>USA File: President Bush addresses American Legion National Convention, compares Islamic terrorists with Nazis and communists

>As veterans, you have seen this kind of enemy before. They are successors to fascists, to Nazis, to communists and other totalitarians of the 20th century. And history shows what the outcome will be. This war will be difficult, this war will be long, and this war will end in the defeat of the terrorists and totalitarians and a victory for the cause of freedom and liberty.

— President George W. Bush, American Legion National Convention, Salt Lake City, August 31, 2006

Bravo! Hear that Putin? Hu?

Link: FoxNews.com

>Latin America File: Mexican Revolution 2: PRD officials issue strong condemnations against Calderon, reiterate plans for "legitimate" government

>We just hope there won’t be any need to shoot anyone.
— Rosario Ibarra, “human rights” activist who frequently shares stage with Obrador

We do not recognize Felipe Calderon as president, nor any officials he appoints, nor any acts carried out by his de-facto government.
— Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Leader, Alliance for the Good of All/Party of the Democratic Revolution

Communists never take no for an answer . . . and no one in the USA or Canada is prepared to deal with the consequences because “communism is dead.” North American Union, per the recommendation of the Council on Foreign Relations, after communist revolution in Mexico? I think not. The pictures in this blog are from an Obrador rally on August 28.

Mexico leftist to create parallel gov’t
By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer
Tue Aug 29, 5:12 PM

ETMEXICO CITY – Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, convinced he won’t be awarded the presidency, has vowed to create a parallel leftist government and is urging Mexicans not to recognize the apparent victory of the ruling party’s Felipe Calderon.

While his party lacks the seats in Congress to block legislation, Lopez Obrador can mobilize millions to pressure his conservative rival to adopt the left’s agenda — or to clamp down and risk a backlash.

Both scenarios are possibilities as the former Mexico City mayor lays out plans to create his own government to rule from the streets, with the support of thousands who are already occupying protest camps throughout downtown Mexico City.

Some predict his parallel initiative — which Lopez Obrador’s supporters call the “legitimate government” — could turn those protest camps into the core of a violent revolt, especially if the government tries to shut it down.

Such violence broke out in the southern city of Oaxaca after Gov. Ulises Ruiz sent police to evict striking teachers. Outraged citizens’ groups joined the protests, setting fire to buildings and public buses, seizing radio and TV stations and forcing the closure of businesses in a city known throughout the world as a quaint tourist destination.

“Everything we do, from property taxes to permits to natural resources, will go through the ‘legitimate government,'” said Severina Martinez, a school teacher from Oaxaca camped out in a tent in Mexico City’s main Zocalo plaza. “We won’t have anything to do with the official government.

“Some supporters took out a newspaper ad Tuesday, calling on Lopez Obrador to set up his own treasury department and said all Mexicans “should channel federal revenues to the new treasury department.

“Lopez Obrador is encouraging his followers to disobey Calderon, whose 240,000-vote advantage was confirmed Monday by the country’s top electoral court. The seven magistrates stopped short of declaring Calderon president-elect, but they have only a week to declare a winner or annul the election.

“We do not recognize Felipe Calderon as president, nor any officials he appoints, nor any acts carried out by his de-facto government,” Lopez Obrador said after the court ruling, which he claims overlooked evidence of fraud in the July 2 elections.

Lopez Obrador’s Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, increased its number of congressional seats in those elections and became the second-largest bloc, behind Calderon’s National Action Party, on Tuesday as new lawmakers were sworn in.

But it holds only a quarter of the seats — not enough to block legislation, especially if Calderon forges a likely alliance with the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. That alliance would hold a majority in each house of Congress.

Lopez Obrador has ruled out negotiations with what he calls the “spurious” and “imposed” government. Because PRD legislators fear crossing him or his fervent followers, they can’t cut deals to get their own legislation approved, making them even weaker.

“There is no possibility that we federal legislators in Congress will start any dialogue with the government,” said PRD Senate leader Carlos Navarette, considered one of the party’s moderates. “We will never forget that the leader and director of the Mexican people’s action and the left is Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

“Lopez Obrador’s plan is to have his government help the poor, oppose privatizations and make the news media — which he has accused of ignoring him — more “truthful and objective.

“It’s not clear how he plans to do that, but his supporters are already planning to hold an alternative swearing in ceremony to rival the official inauguration on Dec. 1.

People close to Lopez Obrador say he is assuming the role of his hero, 19th century President Benito Juarez, who led a roving, “unofficial” presidency from 1863 to 1867 during the French invasion, before driving out the invaders and executing the French-installed Emperor Maximilian.

“Juarez ran the government from a carriage and restored the republic,” said Rosario Ibarra, a human rights activist who frequently shares the stage with Lopez Obrador at his rallies. “We just hope there won’t be any need to shoot anyone.

“So far, protesters have only scuffled with police. Some fear the movement could turn violent, although Lopez Obrador says it will remain peaceful.

The administration of PresidentVicente Fox hopes it will all just boil down to some fiery rhetoric and posturing.

“We think this is a symbolic, political act that has no validity in the affairs of state,” Fox’s spokesman, Ruben Aguilar, said Tuesday. Asked about Lopez Obrador’s plan to declare himself head of state, Aguilar noted that “in this country, everyone is free to say whatever they want.

“There is no question that Lopez Obrador is taking his “legitimate government” or “government in resistance” — the exact title has yet to be determined — very seriously.

Asked whether Lopez Obrador would wear some version of the presidential sash during his swearing-in ceremony, PRD spokesman Gerardo Fernandez accused reporters of poking fun at the candidate. He also upbraided those who spoke of plans for an “alternative government.”

“What Andres Manuel has suggested is not an alternative president,” Fernandez said. “It will be a legitimate government with a legitimate president.”

Link: Yahoo.com

>Final Phase Backgrounder: First Secretary of the Belarus section of the continuing CPSU affirms existence of the Soviet Union in 2006

>In The Perestroika Deception (London: Edward Harle, 1995, 1998), KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn writes of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s public abandonment of the monopoly of power in 1991: “Although the end of the Party’s monopoly is proclaimed, the Party apparatus remains in being and is still run mainly by the same old-timers [Oleg Shenin, Gennady Zyuganov, et al]. The Party apparatus, though less visible, will continue to provide guidance to Party members in the reformed institutions. The Party not only retains a vast organization, but has long experience, including periods of illegal operation under the Tsarist regime and in those territories which fell under German occupation in the Second World War. It will have no difficulty in adjusting to the environment of a fictional ‘multi-Party system’ which in practice it and the strategists will control” (page 206).

The legal basis for the continued existence, or restoration, of the USSR rests on the 1922 Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, originally signed by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Transcaucasian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, and the Byelorussian and Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republics. According to both Leonid Shkolnikov, First Secretary of the Belarus Section of the continuing CPSU, and Oleg Shenin, Chair of the continuing CPSU and supporter of the August 1991 “hardline” communist coup, the founding document of the USSR remains legally in force. Even though the other coup plotters and supporters are on the same team as Mike (“I’ll Always Be a Communist”) Gorbachev and the other “reform” communists, to this day the Stalinists in the continuing CPSU reject the treaty’s public termination on Christmas Day, 1991, which paved the way for the USSR2, the Commonwealth of Independent States. Shkolnikov’s comments below were delivered at the 15th International Communist Seminar (ICS), sponsored by the International Communist Movement and the Workers’ Party of Belgium in May 2006:

All of this means that the USSR continues to exist not just de-facto as a real remaining economic unity, as a united territory of all the Soviet people, as a fact of undying self-consciousness of the Soviet people with their mutual language of communication – Russian and with the Soviet socialist mentality, but also de-jure. It would be sufficient just to rebuild its state structures, by overcoming the bourgeois delusions and by coming back to the socialist path of development.

Under conditions of stabilization of the bourgeois power it will be extremely difficult to achieve, but the Soviet people under the leadership of a single, united and truly Leninist Bolshevik Communist party of the Soviet Union should be able to do that – for the sake of his own future as well as for the future of the whole planet.

Link: International Communist Movement

In this blogsite we alternately refer to the “restored” or “continuing” CPSU and the “restored” or “continuing” Soviet Union, as if the status of these political entities is uncertain. On the one hand, the CPSU and the Soviet Union never ceased to exist in 1991, both maintaining a phantom-like existence during the period of perestroika, or “restructuring,” which extended well into Western Europe with the advance of the European Union, Global Green Gorby’s “New European Soviet.” In that sense, both the CPSU and the Soviet Union are “continuing.” On the other hand, the reemergence of the CPSU, which occurred in 2004 with little notice in the West, and the reemergence of the Soviet Union, which is the main objective of the continuing CPSU, permits one to speak of a “restored” CPSU and a “restored” Soviet Union that dispenses with the charade of the Commonwealth of “Independent” States.

Delegates to the 15th ICS, of which the CPSU is a member, are pictured above. Western communists, as can be seen, are very much aware of the “continuing/restored” CPSU and its plans to resurrect the new/old Soviet Union. The inhabitants of the West have been profoundly deceived by the last 15 years of history.

>USSR2 File: Putin’s September visit to neo-communist South Africa first-ever visit by Russian head of state; bolster alliances with SA and Angola

>After pouring men, money and munitions into southern Africa for at least three decades, the USSR2 is now openly consolidating its strategic alliances with the neo-communist regimes in South Africa and Angola

Vladimir Putin to visit South Africa
25 July 2006

Russian President Vladimir Putin is to visit South Africa for the first time in September this year, Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma told journalists in Pretoria on Monday.

Dlamini-Zuma was speaking at an “inter-sessional” meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee on Trade and Economic Co-operation (Itec), a platform for the South African and Russian Federation governments to discuss political and economic relations between the two countries.

The minister, accompanied by Russian Minister of Natural Resources and Itec co-chair Yuri Petrovich Trutnev, announced that Putin would be in South Africa on a three-day working visit from 4 to 6 September.

The purpose of Putin’s visit would be to “look into our relationship in general” as well as into global issues, Dlamini-Zuma said.

She added that several agreements worth “hundreds of millions of dollars” would be signed during Putin’s visit.

A business forum, scheduled to run parallel to the Russian president’s visit, would also be held among South African business people and their Russian counterparts.

“Investment is a key issue, and we are putting in more effort to strengthen the co-oporation between us,” the minister said.

A delegation from South Africa’s Department of Minerals and Energy would travel to Russia in a few weeks’ time to explore opportunities in that country’s gas sector.

“This is the sector we are more interested in,” Dlamini-Zuma said, while noting that South Africa and Russia were exploring trade and investment in a number of spheres, including minerals and energy, banking, science and technology, transport and agriculture.

Monday’s meeting between Dlamini-Zuma and Trutnev looked at progress made so far in implementing agreed trade deals between South Africa and Russia, and identified constraints that needed to be ironed out.

SouthAfrica.info reporter and BuaNews

Link: SouthAfrica.Info

Putin to visit Angola in September
Last Updated (Beijing Time): 2006-07-27 14:06

Russian President Vladimir Putinwill visit Angola in September this year, visiting Russian Minister of Natural Resources Lury Trutneu Petrovich said on Wednesday.

This announcement came after the minister attended a meeting held in South Africa, at which South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said Putin is scheduled to visit South Africa on September 4-6 to pay the first visit by a Russian head of state to the rainbow nation.

At a joint news conference after Petrovich’s meeting with Angolan Planning Minister Ana Dias Lourenco, Petrovich told the journalists that Putin’s visit will boost existing bilateral cooperation.
The two ministers reviewed the bilateral cooperation in law and financial fields and discussed the signing of an accord aimed to deepen their relations that started in 1975, when Russia was Soviet Union.

Lourenco considered as positive the Angola-Russia cooperation that gained momentum with the visit of Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos to Russia in 1998.

Link: China Economic Net

>Communist Bloc Military Updates: Deputy Commander of Russian Air Force: "All cruise missiles hit their targets"

>Russian Strategic Bombers Launch Series of Cruise Missiles
Created: 24.08.2006 15:32 MSK (GMT +3)
MosNews

Russian strategic bombers launched a series of cruise missiles during command and staff exercises at a northern testing ground, a senior Air Force official said Thursday.

According to the RIA Novosti news agency, during a 10-hour flight, two Tu-160 and two Tu-95MS from strategic long-range aviation units, designated by NATO as Blackjack and Bear-H, respectively, successfully hit targets and performed a number of tasks, including in-flight refueling.

“All cruise missiles hit their targets,” said Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky, deputy commander of the Russian Air Force.

He added that six Tu-22M, or Backfire-C, long-range bombers simultaneously conducted successful missions with bombardment and missile launches at the Guryanovo testing ground in southern Russia, and at Emba, a testing ground that Russia leases from Kazakhstan.

Link: Moscow News

>Asia File: Nepalese monarchy capitulates to Maoist insurgents; party documents reveal plan to dominate interim government

>In June 2006 the Nepalese monarchy capitulated to the decade-old Maoist insurgency in that country by admitting the rebels into an interim government to be assembled by April 2007. Maoist chairman Prachanda, pictured at left in propaganda poster, has given no assurances that the rebels will disarm. A draft constitution produced by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), moreover, reveals the party’s plan to dominate that government by occupying one third of the seats in the Constituent Assembly, as well as exercising an influence in the selection of another third of the assembly’s representatives:

Therefore, we sovereign Nepalese people, through a broad national political convention of the democratic revolutionary forces, hereby annul the existing Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal 1990 and promulgate and enforce the Interim Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal 2006 for the period until another democratic constitution is created through an elected Constituent Assembly with proportionate and inclusive representation of all classes, nationalities, regions, gender and communities.

Part 4: Interim Legislature

3. The broad National Political Convention shall constitute an Interim Legislature as follows:

a) One third representatives from the Seven Political Parties, totalling 101

b) One third representatives from the CPN (Maoist), totalling 101

c) One third representatives from civil society, professional organizations and special personalities of the country who participated in the Democratic Movement, totaling 101. Their selection shall be made through mutual understanding between the Seven Political Parties and the CPN (Maoist).

While selecting representatives, attention shall have to be given to proper inclusion of class, nationalities, regions, gender and other communities.

In this way, the total number of members in the Interim Legislature shall be 303.

Link: Maoist Information Bulletin

The solidarity between the insurgents of the CPN(M) and the Communist Party of India (Maoist), which controls one quarter of territory in India, demonstrates that the second most populous country in the world is ripe for the communist axe. Don’t expect the MSM to discuss the ramifications of the fall of Nepal to neo-communism for the Indian subcontinent. In the communique below, found at the same link as above, the two parties expressly deny any fundamental division in ideology or intent:

The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and the Communist Party of India (Maoist) jointly re-assert their firm commitment to proletarian internationalism, mutual fraternal relations, on the basis of MLM. All tactical questions are being adopted in the respective countries are the sole concern of the parties operating there. Both parties will seek to learn from the positive experiences of the other party as also the experiences of the Maoists who comprise the ICM.

While doing so we shall continue debates on ideological, political and strategic issues on which we differ in the true democratic traditions of the international communist movement. These debates and discussions will take place bilaterally and occasionally, publicly. Such differences are inevitable as struggles in the sphere of ideas are inevitable in a class society, which, as Engel’s said, is a reflection of the class struggle in society.

Lately a section of the media has tried to blow out of proportion differences that have been expressed by the two parties publicly. It is in the interests of the reactionaries that Maoists divide and split continuously. It is then no wonder that a section of the media has sought to exaggerate the differences in India and Nepal.

The two parties once again re-assert their firm unity in the spirit of proletarian internationalism while continuing healthy debates and discussions on issues on which we differ.

>Breaking News: Turkish F-16 jets attack PKK targets in N. Iraq, US Maj. Gen. William Caldwell denies knowledge of Iranian shelling

>The pro-Soviet Islamic theocracy in Iran and the semi-Westernized, secular Islamic state of Turkey have intriguingly combined to annhilate the Marxist- Leninist-nationalist Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). The plight of the Kurds is but a sub-subplot in the endless Middle Eastern war narrative. The PKK’s obvious communist orientation is evident in the party’s logo, above.

Turkish F-16 Jets Carry out Strikes Against PKK Targets in N. Iraq
8/24/2006 Cihan News Agency

Turkish jet fighters have commenced air strikes against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PPK) bases in northern Iraq.

F-16 jets carried out air strikes against targets in the Kanimasi and Snaht regions in northern Iraq.

Army officials stated that the F-16 jets which took off during the night had inflicted serious casualties on the PKK.

In addition to the air strikes, Turkish security forces are continuing their operations along the Iraqi border.

The U.S. government is looking into allegation of Kurdish reports of a joint Turkish-Iranian operation against the PKK in northern Iraq.

Speaking in Baghdad, spokesman for the U.S. and its allies in Iraq Maj. Gen. William Caldwell stated that there had been shelling in northern Iraq. “I’m not sure exactly where the shelling came from. So I’d be hesitant to say exactly who was responsible for it,” the US general said.

Link: KurdishMedia

If Maj. Gen. Caldwell has no intelligence re. Iranian shelling of Kurdish positions in northern Iraq, then he should read the following article from the British press:

Kurds flee homes as Iran shells Iraq’s northern frontier
Michael Howard in Qandil Mountain
Friday August 18, 2006

Turkey and Iran have dispatched tanks, artillery and thousands of troops to their frontiers with Iraq during the past few weeks in what appears to be a coordinated effort to disrupt the activities of Kurdish rebel bases.

Scores of Kurds have fled their homes in the northern frontier region after four days of shelling by the Iranian army. Local officials said Turkey had also fired a number of shells into Iraqi territory.

Some displaced families have pitched tents in the valleys behind Qandil Mountain, which straddles Iraq’s rugged borders with Turkey and Iran. They told the Guardian yesterday that at least six villages had been abandoned and one person had died following a sustained artillery barrage by Iranian forces that appeared designed to flush out guerrillas linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who have hideouts in Iraq.

Although fighting between Turkish security forces and PKK militants is nowhere near the scale of the 1980s and 90s – which accounted for the loss of more than 30,000 mostly Turkish Kurdish lives- at least 15 Turkish police officers have died in clashes. The PKK’s sister party in Iran, the Kurdistan Free Life Party (Pejak), has stepped up activities against security targets in Kurdish regions. Yesterday, Kurdish media said eight Iranian troops were killed.

Rostam Judi, a PKK leader, claimed yesterday that no operations against Turkey or Iran were being launched from Iraqi territory. “We have fighters across south-eastern Turkey. Our presence in Iraq is purely for political work.”

Frustrated by the reluctance of the US and the government in Baghdad to crack down on the PKK bases inside Iraq, Turkish generals have hinted they are considering a large-scale military operation across the border. They are said to be sharing intelligence about Kurdish rebel movements with their Iranian counterparts.

“We would not hesitate to take every kind of measures when our security is at stake,” Abdullah Gul, the Turkish foreign minister, said last week.

There has been sporadic shelling of the region since May but officials worry that concerted military action against PKK bases in Iraq could alienate Iraqi Kurds and destabilise their self-rule region, one of few post-invasion success stories. Some analysts say Ankara and Tehran may be trying to pressure Iraq’s Kurds, afraid that their de facto independent region would encourage their own Kurdish population.

Khaled Salih, the spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government in Irbil, said: “We condemn the shelling and urge the Iraqi government to demand the neighbours to respect our sovereignty.”

Despite its support base in Turkey’s impoverished south-east, the PKK is regarded by Ankara, Washington and the EU as a terrorist organisation. Mr Judi said the PKK was seeking a peaceful and democratic solution to the Kurdish issue in Turkey, and would welcome mediation from the US or Iraq’s Kurdish leaders.

Last week, the Iraqi government said it had closed offices run by PKK sympathisers in Baghdad, and another office was shut by Kurdish authorities in Irbil.

The US is also to appoint a special envoy to find a solution to the PKK problem, but that may not be enough. Ilnur Chevik, editor of the New Anatolian newspaper in Ankara, said: “There is huge public pressure on the Turkish government to take action.” But he doubted whether Turkish forces would mount a full-scale invasion.“The build-up of troops is designed to say to the Americans and the Iraqis, the ball is in your court.” Tehran was also taking advantage of the situation, he said, “to show Turkey that it was taking action against its shared enemy, while the US, Turkey’s ally, has done nothing”.

Meanwhile those displaced wonder when they can resume a normal life. “We know that the PKK are around here,” said Abdul-Latif Mohammed, who fled the village of Lowan with his family. “But they live in the mountains. So these bombs just hurt us poor farmers.”

Link: Guardian Unlimited

>Latin America File: Mexico’s Alliance for the Good of All leader Obrador calls for alternative "people’s government"

>Obrador’s call for the formation of an alternative “people’s government,” even more than his insistence upon a ballot recount, demonstrates that the Mexican Left, along with its allies in the communist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela, are determined to challenge the legitimacy of Mexico’s social democratic bourgeois elite.

When does the armed insurgency begin? In Mexico City protestors supporting the Alliance for the Good of All, which includes the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and the festering teachers strike in the state of Oaxaca have already turned violent. Meanwhile, the governor’s election in another southern state of Chiapas, scene of the 1994 Zapatista rebellion, has produced results that please no one as the incumbent Jaime Sabines of the PRD and Jose Antonio Aguilar Bodegas of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party contest the election results.

Mexico’s opposition leader calls for alternative government
UPDATED: 13:19, August 21, 2006

Mexican left-wing presidential candidate and opposition leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called for the formation of an alternative “people’s government” on Sunday.

Speaking to more than 200,000 followers in the Zocalo, Mexico City’s central square, Lopez Obrador said his appeal was grounded in Article 39 of Mexico’s constitution, which endows the people with the right to change their government.

Lopez Obrador, representing the Coalition for the Good of All in the presidential race, said that the current right-wing National Action Party (PAN) government was trying to impose its presidential candidate, Felipe Calderon, by fraud.

Official results of the July 2 presidential vote showed that Lopez Obrador lost by a mere 0.58 percentage points to Calderon.

Lopez Obrador, who believes the election were massively fraudulent, called on citizens to participate in a Sep. 16 event, the National Democratic Convention.

He described the convention as “a space to make the people’s voices heard,” which would “unite all the Mexicans who are free and determined to once-and-for-all end this unbearable oppression, misery and injustice from which our nation is suffering.”

The country’s electoral authority, the Electoral Tribunal, is due to rule on the disputed election by Aug. 31, and by Sep. 6, it will have to announce a president-elect, who is due to take over from incumbent President Vicente Fox on Dec. 1.

The Tribunal’s decision would “define the depth and direction of our movement,” Lopez Obrador told supporters, “if it validates the fraud, our duty as citizens is to bring an end to the political system based on this democratic farce.”

Link: People’s Daily Online

>Breaking News: Iranian troops seize Romanian oil rig during Islamic regime’s massive military games; Iranians visit Russia for nuke energy training

>Following threats of a “multifaceted response” by August 22 to the United Nations Security Council’s demand for Iran to cease and desist its uranium enrichment program, the Islamic theocracy has made a move of sorts . . . although it’s not quite as apocalyptic as the return of the regime’s “Messiah,” the Mahdi. By seizing the oil rig off the coast of Dubai, Tehran might simply be demonstrating its impatience with the Romanians in the light of the company’s previous legal troubles in Iran. However, in the event of war with Israel and the USA, the platform could serve as a one-time, shoot-and-scoot missile base in the Persian Gulf. Just a thought . . .

Be mindful that pseudo-capitalist Romania is still part of the Not-So-Former Soviet Bloc, with which the Iranian mullahs are aligned.

Romanian oil rig occupied by Iranian troops
2006-08-22 12:56 GMT:
LONDON (AFX)

A Romanian oil rig off the coast of Iran came under fire Tuesday from an Iranian military warship and was later occupied by Iranian troops, a company spokesman said.

The Iranians first fired into the air and then fired at the Orizont rig, said GSP spokesman Radu Petrescu. Half an hour later, troops from the ship boarded and occupied the rig and the company lost contact with the 26 crew members shortly afterward.

Gabriel Comanescu, president of Grup Servicii Petroliere, which runs the rig, said that the Iranian military were “in flagrant breach of international rules.”

He said: “Aboard the rig there is a Romanian crew made up of 26 persons. Since 10.00 we have had no contact with the crew. We do not know if anyone is hurt.”

The Orizont rig has been moored near Kish island in the Persian Gulf since October 2005, he told the Associated Press.

GSP, also known as the Oil Services Group, is a private Romanian company established in 2004 which operates six offshore rigs that it bought from Romania’s largest oil company, Petrom.

Two of its rigs are operating near the Iranian coast in the Persian Gulf as part of a deal signed between Petrom, GSP and Dubai-based Oriental Oil Co.

The Romanian company was in Iranian courts earlier this year over a dispute involving another one of its oil rigs, Fortuna, the financial weekly Saptamana Financiara has reported. It was unclear whether Tuesday’s incident was related to legal issues.

The Orizont rig was built in 1987 and weighs 13,000 tons.

Link: Interactive Investor

The reality-challenged mouthpieces of Tehran, however, effectively deny that the military maneuvers, called Blow of Zolfaghar, the sword used by the Imam Ali, hold any eschatological significance.

Iran defense minister: Exercises not a threat
Aug. 22, 2006 2:10
By JPOST.COM STAFF

The broad-scale exercises that the Iranian army has been conducting over the last few days should not worry anyone, Iranian Defense Minister Mustafa Muhammad-Najar said Monday night.

“Not only doesn’t the defensive power of Iran pose a threat to any country in the world, but it is a source of stability and security in the region and in the whole world. In the 27 years of its existence, the Islamic Republic has not started any kind of confrontation or war, and it will not start one,” he said.

Link: Jerusalem Post

Meanwhile, Moscow’s Leninist cabal stirs the pot of world politics, endeavoring to provoke a response from the sleepwalking Western governments with their Nepman cheering squads . . .

Iran Delegation Visits Russia for Nuclear Energy Training
22.08.2006
MosNews

A delegation from Iran’s nuclear energy organization is expected to visit Russia Tuesday as part of the nuclear cooperation between the two countries.

The Iranians are expected to visit the Kalininskaya nuclear power plant to learn about its reactor operation and the training of personnel, Radio Free Europe reports.

Russian experts have been working to help Iran complete construction and operate the Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran.

Iran is due to give its reply on Tuesday to a package on incentives by world powers that aims to end a nuclear stand-off with the West, but Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed on Monday that Iran would continue its path on nuclear energy.

Link: Moscow News

>Middle East File: Israeli security cabinet minister, ex-spymaster Rafi Eitan: Brace for Iranian missile attack at any time, prepare bomb shelters

>Minister says Israel must be ready for any Iranian attack

Last update – 10:44 22/08/2006
By Reuters

A week after the end of the war with Hezbollah, Minister Rafi Eitan warned Tuesday that Israel should prepare for the possibility of a missile attack from Iran.

“We are liable to face an Iranian missile attack. The Iranians have said very clearly that if they come under attack, their primary target would be Israel,” Eitan, a member of the decision-making security cabinet, told Israel Radio.

Iran could fire missiles at Israel “therefore we must prepare for what could come, and prepare the entire country for a missile strike attack, to prepare all the civilian systems so they are ready for this,” Eitan said.

The radio said Eitan, a former spymaster, meant that Israel should prepare its bomb shelters to protect against a possible Iranian attack.

It quoted Eitan as alluding to the current international standoff with Iran over its uranium enrichment, saying if the situation deteriorates, Israel would be the first to come under attack.

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”

He has said Israel “should not assume” its cease-fire with Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas last week means an end to the crisis.

Hezbollah fired 4,000 rockets on northern Israel during the war.

Iranian cleric Amad Khatami has said that Iran would hit Tel Aviv with medium-ranged missiles if it came under attack. Arms experts say Iran’s Shahab-3 missiles are capable of striking Israel.

Eitan’s remarks also came as tensions rose between Iran and six world powers led by the United States, who have sought to persuade Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment program, with an August 31 deadline for Tehran to face possible sanctions from the United Nations.

Link: Haaretz

>Communist Bloc Military Updates: Russian military to repel mock foreign invasion in Far East, Putin to attend exercises

>

Since open war with the West is forever on the minds of the Soviet General Staff, the Russian Far East in general and Kamchatka Peninsula in particular are annual hotbeds of military activity.

Russian Army to Practice Repelling Invasion From the East — Paper
Created: 15.08.2006
MosNews

Russia’s military will practice repelling a foreign invasion during exercises this month in the country’s far east, the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta said Aug. 25.

According to the Agence France-Presse, the exercises will take place on the Kamchatka peninsula some time in the second half of August and will be presided over by President Vladimir Putin, the newspaper said, citing unnamed sources on the military’s general staff.

The aim is to improve cooperation between different arms of the military in “defending the coast from possible armed invasion,” the newspaper said.

“The ’conditional opponents’ are not abstract terrorists but the armed forces of real states,” the paper said.

Taking part will be 5,000 servicemen, 20 ships, nuclear submarines, artillery and air defense forces, the newspaper said.

The exercises will be a continuation of staff-level exercises that took place last month, the paper said.

The military will practice “repelling a coastal landing by foreign forces, cutting the naval communications of the conditional opponents and fighting submarines and airborne enemies,” the newspaper said.

Link: The Moscow News

>Breaking News: Obrador’s supporters turn violent during Mexico City protest

>The revolution begins . . .

Mexican protests turn violent
8/15/2006 10:16:00 AM –0400

MEXICO CITY, Aug. 15 (UPI) — Protests in Mexican City over presidential election results have turned violent with dozens of injuries, El Universal newspaper reported Tuesday.

More than 30 people were injured during a melee Monday between protesters and police who fired tear gas into the crowd.

Leading the demonstrations over the last few weeks was losing candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who lost by 240,000 votes to Felipe Calderon. A partial recount has indicated little change in the overall figure

The leftist Lopez Obrador maintains that the election was stolen by the center-right Calderon, who hails from the same party as current President Vicente Fox.

Link: United Press International

>Latin America File: Clinton Administration Justice Department quashed investigation into Raul Castro’s alleged cocaine smuggling operation

>While the world speculates about the future of communism on Cuba, the MSM, which is normally addicted to logic-overriding infotainment, publishes information on the communist-narcoterrorist nexus, exposed, among other places, in Joseph Douglass’ Red Cocaine. In the meanwhile the Left would have us believe that the CIA, not the KGB or the DGI, is responsible for the past glut of coke in the USA.

Raul Castro: Cocaine Connection?
August 14, 2006 9:55 AM
Brian Ross and Vic Walter Report:

Federal prosecutors in Miami were prepared to indict Raul Castro as the head of a major cocaine smuggling conspiracy in 1993, but the Clinton Administration Justice Department overruled them, current and former Justice Department officials tell ABC News.

The officials say Castro, as Cuban Defense Minister, permitted Colombian drug lords to pay for the use of Cuban waters and airstrips as staging grounds for smuggling runs into the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s.

“It was a major investigation involving numerous witnesses that was killed at the highest levels in Washington,” said a former Justice Department official with direct knowledge of the case.

“There were numerous national security and intelligence issues that would have made the case difficult,” said Tom Cash, the former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Miami.

Convicted Colombian drug boss Carlos Lehder of the Medellin cartel testified in a 1991 federal trial that he met twice in Havana with Raul Castro to arrange safe passage for cocaine flights over Cuban airspace.

The draft indictment, as described by a former Justice Department official who saw it, listed Raul Castro as the leader of a conspiracy involved in smuggling seven and a half tons of cocaine into the United States over a 10-year period. At least a dozen other Cubans were also to be indicted.

In 1989, a top Cuban General, Arnoldo Ochoa, was convicted by a Cuban court and ordered executed with three other military officers for their roles in drug smuggling.

Cuban waters continue to be used by drug smugglers, according to federal law enforcement officials.

“The smugglers know that the U.S. Coast Guard can’t go after them in Cuban waters,” one official said.

There was no immediate comment from the Cuban Interest Section in Washington, D.C. In the past, Fidel Castro has denied that his country or his brother had any role in protecting drug smugglers.

Link: ABC News

>Latin America File: Opinion piece by veteran Canadian journalist: Cuba and Venezuela to unite in one state under presidency of Hugo Chavez

>Gwynne Dyer is a Canadian journalist based in the United Kingdom. Although he naively refers to Comrade Chavez as “not a communist,” the scenario he describes below, regarding the union of Cuba and Venezuela into one state, is intriguing and not unlikely in view of the communist propensity for forcibly uniting countries into regional blocs, such as the old Soviet Union, the new Soviet Union, otherwise known as the Commonwealth of Independent States, and the “post”-communist Union of Russia and Belarus.

In the interview linked here former Venezuela Air Force Major Juan Diaz Castillo would diverge from Dyer’s characterization of Chavez as “non-communist.” The Bolivarian government of Comrade Chavez can safely be referred to as neo-communist since the Communist Party of Venezuela has been incorporated into the ruling coalition that completely dominates the National Assembly and is led by Chavez’s left-nationalist Fifth Republic Movement (MVR).

In the pic above Comrade Chavez cheers ailing communist godfather Castro, who hovered on the brink of death this past week but apparently did not quite make it over the edge . . . one cannot help but note that both men are wearing their favorite color.

Castro’s successor may not be a Cuban

By Gwynne Dyer
August 10, 2006

‘Are revolutions doomed to fail” asked Fidel Castro last November, addressing an audience of university students in a five-hour speech that was followed by a question-and-answer session that lasted until dawn. “When the veterans start disappearing, to make room for new generations of leaders, what will be done? Can the revolutionary process be made irreversible?”

Those questions haunt Cubans now, as the 79-year-old Maximum Leader recovers from surgery for “intestinal bleeding”, having temporarily handed power to his designated successor, his brother Raul. Some Cubans desperately hope that Fidel will survive; others hope just as strongly that he and his revolution will pass away. But the only people in a position to affect the outcome are the senior officials of the Cuban Communist Party. None of their alternatives is ideal.

Raul is not a long-term option: he is too old (75), and suffers from a drastic lack of charisma. There is a younger generation of dedicated Communists, people such as Vice-President Carlos Lage Davila and Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, but they aren’t exactly pop stars either. For almost half a century Cubans have been incited, flattered, thrilled and scolded by the incendiary rhetoric of the 20th century’s most articulate revolutionary. He is a hard act to follow.

But there is Hugo Chavez. Chavez’s drawbacks as a replacement for Fidel Castro are obvious: he is the President of another country, Venezuela, and he is not a communist. On the other hand, he is a tireless revolutionary orator in the Castro mode, he is the right racial mixture to appeal to the downtrodden in many Latin American countries – and he does have money. With oil at its present near-record price, about $A263 million in oil revenues is flowing into Caracas every day (half of it from the United States), and Chavez has already proved generous to his friends.

The Communist bosses would expect to go on making the real decisions in Cuba, of course. As hardened masters of the dialectic, they are bound to see Chavez as a naive, impulsive romantic. But a formal merger of the two countries, rather along the lines of the “United Arab Republic” that Egypt’s Gamal Abdul Nasser once declared with Syria, would have major advantages for a beleaguered post-Castro Communist regime in Havana.

The Cuban Communists fear indirect or even direct US interference in the country to destabilise the regime after Fidel’s departure. They worry out loud about the loyalty of a younger generation whose nationalism (which in Castro’s Cuba means anti-Americanism) is at war with its urgent desire for access to all the pleasures of consumerism. They worry more quietly about the millions of Cubans who really would like to see democracy in their country. Plenty of reasons, then, to consider the Chavez option.

A formal link between Cuba and Venezuela, with Chavez as joint president, would give the regime in Havana new ideological impetus by appealing to the old Bolivarian dream of a unified Latin America. It would give Cuba more access to Venezuelan oil, Venezuelan financial aid, and perhaps even the modern arms that Venezuela is now buying from Russia.

Chavez would be a sucker for such a proposal, partly because it would appeal to his own Bolivarian dreams and partly because it would drive the US Government crazy. As he said last year at a meeting of the Joint Commission on the Comprehensive Co-operation Agreement Between Cuba and Venezuela, “Cuba and Venezuela have joined together, and at this point, the world should know that our fate is sealed, that these two homelands, which deep down are one, are opening a new road at whatever cost.”

It isn’t just a pipe dream. The first person to suggest in public that the Cuban regime might be seriously considering such a union was Ana Faya, now a senior analyst at the Canadian Foundation for Latin America in Ottawa, but for 10 years, until she fled to Canada in 2000, an official of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party. “It wouldn’t be outrageous,” she said last October. “(But) it should take place while (Fidel) Castro is still in charge.”

If she is right, it will now have become an urgent priority in Havana.

Link: The Age

>Grey Terror File: UK-based terrorists planned to bomb US-bound commercial flights on August 16

>The obvious question as August 16 approaches: Did British police apprehend ALL of the terrorists?

Day of terror strikes was planned for August 16
15:03pm 11th August 2006

Terrorists were planning to unleash a series of deadly mid-air explosions on flights between London and America on August 16, it has been revealed today.

Members of the terror group, who were arrested in a series of raids by anti-terror police yesterday, were due to mount a dry run today to check if they could smuggle components for liquid explosives through Britain’s airports.

United Airline tickets dated next Wednesday were found by police at the home of one of the raided addresses.

One US intelligence official told today’s Evening Standard: “The bombers were a couple of days from a test, and a few days from doing it.”

The airlines targeted were United, American and Continental, which fly to New York, Washington and California.

Today the Bank of England named and froze the assets of 19 of the 24 air terror suspects arrested. The bank was acting under the instruction of Chancellor Gordon Brown and on the advice of the police and security services.

It acted under powers granted by the United Nations to tackle the financing of terrorism in the wake of the September 11 2001 attacks. Its action means it is a crime to make their money available without a licence from the Treasury.

The oldest of the named suspects is 35 and the youngest 17. Thirteen of them are from east London – nine from Walthamstow, one from Chingford, one from Leyton, one from the Limehouse and Poplar area and one from Clapton.

Four are from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and the other two are from Birmingham and Stoke Newington, north London.

The imam of Walthamstow mosque, where many of the suspects live, urged the Muslim community to remain calm and assist the police in their inquries. The unnamed imam added: “We’d like to remind people that the suspects are innocent until proven guilty.”

Meanwhile, a senior Pakistani government official said today that two British nationals arrested in Pakistan provided information about the alleged UK air terror plot.

The UK remains on a “critical” level of alert against terrorism and air passengers at UK airports are expected to face widespread disruption again today following the introduction of new anti-terrorism measures yesterday including a ban on hand luggage.

The plot, which was described as an attempt to commit “mass murder on an unimaginable scale” by blowing up passenger jets, may have been thwarted just days before it was due to be carried out.

Link: Daily Mail

>Grey Terror File: British police thwart terrorist plot to bomb as many as 10 US-bound aircraft and cause "mass murder on an unimaginable scale"

>

‘Airlines terror plot’ disrupted
August 10, 2006

A plot to blow up planes in flight from the UK to the US and commit “mass murder on an unimaginable scale” has been disrupted, Scotland Yard has said.

It is thought the plan was to detonate explosive devices smuggled in hand luggage on to as many as 10 aircraft.

Police are searching premises after 21 people were arrested. Home Secretary John Reid said they believed the “main players” were accounted for.

High security is causing delays at all UK airports.

The threat level to the UK has been raised by MI5 to critical after the arrests in London, High Wycombe and Birmingham.

Critical threat level – the highest – means “an attack is expected imminently and indicates an extremely high level of threat to the UK”.

Three US airlines are believed to have been targeted.

Mr Reid said had the attack gone ahead it would have caused a loss of life of “unprecedented scale”.

He said they were “confident” the main players were in custody, but neither the police nor government are “in any way complacent”.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, on holiday in the Caribbean, paid tribute to the the police and the security services.

He said they had tracked the situation for a “long period of time” and had “been involved in an extraordinary amount of hard work.”

“I thank them for the great job they are doing in protecting our country.

“There has been an enormous amount of co-operation with the US authorities which has been of great value and underlines the threat we face and our determination to counter it,” he said in a statement.

BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera said the plot was thought to have involved a series of “waves” of simultaneous attacks, targeting three planes each time.

He also said the plan “revolved around liquids of some kind”.

“Officials say the explosives would have been sophisticated and extremely effective,” our correspondent said.

Airport ‘crammed‘

Meanwhile, at Heathrow Airport incoming short-haul flights have resumed, but long-haul services are seriously delayed. Several outbound services have been cancelled.

The airport is crammed with thousands of passengers, while at Stansted more than 2,000 people are queuing to pass through customs.

Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson said the alleged plotters had intended “mass murder on an unimaginable scale”.

“We are confident that we have disrupted a plan by terrorists to cause untold death and destruction and to commit, quite frankly, mass murder,” he said.

“We believe that the terrorists’ aim was to smuggle explosives on to aeroplanes in hand luggage and to detonate these in flight. We also believe that the intended targets were flights from the United Kingdom to the United States of America.”

Police had spoken to a “good number of community leaders to make them aware that a major operation was under way,” he added.

Head of the Met’s anti-terrorist branch Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke said the investigation had had “global dimensions” and had seen an “unprecedented level” of surveillance.

The decision to take action had been taken on Wednesday night, he added.

According to BBC sources the “principal characters” suspected of being involved in the plot were British-born. There are also understood to be links to Pakistan.

BBC home affairs correspondent Andy Tighe said police sources had told him they had found “interesting items” which were being examined.

In other major developments:

* Houses in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, are evacuated by police

* US air marshals are being sent to the UK to provide extra air security

* The US Department of Homeland Security increased the threat level applied to US-bound commercial flights originating in the UK to “red” – the first time it has done this for flights coming in from another country

* The Home Office confirmed there had been meetings overnight and on Thursday morning of the Cabinet’s emergency committee, Cobra, chaired by Home Secretary John Reid, to discuss the terror alert

* A spokesman for Number 10 said Tony Blair had briefed US President George Bush on the situation during the night

BBC home affairs correspondent Daniel Sandford said despite the arrests the threat level had been raised “in case there is some other sub-plot, back-up plot around this that the police aren’t aware of”.

The Department for Transport set out the details of the security measures at UK airports.

Passengers are not allowed to take any hand luggage on to any flights in the UK, the department said.

Only the barest essentials – including passports and wallets – will be allowed to be carried on board in transparent plastic bags.

“We hope that these measures, which are being kept under review by the government, will need to be in place for a limited period only,” the statement said.

Link: BBC News

>USA File: Navy sailor suspected of spying for Russia, passed secrets to agents in Bahrain, Austria and Mexico

>

And so another episode of Cold War 2 unfolds with little more than a yawn from the West. Note that the suspect is 21 years old. He was only 6 when communism “collapsed.” He is a new recruit, no doubt enlisted by Comrade Czar Putin’s Chekist regime, unlike FBI traitor Robert Hanssen, who stole secrets on behalf of the KGB and its “post”-communist “successor” organization, the FSB.

Sources: Navy sailor suspected of spying for Russia
From Barbara Starr
CNN Washington Bureau
August 9, 2006

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A sailor facing espionage and desertion charges has been held at a Norfolk, Virginia, brig since March, the U.S. Navy said Wednesday.

Ariel Weinmann, 21, is suspected of having worked on behalf of Russia, said military sources close to the case.

He was likely to have had access to technical manuals and other material on how submarine systems work, Navy sources said. It’s not believed that anyone else in the Navy worked with him, they said.

The fire control technician third class, assigned to the submarine USS Albuquerque, attempted on three occasions to pass classified information to foreign agents, according to the charges against him.

Those times include March 2005 in Bahrain; October 2005 in Vienna, Austria; and March 2006 in Mexico City, Mexico, according to the charges.

In addition to the espionage allegations, Weinmann also faces desertion charges, which could result in the death penalty. He is accused of deserting in July 2005 during his first tour of duty.

A customs agent took Weinmann into custody March 26 at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport when he tried to re-enter the United States.

The case is the second one involving spying allegations by Russia against the U.S. military. The Defense Department has said it believes Russia collected information about American intelligence in Iraq from U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar, in 2003.

Link: CNN

>Red Terror File: Israeli official: "All the terrorists surrounding Israel" use Russian weapons; Lebanese communists allegedly fighting IDF

>The “collapse” of communism in Eastern Europe did not affect Moscow’s role as the world’s primary supplier of arms to terrorists, nearly all of whom are Marxist or Islamo-Marxist in ideology. In fact, the “collapse” of communism has permitted the neo-Soviet subversion apparatus to operate more stealthily than before.

Terrorists Fight Israel With Russian Weapons — Internal Security Minister
Created: 08.08.2006
MosNews

Israeli Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter has said in an interview that “all the terrorists surrounding Israel” are using Russian weapons, AFP reports.

“All the terrorists surrounding Israel are using Russian and Soviet-made arms — Kalashnikov assault rifles and Katyusha rockets,” Dichter told the Russian daily Vremya Novostei in an interview published Tuesday.

“We don’t have information about direct contacts between Hezbollah combatants and Russia, but we know quite well about Hezbollah’s direct contacts with Syria and Iran,” Dichter said.

Russian sales of anti-aircraft missiles to Syria and Iran have been heavily criticized by the United States and Israel.

Last week, the U.S. government imposed sanctions on Russian jetmaker Sukhoi and arms export monopoly Rosoboronexport, citing their weapons sales to Iran.

President Vladimir Putin defended the sale of anti-aircraft missiles to Syria in 2004, saying they posed no threat to Israel.

Link: Moscow News

Not surprisingly, neither Hezbollah nor Hamas are included on the USSR2’s terrorist list. This will be welcome news to the fascist-communist regime in Damascus where communists demonstrated against “US-Zionist” aggression in Lebanon:

In Damascus, the Syrian capital, about 500 Communist Party protesters staged a sit-in. They carried Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian and Hezbollah flags, and photos of Syrian President Bashar Assad and Nasrallah.

The protesters carried banners with slogans like: “Glory to the heroes of the resistance in confronting the outrageous U.S.-Zionist aggression.”

“It’s a clear and big plot led by the U.S. and Israel in the pretext of rebuilding the Middle East,” said Ibrahim Zgheir, 57. “Lebanon is an entrance and the plan would expand to other countries.”

According to the Lebanese Communist Party, seven members of that party and the related Union of Democratic Lebanese Youth (UDLY) have been killed in recent weeks, fighting against the Israeli Defense Force in southern Lebanon. The UDLY missive below clearly reveals the solidarity between Islamists and communists against the West and its outpost in the Middle East, Israel. It also glorifies the role of Lebanese communists in opposing Israel’s 1982 occupation of that country.

The Islamic resistance continues to make heroic sacrifices and score heroic victories. Our army is standing steadfast after its officers and men were targeted in what amounted to a cowardly assassination attempt. At this time duty to the homeland calls on us to join in the resistance struggle and stand up to the occupiers and their crimes. This is our duty as political parties, leftist and democratic patriotic forces, personalities, and fighters who once played an honorable part in defending the homeland against aggression, who in the Lebanese National Resistance Front in 1982 and afterwards performed acts of heroism that our people remember with pride and glory.

>Latin America File: Obrador’s supporters paralyze Mexico City, protest presidential election results

>Sorry loser leftists worldwide throw fits and threaten revolution whenever their campaigns of fraud and intimidation fail to secure elections. Mexican crypto-communist Obrador and his lackies are no different. Be assured, the neo-communist regime in Caracas and the paleo-communist regime in Havana are closely watching the fortunes of Obrador’s Alliance for the Good of All, which includes the Party of the Democratic Revolution.

In the picture here Obrador supporters camp outside the stock exchange in Mexico City.

More protests hinge on recount decision in Mexico election
By Christina Hoag
Saturday, August 5, 2006 – Page updated at 12:00 AM
McClatchy Newspapers

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s electoral tribunal is expected to rule this weekend on whether it will order a recount of the close presidential election that apparent loser Andrés Manuel López Obrador says was marred by fraud.

The tribunal’s announcement Friday cast a pall of trepidation over the capital city, where several thousand López Obrador followers have blockaded a main thoroughfare with tents since Sunday to pressure the court to make a prompt decision.

The ruling by the seven magistrates who make up the tribunal will determine whether the National Action Party’s Felipe Calderón will uphold the victory he claimed after the July 2 vote or whether a partial or complete recount must begin.

Calderón won the initial count by 244,000 votes, less than a percentage point, and he contends that the election was free and fair. López Obrador maintains that in 173 of 300 voting districts, the balloting was riddled with fraud and tabulation errors.

At stake is not just Mexico’s presidency, but also the possibility of wider protests by López Obrador’s supporters.

This week’s action caused major traffic gridlock, millions of pesos in losses for businesses and headaches for residents. But as officials of Lopez Obrador’s leftist Revolutionary Democratic Party met Friday night to strategize, some predicted more serious action, including blockades of highways, bridges, ports, airports and government buildings.

In a speech Thursday night to his supporters at the Zocalo, Mexico City’s historic square, where he has slept in a tent this week, López Obrador said he didn’t advocate violence but asserted that he’ll accept nothing less than a full recount.

“If the vote-by-vote recount is not accepted, we are not going to allow a spurious president,” he said. “Mexico does not deserve that. Our country does not deserve to be governed by a president without moral and political authority.”

President Vicente Fox exhorted citizens Friday to respect the rule of law. “Mexico is and must continue to be a plural country, a tolerant country,” he said. On Thursday, in an apparent reference to López Obrador, he said the law wasn’t a “custom-made suit.”

The tribunal, which has received reams of documents supporting both contentions, could agree to re-tally the contested ballots, all the ballots, some of the ballots or leave the count as is.

Supporters of López Obrador, who have come from across Mexico to sleep in the street the past six nights, enduring a freak hailstorm and torrential rain, said they were prepared to remain if the tribunal didn’t agree with their candidate.

“We’re sure there was fraud,” said Maricruz Velásquez, sprinkling scarlet sawdust on the ground to spell out the recount campaign’s slogan, “Vote by Vote.” A chant of “people united will never be defeated” sounded nearby. “We’re staying here however long it takes,” Velásquez said. “This is an important struggle.”

Link: The Seattle Times

>USSR 2 File: Finnish media: Russia expands border zone around Federation

>War prep? Border security in the USSR2 has since 2003, per Presidential Edict No. 960, signed by Comrade Czar Vladimir (“There’s No Such Thing as a Former KGB Man”) Putin, been under the direct control of the Federal Security Service.

Russia expanding border zone: Finnish daily
4.8.2006 at 9:05

Russia is currently significantly expanding its border zones all over the Federation, also on its border with Finland, the national daily Helsingin Sanomat reported in its Friday edition.

The border zone on the Russian border with Finland has so far been around 5 kilometres in width but is now being significantly widened all along the border. The new border zone can be up to 25 kilometres wide in Lapland, or an average of 10 kilometres wide on the Karelian Isthmus in the south, according to Moscow based papers.

Brigadier General Mikko Kirjavainen from the Finnish Border Guard said that Russia has not told Finland officially about changes to the border zone. Its practical consequences are also unclear but the Border Guard is currently gathering information about the new zone from different sources.

“This matter is so new to us too that we have not marked the limits of the new Russia border zone on our maps yet,” Gen Kirjavainen told Helsingin Sanomat.

Finland is currently decreasing the width of its own border zone on the Russian border in order to ease the life of local residents.

Link: NewsRoom Finland

>USSR2 File: Continuing Communist Party of the Soviet Union joins communists worldwide in condemning Israel, supporting Palestinians and Lebanon

>Adhering to the axiom “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” the Red International is unwaveringly devoted to the Islamic cause and opposes the existence of Israel. Note that both the continuing Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of Israel, which operates as a nationally self-denying cancer in Israel’s body politic, supported this declaration of solidarity with the Palestinians and Lebanese. Not surprisingly, the Lebanese Communist Party, Syrian Communist Party and communist Tudeh Party of Iran supported the statement too.

The banner above is taken from the website of the largest faction of the CPSU, operating under the leadership of Oleg Shenin and Gennady Zyuganov.

24.07.2006, Joint Statement: Solidarity with Palestinian
and Lebanese people
————————————————-
From: Communist Party of Greece, Monday, July 24, 2006
http://inter.kke.gr , mailto:cpg@int.kke.gr
==================================================

Joint statement by communist and workers’ parties
Solidarity with Palestinian and Lebanese people

We strongly condemn all aggressive acts by the Israeli
army in Gaza and Lebanon with tragically consequences for
the live of the Palestinian, Lebanese and Israeli people
but also for people from other countries.

We reject and condemn the blames and threats by U.S and
Israeli government addressed toward Syria and Iran and
against other countries of the region. These threats reveal
that the real aggressive and expansive force in the region
is Israel.

We strongly protest the US policy which encourages the
Israeli aggressiveness. We reject the hypocrisy shown by
the G8 leaders and the “equal distance” policy pursued
today by certain forces.

We are highly concerned about and warn of the great
dangers for a general spread of the crisis in the Middle
East, for a new civil war and for a massive imperialist
intervention in Lebanon under the pretext of “peace
building measures”.

The bombings against Lebanon follow the fierce offensive
in the Gaza Strip, the kidnapping of Palestinian political
figures, the attempt to eliminate the Palestinian National
Authority, to destroy the infrastructure and to sink the
Palestinian society into a state of chaos.

The raids in Gaza and Lebanon constitute new steps of the
“Greater Middle East” US and NATO policy which is directed
against the legitimate rights of the peoples, the popular
resistance, the progressive and peace loving forces.

The Israeli government, the only military nuclear power in
the region, demonstratively ignores UN Security Council
resolutions, violates agreements with the Palestinian
Liberation Organization, undermines the agreements by the
Palestinian organizations regarding the creation of an
independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, and rejects
the ceasefire proposals. It is also in violation of the
Fourth Geneva Convention, an international law that
prohibits collective punishment, “targeted” assassinations,
and destruction of the infrastructure of an occupied
territory.

We call upon all peace loving forces to strengthen their
solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples, with
the progressive forces fighting for peace in Israel and to
intensify the struggle for a political solution based on:

The immediate cessation of the attacks and withdrawal of
the Israeli army.

The respect of national sovereignty and territorial
integrity against any imperialist intervention under any
pretext.

The immediate release of the political prisoners.

The complete dismantling of the settlements and withdrawal
of the Israeli army from the territories occupied in 1967,
the establishment of a Palestinian state (Gaza Strip and
the West Bank) with its capital in East Jerusalem,
alongside Israel. The solution of the refugee question. The
return of all Palestinian refugees should be based on the
resolution of UN General Assembly No. 194 and according
also to the other UN resolutions.

Only pulling out Israeli soldiers from Gaza and Lebanon and
a just and viable peace would put an end to the bloodshed
and guarantee the security for all peoples of the Middle
East.

20 July 2006
The parties:
Communist Party of Albania
Communist Party of Argentina
Communist Party of Australia
Communist Party of Bangladesh
Communist Party of Belarus
Workers’ Party of Belgium
Communist Party of Brazil
Communist Party of Britain
New Communist Party of Britain
Workers’ Communist Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Communist Party of Bulgaria
Party of Bulgarian Communists (former Bulgarian Communist
Party “Georgi Dimitrov”)
Communist Party of Canada
Communist Party of Chile
Communist Party of Cuba
Communist Party of Bohemia & Moravia
AKEL, Cyprus
Communist Party in Denmark
Communist Party of Denmark
Communist Party of Equador
Communist Party of Egypt
Communist Party of Estonia
Communist Party of Finland
Communist Party of Macedonia
Unified Communist Party of Georgia
German Communist Party
Communist Party of Greece
Hungarian Communist Workers’ Party
Communist Party of India
Tudeh Party of Iran
Communist Party of Ireland
Workers’ Party of Ireland
Communist Party of Israel
Party of the Italian Communists
Jordanian Communist Party
Socialist Party of Latvia
Lebanese Communist Party
Socialist Party of Lithuania
Communist Party of Luxembourg
Communist Party of Malta
Party of the Communists, Mexico
Popular Socialist Party of Mexico
New Communist Party of the Netherlands
Communist Party of Norway
Palestinian People’s Party
Party of the People of Panama
Paraguayan Communist Party
Peruan Communist Party
Phillipine Communist Party (PKP-1930)
Communist Party of Poland
Portuguese Communist Party
Communist Party of Romania
Socialist Alliance Party, Romania
Communist Party of the Russian Federation
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Russian Communist Working Party Russian Party of
Communists
New Communist Party of Yugoslavia
Communist Party of Slovakia
Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain
Communist Party of Spain
Sudanese Communist Party
Communist Party of Sweden
Syrian Communist Party
Communist Party of Turkey
The Party of Labour, EMEP, Turkey
Communist Party of the Ukraine
Union of Communists of Ukraine
Communist Party, USA
Communist Party of Venezuela

Other endorsements:
Party of Popular Vanguard of Costa Rica
Peoples Liberation Front in Sri Lanka (JVP)
Communist Party, Sweden

*End*

Link: SolidNet