bahrain, which was founded in 1955 by the communist Tudeh Party of Iran.
2) The parliamentary opposition consists of a coalition of the Nationalist Democratic Rally Society, National Democratic Action, and two Shia Islamist parties–the Al Wefaq National Islamic Society and Islamic Action Society, which is the direct descendent of the Iran-based terrorist army, the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain.
3) The Al Menbar Islamic Bloc is the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Bahrain.

Kingdom of Bhutan
Type of state: Constitutional monarchy since 2008, with nascent party system
Prime Minister of Bhutan: Lyonpo Jigme Yoser Thinley (Bhutan Peace and Prosperity Party, royalist): April 9, 2008-present
Dragon King of Bhutan (Head of State): Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck: December 14, 2006-present
Socialist International presence: none
Communist parties/insurgency: Communist Party of Bhutan (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist)
Important notes:
1) There is some debate as to whether Bhutan is a sovereign country in that following Indian independence in 1947, the two countries entered a perpetual treaty by which India assumed a consultative role, replacing Britain, in formulating Bhutan’s external relations, but was forbidden from interfering in the kingdom’s internal affairs.
2) In November 2005 more than 200 Chinese troops entered Bhutan where they were building roads and bridges deep inside the mountain kingdom. It is highly probable that the People’s Republic of China is supporting the Maoist insurgents in Nepal, India and Bhutan. Maoist guerrillas from India and the banned Communist Party of Bhutan (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) (CPB (MLM))are reported to maintain camps and launch attacks on India and Bhutan from the border region between the two states. Founded in 2001, the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organizations of South Asia includes the CPB (MLM), which holds observer status.
3) Bhutan’s first election ever took place in March 2008. The royalist Bhutan Peace and Prosperity Party won all but two seats in the National Assembly. The other party that contested the election was the People’s Democratic Party, which is social democratic in orientation.

Kingdom of Cambodia (1953)
(formerly State of Cambodia, 1989-1993; People’s Republic of Kampuchea, 1979-1989; Democratic Kampuchea 1976-1979; Republic of Cambodia, 1960-1976; Kingdom of Cambodia, 1953-1960)
Type of state: Constitutional monarchy with “post”-communist multiparty system
Prime Minister of Cambodia: Hun Sen (Party of Democratic Kampuchea, Kampuchean People’s Revolutionary Party, Cambodian People’s Party): January 14, 1985-present
King of Cambodia (Head of State): Norodom Sihamoni: October 14, 2004-present
Communist government:
1) Cambodian People’s Party (formerly Kampuchean People’s Revolutionary Party) in coalition with National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia (nationalist-royalist), 1993-present
2) Kampuchean People’s Revolutionary Party (consisting of former Party of Democratic Kampuchea members), 1979-1993
3) Party of Democratic Kampuchea (formerly Communist Party of Kampuchea or Khmer Rouge), 1975-1979
Socialist International presence: none
Communist parties: Cambodian People’s Party
Important notes:
1) Khmer Rouge (Red Khmer) refers to a succession of Maoist parties in Cambodia. In 1951 the communist government of North Vietnam formed the People’s Revolutionary Party of Cambodia. In 1966 the name of the party was secretly changed to the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), but only top-echelon cadres were notified of the new name. In 1968 the Khmer Rouge launched an armed insurgency throughout Cambodia and eventually revealed itself to be the CPK. At the time, the CPK was also known as the Khmer Communist Party and the National Army of Democratic Kampuchea.
2) On April 17, 1975 the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, and instigated a four-year reign of genocidal terror that exterminated between 1.5 to 2.3 million, out of a national population of approximately eight million people. Between 1975 and 1979 the CPK was known as the Party of Democratic Kampuchea (PDK).
3) The Khmer Rouge regime was removed from power in 1979 as a result of an invasion from communist Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge persisted as a resistance army in both western Cambodia and Thailand until a peace agreement in 1996 prompted long-time Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot to officially disband the party. Pol Pot died in 1998, having evaded capture and justice for his genocidal regime. By February 2006, moreover, only three Khmer Rouge leaders had been tried and imprisoned.
4) Hun Sen, current Prime Minister of Cambodia, was a prominent figure in the Marxist-Leninist KPRP and is current leader of the successor party, the CPP. Hun Sen was also Prime Minister of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) between 1985 and 1989, Prime Minister of the State of Cambodia between 1989 and 1993, and Co-Prime Minister of the restored Kingdom of Cambodia between 1993 and 1997, at which point he seized exclusive power in a bloody coup d’etat. When the Khmer Rouge regime was “toppled” by the Vietnamese military invasion (“Vietnam’s Vietnam War”) in 1979, Hun Sen was also appointed foreign minister of the PRK from 1979 until 1990, with a short interruption in the mid-1980s.
5) Many members of the ruling CPP/KPRP are former Khmer Rouge cadres who escaped to Vietnam after opposing the regime’s genocidal destruction of Cambodian society. Hun Sen was an Eastern Zone Khmer Rouge cadre based near the Cambodian-Vietnamese border. Political opponents have accused Hun Sen of being a puppet of Vietnam’s communist government.
6) FUNCINPEC constituted the political and armed anti-communist resistance against the Vietnamese-installed PRK. Its armed wing was known as the Sihanoukist National Army. Prince Norodom Ranariddh is current chair of FUNCINPEC. He was Co-Prime Minister of Cambodia from 1993, when the monarchy was restored after a thirty-three-year interregnum, until 1997, when he was deposed by “ex”-Khmer Rouge Hun Sen.

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Type of state: Absolute monarchy based on Islamic Sunni fundamentalism, also known as Salafism or Wahhabism
King of Saudi Arabia (Head of State and Government): Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud: August 1, 2005-present
Socialist International presence: Political parties banned
Communist parties: Political parties banned
Important notes:
1) King Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, progenitor of the currently ruling House of Saud, established the modern Saudi Arabian state by subduing other regional states to form a unified kingdom in 1932.
2) Banned political parties include the Communist Party of Saudi Arabia (CPSA), founded in 1975. The CPSA maintained close relations with other Arab communist parties and was a distinctly pro-Soviet party. The CPSA traces its origins to the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM) in Saudi Arabia, originally known as the National Renewal Front, founded in 1954, and renamed as the National Liberation Front (NLF) in 1958. The NLF held membership in the larger Arab National Liberation Front and communists operated within the NLF as the Organization of Saudi Communists. The Saudi regime persecuted the CPSA and only released its prisoners in the early 1990s in exchange for the party’s promise to dissolve itself.
3) Other banned parties in Saudi Arabia include the Green Party of Saudi Arabia and the Arab Socialist Action Party (ASAP), which, like the CPSA, traces its origins to the ANM. The Saudi regime persecuted the ASAP and only released its prisoners in the early 1990s in exchange for the party’s promise to dissolve itself.
4) The ANM was founded in the late 1940s by George Habash, who was also Secretary General of the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) between 1967 and 2000. The ANM as a distinct political movement was a spent force by 1970 but many of its adherents embraced Marxism-Leninism and infiltrated or formed other parties throughout the Arab world, including the Arab Socialist Union in Egypt, Syria and Iraq; the PFLP and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Communist Action Organization in Lebanon; Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman; Yemeni Socialist Party in communist South Yemen and the “post-communist” reunified Republic of Yemen; and the Progressive Democrats in Kuwait.

Kingdom of Thailand
Type of state: Constitutional monarchy with multiparty system
Prime Minister of Thailand: Abhisit Vejjajiva (Democrat Party, royalist, with support from ex-members of People’s Power Party): December 17, 2008-present
King of Thailand (Head of State): Bhumibol Adulyadej: June 9, 1946-present
Communist government:
1) For Thais Party (reorganized elements of banned People’s Power Party (social democratic), Thai Nation Party (center-right) and Neutral Democratic Party (populist)): 2008
2) People’s Power Party (contains “former” members of Communist Party of Thailand; widely perceived as continuation of Thai Rak Thai Party): 2008
3) Interim Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont (retired general, father was high-ranking communist): 2006-2008
4) Thai Rak Thai Party (contains “former” members of Communist Party of Thailand): 2001-2006
5) People’s Party (socialist): 1932-1944, 1946, 1948-1957
Socialist International presence: none
Communist parties: none
Important notes:
1) Formed by billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra in 1998 and banned in 2007, the Thai Rak Thai Party (TRT) was populist in orientation, promoted center-left policies, and contained many factions, including “former” members of the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT), such as Prommin Lertsuridej, who was Prime Minister Shinawatra’s Minister of Energy. The TRT government, first elected in 2001, was overthrown in a military coup in 2006. The People’s Power Party, which won the most seats in the December 2007 parliamentary election, is considered by some observers to be a proxy for the TRT. On February 28, 2008, after 17 months of exile, deposed PM Shinawatra returned to Thailand, where he received a hero’s welcome. The Associated Press reports: “Cabinet members from the People’s Power Party are expected to defer to the former leader, undermining the authority of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej. Hours after Thaksin arrived from Hong Kong, the finance minister announced that the government would consult him for economic advice.” The head of both the TRT and PPP is Surapong Suebwonglee, a former communist rebel. Thailand’s Constitutional Court banned the PPP and two allied parties on December 2, 2008, forcing non-executive members of the PPP to reorganize under the For Thais Party banner.
2) General (ret.) Surayud Chulanont, who in collaboration with the military-backed Council for National Security led the post-coup interim government of Thailand between 2006 and 2008, previously conducted operations against the People’s Liberation Army of Thailand, the armed wing of the Communist Party of Thailand. Ironically, Surayud’s father Lt. Colonel Phayom Chulanont defected from Royal Thai Army to join the CPT, evenutally becoming a member of the party’s Central Committee and Chief of Staff of the PLAT.
3) In 1932 a coalition of civilians and military officers with a socialist orientation seized power under the banner of the People’s Party in what was then known as Siam. The first People’s Party Prime Minister Phraya Manopakorn Nititada attempted to implement an economic nationalization plan devised by Pridi Phanomyong, but was overthrown in a counter-coup. General Phraya Phahon Phonphayuhasena, however, restored the People’s Party rule between 1933 and 1938, as did Field Marshal Plaek Pibulsonggram between 1938 and 1944, during which time the government took on a semi-fascist hue. Pridi Phanomyong was briefly prime minister in 1946, while Field Marshal Pibulsonggram returned to power between 1948 and 1957.
4) Founded in 1968, the Patani United Liberation Organization is one of several insurgent groups fighting for the independence of the largely Muslim provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala. In 2005 the Thai Prime Minister was granted emergency powers to quell the insurgency in the troubled states.
5) The Communist Party of Thailand’s membership was primarily ethnic Chinese and its policies were pro-Beijing. The party was banned in 1952. In the late 1970s the CPT’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army of Thailand (PLAT), boasted between 11,000 and 12,000 guerrillas who appeared to be in a position to seize power from the government. After a 30-year insurgency, however, the People’s Republic of China established official relations with the Thai government and withdrew its support for the CPT, which was amnestied in 1982. The CPT’s activities tapered off in the 1990s, but some of its former cadres joined the mainstream Thai Rak Thai Party after its formation in 1998.

Lao People’s Democratic Republic (1949)
(formerly Kingdom of Laos, 1945-1975)
Type of state: Paleo-communist single-party dictatorship
Prime Minister of Laos: Bouasone Bouphavanh (Lao People’s Revolutionary Party): June 8, 2006-present
President of Laos: Lieutenant General Choummaly Sayasone (Lao People’s Revolutionary Party): June 8, 2006-present
Communist government:
1) Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, sole legal party, 1975-present
2) Lao Patriotic Front in coalition with monarchists, 1957-1959
Socialist International presence: none
Communist parties: Lao People’s Revolutionary Party
Important notes:
1) The Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) traces its origins to the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), founded by Ho Chi Minh in 1930, The ICP was completely Vietnamese at its inception but spread throughout French Indochina, establishing a Lao branch in 1936.
2) In 1955 the LPRP’s clandestine predecessor, the Lao’s People’s Party, was officially proclaimed at the first party congress. The LPP and the LPRP, however, maintained a clandestine existence until 1975, operating, instead, through fronts such as the Pathet Lao and legal parties such as the Lao Patriotic Front, which can be considered the Laotian equivalents of the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia and the Viet Minh and Viet Cong of Vietnam.
3) A Marxist-Leninist party, the LPRP follows the model of the Vietnamese Communist Party and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Beginning in the late 1980s the party introduced a limited market economy, lifted controls over state-operated enterprises and abandoned agricultural collectivization.
4) The Committee for Independence and Democracy in Laos (CIDL) is an insurgent group consisting of ex-army officers, representatives of the Hmong tribe and other Laotians opposed to the communist regime. The CIDL was responsible for several attacks against the government in 2004.

Mongolia (1921)
(formerly People’s Republic of Mongolia, 1921-1990; Chinese annexation until 1911)
Type of state: “Post”-communist multiparty state
Prime Minister of Mongolia: Sanjaagiin Bayar (Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party): November 22, 2007-present
President of Mongolia: Nambaryn Enkhbayar (Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party): June 24, 2005-present
Communist government:
1) Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, 1921-1996, 2000-2004, 2006-present
Socialist International presence: Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party
Communist parties: Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party
Important note:
1) On January 14, 2006, in a legislative coup, the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP) overthrew the coalition government of Democratic Party leader Tsakhiagiyn Elbegdorj and recognized MPRP member Miyeegombyn Enkhbold as the new prime minister.

Palestinian National Authority, including West Bank and Gaza Strip (1994)
Type of state: Multiparty state with democratically elected Islamo-Marxist government
Prime Minister of PNA: Salam Fayyad: (Third Way, centrist): June 15, 2007-present
President of PNA: Mahmoud Abbas (Palestinian National Liberation Movement, “Fatah”): June 15, 2005-present
De facto Prime Minister of Gaza Strip: Ismail Haniyeh (Islamic Resistance Movement, “Hamas”): March 29, 2006-present (dismissed as Prime Minister of PNA on June 14, 2007 by President Abbas)
Communist government:
1) Palestine Liberation Organization (consisting of Palestinian National Liberation Movement (center-left, nationalist), Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Palestinian People’s Party, Palestine Liberation Front, Arab Liberation Front (Palestinian branch of defunct Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party of Iraq (neofascist)), As-Sa’iqa (Palestinian branch of Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party of Syria (neofascist)), Palestine Democratic Union, and Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (far-left Ba’thist)), 1994-present
Socialist International presence: Palestinian National Liberation Movement (observer)
Communist parties: Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Palestinian People’s Party (formerly Palestinian Communist Party), Palestine Liberation Front, Palestine Democratic Union
Communist insurgency: Palestine Liberation Organization
Important notes:
1) The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was founded in 1994 on the basis of the Oslo Accords between the PLO and the Government of Israel. The PNA enjoys international recognition as the organization representing the Palestinian people. Under the name “Palestine,” it boasts observer status in the United Nations (UN), like the PLO since 1974. After the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, the PLO’s representation at the UN was renamed Palestine, engages in General Assembly debates without voting, and since 1998 has been recognized by Israel as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
2) The Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, is not a member of the PLO, but won enough votes in the January 2006 Palestinian election to form the government. However, in June 2007 Hamas seized Gaza Strip from Fatah, prompting President Abbas, who represents Fatah, to dismiss Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, who represents Hamas. Since that time Hamas has formed the de facto government of the Gaza Strip. Hamas is the Gaza Strip branch of the social revolutionary Muslim Brotherhood.
3) The Soviet Union and the Russian Federation have unwaveringly supported the PLO/PNA and opposed the national security of Israel.

People’s Republic of Bangladesh (1971)
(formerly East Pakistan)
Type of state: Multiparty state with democratically elected socialist government and history of military dictatorships
Prime Minister of Bangladesh: Sheikh Hasina Wazed (Bangladesh People’s League, Sunni Muslim): January 6, 2009-present, June 23, 1996-July 15, 2001
President of Bangladesh: Iajuddin Ahmed (independent, Sunni Muslim): September 6, 2002-present
Communist government:
1) Grand Alliance, consisting of Bangladesh People’s League, Jatiya Party, Jatiyo Samajtantrik Dal (socialist), Workers’ Party of Bangladesh (communist), and Liberal Democratic Party: 2009-present
2) Bangladesh Workers’, Peasants’, and People’s League (BAKSAL, merger of Bangladesh People’s League and Krishak Sramik Party), sole legal party: 1973-1975
Socialist International presence: none
Communist parties: Bangladesh National Awami Party, Bangladesh National Awami Party (Bashani), Bangladesh National Awami Party (NAP-Bashani), Bangladesh Workers’, Peasants’, and People’s League (BAKSAL), Bangladesh People’s League (Maoist), Communist Center, Communist Party of Bangladesh, Communist Party of Bangladesh (formerly Bangladesher Sarbahara Party), Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist-Leninist) (Barua), Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist-Leninist) (Dutta), Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist-Leninist) (Umar) with front Democratic Revolutionary Alliance, Democratic Proletarian Party, Democratic Workers’ Camp, Democratic Workers’ Party, Left Democratic Front, National Awami Party, National Awami Party (Muzaffar), National Socialist Party (Inu), National Socialist Party (Rab), National Unity Front, Peasants’ and Workers’ Emancipation Movement, People’s Forum, People’s Freedom League, People’s Solidarity Movement, Proletarian Party of Bangladesh, Proletarian Party of East Bengal (Maoist Bolshevik Reorganization Movement), National People’s Front (split from Workers’ Party of Bangladesh), Revolutionary Unity Front, Revolutionary Workers’ Movement, Socialist Party of Bangladesh (Khaleq), Socialist Party of Bangladesh (Mahbub), United Peoples’ Democratic Front, Workers’ Emancipation Movement, Workers’ Party of Bangladesh (Ali), Workers’ Party of Bangladesh (Menon), Workers’ and Peasants’ Socialist Party
Communist insurgency: Communist Union, East Bengal Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), East Bengal Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) (People’s War), Golden Bengal Communist Party, National Socialist Party-People’s Arm, New Revolutionary Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), People’s Freedom Force (split from Revolutionary Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist-Leninist)), Proletarian Party of Bangladesh (Kamrul), Proletarian Party of Bangladesh (Zia), Proletarian Party of East Bengal (Central Committee), Proletarian Party of East Bengal (Maoist Construction Center), Revolutionary Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist-Leninist); numerous Marxist and nationalist-Marxist insurgent groups in northeastern India operate bases in Bangladesh
Important notes:
1) Following the brief single-party socialist dictatorship of BAKSAL, the main descendant of which is the Bangladesh People’s (Awami) League (BPL), several military governments ensued between the assassination of Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975 and the restoration of multiparty democracy in 1990. Founded in 1949 as the All Pakistan Awami Muslim League, the BPL was a defecting faction of the All Pakistan Muslim League. The BPL played a major role in fomenting the Bangladesh Liberation War, which severed East Pakistan from West Pakistan, now known as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The BPL returned to power between 1996 and 2001 and again in 2009, under the leadership of Sheikh Hasina Wazed.
2) Founded in 1968 as the Communist Party of East Pakistan, the CPB joined the BPL in the nine-month-long armed insurgency for the liberation of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971. A Special Guerrilla Force under the command of the CPB, Bangladesh Students’ Union, which is a front for the CPB, and the leftist National Awami Party engaged in combat against the Pakistani Armed Forces. Communists participated in other units of the armed resistance, including the Freedom Fighters and the new Bangladesh Army. In short, the Bangladesh Liberation War was in part a failed communist revolution.
3) Following Bangladesh’s secession from Pakistan, the CPB’s former president, Moni Singh, became an elected member of the Advisory Council of the Provisional Government of Bangladesh. The CPB has supported the progressive policies of the successive governments of Bangladesh but simultaneously opposes “reactionary” tendencies. The CPB holds membership in the Coordinating Committee of Communist Parties in Britain, a bureau of the Communist Party of Britain.
4) The Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist-Leninist) (Barua) holds membership in the Left Democratic Front and the 11-Party Alliance. By contrast, the Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist-Leninist) (Dutta) is an underground party associated with the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement and the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organizations of South Asia. The Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist-Leninist) (Umar) is also an underground party and operates through its fronts, the Democratic Revolutionary Unity and the Bangladesh Students’ Federation.
5) Founded in 2001, the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organizations of South Asia includes the following Bangladeshi communist parties: Purba Bangala Sarbahara Party (Central Committee), Purba Bangla Sarbahara Party (Maobadi Punargathan Kendra), Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist-Leninist) (Dutta), Purba Banglar Communist Party-Marxbadi-Leninbadi (Lal Patakar), and Maoist Bolshevik Reorganization Movement, which holds observer status.

People’s Republic of China (PRC), including Hong Kong and Macau (1949)
Type of state: Paleo-communist single-party dictatorship
Premier of PRC: Wen Jiabao (Communist Party of China): March 16, 2003-present
President of PRC: Hu Jintao (Communist Party of China): March 15, 2003-present
Communist government:
1) Communist Party of China (CPC), with leadership role in United Front, consisting of Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang, China Democratic League, China Democratic National Construction Association, China Association for Promoting Democracy, Chinese Peasants’ and Workers’ Democratic Party, China Party for Public Interest, September 3 Society, and Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League, 1949-present
Socialist International presence: none
Communist parties: Communist Party of China
Important notes:
1) Following the Eighty-One Party Congress in Moscow, in 1960, where international communism’s long-range strategic deception was planned, the CPC and the restored/continuing Communist Party of the Soviet Union, together forming the Moscow-Beijing Axis, have been the primary instigators of Marxist revolution, international terrorism, regional wars, economic subversion, and cultural degradation in the West and elsewhere.
2) The so-called “Sino-Soviet Split” prior to the KGB-managed collapse of communism in Eastern Europe was a fiction designed to propagate the lie that the communist regimes in Moscow and Bejing were disunited. Since 2005 “post-communist” Russia and the PRC have implemented multi-branch military coordination by conducting joint exercises, a development that would have no doubt greatly alarmed the West during the First Cold War (1945-1991). The first exercise was called “Peace Mission 2005” and is scheduled for replication in 2006.
3) Notwithstanding the “capitalization” of the PRC economy since the neo-Maoist renewal of the 1980s and the rise of Chinese economic hegemony in East Asia, the CPC continues to affirm its commitment to a socialist China and the worldwide advance of communist revolution. Free trade between the capitalist West and communist China has placed, more than likely by design, the former in a position of economic subservience to the latter.
4) The CPC vigorously represses political dissent as witnessed in the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 and underreported peasant riots in Dongyang, in southeastern China, in 2005. The PRC’s communist regime also represses religious dissent, as witnessed in the ongoing persecution of “house church” Christians and other religious adherents outside the state-supported Three-Self Patriotic Movement, China Christian Council and Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. Religious groups must register with the State Administration for Religious Affairs, or its provincial and local counterparts, known as Religious Affairs Bureaus.
5) Chinese families are allowed by law to have only one child, a government policy that extends throughout the current Five Year Plan between 2006 and 2010. Forced abortions are government policy. The Internet is censored and public use regulated by government-issued identification cards.
6) In 1950 the People’s Liberation Army invaded and occupied Tibet, a country long claimed by Beijing as an integral part of China. Tibet was subsequently annexed by the PRC as the Tibet Autonomous Region. Tibet’s government in exile is known as the Central Tibetan Administration and has been based in Dharamsala, India, since 1959, after the demise of the Tibetan resistance movement. The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is the head of Tibet’s exiled government, which is not currently seeking full independence for Tibet but a special administrative status similar to that held by Hong Kong and Macau. The Dalai Lama is a popular figure at interfaith conferences, and Tibetan independence is a cause célèbre for many non-communist leftists, Buddhists, New Agers and theologically liberal Christians worldwide.
7) The United Front provides a veneer of democracy in China, but members of these minor parties are chosen by the CPC and operate through the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, which existed prior to the founding of the PRC.
8) Under Beijing’s “One Country, Two Systems” policy, multiparty systems exist in the Special Administrative Regions (SAR) of Hong Kong and Macau, previously colonies of the United Kingdom and Portugal. These party systems developed before the integration of each European colony into the PRC in 1997 and 1999, respectively. The Chief Executive of each SAR is elected by the region’s Election Committee, the members of which are appointed by the communist-controlled Central People’s Government in Beijing. Following an election, the Chief Executive is then appointed by and accountable to the Central People’s Government. The Chief Executive must be nonpartisan. Members of each SAR’s legislative council may openly affiliate with political parties.

Republic of China, or Taiwan (1949)
Type of state: Multiparty state with resurgent elements of past nationalist single-party dictatorship
Premier of ROC: Liu Chao-shiuan (Chinese Nationalist Party): May 20, 2008-present
President of ROC: Ma Ying-jeou (Chinese Nationalist Party): May 20, 2008-present
Socialist International presence: none
Communist parties: communism banned
Important notes:
1) The Chinese Nationalist Party (“Kuomintang,” KMT) emerged from the moderate, democratic socialist Revolutionary Alliance that overthrew the Qing Dynasty in the 1912 Xinhai Revolution. One of the founders of the KMT was Chinese republican revolutionary Sun Yat-Sen. While living in exile in Japan in 1914, Sun established the Chinese Revolutionary Party, but resuscitated the KMT in 1919. In 1923 the republican government of China sought but was denied recognition from the West. As a result, the KMT leadership turned for support to the Soviet Union. Soviet advisers, including Communist International (Comintern) agent Mikhail Borodin, arrived in China and reorganized the KMT along Leninist party lines, a structure that endured into the 1990s. Under instructions from the Comintern, the Communist Party of China (CPC) cooperated with the KMT by forming the First United Front between 1926 and 1927. Soviet advisers founded a political school to train KMT propagandists in methods of mass mobilization. In 1923 Chiang Kai-shek, one of Sun’s lieutenants in the Revolutionary Alliance, traveled to Moscow for several months of military and political studies.
2) Following the death of Sun Yat-sen, General Chiang Kai-shek emerged as the KMT leader and launched the Northern Expedition in 1926 to defeat the northern warlords and unite China under the party. He halted briefly in Shanghai in 1927 to purge the Communists who had been allied with the KMT, which sparked the Chinese Civil War.
3) Together with the People First Party and Chinese New Party, the KMT forms what is known as the Pan-Blue Coalition, which leans towards Chinese reunification under the Republic of China. The KMT is similar to Singapore’s long-ruling People’s Action Party in that it is a conservative and nationalist party with socialist and Leninist origins. The Pan-Blue Coalition favors political rapprochement and economic linkages with the Peope’s Republic of China. By contrast, the center-left Pan-Green Coalition, which consists of the Democratic Progressive Party, Taiwan Solidarity Union, and Taiwan Independence Party, leans towards Taiwanese independence.
4) A Taiwanese Communist Party existed between 1928 and 1931, and a communist Taiwanese People’s Party between 1927 and 1931. A number of civic and leftist groups are allied under the Pan-Purple Coalition.

>Latin America File: Chavez oil deal finances Ortega’s November presidential bid in Nicaragua

> Need a whistling emoticon here . . . Latin America’s Red Axis is consolidating its power.

Chávez plays oil card in Nicaragua
By Tim Rogers Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
May 05, 2006

MANAGUA, NICARAGUA – Venezuela’s populist president Hugo Chávez has been accused of using his country’s oil wealth to help elect like-minded leaders in Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, and Nicaragua. But there’s been little evidence, until now.

A cooperation agreement signed last week between Nicaragua’s Sandinista leader – and longtime US nemesis – Daniel Ortega and Mr. Chávez is being touted by many here as an initiative to sell oil to Nicaragua on credit, allowing the country to invest more in poverty-fighting projects. Critics call it a blatant attempt to buy the Nov. 5 presidential election for Mr. Ortega.

“Central America is important for Chávez because the rest of his influence is concentrated in the Andean countries [of South America],” says Michael Shifter, vice president for the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue. Mr. Shifter says Chávez is clearly on a mission to challenge US influence in the region, but that he also appears genuinely concerned with helping the poor – two traits that don’t necessarily contradict one another. “This shows a larger ambition, and he is focusing his resources on Nicaragua and calculating that Ortega has a chance to win [elections in November].”

In the past few years, Chávez has made high-profile deals to sell discounted oil to Central American and Caribbean nations, and even to poor citizens in US states such as New York and Massachusetts.

But the deal struck between Chávez and Ortega comes during a grinding energy crisis, and before a pivotal election that could see another leftist leader come to power in the region. In the past year, energy shortages here have led to power-rationing blackouts and transportation strikes. Under the agreement, Venezuela will accept 60 percent of payment within 90 days of shipment, while the remaining 40 percent will be paid off over 25 years at 1 percent interest, including a two-year grace period.

The deal could be one of the most important real-world applications to date of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), a Latin American integration initiative started a year ago by Cuba and Venezuela to counter US efforts to promote hemispheric free-trade integration. ALBA promotes the principles of social and economic justice, but so far is known more for its symbolism than concrete action.

Yet the pact is gaining steam, with newly elected Bolivian President Evo Morales signing on to ALBA in Havana this past weekend to much fanfare. On Monday, Mr. Morales also sent shockwaves throughout the energy sector when he announced that he would nationalize Bolivia’s gas reserves, the second largest in the region.

When in Venezuela last week, Ortega vowed to join ALBA if elected this November. But critics say the agreement between Chávez and Ortega, signed during Ortega’s visit, effectively means Ortega has joined ALBA early, undermining the legitimacy of the current Nicaraguan government, and using Venezuelan oil money to boost his campaign bid.

“This is just a sophisticated mechanism for Ortega to launder Venezuelan money for his campaign,” charged congressman Wilfredo Navarro, vice president of the incumbent Liberal Constitutional Party (PLC). “Forty percent credit is the same as 40 percent of the money that will disappear and end up in Ortega’s campaign.”

The Sandinistas, however, claim the pact with Venezuela is an example of how they offer solutions to problems that the pro-business government has been unable to resolve – a form of “governing from below,” which Ortega promised he would do when his revolutionary government was voted out of office in 1990.

Since that time, Ortega’s party has managed to consolidate enormous power in the legislative, judicial, and electoral branches of government, despite losing three presidential bids in the process. He’s currently polling third among Nicaragua’s presidential candidates, but is only six points behind the pro-business frontrunner and US favorite, Eduardo Montealegre.

Last month, the incumbent PLC accused Chávez of planning to finance Ortega’s campaign to the tune of $50 million – an allegation that was denied by both Ortega and Venezuela’s ambassador to Nicaragua.

President Enrique Bolaños, in statements to the local press, went as far as to warn Chávez that giving oil on credit to Sandinista mayors could constitute an electoral offense in Nicaragua.

Ortega maintains that the oil agreement is about helping the people of Nicaragua, rather than helping himself get elected. Yet the political implications of the pact with Chávez are obvious, and Ortega isn’t afraid of playing that card.

“Where is the United States when Bolaños needs help resolving problems with oil prices?” Ortega demanded last September, following Chávez’s initial promise to broker a deal with the Sandinistas. “The yanquis had hundreds of millions of dollars to invest in the war in Nicaragua; hundreds of million of dollars to kill Nicaraguans. But where is the US when Nicaragua has to start rationing energy?

“Chávez has an alternative, a proposal that’s being implemented,” Ortega added.

The US government, for its part, maintains that its commitment to Nicaragua’s economic and social development is “longstanding, regardless of political affiliation,” says US Embassy spokeswoman in Managua, Preeti Shah. “Since 1990 the United States has provided the people of Nicaragua with more than $1 billion with programs designed to improve health, education, trade and development, as well as democracy and the rule of law.”

The Chavez-Ortega pact has led to the creation of a Nicaraguan-Venezuelan oil firm, Alba Petróleos de Nicaragua, which will be managed by Nicaragua’s Sandinista-controlled municipal government association, known as AMUNIC.

Patricia Delgado, executive director of AMUNIC, says that the agreement is still “in the beginning stages of analysis,” and that the logistics are still being worked out.

She estimates that the first shipment of oil could be made in October, but admits there are a lot of external factors at play. But once the company is up and running, she says, it could generate some serious income for the local governments.

“This will strengthen the autonomy of municipal governments and facilitate local development,” Ms. Delgado says. “The municipalities can’t wait for the central government, we have to keep moving forward and advancing with whomever will take our hand.”

Sandinista congressman and hardliner Bayardo Arce agrees that the initiative will strengthen his party’s leadership. “We are trying to offer answers on the municipal level, but when we return to govern the country, we will start to offer more integral answers,” he said, after returning from Venezuela to help negotiate the oil deal.

Political analyst Carlos Fernando Chamorro says the Sandinistas should wait until the oil is distributed before they take too much credit for resolving the countries problems. “There is still a lot that is not clear about this agreement, and as long as the oil isn’t coming, it remains just a campaign promise.”

Link: The Christian Science Monitor