>Latin America File: Venezuela implements "21st century socialism," nationalizes foreign oil projects, follows footsteps of Putin and Morales

>Following the lead of the neo-Soviet Tyrant Vladimir (“There’s No Such Thing as a Former KGB Man”) Putin and Bolivian “mini me” sidekick Evo Morales, Comrade Hugo moves ahead with plans to nationalize (steal) foreign petroleum projects in Venezuela’s Orinoco River region. More than anything else, the nationalization of strategic resources in South America’s Red Axis, personified in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, and the re-Stalinization of the Russian economy indicates that the Communist Bloc is placing itself on war footing against the West.

Venezuela to seize foreign oil projects
NATALIE OBIKO PEARSON
February 26, 2007
Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez ordered by decree on Monday the takeover of oil projects run by foreign oil companies in Venezuela’s Orinoco River region.

Chavez had previously announced the government’s intention to take a majority stake by May 1 in four heavy oil-upgrading projects run by British Petroleum PLC, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips Co., Total SA and Statoil ASA.

He said Monday that has decreed a law to proceed with the nationalizations that will see state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, taking at least a 60 percent stake in the projects.

“The privatization of oil in Venezuela has come to an end,” he said on his weekday radio show, “Hello, President.” “This marks the true nationalization of oil in Venezuela.”

By May 1, “we will occupy these fields” and have the national flag flying on them, he said.

The law is expected to be published shortly in the government’s official gazette, and the companies will have four months from then to negotiate terms and conditions with PDVSA to decide whether they will take part in new joint ventures as minority partners, Chavez said.

Chavez did not detail how the government will pay for its increased share in the projects in which the companies are estimated to have invested some $17 billion.

The government has compensated companies reasonably in recent weeks for nationalizations it has carried out in other sectors, but those agreements were for assets valued far less than the oil projects.

The Orinoco projects are the only oil-producing operations in the country remaining under private control, which Chavez called “disgraceful.”

But he added that Venezuela doesn’t “want the companies to go … We just want them to be (minority) partners.”

Private companies pumping oil elsewhere in Venezuela submitted to state-controlled joint ventures last year, and few resisted because they were reluctant to abandon Venezuela, which has the largest oil deposits outside of the Middle East.

Chavez has been given special powers by congress for 18 months to issue laws by decree in energy and other areas, which he has used to nationalize the country’s biggest telecommunications company and electricity company in recent days.

Chavez has justified the nationalizations as necessary to give the government control of sectors “strategic” to Venezuela’s interests.

Source: YahooNews.com

Bolivia’s Trotskyist president, whose Movement Toward Socialism party is supported by the extraparliamentary Communist Party of Bolivia, nationalized that country’s natural gas industry last year, as the report below details. In a 2005 interview Morales affirmed:

I respect Cuba a lot. When it comes to Che Guevara, our only difference is the armed struggle—I don’t accept armed struggle. Maybe it was the way in the ’50s and ’60s, but we want a democratic revolution.

This is a typical response from all communists: “We prefer to have a democratic revolution, but if the imperialists interfere we will not hesitate to blow off their heads.” Morales continues:

There are many progressive leaders in Latin America right now; presidents like Fidel and Chavez, but also Kirchner [in Argentina], Lula and Tabarez Vasquez [in Uruguay]. The social movements are very strong and interesting and they move from union struggle, to local, to national struggle. If the 19th century belonged to Europe and the 20th century to the United States, the 21st century will belong to America, to Latin America. I have a vision of integration, like the European Union, with a single market and a single currency and with the corporations subordinate to the state.

He added: “We are the most militant force against neoliberal [capitalist] politics.”

Bolivia nationalizes natural gas industry
Updated Tue. May. 2 2006 6:26 AM ET
Associated Press

SANTA CRUZ DE LA SIERRA, Bolivia — Soldiers guarded natural gas fields and refineries after Bolivia’s leftist president ordered the nationalization of the sector, threatening to evict foreign companies unless they give Bolivia control over production within six months.

President Evo Morales announcement Monday fulfils an election promise to increase state control over Bolivia’s natural resources, which he says have been “looted” by foreign companies. It also solidifies his role along with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro in Latin America’s new axis of leftist leaders opposed to U.S. and corporate influence in the region.

About 100 soldiers took control of the Palmasola refinery in the eastern city of Santa Cruz, some carrying assault rifles, while others carried anti-riot gear. Most stood in front of the gates of the refinery, which is run by Brazil’s Petroleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras.

“Our mission is to guarantee the normal operations” of the facility, said unit commander Capt. Jorge Lenz.
Soldiers and engineers with Bolivia’s state-owned oil company were ordered to installations and fields tapped by foreign companies — including Britain’s BG Group PLC and BP PLC, Petrobras, Spanish-Argentine Repsol YPF SA, France’s Total SA and U.S.-based Exxon Mobil Corp.

The companies have six months to agree to new contracts or leave Bolivia.

“The looting by the foreign companies has ended,” Morales, Bolivia’s first Indian president, said in a speech from the San Alberto field in Santa Cruz operated by Petrobras in association with Repsol and Total SA.

Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera said troops were sent to 56 locations around the country.

The announcement follows a trend by oil- and gas-rich Latin American countries to exact a larger share of profits from extraction of the fossil fuels.

It comes as Ecuador argues with Washington over a new oil royalties law and less than a month after Chavez ordered the seizure of oil fields from Total and Italy’s Eni SpA when the companies failed to comply with a government demand that operations be turned over to Venezuela’s state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA.

Bolivia has South America’s second-largest natural gas reserves after Venezuela. All foreign companies must turn over most production control to Bolivia’s cash-strapped state-owned oil company, Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos, Morales said.

Multinational companies that produced 28 million cubic metres of natural gas daily last year in Bolivia will be able to retain only 18 per cent of their production, with the rest being given to YPFB, he said. Morales did not name the companies.

“We are monitoring the situation very closely,” said Bob Davis, a spokesman for the world’s largest oil company Exxon Mobil Corp., which has a 30 per cent interest in a non-producing field called Itau, which is operated by Total.

In Madrid, Spain’s government expressed “deep concern” about the decree to nationalize the hydrocarbons sector.

“The government hopes that in the 180 days period announced by the Bolivian president for foreign companies to regularize their current contracts, there is authentic negotiation and dialogue between the government and the different companies in which each other’s interests are respected,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Petrobras called the Morales’ decree an “unfriendly” action that took the company by surprise.

“Evo Morales’ decree was a unilateral measure adopted in an unfriendly way,” Petrobras President Jose Sergio Gabrielli told the official Brazilian news service Agencia Brasil in Houston where he was taking part in an international oil conference. “It obliges us to analyze very carefully our situation in the country.”

Morales said the government would begin negotiations immediately with the companies to make sure they are willing to comply, but said they could be stripped of their privilege to operate in Bolivia if they don’t sign new contracts within six months.

Source: CTV.ca

>Blogger’s Note: Iranian President Iwannajihad moonlights as cabbie

>I know what you’re thinking. Once Upon a Time in the West is way too serious. All this doom and gloom is depressing me too. We need some major blog humor.

Pictured here: Iranian President Iwannajihad moonlights as cabbie: “Look, man, I don’t drive to that part of Tehran. Take another cab or take a hike.”

>Communist Bloc Military Updates: Russian generals to meet US counterparts in Washington, discuss missile defense; Moscow to deploy new system

>A friendly warning from the Kremlin to the White House: “Push us, we’ll push you back.” Pictured here: Yuri Baluyevsky, General of the Army, Chief of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, and First Deputy Minister of Defence since July, 2004.

Russian generals to discuss USA’s missile defense plans
28.02.2007, 13.42

MOSCOW, February 28 (Itar-Tass) – A delegation of Russian military officials led by head of the Defense Ministry’s main department for international military cooperation Anatoly Mazurkevich will hold consultations in Washington on March 9 over problems of regional and global stability.

The Russian military will confer with U.S. army brass lead by Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman, an official from the Russian Defense Ministry told Itar-Tass on Wednesday.

“The main theme of the consultations is the U.S. decision to field global missile defense system facilities in Europe, and the necessity for Russia – caused by this decision – to examine the possibility of unilateral withdrawal from the treaty on liquidating medium- and shorter-range missiles, in order to ensure its security” the official said.

“Russian generals are expected to draw the U.S. partners’ attention to the fact that the deployment of a launch area on the European continent implies that advance U.S. army groups in Europe acquire strategic components, which they hitherto did not have,” he went on to say.

“Russia will also state that the missile defense facilities deployed near the Russian borders is viewed by Moscow as a strategic system, which, if boosted, will be able to exert considerable influence on the Russian deterrence potential,” the official noted.

The Russian delegation will note the fact that under the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty /INF/, just two countries – Russia and the Untied States – have no opportunities to have this class of missiles.

“But whereas the United States, protected from countries with unstable regimes by two oceans, is no great need for such weapons, the situation with Russia is quite different. Our country has a long land border it must protect, but it has no medium range missiles, which a number of neighboring states possess. It’s complete absurdity, which cannot last forever,” he said.

The Defense Ministry official reminded that the consultations in Washington will be held within the framework of the Mazurkevich-Edelman high-level group, set up by the previous Russian and U.S. defense chiefs Sergei Ivanov and Donald Rumsfeld.

“Given the importance of the present consultations, their results will be immediately reported to Russia’s military-political leadership,” according to the official.

Source: ITAR-TASS

With typical communist deceit and hypocrisy, the Kremlin intends to field its new generation of mobile missile defense in mid-2007:

First S-400 missile regiment to go on combat duty in Russia
12:51 27/ 02/ 2007

MOSCOW, February 27 (RIA Novosti) – The first air defense regiment equipped with new S-400 Triumf ground-to-air missile systems will be put on combat duty in the Moscow Region in the middle of 2007, a manufacturer said Tuesday.

The Military-Industrial Commission, which answers directly to the Russian president, meets Tuesday to consider prospects for a fifth-generation air-defense system and building aerospace defenses in the country.

“The [new] regiment will have more [missile] batteries than regiments currently equipped with S-300 air defense systems,” said Alexander Lemansky, chief designer at the Almaz Science and Production Association.

Lemansky said new S-400 systems considerably differ from S-300 systems by their effective firing range, firing capacity and other parameters.

S-300 (SA-10 Grumble) anti-aircraft missile system was designed to protect military and industrial facilities from mass air strikes. A missile launched from the system can travel at a speed of 2,000 meters per second and is capable of hitting a target at a distance of 150 km (93 miles) flying at a height of up to 30 km (19 miles) and at a speed of up to 10,000 km/h (6,215 mph).

“The effective firing range of the new [S-400] system is twice that of the previous S-300 [system] and its firing capacity is more than double,” Lemansky said.

First Deputy Prime Minister and former defense minister Sergei Ivanov, who oversees defense-related sectors and chairs today’s meeting of the commission, earlier said new S-400 Triumf ground-to-air missile systems were adopted for service in late 2006 and will be placed on alert duty later this year.

Source: Novosti

>Breaking News: Cops held as suspects in killing of Salvadoran politicans murdered in jail, Mara Salvatrucha riots in same facility

>Stop the presses. See our previous blogs on this subject, in which we detailed the possible involvement of the Latin American Left and its terrorist offshoots such as Mara Salvatrucha, a front for the communist FMLN in El Salvador, in the February 20 murder of Eduardo D’Aubuisson and two other ARENA colleagues. All of the slain were en route to the Central American Parliament, where they were deputies. Sinister and clandestine political forces are at work in Central America again. The masterminds behind the brutal slaying of the Salvadoran politicans clearly wish to remain undetectable.

Mara Salvatrucha gang members occupy the same jail in which the four high-ranking Guatemalan police officers/investigators, who allegedly confessed to the deadly deed, were incarcerated. The news items below notes: “The four police officers were arrested for the killings on Thursday and taken to the high-security prison at Cuilapa, occupied mostly by gang members, after their lawyer said that their lives were in danger at a detention center in Guatemala City.” Can anyone be faulted for asking: “For whom was that lawyer really working?”

Salvadoran President Tony Saca is currently meeting with President George Bush (both pictured here). During his White House visit Saca stated: “We talked about regional security and its importance, and also the combat to drug dealing and the combat to the gangs.” In light of Central America’s recent return to the political murders of the 1980s, apparently there’s much work to be done on these issues . . .

Suspects in deaths of Salvadoran politicians are murdered
The Associated Press
Published: February 26, 2007

CUILAPA, Guatemala: Four imprisoned Guatemalan police officers, important suspects in the grisly killings last week of three Salvadoran politicians, have been shot and killed in their cell, the police said.

Officers outside the jail in Cuilapa, 70 kilometers, or 40 miles, east of Guatemala City, showed reporters cellphone photos on Sunday of the bullet-ridden bodies of Luis Arturo Herrera, the head of the Guatemalan National Police organized crime unit, and three of his officers.

“It’s confirmed — they killed the four of them,” said Maria José Fernández, a spokeswoman for the national police. Fernández said she did not know who shot the prisoners.

Members of the violent Mara Salvatrucha gang also rioted in the prison, capturing five prison officials, the police said. However, it was unclear if the gang riot started before or after the killings.

The hostages were still being held late Sunday, as about 50 riot police officers were entering the prison.

On Feb. 19, assailants abducted and killed Eduardo D’Aubuisson — the son of El Salvador’s late rightist leader, Roberto D’Aubuisson — along with two other Salvadoran officials and their driver.

Their charred bodies were found along a road about 30 kilometers southeast of Guatemala City.

The three slain Salvadoran politicians represented their country at the Central American Parliament, which is based in Guatemala City and has 132 members representing five of the seven Central American nations. They were also members of El Salvador’s governing party, Arena.

The four police officers were arrested for the killings on Thursday and taken to the high-security prison at Cuilapa, occupied mostly by gang members, after their lawyer said that their lives were in danger at a detention center in Guatemala City.

Officials from Guatemala and El Salvador have espoused several theories about the killings of the politicians, saying they could have been a drug-related crime, a political vendetta or a case of mistaken identity.

Salvadoran police officials told reporters that the policemen had confessed to the crimes, while Guatemalan prosecutors said they had refused to speak.

The Salvadoran president, Tony Saca, said on Sunday before the suspects were killed that the case would not affect ties between the two nations, and promised that there would be a bilateral effort to get to bottom of the matter.

The FBI has been asked to help in the investigation.

The elder D’Aubuisson was embroiled in scandals revolving around the charge that he had founded death squads in El Salvador during the civil war, which lasted from 1980 to 1992. The squads were responsible for the kidnapping, torture and murder of tens of thousands of civilians.

The Mara Salvatrucha is involved in drug trafficking, kidnapping, extortion and other crimes. The gang was started in Los Angeles in the 1980s and now has tens of thousands of members throughout Central America.

Source: International Herald Tribune

>Asia File: Naxalite rebels blow up railway, kill four policemen in India; Tamil Tigers injure diplomats, Sri Lankan communists justify insurgency

>Naxalite rebels (pictured here) hold nearly one third of Indian territory and network with like-minded insurgents throughout south and southeast Asia, including Nepal, where last year Maoists were admitted into the government after a decade of civil war. The Naxalites represent the military wing of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).

Maoists blow up railway tracks, kill four policemen in India’s Bihar
New Delhi, February 27, 2007, IRNA

Naxalites shot dead four policemen and blew up tracks at two places in Bihar’s Lakhisarai district early today, police said.

Scores of naxalites belonging to the banned CPI (Communist Party of India-Maoist) swooped on a camp of eastern state of Bihar Military Police at Khaira village at around 1 am, shot dead four policemen and wounded three others, police said.

The naxalites looted one carbine, three self-loading rifles and ammunition before retreating, PTI reported.

Superintendent of Police S Malar Viji rushed to the spot with reinforcements, sources said.

The Maoist guerrillas blasted the railway track near the eastern cabin of Dhanauri station, about 20 km from Lakhisarai, on Kiul-Jamalpur section of Eastern Railway, DIG (Railway) Ajay Verma said.

They fired and exploded bombs to scare away the railway staff before blasting the track in a stretch of about two meters. They also uprooted the track at Urain station in a stretch of about 10 meters.

Several trains were stranded due to the blasts.

Superintendent of Railway Police (Jamalpur) Arvind Kumar also rushed to the spot with government railway police and railway protection force reinforcements, Verma said.

Source: Islamic Republic News Agency

Further south, across Palk Strait, the communist insurgency in Sri Lanka generates some collateral damage in the form of two injured foreign diplomats, who were caught in the crossfire between the Sri Lankan Armed Forces (SLAF) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Rather than accept responsibility, the LTTE allocates the blame to the SLAF for failing to properly protect the US and Italian ambassadors. Pictured here: Irasiah Ilanthirayan, LTTE military spokesman.

LTTE condemns GoSL for endangering the lives of foreign diplomats [TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 February 2007, 05:31 GMT]

Military Spokesman of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) Irasiah Ilanthirayan, expressing deep regret for the injuries caused to the foreign diplomats who landed in the military airfield of the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) in Batticaloa and the Weber Stadium where 23-3 Brigade Commander’s military headquarters is located, condemned the Government of Sri Lanka for having endangered the lives of foreign diplomats bringing them into the artillery launchpads inside the military zone without following diplomatic procedures.

“We immediately ceased the fire as soon as we were notified of the presence of foreign diplomats under artillery fire, by Mr. Marian Din, the UN official for coordinating security arrangments here in Kilinochchi,” Mr. Ilanthirayan said.

“We are shocked by the grave negligance of the security arrangments for the diplomats by the Sri Lankan government that has transported the delegation into the artillery launchpads amid the prevailing atmosphere of provocative artillery attacks.” LTTE’s military spokesman further said.

There is a procedure in practice, of informing the LTTE in advance, when foregin diplomats and NGO officials are scheduled to visit war zone. Liberation Tigers Liaison Officer for UN and NGO affairs gets informed with details of the officials and their belongings. The Sri Lankan military establishment has ignored the practice in Batticaloa, he charged.

“This is a simple procedure that has been intentionally ignored in Batticaloa by the Sri Lankan military.”

“We condemn the GoSL in strongest possible terms for seeking to sabotage LTTE’s relationship with the foreign missions and the International Community.”

“This is also a criminal act of failing to follow the procedures in place by the Sri Lankan military which is engaged in a self-proclaimed war in the entire Batticaloa district,” LTTE spokesman said.

The LTTE was responding to hostile artillery and mortar attacks Tuesday morning, he said.

The aircraft carrying foreign diplomats had landed in the military airfield of the Sri Lankan Air Force (SLAF) and two helicopters had landed inside the main military camp in Batticaloa city.

Source: TamilNet.com

Expressing solidarity with LTTE, Vickramabahu Karunarathne, a politician of the Trotskyist Nava Sama Samaja Party, has taken to the international speaker’s circuit to stump for Tamil Tiger terrorism. Comrade Vickramabahu, like all communists, rationalizes violence to justify “liberation”:

Atrocities of tigers are known to us and we never condone that. All liberation struggles are made with ferocity and terror. In spite of all such criticism LTTE is a liberation movement and it has given dignity and courage to the Tamil people. There can be no discussions without the LTTE. In that scenario, why have the global powers taken the side of the Mahinda regime which oppresses not only the Tamils and Muslims but also the poor masses in the Sinhala areas?

>Middle East File: Israel to hold first-ever nation-wide nuclear war drill; Syrians build up military in Golan, Iranians complete war games

>In the wake of last year’s war against Soviet-backed, Lebanon-based Hezbollah; Soviet client state Iran’s latest military exercises, in which Tehran flexed its missile muscles; and Soviet client state Syria’s latest military deployment near Golan, the Israeli government is preparing its citizens to face nuclear war. The USA, Canada, and Western Europe should follow the Israeli example and likewise prepare its citizens to survive the Fourth World War.

Like the Nazis, the restored Communist Party of the Soviet Union, under the leadership of August 1991 coup plotter Oleg Shenin, is implacably opposed to Israel. In a 2000 interview Chairman Shenin declared: “Zionism now is a force of a class character, it is the vanguard of world imperialism. It did played in the past, plays now and wants to play in future considerable part in enslavement of peoples, in building up the “new world order” – the regime of superexploitation and genocide of the working people of all nationalities. It’s a fact. Karl Marx characterised class essence of Zionism as mercantilised one, as financial oligarchy and now we see this more and more.” Russia, not Germany, is the world birthplace of anti-Semitism. Communism, not fascism, is the avowed enemy of nationalism.

By contrast, the Holy Bible, in Psalm 122:6, exhorts those who love and fear God: “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; they shall prosper that love thee.”

Pictured above: A signpost in the Golan Heights: Damascus, 60 kilometres away.

Israel to hold nationwide nuclear attack drill
Feb 26 11:03 AM US/Eastern

Israel will next month stage its first-ever nationwide drill simulating a nuclear and chemical missile attack on its cities, rescue services said Monday.

The exercise was initiated by the army’s homefront corps in the wake of last summer’s war in Lebanon and Iran’s calls for the destruction of the Jewish state and its controversial nuclear programme.

Israel suspects is Iran is aiming to develop an atomic bomb, but Tehran insists its programme is for civilian energy purposes.

The main scenarios which will be simulated are a massive rocket attack on cities as well as a “conventional and non-conventional missile attack,” Magen David Adom rescue services spokesman Yerucham Mandola told AFP.

During the drill — which will include army rescue forces, police, medical and firefighting services — air-raid sirens may be sounded across the entire country.

The Hezbollah militia fired over 4,000 rockets against northern Israel during the war last summer, killing more than 40 civilians and paralysing the region’s industry and economy.

During the 1991 Gulf War, Israeli citizens were equipped with gas masks out of fear of a chemical attack. None of the missiles fired from Iraq against Israel were equipped with chemical warheads.

Source: Breitbart.com

Pictured here: Syrian troops are well trained, but their military hardware is aging.

Syria deploys troops near Golan: Report
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Source: AFP

JERUSALEM • A reported Syrian troop build-up near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights has fuelled speculation in Israel about a future conflict, more than three decades after the two enemies last went to war.

Syrian armed forces appear to be moving closer to the armistice line as Damascus spearheads an unprecendented armaments drive, shrieked Israel’s Haaretz newspaper from its front page yesterday.

“The Syrian armed forces are being strengthened in a way unprecedented in recent memory with the help of generous funding from Iran,” wrote military affairs correspondent Zeev Schiff.

Brigadier General Yossi Beidatz, the head of military intelligence research, has also warned Syrian President Bashar Al Assad is preparing for conflict with Israel, possibly through Hezbollah, which fought a 34-day war with Israel last year.

Haaretz said the main thrust of Syria’s armaments drive was missiles and long-range rockets, with its navy being bolstered by an Iranian missile similar to one fired by Hezbollah, killing four Israeli sailors last summer.

Syria is also close to concluding a deal with Russia to procure thousands of advanced anti-tank missiles, of the sort Hezbollah used to such lethal effect against Israeli armour last year, Haaretz reported.

“It appears that the Syrians have moved forces closer to the border (armistice line) with Israel on the Golan Heights,” wrote Schiff, noting similar movements prior to the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

Three decades ago, a coordinated Egyptian and Syrian assault caught Israel totally off guard on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, triggering its deadliest conflict since independence in 1948.

Syria has test-fired ballistic missiles, such as a Scud-D surface-to-surface missile, which would put most of Israel within range, Haaretz reported.

Israel is still smarting from its deadly pounding by more than 4,000 Hezbollah rockets that killed some 40 civilians last summer.

But Defence Minister Amir Peretz was quoted by journalists as telling military officials to “avoid making unnecessary comments” on Syria and asking officers to steer clear of a “war of words” with Damascus.

“The situation in the field will be examined according to facts and the Israel Defence Force will prepare itself accordingly,” he was quoted as saying.

One aide, Amos Gilad, said he saw no immediate danger of war but that Syrian weapons purchases highlighted the need for Israel to remain combat-ready.

“The fact that Syria is strengthening its military capabilities does not mean we’re going to be attacked tomorrow but certainly we need to be prepared,” Gilad told public radio.

“There is no danger of war. There is no deployment of forces indicating that Israel would be threatened by an offensive tomorrow.” A northern command source agreed that Syria had beefed up its troops along the armistice line as Israel did following the outbreak of war in Lebanon.

“Since the end of the war, tension has remained high on both sides and at a much higher level than it was before the war. There is much more Israeli and Syrian daily military presence along the border today,” the official said.

But a source in the UN force in the Golan Heights charged with monitoring the armistice denied any Syrian troop build-up and lashed out an “alarmist Israeli media that repeatedly brings up the topic.”

Source: The Peninsula

Pictured here: Iran’s medium-range ballistic missile, Shahab-3B, with a range of 2,100 kilometres and warhead capacity of 990 kilograms. The Shahab is based on the North Korean Nodong-1, which is based on the Soviet SS-1 (NATO reporting name “SCUD”). Israel is within striking distance of the Shahab.

Iran’s military exercises start across the country
February 20, 2007

Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards ( IRGC) launched the three-day military drills on Monday across the country, conducting a series of missile tests, the state media reported.

The ongoing war game, dubbed Eqtedar (Grand), were being carried out in 16 of Iran’s 30 provinces. It has been reported that 20 brigades of Revolutionary Guards’ ground forces had joined the maneuvers and “the most advanced weapons” would be tested during three days.

“The drills started with the firing of short, medium and long- range missiles, and the Fajr-3, Fajr-5 and Zelzal missiles with various ranges will be fired during the three-day wargames,” the official IRNA news agency reported.

The Fajr-3 has a slightly shorter range, and the Fajr-5 can hit a target about 70 km away, while the Zelzal could cover a range of 100 to 400 km, according to the report.

“The purpose of the drills are aimed at maintaining IRGC’s different units’ combat readiness,” it added.

Commander of IRGC ground forces Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi said that the current Eqtedar maneuvers will be conducted in three stages, adding that the exercises would be the biggest conducted by the IRGC ground forces in the current Iranian year ( stated March 21, 2006).

Meanwhile, exercise spokesman General Nilforoushan, who didn’t give his first name, said in a state television that the troops would carry out offensive exercises with anti-helicopter and anti- aircraft weapons besides defense practice.

“Having military weapons with a range of up to 50 km was used to be our dream, but today we have rockets and missiles with a range of more than 200 km,” said the top officer.

This is the second time that Iran launched war games in the recent one month. Missile units of the air and naval forces of the Revolutionary Guards launched drills on Feb. 7, in order to test the country’s missile defense capability.

During the exercise, Iran test-fired a land-to-sea cruise missile and its newly imported Tor-M1 air defense missile systems.

Iran has regularly launched large-scale war games since the nuclear issue became the global spotlight three years ago.

Last November, Iran started a 10-day military maneuvers, dubbed “The Great Prophet 2”, during which the Revolutionary Guards also test fired ballistic Shahab-3 missiles with a range of more than 2,000 km.

Source: People’s Daily Online

>Latin America File: FSLN portrays Nicaragua as drug cartel victim, but allied with narco-terrorist FARC; Nicaragua’s top general Sandinista

>We are going to make the people up there [the United States] white, white with cocaine.
— Fidel Castro, President/Tyrant of Cuba; quoted by Timothy Ashby, “Nicaragua’s Terrorist Connection,” published by Heritage Foundation, March 14, 1986

The neoliberal [capitalist] economic model is a source of corruption, and to talk about privatization is to talk about corruption. We need to investigate [privatizations] and look for the problems and the crimes, if they were committed, and then take corrective measures.
— Daniel Ortega, President/Past Tyrant of Nicaragua; quoted in The Miami Herald, July 30, 2006

Revolutionary Nicaragua Becomes a Base for Narco-Subversion and Soviet-Sponsored Terrorism in the 1980s

In a previous blog we cited Joseph Douglass’ seminal work Red Cocaine (Atlanta: Clarion House, 1990) to demonstrate that in the 1960s the Communist Bloc established Cuba as the Western Hemisphere’s preeminent hub for communist terrorism, majoring in narco-subversion operations in collaboration with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. In 1979 the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), with Soviet and Cuban assistance, seized control of Nicaragua, enabling the Communist Bloc to establish a second base of narco-subversion. Since 1990 the Communist Party of Cuba, the FARC, the FSLN, and Latin America’s other leftist-communist parties have coordinated their revolutionary operations through the Sao Paulo Forum. Douglass describes Nicaragua’s role in the Communist Bloc’s narco-subversion offensive against the West below. According to Douglass, past Sandinista Interior Minister, current National Assembly deputy, and Maoist Tomas Borge (pictured above) coordinated the operation, which the Soviets cynically called Druzhba Narodov (“Friendship of Nations”).

Nicaragua’s participation in drug and narcotics trafficking into the United States [as official but secret policy of the Sandinista government] sprang from Raul Castro’s meeting with Humberto Ortega. The narcotics operation itself was placed under the Nicaraguan intelligence servce, with Tomas Borge, the Minister of Interior and head of the intelligence service, in charge of the operation, and his deputy, Frederico Vaughan, the chief of staff of the operation. Frederico Vaughan was indicted in 1986 in the US District Court, Southern District of Florida, along with Carlos Lehder, the Ochoa family, Pablo Escobar-Gaviria, and others on twenty-four counts of producing and smuggling cocaine into the United States, conspiracy, obstructing justice, and related crimes (page 102).

Baldizon’s debriefing by US officials is particularly revealing. From 1982 until his defection on July 1, 1985, Baldizon was the chief investigator of internal abuses within the Nicaraguan Ministry of Interior. In 1984, Baldizon’s office received reports that linked Interior Minister Tomas Borge with cocaine trafficking. Baldizon was instructed to investigate this as a compromise of a state secret. He thought this was a mistake, because he could not believe his government was involved in narcotics trafficking. Thus, he went to the chief of his office, Captain Charlotte Baltodano Egner, and asked her if it should not be investigated as a slander against the minister. Baltodano was taken aback and said that the office should not have received the report. The fact that Borge had involved the government in narcotics trafficking was highly classified, she explained, and known in the Ministry only to Borge, his assistant [Frederico Vaughan], the chiefs of police and state security, and to her. Outside the Ministry, it was known only to members of the FSLN’s National Directorate. Baldizon also provided additional details concerning Borge and cocaine trafficking and the use of the money “for mounting clandestine operations by the Intelligence and State Security Department outside Nicaragua.” Baldizon died in 1988, in California (page 103).

A Time magazine piece from December 1, 1986 covered a US federal grand jury’s indictment of Medellin drug baron Pablo Escobar Gaviria who was allegedly responsible for coordinating the smuggling of 58 tons of cocaine into the USA since 1978 and ordering the assassination of drug smuggler-turned-DEA informant Adler “Barry” Seal in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1986. Escobar was killed by Colombian police in 1993. Included in the indictment was Sandinista Interior Minister Borge’s assistant. “The others named with Escobar were the three Ochoa Vasquez brothers, Jorge Luis, Juan David and Fabio, who manage the ring’s distribution networks, as well as Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas, a former Colombian legislator who is suspected of financing terrorist attacks on his own government. The indictment names four low-level associates, including Federico Vaughan, a former aide to Nicaraguan Interior Minister Tomas Borge Martinez, who is accused of helping the cartel set up cocaine labs in Nicaragua. Using incriminating photos of Vaughan supplied by Seal, the Reagan Administration has accused Nicaragua’s Sandinista government of involvement in drug trafficking.”

A March 14, 1986 report by the Heritage Foundation revealed: “The Sandinistas also work closely with Cuba’s Castro regime in supporting terrorism and smuggling narcotics from Latin America into the United States. Drug trafficking is used not only to addict American society but to provide operational funds for terrorism. As a haven for terrorists on the mainland of the Americas Nicaragua represents a serious threat to the U.S. and to the growth of democracy and economic development in Latin America and the Caribbean.” Elsewhere in the report, the author Timothy Ashby states:

Sandinista involvement in international narcotics trafficking aims at subverting the U.S. through drug use and destabilizing other Western Hemisphere nations by financing revolution with narcotics profits against the West. Indeed, Fidel Castro has boasted: “We are going to make the people up there [the United States] white, white with cocaine.” The Cuban dictator reportedly coordinated this strategy with Tomas Borge and other Sandinistas during a 1982 meeting in Havana. The drug trade is part of a Soviet-Cuban-Nicaraguan strategy. Sandinista drug trafficking is handled by the Ministry of the Interior under Borge’s direct control. In 1982, this ministry ruled that all cocaine, precious metals, and U.S. dollars recovered by the Ministry’s Department of Criminal Investigations (DIC) must be sent to Borge’s office. The proceeds from the sale of this contraband is used to help finance international clandestine operations (Lima El Comericio, January 28, 1986, p. A2 16).

At the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana, the Sandinistas received their marching orders from Comrade Fidel and their Soviet masters. Ashby writes:

There the Sandinistas, the PLO, and others met to formulate a strategy for what they called ”the global revolutionary movement.” Three years later, Tomas Borge, now Nicaragua’s Interior Minister, was one of the 50 to 70 Sandinistas sent to Lebanon for training by Cubans and the PLO. Other Nicaraguan leftists received training at Pzx camps in Libya. PLO-trained Sandinistas took part in several terrorist operations in the Middle East during the early 1970s, includtng an attempt to overthrow the government of Jordan’s King Hussein.

US Senator John Kerry Shills for the Sandinistas

The Left, of course, denies everything and goes to great lengths to this day to frame the CIA–rather than the KGB, the Sandinista General Directorate of State Security (DGSE), or the Cuban General Intelligence Directorate (DGI)–for the USA’s cocaine epidemic. Indeed, communist sympathizer, Bonesman, and US Senator John Kerry, per a 2004 article by Dave Eberhart, tried to project the crimes of the FSLN onto the Contras through the propaganda of the Commission on United States-Central American Policy, a front for the International Center for Development Policy, itself a front for the Sandinistas, the Communist Party of Cuba, and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front in El Salvador. Eberhart contends: “Kerry feverishly honed a theory that the Contras were nothing less than a major hub in an international cocaine-smuggling operation. Elsewhere in the same report, Eberhart states: “Thickening the unsavory brew, the Washington Times then revealed that Kerry had concealed evidence of Sandinista drug trafficking and had deleted information from his staff report of the previous October to pin the blame on the Sandinistas’ U.S.-backed opponents.” On April 18, 1985 a few months after taking his Senate seat, Kerry and Senator Tom Harkin traveled to Managua and met President Ortega. The 1989 Kerry Committee report determined that “the Contra drug links included . . . payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.”

Are the Sandinistas Still Involved in the Drug Trade?

Pictured here: Colombian drug boat confiscated by Nicaraguan Navy.

The general drug-related corruption that pervades Latin America might reasonably lead one to conclude that Nicaragua’s neo-Sandinista government is still an integral component in the Communist Bloc’s narco-subversion enterprise. The fact that the FSLN and FARC are allied through the Sao Paulo Forum provides even greater evidence that all of these organizations are actively collaborating in the revolutionary subversion of the West. During the 1990s the Sandinistas experienced a number of defections by party members. For example, “ex”-Catholic priest/poet Ernesto Cardenal, who “objected” to Ortega’s authoritarian leadership but who now works for (authoritarian) Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s TeleSUR broadcasting network, complains bitterly of Comrade Dan’s sell out of “la revolucion”:

The Ortega-Murillo program is bursting with words of love, reconciliation, unity and religious mercy, but deep down there’s resentment, thirst for vengeance, arrogance and intolerance, behind them their hypocrisy, lack of ethics, and light pink insanity.

Daniel also joined forces with Cardenal Obando, who so hated and hurt Sandinismo, so much that he became a Cardenal. We’ve seen with speechless wonder their campaign by radio and TV as well as in large banners displayed everywhere: Obando, prince of reconciliation, the FSLN supports you. And also Daniel’s petition that the Nobel Prize for Peace be granted to that champion of anti-Sandinismo and patron of the contras. And we owe to Daniel that Obando’s protégé Roberto Rivas is presiding over the Supreme Electoral Council. Daniel changes sides in every election to make us believe he’s changed. Actually, there’s no truth in him. He betrayed the revolution, first by taking out of the Sandinista anthem the line that went “the yankee enemy of mankind” and then all of its lyrics, replacing it with a different music. He changed the red and black flag for a pink one.

Belying his demagogy with his actions, Daniel has fooled the Latin American left-wing leaders who believe he represents the left here. They may be deceived by distance, but we Nicaraguan Sandinistas may not.

Cardenal’s lament could very well be smoke and mirrors with the intent of diverting attention from the FSLN’s ongoing cozy relationship with the Latin America communist-terrorist left. Depending upon the political winds, an individual cadre’s position in the communist hierarchy, or the extent of the cadre’s knowledge of the Moscow-Beijing Axis’ long-range strategy, communists can be starry-eyed purists (like Cardenal) or vicious opportunists (like Ortega).

In spite of these defections, the FSLN still maintains its control over Nicaragua’s political power structures. Before their graceful retreat from open governance in 1990, the Sandinistas, as we have documented before, consolidated their power in the bureaucracy, military, police, and judiciary, in part, by privatizing assets confiscated the revolutionary government in the 1980s. In 1994 Marvin Alisky wrote: “However, Ortega warned the Congress (National Assembly) not to repeal the giveaway the Sandinistas achieved just before they left power. He threatened a civil war if these expropriations were repealed, and the UNO Congressional majority and Chamorro’s Cabinet backed down. The thousands of houses, land, and other property the Sandinistas gave to their leaders just before leaving office have remained in Sandinista hands.” Later, in 2000, Ortega established “El Pacto” with President Arnoldo Aleman of the Constitutional Liberal Party to prevent other parties from exercising any real influence in Nicaraguan politics. This was accomplished, as Father Cardenal laments, by stacking the Supreme Electoral Council with Sandinista sympathizers, such as Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo’s ally Roberto Rivas, and lowering the vote threshold by which Ortega could re-assume the presidency.

In a previous blog we reported that as of 2007 the FARC channels nearly 90% of all cocaine into the USA. Notwithstanding Sandinista propaganda such as the article below–which touts the Nicaraguan government’s commitment to cooperating with the USA in interrupting the “pink epidemic,” another term coined by the Soviet schemers in the 1960s–recent news items reveal that Nicaragua remains a major transshipment point between cocaine producers in Colombia and users in the USA.

The Nicaraguan military laments its inability to interdict the flow of cocaine along the country’s Atlantic coast and almost admits its own complicity in the drug trade. Captain Manual Mora, chief of Nicaragua’s Atlantic Naval Command states: “On the islands, entire communities provide logistics support for the narcos. Everybody is involved, one way or the other. Everybody.” In his January 29, 2007 report “Cocaine is King on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast,” journalist Bernd Debusmann writes: “In the past four years, Mora said, his force had seized 11 tons (tonnes) of cocaine and 40 northbound speedboats. There are no estimates of how many managed to complete the trip but as a rule of thumb, narcotics experts say that for every vessel intercepted, at least four get through.”

Since 1990 the Nicaraguan Armed Forces, previously known as the Sandinista People’s Army, were downsized and allegedly de-Sandinista-ized. Notwithstanding these cosmetic changes, the previous commander in chief of the armed forces is former Sandinista guerrilla Javier Carrion, who visited Moscow in 2002 to confer with Anatoly Kvashnin, then Chief of the Russian General Staff. The topic of discussion was military-technological cooperation between the two regimes. General Carrion informed his visitors that his trip was at the behest of the President of Nicaragua who, at the time, was Enrique Bolaños. The latter’s ability to function independently from the Sandinistas was no doubt curtailed by “El Pacto,” founded two years before. Since February 21, 2005 the top general in Nicaragua has been Omar Halleslevens Acevedo, who is also a Sandinista.

Given the continuing role that the FSLN plays in the global revolutionary movement, would it be inappropriate to conclude that the four coke vessels that “slip” past the Nicaraguan Navy for the every one that is apprehended have Comandante Ortega’s blessing and General Halleslevens’ approval?

In a 2005 report published in the India Daily Balaji Reddy contends that the Nicaraguan military is selling some of its Soviet-vintage surface-to-air missiles to FARC, Al Qaeda, and India’s Naxalite (Maoist) insurgents. “A likely scenario,” Reddy explains, “is that these military junta may have sold these missiles to drug traffickers. The drug traffickers these days are being contacted by the Al-Queda for a possible clandestine entry to America or other countries. These drug traffickers in turn may sell these missiles to Al-Queda or similar terrorists organizations include anti-Russian Chechens.” These are the same SAMs that President Ortega has refused to decommission under pressure from the White House. US military aid resumed to Nicaragua in 2002, but may be terminated again in view of Managua’s revitalized military hardware supply arrangement with Moscow, which dispatched ex-Prime Minister/KGB Director Sergei Stepashin to attend Comrade Dan’s January 10 inauguration.

The neo-Sandinista government endeavors to portray itself as a victim of the Colombian drug cartel, its own (female) national police chief Aminta Granera (pictured below with Comrade Dan) the target of druglord death threats, and its role in the “war against drugs” as a positive one. The facade is not convincing. “Friendship of nations,” indeed.

Nicaragua in the sight of the international drug trafficking

The recent revelation of which the international posters of the drug glided to attempt against the female leader of the National Police fell like mazazo on the Nicaraguan society, that woke up of blow before the power of the narcotics traffickers

By: PL 22 of February of 2007 18:46:17

The threats of death against First Grain Aminta Commissioner were revealed by the own police female leader last Tuesday, during an act witnessed by notary public in Managua, and caused consternation in all the country.

Grain dealer put itself in the sight of the narcotics traffickers as a result of the more and more frequent and voluminous drug seizures that followed one another in Nicaraguan territory since it assumed the position in last September.

Between end of December of 2006 and the first days of January of this year, combined forceses of the Police and the Army were only seized of more than four tons of cocaine in three operative different ones.

From 2005 to date they were seized more than 10 tons to posters of the drug that the local forces of the order think that they have his operational bases in Mexico.

“the posters of the drug are worried, are annoying, are burned with the National Police”, assured Grain dealer, who noticed, without embargo, that the death threats “are not going to us to fold”.

This Thursday, the Nicaraguan Center of Human rights (CENIDH) considered that the plans of attack against the police female leader deserve one signs and energetic sentence because they are of “extreme gravity”.

To the margin of the preoccupation that they generate the threats of death against Grain dealer, to the civil society also worry relative impunity to him that some narcotics traffickers enjoy, with the aid about venal judges.

One of the most recent scandals is a judge of sureño department of Rivas, that in last January left free 13 individuals that days before had been arrested by the Police when thousand 600 kilograms of cocaine in the Pacific trasegaban.

The magistrate, on who other accusations weigh, was dismissed of his east position Thursday.

In opinion of the CENIDH, those acts “they register in a context of fragility of the management system of justice” in Nicaragua, happened route of the drug that travels from Suramérica towards the United States, the main narcotic market of the world.

To the venality of certain judges it is necessary to add the fear to undergo retaliation, personal as as much familiar, that they experience some of the civil employees in charge to distribute justice. A solution to that problem would be the application of the call “justice are face” that is used in Colombia, to judge cases of the international drug trafficking.

The possibility of maintaining in the anonymity the judges was enunciated by the president of the Supreme Court of Justice, Manuel Martinez. “Here we could have judges without face, because the international drug trafficking does not walk respecting nothing”, it noticed the magistrate.

Meanwhile, the Police announced that it continues investigating the threats of death against Grain dealer, with the hope to leave without a leader hidra of the drug trafficking, at least within Nicaragua.

Source: La Voz del Sandinismo

>Asia File: Thai DM: Insurgents have infiltrated Bangkok; PULA kills two Muslim villagers; ex-employees torch computer factory

>Pictured here: The flag of Thailand’s Islamic insurgents, the Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO). Founded in 1968, PULO’s militant wing is known as the Pattani United Liberation Army (PULA).

Report 1: Thailand’s military government admits that it cannot curb movement of militant secessionists:

Southern militants may slip into the capital : Defense minister
February 24, 2007

Militants from the restive south have slipped into Bangkok and infiltrated in universities with potential to launch attack to the capital, Defense Minister Boonrod Somtat said Thursday.

“We cannot control them as they exploit liberty as students to have free movement throughout Bangkok,” General Boonrod told reporters.

“We have intelligence units to take care of this matter but they might over come our surveillance,” he said.

The ministry admitted to the parliamentarian during a session on the situation in the deep south yesterday that the government remained no achievement to contain the ongoing violence while the militants kept expanding their operation.

Source: The Nation

Report 2: Islamic insurgents murder co-religionists to make their point:

Militants shoot villagers in Thai south
Last Updated 23/02/2007, 10:25:05

Thai police say two Muslim villagers have been shot dead by suspected Islamic militants in the southern province of Narathiwat, near the Malaysian border.

A 32-year-old Muslim man was shot by two militants on a motorcycle.

In a separate incident, a 24-year-old Muslim man was shot dead at a local tea shop.The region was struck by dozens of bombings and shootings during Chinese New Year celebrations last weekend, where nine people died and more than 40 were wounded.

Source: Radio Australia

Report 3: Labor unrest in central Thailand leads to rioting and arson:

Protesters torch factory in central Thailand
2007-02-20 12:41:41

BANGKOK, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) — More than 100 protesters set fire to a computer factory in Thailand’s central province of Ayutthaya Friday morning. A large number of firemen were rushing to the scene, a local police source told Xinhua.

The furious protesters, who are all employees fired by the factory recently, set fire to the factory buildings in Rawdchana district of Ayutthaya at about 9:00 a.m. local time (0200 GMT). The fire licked up the workshops immediately.

Firemen and police rushed to the spot and the flame was put out after burning about two hours.

Source: Xinhua.net

>Latin America File: Chavez cements ties with Argentina, Caribbean; receives Ortega in Caracas, relocates aluminum plant from Costa Rica to Nicaragua

>Chavez Woos Argentina’s Kirchner, Condemns Costa Rica’s Arias as “Neo-Liberal”

Although Argentina is not yet a member of the communist Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), Venezuelan President/Tyrant-in-Training Hugo Chavez is apparently determined to secure the support of Argentina’s President Nestor Kirchner (pictured here). The latter represents the left wing of the Peronist Justicialist Party.

The term “justicialist” fuses “justice” and “socialism.” Peronism is a semi-fascist ideology that endorses authoritarian, centralized government, imposes rigid control of opposition parties without resorting to systematic violence, insists upon freedom from foreign political forces, embraces internal communist and anti-communist tendencies, and advocates a “third way” economic theory that dovetails nicely with corporatism and Catholic social teaching. Justicialist Party founder Juan Peron was an unabashed devotee of Benito Mussolini. It should be noted that Catholic social teaching, which is influential in Latin America where the Catholic Church has historically enjoyed considerable power, promotes government regulation of the economy. Its precepts are summarized in various papal encyclicals and the 1995 Cathecism of the Catholic Church.

Venezuela, Argentina Fully Collaborate

Caracas, Feb 22 (Prensa Latina) The signing of 17 accords between Argentina and Venezuela, in energy, finances and health, are Thursday a solid support to economic collaboration and union in the region.

Argentina’s President Nestor Kirchner’s recent visit to Venezuela has strengthened these bilateral links, which include the creation of bases for the development of important financial institutions.

As for hydrocarbons, both statesmen analyzed the supply of fuel oil to Energia Argentina S.A. Company, while that entity made some forays with the state Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. into the prospecting of crude oil in the Orinoco Strip.

A larger presence of natural gas in the functioning of vehicles, as well as the purchase of those fuel-based units is included in the pacts.

Regarding finances, the Venezuela Economic and Social Development Bank arranged a line of credit to the SANCOR Cooperatives Unidas Ltd. of Argentina, in exchange for powdered milk and technology from that industry.

Other agreements include fostering technical and scientific cooperation to optimize agricultural production, exchange experiences, and give assessment and professional training in health.

Source: Prensa Latina

Meanwhile, failing to secure the unquestioning support of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias (pictured here), Venezuela has closed its aluminum plant in the Central American country. This decision will throw 400 employees out of work, the very same “proletariat” for which Comrade Hugo has expressed so much concern. In assessing Chavez’s newly granted powers to rule by decree, Arias committed the error on Costa Rican radio of insisting that Chavez is a “dictator”: “There is a simple difference between a dictator and a democrat: if the democrat has no opposition, it’s his job to create it, but the dream of the dictator is to eliminate all opposition. The most important thing is not to have opposition but to have absolute power. A democrat believes only power stops power and, therefore, believes there has to be a division of powers, because society works better with those checks and balances.”

This did not sit well with Comrade Hugo who openly admits, below, that there were “geopolitical” reason for pulling the plug on Caracas’ Costa Rican aluminum operation, by which he probably means that Costa Rica’s governing party is too “neo-liberal” (capitalist) and therefore is not yet ready to join ALBA.

Incidentally, Arias is one of the prime movers behind the creation of the Central American Parliament (Parlacen), to which the three ARENA deputies from El Salvador were travelling on February 20 when they were gunned down and for which four Guatemalan police offers are under arrest. Ironically, Costa Rica has yet to ratify its representation in Parlacen.

Costa Rica blames plant’s closure on Venezuela
By Adam Thomson in Mexico City and Andy Webb-Vidal in Caracas
Published: February 22 2007 20:36 Last updated: February 22 2007 20:36

Costa Rica’s government has accused Venezuela of closing down an aluminium plant and relocating it elsewhere because of a political spat between the two country’s leaders.

Rodrigo Arias, the chief of staff and brother of Óscar Arias, Costa Rica’s president, said of the decision: “It seems to us that there is a political motivation.” The comments late on Wednesday night followed Venezuela’s decision to close the plant and move it elsewhere in the region.

The Alunasa aluminium plant has been operating for more than 25 years and was bought by Venezuela’s state-owned heavy industries conglomerate, the Corporación Venezolana de Guyana, or CVG, in 1990. Bienvenido Venegas, a Costa Rican lawmaker, claimed on Thursday that the decision by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela to close the plant, which produces about 10,000 tonnes a year and employs 400 people, could not be economically motivated.

“It’s a completely crazy idea to remove the company from Costa Rica. Last year it had record production,” Mr Venegas said.

Marco Vinicio Ruiz, Costa Rica’s trade minister, stress-ed that the company had increa-sed exports to $47m (€36m) last year, compared with $26m in 2000, although aluminium prices have roughly doubled in the same period. Luis Guillermo Solís, a professor at the University of Costa Rica and a former foreign secretary, supported the view that the decision had not been taken for financial reasons. “The company is not only profitable, it is very profitable,” he said. “It has an excellent reputation in Costa Rica. It has improved its financial position in recent years and it is producing efficiently.”

But Prof Solís also criticised Mr Arias’s approach. “A head of state has to be much more careful. Costa Rica does not gain a thing by criticising Hugo Chávez. It only loses.”

The 66-year-old Costa Rican leader, who won a Nobel peace prize in 1987 for his efforts to end the civil wars in central America, is firmly in the free-market camp. He recently lambasted the regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba, comparing it with the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile.

The diplomatic spat between Caracas and San José has been simmering since the start of February, when Mr Arias implied Venezuela’s leader was “a dictator” after he was granted extraordinary powers to rule by decree for 18 months.

This week Mr Chávez rejected the Costa Rican government’s accusations, in-sisting the decision to close its plant was the result of “economic considerations”.

“They say I’m angry and that is why I gave the decision to remove the plant,” he said. “No, it’s just that there are geopolitical reasons as well as economic and technical reasons.”

Source: Financial Times

Sandinista Leader Visits Caracas while ALBA Grows Again with Inclusion of Caribbean States

In a related development, Comandante Ortega flew today to Caracas to continue discussions with Comrade Hugo on the issue of his country’s incorporation into ALBA. Apparently, Chavez intends to relocate its Costa Rican aluminum operation to neo-Sandinista Nicaragua. These are the “geopolitical reasons” mentioned in the previous news item. Pictured below: Comrades Dan and Hugo in Caracas.

Nicaragua Steps up for ALBA

Managua, Feb 23 (Prensa Latina) The visit Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega will be making to Venezuela Friday will allow the country to make a further step in the integrationist process encouraged by the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA).

Once in Caracas, Ortega is expected to meet with his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chavez, after they made the first step to strengthen bilateral relations in January.

Chavez and Ortega will examine the agreements signed in Managua on January 11, when the Nicaraguan leader made the country s adhesion to ALBA official.

That cooperation comprises Venezuelan oil supply under advantageous payment terms, and the granting of generators to alleviate the crisis in the Nicaraguan energy sector.

The Venezuelan government is also studying the possibility to construct a refinery, an oil pipeline, and two aluminium-processing plants in the Central American country.

During the presidential meeting today, bilateral cooperation is expected to be extended to other areas of mutual interest.

The Chavez-encouraged integrationist project has already welcomed seven members, after the Caribbean islands of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, and Antigua and Barbuda joined Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua last week.

Source: Prensa Latina

Latin American political-economic integration outside the confines of the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas is moving quickly. On February 16 the Caribbean states of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG), Dominica, and Antigua and Barbuda joined ALBA, which until recently included only Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. On that date President/Tyrant-in-Training Chavez flew to SVG where he, Prime Minister of Dominica Roosevelt Skerrit, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda Baldwin Spencer, and Prime Minister of SVG Ralph Gonsalves (all pictured above) pledged allegiance to the Western Hemisphere’s new Red Axis. Skerrit is associated with the Dominica Labour Party, which holds membership in the communist-terrorist Sao Paulo Forum; while Spencer represents Antigua and Barbuda’s United Progressive Party and Gonsalves represents SVG’s Unity Labour Party. ALBA’s next scheduled stop: neo-communist Ecuador.

Although Latin American communists like Comrade Hugo denounce the FTAA as a tool of US “imperialism,” according to Karl Marx himself, free trade actually advances communism by creating economic disparities and hence political warfare between nations, not merely social classes. In a January 9, 1848 speech delivered to the Democratic Association of Brussels, the founder of modern communism affirmed: “But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.” And so Nepman capitalism, shorn of patriotism and morality, digs its own grave.

>Latin America File: Guatemalan police officers arrested in murder of Salvadoran politicans; farm where victims killed anti-communist hangout

>Pictured here: Police at the scene of the crime near Guatemala City.

This is one of the saddest days in the history of the ARENA party, and one of the saddest days in the history of El Salvador
— Tony Saca, President of El Salvador, February 22, 2007

They burned their bodies several times. They killed them. They riddled their bodies with bullets. They made them suffer in a cowardly manner. This was directed by someone who wants to send a message, and if the message is to scare Salvadorans who love liberty, then that person is wrong.
— President Saca, February 21, 2007

It wasn’t coincidental. We have various theories, and we aren’t ruling out the possibility that it was a political crime.
— Oscar Berger, President of Guatemala, February 21, 2007

This is not a crime that fits the pattern of a common killing. The violence and the cruelty with which it was done were meant to send a message.
— Carlos Vielmann, Guatemalan Interior Minister, February 21, 2007

In spite of the AP report below, Guatemalan officialdom has little to gain by assassinating three Salvadoran politicians, save a very serious international incident with its neighbor. By contrast, the communist-terrorist Sao Paulo Forum, which met in San Salvador last month, and its red masters in Moscow might be under the impression (mistaken or otherwise) that they have something to gain by provoking a new round of political turmoil in Central America.

At least seven factors points to the Latin American left’s involvement: 1) El Salvador’s opposition party, the FMLN, recently protested the ruling ARENA party’s resolution to honor its founder and alleged Salvadoran death squad organizer Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, 2) the choice of February 20 to carry out the assassination coincided with D’Aubuisson’s death in 1992, 3) the targetting of D’Aubuisson’s son Eduardo and two other ARENA politicians, 4) the well-planned brutality of the executions, 5) the selection of a farm frequented in the past by anti-communist sympathizers of the late Major D’Aubuisson to execute the politicians, 6) the communist FMLN was quick to post a denunciation of the murders on its website, and 7) the Latin American Left is rapidly consolidating power throughout the hemisphere. The corruption of Latin America’s police and military is well known. In this case, we can only speculate that official corruption might have converged with regional narco-communist provocation. Along those lines, however, CNN reports: “Investigators have not given any motive for the killings, but some officials said they suspected political motivations. The arrest of officers from the organized crime unit suggested the killings may be linked to the region’s powerful gangs and crime groups.”

The Salvadoran media is indicating that Guatemalan criminal investigators identified their own colleagues as the perpetrators by using global positioning system (GPS) technology, which is also installed in Guatemalan police vehicles. The alleged killers are the head of Guatemala’s anti-gang unit Luis Arturo Herrera Lopez and three subordinates: Jose Lopez Arriaga, Jose Adolph Gutiérrez, and Marvin Méndez Field. Their apparent failure to disable the GPS devices in their vehicles should prompt one to conclude that: 1) the cops-turned-assassins overlooked a critical element in their murder plot, or 2) someone intended that the trail of clues lead directly to Guatemala’s “finest.”

The attack, moreover, was carried out with Russian-made AK-47 assault rifles, a weapon routinely used by police in that country. During the First Cold War, it should be noted, the Soviet Union supplied the first Sandinista regime with this firearm . . .

4 Guatemalans arrested in 3 killings
2/22/2007, 8:43 a.m. PT
By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA The Associated Press

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Four Guatemalan men were arrested Thursday in connection with the killing of three Central American Parliament members, including the son of the alleged founder of El Salvador’s death squads.

The assailants repeatedly shot Eduardo D’Abuisson, son of El Salvador’s late right-wing leader Roberto D’Abuisson, two other Salvadoran officials and their driver before setting them on fire while they were still alive, officials said. Their charred bodies were found Monday along a road about 20 miles southeast of Guatemala City.

Radio Sonora reported the suspects are two high-ranking police officials and two police investigators. All four, the radio said, were assigned to a special unit to combat youth gangs.

On Thursday, police spokeswoman Maria Jose Fernandez told The Associated Press four suspects were being held, but declined to confirm if they were members of the police department or give any details until officials hold a press conference later in the day.

The three slain politicians — D’Abuisson, William Pichinte and Ramon Gonzalez — represented El Salvador at the Central American Parliament, which is based in Guatemala City and has 132 members representing five of the seven Central American nations. They were all members of El Salvador’s ruling party, ARENA.

Officials, including El Salvador’s president, said they suspect the slayings were politically motivated.

Investigators have not given a motive.

President Tony Saca and other leading members of the ARENA party received D’Abuisson’s body Wednesday. D’Abuisson, whose father founded ARENA, was to be buried Thursday.

“This is one of the saddest days in the history of the ARENA party, and one of the saddest days in the history of El Salvador,” said Saca, who is to meet with President Bush next week. Saca said the FBI has been asked for help in the investigation.

D’Abuisson, 32, was serving his first term in public office and was not viewed as a controversial figure.

His late father was embroiled in scandals as the alleged founder of El Salvador’s death squads during its civil war from 1980-92. The death squads were responsible for the kidnap, torture, and murder of tens of thousands of civilians.

His father, who died of throat cancer in 1992, was accused by a U.N. truth commission of having ordered the killing of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, but an amnesty granted at the end of the war prevented him from going to trial.

Pichinte, 49, was a ruling party federal legislator before being elected to the Central American Parliament. The owner of a successful hat factory, his hats were a trademark of ARENA supporters at party rallies.
Gonzalez, 57, was a ruling party founder and worked closely with the elder D’Abuisson in organizing rallies.

The escorts had followed the men — who were traveling in three cars — from the Salvadoran border to the capital’s edge, where the vehicles took different roads into the city, officials said. They were believed to have been kidnapped and then taken to a farm to be executed.

Guatemalan politician Leonel Sisniega said the farm “was a common meeting spot for Guatemalan anti-Communists who sympathized with Roberto D’Abuisson.”

Associated Press Writer Diego Mendez contributed to this report from El Salvador.

Source: OregonLive.com

The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, Mara Salvatrucha, and Soviet Intelligence

Perhaps investigators should consider another possible perp: How about the violent Salvadoran terrorist outfit Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), which operates throughout North and Central America as a front for the FMLN and Soviet intelligence which, as we have blogged before, controls the Mexican drug cartels? Boruch Ellison at the ATTAC Report stated in July 2006:

Mara Salvatrucha was established by members of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, or FMLN, the umbrella organization of Marxist-Leninist terrorist groups in El Salvador. The FMLN was formed by the Communist Party of El Salvador, and it receives weapons, training, and orders from Soviet Russia through Cuba and Nicaragua, both Communist-occupied nations. The involvement of Mara Salvatrucha in Mexican gangs means the Mexican drug trade is coordinated by the Communist Bloc.

The Mexican cartels also work closely with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in the transshipment of cocaine to the United States. The FARC is the armed wing of the Communist Party of Colombia, and it, too, works under tight Soviet Russian and Cuban supervision.

But the Mexican drug mafia even works directly with Soviet Russia. The Mexican attorney general’s office has revealed that in the last few years, swarms of Soviet Russian operatives, including numerous agents of the KGB secret police, have invaded Mexico and seized control of the gangs.

In 2005 an MS-13 leader Ebner Anivel Rivera-Paz reportedly issued orders from US federal prison to attack the Minuteman volunteers who are patrolling the US-Mexican border in an effort to stem the illegal alien invasion. This is the same invasion that Sandinista Interior Minister and current Nicaraguan National Assembly deputy Tomas Borge advocated 20 years ago. We have posted his comments to this effect on a number of occasions. In view of the recent stabbing by Armando Martinez-Lozano, an illegal alien, of US soldier Jason Okon of Valley, Arizona (pictured here), Borge’s quote is worth reiterating:

We have Nicaragua, soon we will have El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica and Mexico. One day, tomorrow or 15 years from now, we’re going to take 5 to 10 million Mexicans and they’re going to have one thing in mind – cross the border, go into Dallas, go into Houston, go into New Mexico, go into San Diego, and each one has embedded in his mind the idea of killing 10 Americans.

Okon, who received a Bronze Star for valor as a result of his term of duty in Iraq, was in an intensive care unit as of February 15.

>Latin America File: President Ortega to visit Venezuela, reciprocate Chavez’s attendance at inauguration, deepen Nicaragua’s membership in ALBA

>We will recognize the Cuban intellectuals’ huge efforts on behalf of the cultures of Latin America.
— Rosario Murillo, Coordinator, Citizenship and Communications Council, wife of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega; reported by Cuban News Agency, February 22, 2007

The deepening of relations within Latin America’s Red Axis and its political-military linkage with the Soon-to-Be-Revived Soviet Union is moving at breakneck speed but barely causing a blip on the MSM’s radar screen. On January 10 President/Tyrant-in-Training Chavez was inaugurated for the third time before flying to Nicaragua later that day for President-Elect/Past Tyrant Ortega’s inauguration. In attendance too was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s personal envoy Sergei Stepashin, who promptly signed an agreement with Ortega to upgrade Nicaragua’s Soviet-vintage armed forces. The following day, Nicaragua joined the anti-FTAA, anti-USA bloc called the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA, which also means “dawn” in Spanish), illicit offspring of President/Tyrant Castro. Tomorrow Comandante Ortega is flying to the Bolivarian/Socialist Republic of Venezuela to cement the Caracas-Managua Axis.

Daniel will travel Friday to Venezuela
By: PL 21 of February of 2007 21:32:41

The president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, will travel Friday next to Venezuela, to give pursuit to the cooperation agreements that signed with its colleague Hugo Chávez 11 of January the last, announced the own agent chief executive

“(Yesterday) I spoke with Chávez, and we decided to be Friday in Caracas”, revealed Ortega Wednesday, when taking part in an act witnessed by notary public where one commemorated anniversary 73 of the murder of anti-imperialist the fighter and Nicaraguan hero, Augusto Caesar Sandino.

The agent chief executive added that in March next a Venezuelan delegation will come to Managua to conform a commission that will be in charge to evaluate the agreements of cooperation between both countries.

The agreements were signed in Managua, a day after the possession taking of the sandinista leader like president of Nicaragua, the 10 of last January.

Hours before the company/signature in the agreements, Ortega had formalized the adhesion of the Central American nation to the Bolivariana Alternative of the Américas (WHITE), the integracionista project of which already comprised Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia.

From the last weekend, the WHITE sum seven members, with the inclusion of the Caribbean islands of San Vicente and the Granadinas, Dominican and Antigua and Barbuda.

In the case of Nicaragua, the Venezuelan cooperation includes the petroleum provision in advantageous conditions of payment and electrical plants, and the infrastructure areas, agriculture, qualification and transference of technology.

Venezuela also studies the possibility of constructing a refinery, a pipe line and two plants aluminum processors in Nicaraguan territory, and will support in addition programs to health in the Central American nation.

The agreements of the DAWN are to the delay of the approval of the Nicaraguan National Assembly, whereas the Venezuelan legislative power already gave green light them.

Source: La Voz del Sandinismo

Translation courtesy Babelfish

Following his one-day trip to Venezuela, Comandante Ortega will preside over a ceremony in Masaya, Nicaragua that will honor seven Cuban intellectuals, whose anti-imperialist credentials have no doubt been vetted by the Communist Party of Cuba. Yesterday we blogged about the parallel government structures that the neo-Sandinista regime is rapidly erecting. One of these organizations, Citizenship and Communications Council, is mentioned below and operates under the leadership of former “guerrilla girl” Rosario (“Hillary Clinton of Nicaragua”) Murillo, who is also Comrade Dan’s wife.

Nicaragua to Honor Cuban Intellectuals
Havana, Feb 22

(ACN) Cuban Culture Minister Abel Prieto and seven young writers will be awarded Nicaragua’s Ruben Dario Cultural Independence Award on Saturday at a public ceremony presided over by President Daniel Ortega.

Rosario Murillo, coordinator of the government’s Citizenship and Communications Council, announced the decision to award the Cuban intellectuals during a ceremony in which Daniel Ortega granted distinctions to a group Nicaraguan culture workers.

We will recognize the Cuban intellectual’s huge efforts on behalf of the cultures of Latin America, said Murillo, also the wife of President Ortega.

The awards ceremony for the Cuban creators will take place in an indigenous neighbourhood of the city of Masaya, 30 kilometers east of Managua.

Source: Cuban News Agency

Translation courtesy Babelfish

>EU File: Italian PM and alleged KGB/FSB agent Prodi resigns, far left deputies oppose Afghanistan troop deployment; government in no danger of falling

>Even if Prime Minister Romano Prodi is unable to cobble together another government, three factors remain unchanged: his left-communist coalition controls at least one half of the Italian Parliament, the otherwise ceremonial position of Italian President is held by communist Giorgio Napolitano, and Italy, like most of the “new European Soviet,” has been thoroughly decimated by domestic socialist policies and infiltrated by Moscow’s agents. Italian governments are notoriously short-lived, but in spite of the current political crisis, Dario Franceschini, leader of the governing Union coalition has assured Prodi that all of the coalition members will continue to support the ex-President of the European Commission.

Italian crisis talks as PM quits
February 22, 2007

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano has begun crisis talks following the resignation of Prime Minister Romano Prodi after just 10 months in office.

Mr Prodi quit after several of his centre-left coalition partners opposed troop deployments in Afghanistan and plans to expand a US airbase in Italy.

Mr Napolitano may call new elections if agreement is not reached on forming a new coalition government. Mr Prodi will stay on as caretaker prime minister in the meantime.

The talks are expected to last well into Friday, the president’s office has said.

The BBC’s Mark Duff in Milan says the smart money is on a much-weakened Mr Prodi being offered a new mandate to govern.

If so, he could return at the head of a new centre-left coalition, possibly including the opposition Christian Democrats.

Failing that, our correspondent says, the president may feel obliged to construct a temporary government of technocrats to hold the fort – and push through urgent measures like pensions reform and the next year’s budget.

Mr Napolitano cut short a trip to Bologna to return to Rome for talks with Mr Prodi on Wednesday, during which his prime minister tendered his resignation.

He was expected first to meet Senate Speaker Franco Marini, before holding talks with his counterpart in the lower house, Fausto Bertinotti, and the heads of parliamentary groups.

If agreement cannot be reached, Mr Napolitano could call early elections, although it would be well ahead of their scheduled date in 2011.

The coalition’s leader in the lower house of parliament, Dario Franceschini, said the main groups in the nine-party governing alliance would continue to back Mr Prodi.

It was the opposition of several more left-wing coalition senators to what critics have called his “pro-American” foreign policy that cost Mr Prodi the senate vote.

Street protests

There were dramatic scenes in the upper house, the Senate, on Wednesday as the government lost its motion by just two votes.

The result was met by cries of “resign! resign!” by right-wing senators, and the sitting was suspended shortly afterwards.

The motion had asked the Senate to approve the government’s foreign policy, a policy which it said was inspired by a repudiation of war and respect for the role of the EU, UN and international alliances.

Although it was not a formal confidence vote, Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema had urged the government to resign if it could not win backing for its foreign policy.

Mr Prodi’s government had been forced on the defensive over the continued deployment of 2,000 Italian troops in Afghanistan, with strong opposition from some of his more left-wing coalition partners.

Plans for the expansion of a big US military base in Vicenza, northern Italy, had also sparked protests both within his government and on the street, with large demonstrations in Vicenza at the weekend.

US President George W Bush wants to strengthen the base by transferring from Germany to Italy another 2,000 US soldiers, taking the total number stationed in Vicenza to nearly 5,000.

Mr D’Alema told the senate that to renege on the approval given by Mr Prodi last month for the base’s expansion would be a “hostile act” towards the US.

Source: BBC News Online

Was the Italian Far Right’s Strategy of Tension in the 1970s and 1980s a Soviet False Flag Operation?

Deceased FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko and another former KGB agent (probably Oleg Gordievsky) alleged that Prodi is an agent of the Russian Federation Federal Security Service, the KGB’s nom de jure. What Italian communists could not take through the domestic terrorist provocations known as the strategy of tension during the First Cold War, they have taken by stealth by renaming themselves at the ballot box. Putatively carried out by neo-fascist cells such as the Ordine Nuovo, Avanguardia Nazionale, and Fronte Nazionale, and attributed to a communist insurgency to discredit and prevent the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from entering the government, the “far-right” terrorism that plagued Italy during the 1970s and 1980s, in our estimation, bore the hallmarks of a Kremlin-concocted “false flag” operation that actually undermined the cause of anti-communism in that country. This is standard fare for communists, who typically blame the world’s ills on fascism.

Fast forward to “post”-communist Italy, in which the PCI, now renamed as the Democrats of the Left, occupies an important role in Prodi’s coalition government.

>USSR2/Latin America Files: Soviet communists laud Sandinista victory, affirm Ortega still Marxist, "collapse" of USSR led capitalist nations into trap

>For there is nothing hid, which shall not be manifested; neither was any thing kept secret, but that it should come abroad.
— Jesus Christ, Mark 4:22

We believe that the restoration of a broken union [between the ex-Soviet republics] is our key goal, and we will continue our efforts to accomplish this task. Without a union between Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other brotherly republics that used to be members of the Soviet Union, we do not have a future.
— Gennady Zyuganov, Chair, Communist Party of the Russian Federation; statement made at plenary meeting of Council of Union of Communist Parties-CPSU, January 20, 2007

Yes, even the communists are tools in God’s fist of judgment against the nations. Comrade Kuvaldin concludes his self-satisfied dissertation below by reminding the reader that the “collapse” of the Soviet Union led the capitalist nations into a trap from which there is no exit apart from world revolution. He offers freedom lovers everywhere one option: Prepare to save your you-know-what. (Yes, our smug red friend uses that very expression.)

According to Comrade Kuvaldin, moreover, the Sandinistas’ electoral victory in November 2006 heralded an important advance in the Communist Bloc’s dialectical zigzag through the last 90 years of history. This piece is posted at the website of the Moscow City Committee of the CPRF which, to enlighten any new visitors to this blog, is the Russian section of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, restored in 2004 with no notice whatsoever by the West. The communist mantra “Communism is dead” was apparently very effective.

The translation below is courtesy Babelfish with some refinements from your resident blogger.

Elections in Nicaragua: The Crushing Victory of Revolutionary Marxist Daniel Ortega 07.11.2006
By Communist Gabriel Kuvaldin

In the presidential election of Nicaragua left candidate Daniel Ortega was supported by more than 40 percent of voters. His only competition was American protege Edward Montelegre, millionaire and former banker.

The present accession to power of Ortega can change the distribution of political forces in the Central American region. With him openly sympathize such opponents of the administration of George Bush as the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia.

Revolutionary Marxist and leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, Daniel Ortega first assumed power in the late 1970s when the Sandinistas overthrew the dictatorial regime of Samoza and expropriated the property of the rich.

A number of presidents of the countries of Latin America have openly embarked on a path of opposition to the dictates of Washington. The trio of rebellious presidents has become a quartet. Long hidden in the political shadows Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega returns in triumph to the presidential palace. In the course of his election campaign he received moral and material support from Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales. With the declaration of the preliminary results of the elections it was apparent that victory was unattainable for the other candidates. This occurred despite the fact that on the eve of the elections the White House repeatedly warned of an “inevitable worsening in the relations between the two countries, up to the application of sanctions” should Ortega reassume power. In these hours tens of thousands of Nicaraguans rejoiced under the red [and black] flags [of the FSLN] in the streets. The police did not interfere.

There is nothing surprising in the victory of Daniel Ortega. Its time simply arrived. Peace [communism] develops according to the dialectical laws founded by Karl Marx. Any attempt to stop the development of society is like trying to impede the rotation of the Earth around the sun.

Globalization is inevitable and connected with the process of the public [means of] production. But globalization unavoidably leads to the stratification of countries between the rich and the poor. As a result, the poor are forced to unite against the rich countries and against their [own] marionette governments. The population of the poor countries is the proletariat. But the proletariat has clear class interests.

Now the poor countries have intergovernmental organization [such as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas]. This means that their strength will increase due to the connections between the new countries. Where the stratification between the rich and the poor is great, the leftists unavoidably will arrive to power and will [then] join the Latin American group [Red Axis].

Any attempt by the imperialists to unleash war will lead to the defeat of imperialism because all of the poor will begin to war against them. And the war [moreover] will [unfold] according to the diagram designed in Russia, converting imperialist war into the civil [war against] the capitalists.

After the fall of the USSR capitalism, however strange it seems, fell into the trap from which there is no outcome except world communist revolution. The founding of the USSR “let out vapor from the overheated boiler of the hatred of poor for the rich.” Now the “valve” is broken and the “boiler will explode.” The elections in Nicaragua showed that the cusp was passed, and it means, young and foresighted gentlemen: Prepare to save your “zadnitsy.”

Source: Moscow City Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation

The Neo-Sandinista Regime Re-consolidates La Revolucion

Since Comandante Ortega’s inauguration on January 10, 2007 he has committed Nicaragua to membership in the communist Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA), attempted to seize direct presidential control of the military and police forces, and reestablished a military pact with the Not-So-Former Soviet Union. With respect to ALBA, Comrade Kuvaldin noted, above: “Now the poor countries have intergovernmental organization. This means that their strength will increase due to the connections between the new countries. Where the stratification between the rich and the poor is great, the leftists unavoidably will arrive to power and will [then] join the Latin American group [Red Axis].” In attendance at his inauguration were the neo-communist presidents of Venezuela and Bolivia, Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, and more ominously, as President Vladimir Putin’s personal envoy, former Russian prime minister and secret police director Sergei Stepashin (“ex”-CPSU). The Miami Herald article below observes, furthermore, that Comrade Daniel, wife Rosario, and the FSLN are already building parallel government structures that could “undermine Nicaragua’s fragile democracy.” Pictured here: President Ortega addresses Nicaragua’s National Police, February 20. Below: Rosario.

Some call Ortega’s wife power-hungry
Nicaragua’s first lady is considered by many to be the power behind the presidency.
BY TIM ROGERS
Special to The Miami Herald

MANAGUA – A month after President Daniel Ortega took office, his Sandinista government has come under attack for creating powerful parallel governing institutions that could undermine Nicaragua’s fragile democracy.

But it’s not Ortega, an erstwhile Cold War nemesis of the United States, who’s taking the heat. It’s his wife, Rosario Murillo, an eccentric poet who some critics say may some day seek the presidency for herself.

Murillo, 55, who managed her husband’s electoral campaign, now heads the Council on Communication and Citizenry, the most powerful of several new presidential advisory councils created almost immediately after Ortega took office on Jan. 10.

Murillo’s job puts her in charge of ”coordinating the government’s message,” a task that apparently includes controlling government funds for publicity and propaganda. A Finance Ministry memo leaked to the media last month indicated it had allocated its advertising budget to Murillo’s council.

Nicaraguan media leaders have complained the funds could be used to reward pro-Sandinista media with large advertising contracts, while punishing others by starving them of ad revenues.

Murillo’s appointment has been challenged by the independent Permanent Commission on Human Rights and the opposition Conservative Party. Both have filed motions before the Supreme Court, arguing that her appointment violates laws against nepotism.

‘We are concerned about the formation of a parallel government with a concentration of power in the figure of the first lady,” said Vilma Núñez, president of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights, also an independent group. “There is a confusion of roles. We don’t know which is the president and which is the first lady, or the first husband.”

OLD FRIENDS GONE

For others, Murillo’s power is a reflection of the fact that many members of Ortega’s inner circle from his days as leader of the Marxist Sandinista government in the 1980s have left his side. And those hard-liners who remain loyal, such as Tomás Borge, Bayardo Arce and Lenin Cerna, are all rumored to have problems with Murillo, though none has said so publicly.

”Because of this, Rosario has been given the kind of power that should only be granted to officials who are accountable to the state,” said Sandinista dissident and fellow poet Gioconda Belli. “Besides, she has a vision of Daniel as the envoy of the Lord to the Nicaraguan people, and that kind of messianic reading of reality is dangerous for democracy.”

Murillo declined a Miami Herald request for comment, saying that all interviews will have to wait until after the organization of her new council is complete.

Known commonly as ”la Chayo,” from the diminutive of Rosario, Murillo is by all accounts intelligent and astute. She has studied in Europe and speaks several languages. She was assistant to Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, then-publisher of La Prensa newspaper and a leading critic of the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship. During that time, Murillo married a member of the Sandinista guerrilla underground and had her first daughter, Zoilamérica Narváez.

After her first husband died, she joined Ortega in the late 1970s, when he was living clandestinely in Costa Rica. Narváez has publicly alleged that it was there, a year before the Sandinistas toppled the Somozas in 1979, that Ortega started to sexually abuse her at the age of 11. Both Murillo and Ortega have denied the allegations.

During Ortega’s first government in the 1980s, Murillo played a lesser role as head of the Sandinista Association of Cultural Workers.

At that time, Murillo and Ortega were not officially married, and the role of first lady did not exist in revolutionary Nicaragua. The two married in a Catholic Church ceremony in 2005. They have seven children together.

Today, some critics speculate that Murillo’s apparent leverage over Ortega may stem from years of being a ”silent accomplice” to her daughter’s alleged abuse.

”I am deeply convinced that Daniel has an unpayable debt to Murillo for her silence,” said Nicaraguan feminist leader María Teresa Blandón.

DELEGATED POWER

Others say that Ortega doesn’t answer to anyone.

”Any political power Murillo has is just delegated by Ortega. He hasn’t given up anything,” said political analyst and former Sandinista official Aldo Díaz Lacayo. “Ortega’s power is not in play; he is still the one wearing the pants.”

Blandón, however, insists that Murillo is positioning herself to become a Nicaraguan version of Argentina’s famed Evita Perón, and may be considering a run for the presidency in 2011 despite her lack of public appeal and the lingering cloud of the Zoilamérica case.

‘There won’ be any ‘Don’t Cry for Me, Nicaragua,’ because I don’t think anyone would cry for her,” Blandón said.

Source: Miami Herald

>Latin America File: Eduardo D’Aubuisson’s murder follows FMLN opposition to ARENA plan to "canonize" his father, alleged death squad founder Roberto

> The grisly murder of three Salvadoran politicians in Guatemala on February 20 not only coincided with the 1992 death of Major Roberto (“Blowtorch Bob”) D’Aubuisson, but also followed hard on the heels of a campaign by the ruling ARENA party to “canonize” D’Aubuisson as “Son of the Highest Merit.” The parliamentary resolution, reports Diario Co Latino, was withdrawn four days before Roberto’s son Eduardo and two other ARENA colleagues were ambushed, gunned down, and then immolated. Yesterday we pointed out that the communist-terrorist Sao Paulo Forum (FSP) wrapped up its 13th congress in San Salvador barely a month ago. The geopolitical ambitions of the revived Latin America Left, in concert with the restored Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Putinist regime, have been amply documented here. Although the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), which hosted the FSP, was quick to condemn the assassinations, can we be faulted for also posing the question: Was this a revenge killing by leftists?

In the statement below El Salvador’s guerrilla army-turned-opposition party denounces the ARENA resolution and lauds the martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero, whose death in 1980 Major D’Aubuisson allegedly orchestrated. Pictured here: FMLN supporters.

This Thursday during hours in the morning tens of people appeared to the outskirts of the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador to reject this fact. Repudio was remarkable. The assistants expressed duros signallings and criticized the position of the right deputies.

The assistants considered that international and national judicial denunciations that impute to D’ abuisson like intellectual actor of the murder of the archbishop of San Salvador Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero and of founding leader of the killer group exist death squads that committed manifold crimes and acts of lesa humanity.

For today, Thursday 15 of February of 2007, the opinion of the education commission and culture of the legislative assembly was retired of the agenda to treat in the plenary session. Therefore Thanks to the unification of the town and the manifestations of organisms of human rights the request returned to its place of origin but it does not discard becomes to insist on looking for the honorary mentions that constitutional and morally they are inadmissible.

The head of the parliamentary group of the FMLN, Salvador Sanchez Céren showed that to grant such recognition it would be a ridicule for the relatives and victims of homicidas sayings, and an attack against the dignity of the Salvadoran town.

The assistants expressed that whichever times were mobilized is necessary to protest against this opinion that this against all the population and still more all those that they underwent of first hand tortures and murders of relatives and friends.

jueves15/02/2007. He presses FMLN

Source: Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front Official Website

>EU/Latin America Files: President Chavez and Mayor "Red" Ken Livingstone ink agreement to supply London buses with discounted Venezuelan fuel

>Comrade Hugo is making friends (exporting revolution) around the world. Not content to “oil” the wheels of influence among Sandinista mayors in Nicaragua, FMLN mayors in El Salvador, and New York City’s Harlem district–where the Venezuelan state entity Citgo organized a photo op for and where actor-activist Danny Glover introduced the Venezuelan dictator–Comrade Hugo is offloading some extra “petrol” with “Red” Ken Livingstone. The Labour mayor of London supports the Bolivarian front group Hands off Venezuela and dined with Comrade Hugo during Chavez’s May 2006 visit to Britain. In 2002 Welsh communist and Moscow State University graduate Alan Woods founded Hands off Venezuela with the support of other British leftist groupings such as the International Marxist Tendency, International Socialist Group, and RESPECT, which boasts one member of parliament, George Galloway, who once buddied around with deceased megalomaniac and Soviet client Saddam Hussein.

“Red” Ken and his South American visitor, sans trademark red T-shirt, are pictured here.

Chavez to fuel London buses
FEBRUARY 21, 2007 12:00:00 AM

LONDON: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez plans to supply discounted oil to run London’s buses in exchange for urban planning advice from the UK capital’s mayor, Ken Livingstone.

The agreement was signed on Tuesday by Mr Livingstone and Venezuelan foreign minister Nicolas Maduro at City Hall. The agreement follows a September meeting between Mr Livingstone and Mr Chavez in London, the mayor said.

The Venezuelan national oil company, PDVSA, will provide the oil at a discount worth $32 million a year, while the city will use the savings to offer half-price bus fares to 250,000 poor Londoners. Mr Livingstone, a one-time socialist known locally as ‘Red Ken’, has praised the Chavez government for aiming to better the lives of the poor. “This is an incredibly generous offer by the president of Venezuela,” he said.

“This builds on work his government is doing across the world to tackle poverty.” London officials will open an office in Caracas to provide advice on urban planning issues such as traffic management. Mr Chavez has said he may seize Venezuelan companies to support social programs and transform the nation into a socialist state.

Richard Barnes, a Conservative member of the London legislative assembly, criticised the deal. “Why does London one of the richest capitals in the world needs to exploit a developing nation?” Barnes said in an e-mailed press release. “This money would be better directed at the poor of Venezuela.”

Source: The Economic Times

>Red Terror File: Kremlin puppet and Chechnya’s acting president Ramzan Kadyrov: Berezovsky issued orders to ice Litvinenko and Politkovskaya

>Ramzan Kadyrov, acting President of Chechnya, serves his masters in Moscow well. However, the propaganda is blatant and uninspired: Russia’s oligarchs are evil. Capitalists endanger Russia. Litvinenko was a traitor. Politkovskaya was a muckraker. Pictured here: Russia/Soviet President-Tyrant Vladimir Putin with puppet Ramzan, son of Akhmad, who was assassinated on May 9, 2004. The elder Kadyrov was killed along with nearly a dozen other spectators in a bomb blast that occurred at a Grozny soccer stadium during a World War 2 memorial victory parade. The bomb was installed into a recently constructed concrete support pillar under the stadium’s VIP section, a fact that would lead one to believe that Akhmad outlived his usefulness to the man pictured with his son, above.

Berezovsky ordered murders of Litvinenko, Politkovskaya – Kadyrov.
20.02.2007, 17.51

GROZNY, February 20 (Itar-Tass) — Chechnya’s acting president, Ramzan Kadyrov, claims that Boris Berezovsky was the one who had placed the murder contracts on former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London and investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow.

“During the first two military campaigns in Chechnya Berezovsky was the one who financed the militants. He and Litvinenko had triggered a process aimed at ruining Russia. They gave Basayev money. I was a witness to their talks myself,” Kadyrov told a news conference in Grozny, adding that “Litvinenko had said everything he could and was no longer necessary for Berezovsky.”

“That man killed Litvinenko and Politkovskaya,” Kadyrov said. “These days some are looking for ‘the bear’s traces’ in Chechnya, while the one who ordered the crimes should be searched for in London,” he said. “Both Litvinenko and Politkovskaya were of no use to him any more. Everything he had wanted them to do they did a long while ago. Politkovskaya was not a hindrance to us at all. We were reading her articles like children’s fairy tales. She relied on rumors and not on the hard facts.”

Source: ITAR-TASS

>USSR2 File: Russian FM: US missile defense will not lead to new cold war; Russian commander: We can target bases; Polish PM supports missiles

>We are talking about the status of Poland and about Russia’s hopes that Poland will once again come under its [Moscow’s] sphere of influence. But following the deployment of a missile defense base here, the chances of such undue influence arising will be greatly reduced for at least several decades.
— Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Prime Minister of Poland, February 20, 2007

If the governments of Poland and the Czech Republic make such a decision, the Strategic Missile Forces will be able to target these systems.
— Nikolai Solovtsov, Commander in Chief, Strategic Missile Forces, Russian Federation, February 20, 2007

The deployment of [missile] bases in the Czech Republic and Poland means that NATO military installations will move closer to Russia’s borders, in violation of a verbal promise made by the United States to [ex-Soviet president] Gorbachev at talks ending the Cold War. It could lead to a new Cold War.
— Jan Carnogursky, former Prime Minister of Slovakia, February 20, 2007

The current developments in the world do not point at a new variant of the “cold war.”
— Sergei Lavrov, Foreign Minister, Russian Federation; speech made at Moscow Linguistic University, February 20, 2007

The Kremlin’s ominous warnings that the USA is starting a new cold war over Washington’s proposed missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic is deceptive. The first Cold War never really ended.

The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia concurs with Moscow’s Putinist-Chekist-Surkovist-Gryzlovist regime: US missile defense endangers the balance of power in Europe. We have already blogged about the anti-USA protests organized by the KSCM’s “banned” youth section in cooperation with the Czech Republic’s Muslim diaspora. Pictured above: Czech communist poster.

Czech communist against US radar military base
Sunday, 11 February 2007

The Communists have been the only parliamentary politics force in the Czech Republic which, already before the parliamentary elections – when other parties, including those which are now in the government, smokescreened their true positions – highlighted the real danger of a US military base or US radar station being set up at our territory. The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia specifically warned of this issue in its election manifesto.

The CPBM demands that this important matter should be decided by a Referendum!

The CPBM already last year, presented a draft of a Constitutional Law about the Referendum in case of US anti-missile systems would be deployed in the territory of the Czech Republic: That draft will be presented again. The Referendum on this issue is vital, as it is a matter of the Czech Republic national interest. US military bases are under US jurisdiction; that means a Law Order of Czech Republic would not be valid inside of any base or station area. It is also necessary to underline that new missile bases do not notably increase the employment chances for local people, as the intentional right-wing propaganda says. This has been proved by past experience across the world.

The propaganda of both right-wing parties and the Social Democrats has tried to appease some of our citizens: those who are willing to accept that a radar station as “less dangerous” or even a positive “benefit” for our country. The opposite is true!

We draw the attention of the citizens of the Czech Republic to the fact: that the radar station is just as dangerous as an anti-missile base, because radar represents the eyes and ears of the missile systems.

It is typical of the Czech right-wing – which has attained a parliamentary majority only through the betrayal of two Social Democrat deputies – that it betrays both Czech citizens and the sovereignty of our country!

The CPBM is still organizing a petition against establishing of either a foreign military base or a radar station for anti-missile defence at our territory. It calls upon all citizens to add their signatures to the 55,000 signatures that have already been collected.

Source: Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia Official Website

>Latin America File: Roberto D’Aubuisson’s son and two other ARENA deputies slain in Guatemala one month after Sao Paulo Forum meets in San Salvador

>Date of Salvadoran Politicians’ Assassination Coincides with that of Roberto D’Aubuisson’s Death in 1992

As the new “red spread” moves throughout Latin America, will the assassination today of three ARENA politicians, who were en route to the Central American Parliament in Guatemala where they are deputies, propel El Salvador into civil war again? The three deputies, who were slain on February 20, are Eduardo D’Aubuisson, son of the anti-communist Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, William Pichinte, and Jose Ramon Gonzalez.

Between 1980 and 1992 El Salvador’s ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party was locked in a deadly civil war with the communist insurgent army known as the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). The elder D’Aubuisson led ARENA between 1978 and 1985, was a graduate of the international left’s bete noire, the now renamed School of the Americas, and a veteran of Salvadoran military intelligence. He died in 1992 of throat cancer. In 1986 US Ambassador to El Salvador Robert White testified before Congress to the effect that there was more than enough evidence to convict D’Aubuisson of orchestrating the 1980 murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was perceived by the government as sympathizing with Jesuit-spawned liberation theology and the FMLN.

The FMLN, which is now the chief opposition party and boasts only two seats less than ARENA, hosted the communist-terrorist Sao Paulo Forum (FSP) between January 12 and 16, 2007. Schafik Jorge Handal, the son of Palestinian immigrants, was the long-time leader of the FMLN, dying of a heart attack on January 24, 2006. Between 1973 and 1994, Handal was leader of the Communist Party of El Salvador. Farabundo Marti was one of the founders of the communist party in the 1930s. Formed in 1980, the FMLN united five distinct political groups: Communist Party of El Salvador and its armed wing Armed Forces of Liberation; Popular Forces of Liberation “Farabundo Martí”; Party of the Salvadoran Revolution and its armed wing Revolutionary Army of the People (El Salvador); Armed Forces of National Resistance; and Revolutionary Party of Central American Workers and its armed wing Revolutionary Army of the Central American Workers.

Latin America’s communist leaders are pictured above: Handal; Hugo Chavez, President/Tyrant-in-Making of Venezuela; Fidel Castro, President/Tyrant of Cuba; and Evo Morales, President/Tyrant-in-Making of Bolivia.

I do not believe that anyone could be faulted for speculating that the FMLN, the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity–another guerrilla army-turned-political party–or some other member of the FSP was somehow behind the assassination of D’Aubuisson, Pichinte, and Gonzalez. This murder operation occurred only a month after the FSP convened in San Salvador and coincided with the date of the death of Eduardo D’Aubuisson’s father in 1992. With the open reassertion of power by the Sandinistas in neighboring Nicaragua and in view of the fact that the next parliamentary and presidential elections in El Salvador are still a few years away, the FMLN might be anxious to implement another coup d’etat against ARENA.

Do not expect the MSM to delve into Latin America’s subterranean political linkages.

Salvador Deps Killed in Guatemala
Guatemala, Feb 20 (Prensa Latina)

Huge turmoil has been caused here over the killing of three Salvadorian legislators from the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN), who had traveled to the Guatemalan capital to attend a meeting of the regional group.

The victims are Eduardo D’aubisson, William Pichinte, and Jose Ramon Gonzalez, from the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance.

The charred bodies of the deputies and the driver of the car in which they were traveling were found last night in a farm of El Jocotillo village, in Villa Canales municipality, Guatemala department.

The burnt vehicle was far off the main road, and also had several gunshots. Two of the bodies were inside the car and the others on the ground.

Guatemalan Government Minister Carlos Vielmann, and Salvadorian police chief Rodrigo Avila said at the crime scene it was not a common felony, due to the brutality with which it was committed.

Vielmann announced a special team will be created to thoroughly investigate all the movements of the deputies since their arrival in the country.

The victims relatives informed the legislators had left for Guatemala Monday morning, but never got to their hotel.

Source: Prensa Latina

The FMLN condemned the murders in the media release below, but the party’s official statement is meaningless in view of the party’s FSP membership, which the FMLN openly touts on its website.

The Front Farabundo Martí for the National Liberation, FMLN, condemns and repudia the vile murder, in the outskirts of Guatemala, of three deputies of ARENA before the Central American Parliament and its motorist.

The FMLN supports with the families of William Pichinte, Eduardo Jose D’ abuisson Munguía, Jose Ramon González Rivas and Gerald Napoleón Ramirez, with the fraction of the party ARENA before the PARLACEN, with the leaders, militants and supporters of the Party ARENA and with the Central American Parliament, before this criminal fact that it constitutes a new aggression to the Salvadoran and Central American society.

The FMLN demands to the authorities of the Republic of Guatemala to make all the investigations that are necessary to clarify this repudiable crime, and that applies to the guilty all the rigor of justice. We also demanded, of the Guatemalan State, the guarantees of security for the Central American deputies and deputies and all the people who visit that country.

FMLN
Tuesday 20 of February of 2007

>Red Terror File: Explosion at St. Petersburg McDonald’s injures at least six customers, bomb filled with shrapnel

>McCapitalist’s: the symbol of American “imperialism” par excellence. As the restored Communist Party of the Soviet Union seeks to openly reassert itself throughout the Not-So-Former Soviet Union, expect more attacks on any such foreign presence in Russia. According to state-run Novosti, the bomb was filled with shrapnel.

Explosion Hits McDonald’s Restaurant in St. Petersburg
Sunday , February 18, 2007, AP

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — An explosion hit a McDonald’s restaurant in the city center on Sunday, injuring at least six people, officials said.

The explosion blew out windows at the restaurant and partially destroyed the ceiling, said Irina Andriyanova, spokeswoman for the Emergency Situations Ministry.

She said six people were wounded, including four who were hospitalized with various injuries, including concussions and cuts from flying glass.

Ekho Moskvy radio, citing eyewitnesses, said the blast went off in the handbag a restaurant patron.

Officials did not say whether they believed the explosion was related to terrorism or a criminal act. McDonald’s restaurants have been targets of both criminal gang disputes and terrorist attacks in Russia in the past.

In 2002, a car bombing at a McDonald’s restaurant in Moscow killed one person and injured eight. Several Chechen men were convicted in the blast, which prosecutors said was part of a series of terrorist attacks planned by Chechen rebels.

In 1998, a small bomb exploded at a McDonald’s under construction in another part of St. Petersburg.

Source: FoxNews.com

>Asia File: 28 bombs rock southern Thailand in major escalation of Muslim insurgency; 1,000 non-combatants killed since January 2004

>Is Thailand’s Muslim Insurgency a Revival of the Rebellion Initiated by the People’s Liberation Army of Thailand?

The Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Thai Army, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, led the September 19, 2006 coup d’etat against the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Boonyaratglin is a Muslim and has two wives, which is illegal in largely Buddhist Thailand. Although martial law was terminated in January, General Surayud Chulanont is prime minister of Thailand’s Interim Government. Despite conciliatory gestures from the junta, the Muslim insurgency in the province of Pattani continues.

The Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO) is believed to have links to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in The Philippines and the Free Aceh Movement in Indonesia. The PULO renewed its activities in 2001, according to some terrorist experts, under the influence of Al Qaeda and its Indonesian affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah, which seeks to establish an Islamic theocracy. The connections between the PULO and the Al Qaeda network have not been entirely proven. There is a remote possibility, too, that the PULO may be a front for the “dormant” Communist Party of Thailand, the military arm of which, the People’s Liberation Army of Thailand, has been quiet since the early 1990s (when communism “died”). The CPT/PLAT operated in the northern part of the country, as well as the southern, along the border with Malaysia, where the PULO is currently carrying out its armed insurgency. In 1979 the PLAT boasted 11,000 to 12,000 combatants. This figure apparently dwindled over the next decade. In 1987 the Thai government estimated that there were then approximately 600 armed communist rebels.

There are four major countries in southeast Asia that have yet to fall to communism: Indonesia, which almost succumbed in the 1960s; Malaysia, Thailand, and The Philippines.

Pictured above: soldiers of the Royal Thai Army one day after the coup.

Series of bombs rock Thailand, three die
Monday Feb 19 12:03 AEDT

AP – At least 28 bombs exploded in apparently coordinated attacks in parts of southern Thailand plagued by a Muslim insurgency, killing at least three people and wounding more than 50, the military said.

The bombings on Sunday targeted hotels, karaoke bars, power grids and commercial sites in the country’s southernmost provinces, the only parts of predominantly Buddhist Thailand with Muslim majorities.

Two public schools were torched.

Police said three Thais of Chinese descent were also gunned down in Pattani province in what was believed to be the act of insurgents.

The killings occurred as the country’s Chinese community was celebrating the Lunar New Year.

Violence in the south has been escalating in recent months despite a major policy shift by the military-imposed government, which is trying to replace an earlier, iron-fisted approach in dealing with the rebels with a “hearts and minds” campaign.

More than 2,000 people have died in the provinces bordering Malaysia since the insurgency erupted in 2004, fuelled by accusations of decades of misrule by the central government. The insurgents have not announced their goals, but are believed to be fighting for a separate state imbued with radical Islamic ideology.

In Sunday’s attacks, two people were killed and 33 injured in Yala province, while one person died and 20 were wounded in a tourist town in Narathiwat province, said Colonel Wichai Thongdaeng, a military spokesman.

“We believe that the attacks were planned to cause division, create fear among the people. They want to show that they are still capable (of carrying out attacks),” he said, adding the military has sent additional troops to the region.

Two explosions tore through electricity transmitters in Pattani province, causing blackouts in several areas, said Pattani police Major General Kokiat Wongworachart.

Five bombs exploded in the border town of Sungai Kolok, a popular destination for Malaysian and Singaporean tourists, said Major General Yongyut Chareonwanit, the Narathiwat police chief. At least two schools in the province were torched, he said.

Wichai said nine bombs went off in the Yala provincial capital and another seven in the border town of Betong, which also attracts tourists to its entertainment venues. A sizable number of Sunday’s bombings were against karaoke parlors, which are regarded as decadent by the Islamic rebels.

Two bombings were also reported in neighbouring Songkhla province.

Source: NineMSN.com

>USSR2 File: Oleg Shenin, Man in the Shadows: Restored CPSU chair organized Aug. 1991 coup, moved party assets into foreign banks with Marc Rich’s aid

>Shenin is razor-sharp and persistent in reaching his goals. As secretary of the Central Committee, he controlled at least $15 billion worth of secret Communist Party deposits in Western, mainly Swiss, banks.
— Excerpt from article below

Many inhabitants of the shopping mall regime are dimly aware of Gennady Zyuganov and presume that his Communist Party of the Russian Federation is the successor organization of the old Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Even fewer know of his comrade Oleg Shenin, 2008 presidential candidate, hard-core Stalinist, chairman of the restored CPSU–of which the CPRF is the Russian section–and its predecessor, the Union of Communist Parties-CPSU.

Let me introduce you to the “power behind the throne” in Russia. If you have been following our blogsite since its inception more than a year ago, you will know that Shenin is only just now stepping into the limelight . . .

Upon first investigation we viewed Shenin as one of several instigators behind the (deliberately) botched coup of August 1991. In the article below, Kvint and Darialova portray Shenin as the prime mover behind the potemkin coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who knew about the “Vodka Putsch” in advance, a fact reported here in previous months and which bears repeating here. “When Gorbachev was contacted on August 17 and 18 [1991],” Valentin Falin, former head of the CPSU’s International Department said in a 2005 interview with Kommersant Vlast, “and a report was presented to him that everything [for the coup] was ready, he said: ‘Well, boys, you do whatever you think fit. I won’t play your games any longer.'” Kvint and Darialov also explain that Shenin, who was then secretary of the old CPSU Central Committee, not only managed the Party’s finances but also was responsible–before the communists disassembled the Soviet Union–for secreting those enormous assets into foreign banks.

Elsewhere, security, intelligence, and terrorism expert Joseph Douglass, author of Red Cocaine–which details the ongoing Soviet narco-subversion operation against the West–has reported that Belgium-born billionaire and Bill Clinton bud Marc Rich was responsible for assisting the CPSU in moving its money out of the country before 1991 and into Swiss bank accounts and foreign business enterprises. Douglass relates: “Thanks to the influence he gained from sharing his profits with Party and KGB officials, Rich was drawn into the inner reaches of the hierarchy that ruled the Soviet Union and was included in the creation of the sinister, behind-the-scenes government that was designed to outlive the deliberate dismantling of the Soviet Union.” He continues: “And Marc Rich, despite his carefully manufactured facade of humanitarianism, was a major player in the CPSU’s creation of its ‘invisible party economy,'” consisting of privatized state assets overseen by “ex”-communist hierarchs and “ex”-KGB officials. Matching Douglass’ research with that of Kvint and Darialov, first published in 1991, one can only conclude that Shenin and Rich collaborated together to hide the communist nest egg for a rainy day . . . such as the restoration of the Soviet Union more than 15 years later.

Communists have never hesitated to use capitalism to advance their own cause, as unlikely as that endeavor might appear to those who have no understanding of communist dialectics and deception. That a past (and continuing?) business connection might exist between the first president of the restored Soviet Union and the man Slick Willie pardoned has yet to come under the microscope of any investigative journalist anywhere. If the unsolved murders of Paul Klebnikov and Anna Politkovskaya are any indication of the true nature of press freedom in Russia, a detailed study of the Shenin-Rich connection will probably never see the light of day.

Man in the shadows: USSR Politburo member Oleg Shenin
Hidden assets of the Soviet Communist Party
By Vladimir Kvint and Natalia Darialova
28 October 1991

THE SOVIET UNION announced late last month that it has only $3 billion in gold reserves. Westerners were stunned. What happened to all those tens of billions of dollars’ worth of gold the CIA and other analysts had assumed existed in Soviet vaults?

The standard answer is that the Soviets spent it, especially after their oil revenues dropped. We think the standard answer is incorrect. Not all the Soviet gold was spent. A lot of it remains, but in private names and in private bank accounts.

I (V.K.) worked in the Soviet gold and silver industry for many years. Knowing how the metals are produced and where they go, I estimate that at least 60 tons of god, 8 tons of Norilsk platinum and not less than 150 tons of silver were hidden abroad at the order of the Communist Party. We’re not talking about peanuts.

This is without counting diamonds of more than 10 carats, which the U.S.S.R. has been mining but hasn’t been selling in the world markets for over 45 years. In theory they were held at the “Third Department” of the U.S.S.R.’s Ministry of Finance, known under the name “Gokhran” (State Guard). In practice the Communist Party and the Central Committee functionaries could and did help themselves to these diamonds.
By our estimates, between $15 billion and $50 billion of Communist Party money sits, like the lost treasures at the bottom of the ocean, in the safes of Western banks.

So the Soviet Union is not as broke as it pretends. As with a lot of Latin American countries, what should be its reserves instead sit in private hands in foreign banks.

Further, we think this buried capital was a factor in the unsuccessful coup against Gorbachev on Aug. 19. According to the official account, the leader of the coup was Vice President Gennady Yanayev. But in spite of his cunning, he is a rather shallow man, overly fond of vodka. He couldn’t conspire his way out of a paper bag.

Then who was the real ringleader? His name is Oleg Shenin, 54, a member of the Politburo. Shenin’s name has not yet been publicly linked to the coup, but he was arrested in Moscow soon after the coup failed and is now behind bars.

I have known both Yanayev and Shenin for 20 years. Unlike Yanayev, Shenin is razor-sharp and persistent in reaching his goals. As secretary of the Central Committee, he controlled at least $15 billion worth of secret Communist Party deposits in Western, mainly Swiss, banks.

Always a man in the shadows, Shenin was in charge of the country’s two most powerful institutions: the KGB and the army. He is man who believed that arrows from the dark hit better. So he preferred anonymity even though both the former KGB chairman, Vladimir Kryuchkov, and the former defense minister, Dmitri Yazov, reported to him.

Equally important, Shenin controlled the Communist Party’s money. He was to the Communist Party what Martin Bormann was to Hitler’s National Socialists.

One other man had a hand on the purse strings. He was a party functionary named Nickolai Kruchina. Since 1983 Kruchina ran the Upravlenie Delami—the Business Management Headquarters. That organization controlled billions of dollars’ worth of the party’s money, mostly in publishing houses, real estate and cash.

Where is Kruchina now? In a better world. Four days after the coup and after the frantic flights between Moscow and the Crimea, Kruchina made his last flight—out of the fifth-floor window of his apartment. Did he jump? Or was he shoved? It’s not clear. What is clear is that he knew too much for his own good. So now only the jailed Shenin—and perhaps Gorbachev—knows where the money is.

It boils down to this: The Communist Party’s head is dead, but its body still lives. It is one of the world’s biggest financial corporations. A burglar and exploiter, for 74 years the party has ignored any distinction between its own and the state’s pockets.

In 1991 the Law on Property was adopted in the U.S.S.R., ending the state’s monopoly on property. That should help Boris Yeltsin and others who have been demanding that the party hand over its assets to the republics. Seeing this coming, since 1989 the big-time party players have been illegally transferring money abroad.

Of course, not all of the gold stolen by the party is abroad. Much of it is at home. Like any gangster, the Communist gangsters now face the problem of laundering their illegal domestic wealth.

One of my clients, a very large American multinational corporation, recently had a taste of this. It was approached by a Soviet man who claimed he was a president of a large new concern. He had a reference letter from Gorbachev’s closest party friend. I soon discovered that the alleged Soviet company was not registered as a company and didn’t have the right to participate in foreign economic activity. However, the letter from Gorbachev’s friend meant the party was involved. Party members were trying to launder assets by creating a joint venture with a legitimate foreign company. A similar unregistered concern, blessed by the Soviet state bank, tried to sell, a U.S. company several billion rubles for dollars at a price lower than the official rate.

Some of this laundering has already been exposed. When Germany was uniting, the German communist party started moving its valuable new currency outside the country. (West German marks and East German marks were made equal.) This money was invested in businesses, often through joint ventures. One of them was revealed in a Russian newspaper. Putnic, an office-construction firm, was a joint venture between the Soviets and a Cyprus holding company. Where did the Cyprus partner’s capital come from? Answer: from those East German party hacks bearing valuable Deutsche marks.

One Japanese pharmaceutical company won enormous privileges in the U.S.S.R. I learned why: The company helps finance the Japanese Communist Party.

All this activity was directed by Oleg Shenin.

Before the coup one of the U.S.S.R. government’s newspapers published memoirs of a Soviet spy family. As part of its cover, the family owned companies in the U.S. and in Western Europe. Where did the initial capital for the companies come from? From the KGB. I am sure that this is just one piece of a huge financial iceberg the KGB had built in the West under the wise leadership of the Communist Party, and of the party’s KGB overseer, Oleg Shenin.

Foreigners doing business in the former U.S.S.R. should be careful about prospective partners, who may be fronts for old party interests or who actually may have stolen money rightfully belonging to the Soviet state or one of the former republics. Komsomol, the party’s youth branch, is now officially dissolved, but before it went, a lot of its assets leaked out. For instance, it invested 250 million rubles in a new bank, Finist. Now Komsomol is abolished. Who will be getting the interest on the investment? Interesting question.

The new governments, especially Yeltsin’s in Russia, are going after this stolen—or misplaced—money. Last year the Communist Party tried to transfer one of its central Moscow buildings to a Soviet-Swiss joint venture called Link. Its principals on the Soviet side included people connected with the party. Then the democratic Moscow City Council threatened such joint ventures with criminal investigation, and the planned property transfer probably never materialized.

But the main problem is finding out where the treasure abroad is hidden. The Moscow Association of Businessmen has announced rewards for information about the whereabouts of the party’s assets. Russia’s chief prosecutor has started an investigation. Some big scandals are yet to make headlines.

Where it has been identified, party property inside the country is being transferred to local authorities. Local governments have already taken control of more than 4,000 party publishing and printing houses, 40 of them being among the world’s biggest. Many of them will soon be used to form joint ventures with major foreign publishing conglomerates.

Boris Yeltsin and the Russian parliament have asked the Swiss government to freeze the party’s money in Swiss banks. Standing on principle, the Swiss authorities have asked for more information. Perhaps they want proof of the party’s criminal activity. The Swiss government hasn’t yet asked its banks to freeze any funds, but Swiss bankers are keeping an eye out for large transfers. Other foreign governments have received similar requests from the Yeltsin government. The world now knows Communist rule in Russia was corrupt and its socialism utterly unworkable. But the world doesn’t yet know how utterly corrupt and rotten it was.

Vladimir Kvint in Distinguished Lecturer at Fordham University and Babson College.
Natalia Darialova is a writer whose book, No Man’s Land, was a bestseller in the Soviet Union.

Source: Forbes Magazine

In the meanwhile, the restored CPSU has endorsed Shenin’s candidacy. It remains for that party’s largest section, the CPRF, to endorse Shenin too. Although Zyuganov indicated in 2005 that he will run for the 2008 presidential election, we have stated before that we believe he will yield to Comrade Oleg. In any event, per a report from state-run Novosti, the CPRF will shortly nominate its candidate for the election. “We will form our team with a presidential candidate and go forward to the election,” Zyuganov told journalists in St. Petersburg on February 14. As reported too in this blog we have examined documents released by the restored CPSU and its youth section, the Red Youth Vanguard, since 2004, as well as the public statements of Shenin and Zyuganov, and have come to the conclusion that Russia’s communists are prepared to instigate a (real) coup d’etat against the potemkin “rightist” regime in the Kremlin, should the Russian electorate fail to recognize its “true” masters.

>Communist Bloc Military Updates: Top Russian general threatens to scrap 1987 INF Treaty; communists protest US-Russian war game, Torgau 2006 postponed

>As for carrying out preventive strikes against terrorist bases, we will take all measures to liquidate terrorist bases in any region of the world.
— Yuri Baluyevsky, Chief of Russian General Staff; statement made in response to Beslan school massacre, September 8, 2004

So, according to the power behind the “post”-communist Russian elite, where is the world’s chief terrorist base? Oleg Shenin, August 1991 coup plotter, chairman of the restored Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and 2008 Russian presidential candidate, supplies the answer: “The solutions, which are concerned the life of entire peoples, start now not in the capitals of these states, but in Washington – the military-political and financial center of world globalizma – center of robbery, aggression and international terrorism.”

The trap was laid: Communism “dies” in Eastern Europe. NATO and the European Union rush in to fill the political “void,” moving right up to the border with Russia.

The trap is sprung: NATO and especially the warmongering “terrorist regime” in the USA are threatening the Motherland. Moscow must retalitate.

Pictured above: Chief of Russian General Staff Yuri Baluyevsky visits Havana where he meets Comrade Raul Castro, then Cuban Defense Minister, in 2005. Pictured below: With typical communist two-facedness, the following year Baluyevsky cozies up to General Peter Pace, Chief of the US General Staff. “Dumb Americanski. You overlook our friendship with Cuba and Nicaragua, as well as our new alliance with friend of the people, Comrade Hugo.” Looks like someone forgot to take down the hammer and sickle for this photo op. The hammer, ironically, is aimed at Gen. Pace’s head.

Report: Top Russian general says Moscow may unilaterally leave arms reduction treaty
February 15, 2007 4:34 AM

MOSCOW (AP) A top Russian general said Thursday that Moscow may unilaterally opt out of a Soviet-era arms reduction treaty with the United States, Russian news agencies reported.

Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, the chief of the Russian military’s General Staff, was quoted by ITAR-Tass and Interfax as saying that Russia could pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, negotiated between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1987.

He said the decision would depend on the United States’ actions with its proposed missile defense system, parts of which Washington is seeking to deploy in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The treaty eliminated an entire class of medium-range missiles that had been based in Europe.

Baluyevsky’s comments come after President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that the INF treaty no longer serves Russia’s interests.

Source: Santa Barbara News-Press

Kremlin Bows to Communist Opposition to US-Russian War Game

In yet another instance of foolhardy East-West convergence, the US military will engage in joint exercises with the Russian Armed Forces on Russian soil this spring. The US-Russian Torgau war game was originally scheduled for the fall of 2006, as the article below reports, but postponed due to the September 14 protests orchestrated by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the Russian section of the restored CPSU. A resolution from the secretariat of the CPRF Central Committee, referring to the US Armed Forces, declared: “The Communists oppose sabre-rattling on our (Russian) soil by the army that bombed the sovereign Yugoslavia, trampled the statehood of several countries in the Middle East, and is trying by hook or by crook to perpetuate its military presence in the territory of the former Soviet Union.” By facilitating joint US-Russian military “cooperation,” the Putinist-Chekist-Surkovist-Gryzlovist regime is serving its historic mission well by shooting itself in the foot and providing the CPSU with a pretext to openly seize the reins of power in Russia.

Assuming Washington and Moscow go ahead with Torgau this spring, shortly thereafter the world’s two largest communist blocs, the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, will conduct a joint exercise, also on Russian soil, called Peace Mission Rubezh-2007. Be assured, the MSM will for the most part overlook the exercise’s anti-Western intent and the West’s deaf and dumb leaders will look the other way.

Joint U.S.-Russia Military Exercise Postponed Till 2007
October 18, 2006

The U.S.-Russian military training exercise scheduled for earlier this fall but postponed by Russia at the last-minute will not take place in 2006, U.S. military spokesmen in Europe said Tuesday.

Instead, the plan is to hold the event next year, perhaps as early as spring, said Navy Lt. Corey Barker, a U.S. European Command spokesman quoted by The Stars and Stripes.

Torgau 2006 “has been postponed until 2007,” Barker said.

Scheduled from late September to early October, the 2006 exercise would have included about 220 U.S. troops based in Germany. Among the units invited to Russia to take part were the 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment; 5th Signal Command; 21st Theater Support Command; 1st Armored Division; and members of the U.S. Army Europe headquarters staff.

In a statement last month, the Russian Ministry of Defense said the exercise “will have to take place as soon as a related agreement comes into force after ratification by PfP (Partnership for Peace) nations.”

Essentially, the problem was said to involve the status of forces agreement signed in April 2005 by Russia and NATO officials but not yet ratified by the Duma, the Russian parliament. The agreement spells out rules regarding the movement, training and presence of foreign troops on Russian soil.

Early last month, when the Russian military suddenly announced the exercise was being “postponed,” questions arose over the future status of the exercise series and what was behind the deferment. In the Russian press, reasons for the postponement ranged from the unresolved status of forces agreement and the anti-Russian policies of the United States, to the U.S. military’s desire to bring its own vehicles and arms to Russia.

The exercise would have been the third in the Torgau series.

“USAREUR is committed to training with our allies and partners in the Global War on Terrorism,” U.S. Army Europe spokesman Bruce Anderson said in a written response to a query. “The Torgau exercises are an important part of that training.”

However, EUCOM “has agreed to a Russian Federation proposal to postpone Exercise Torgau 06 to allow for passage of Russian legislation consistent with U.S. and Russian policies regarding exercises of this type and scope,” Anderson added. “USAREUR is conducting prudent planning to continue this series of exercises next year, provided the necessary legislation is in place. Due to planning and logistical considerations, there is not enough time to conduct the exercise in 2006.”

Source: Moscow News

Incidentally, the last and only time the USA deployed troops to Russia was to defend the Kerensky regime against the Bolsheviks between 1918 and 1920. The American Expeditionary Force Siberia and the Polar Bear Expedition consisted of 15,500 soldiers. The Allied intervention against the Bolsheviks failed. Look where we are now . . .

Putin Reshuffles Cabinet in Preparation for 2008 Presidential Election

In preparation for the presidential election, President Putin has promoted Anatoly Serdyukov, the former head of the Federal Tax Service, to the post of defense minister. Sergei Ivanov (pictured here with Putin), who previously held that position concurrently with that of Deputy Prime Minister, will now solely hold the latter position, along with Dmitry Medvedev. The Kremlin-dominated media has yet to acknowledge the presence of Shenin in the race and, instead, view Ivanov and Medvedev as the two, otherwise colorless, front-running candidates. By contrast, since its restoration in 2004, the CPSU has consistently highlighted the popularity of Shenin among the Russian electorate. That being so, one can expect that the Ivanov and Medvedev candidacies are designed to fail.

>Grey Terror File: Trolley Square mall killer attended Salt Lake City’s Al Noor mosque, origin of Talovic’s firearms unknown

>LE has no idea where Sulejman Talovic obtained his firearms. No apparent history of violence or drug abuse. No suicide note. A recruit? The imam of the mosque that Talovic attended denies knowing the young killer. Pictured here: Suljo Talovic, Sulejman’s father.

Still no explanation for rampage
Trolley Square: A search for answers

Shooter’s relatives in disbelief over Monday’s tragedy, say they had no explanation for the rampage; the family wants to take the teen’s body back to the Balkan homeland where he spent childhood years witnessing the horrors of the brutal Bosnian war

By Nate Carlisle and Stephen Hunt
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 02/15/2007 01:23:50 AM MST

He fled a war with his family as a child and came to Utah as a refugee. He floated from school to school before dropping out. A Muslim, he sometimes attended a Salt Lake City mosque for Friday prayers before landing a full-time job to help support his parents and three sisters.

Although he was a loner and withdrawn, Sulejman Talovic seemed normal and “nice” to the few people who knew him. On Wednesday – two days after Talovic shot and killed five people and injured four others at Trolley Square – there were no good answers as to why he would do it. There were no signs that the 18-year-old was in trouble, family members said.

“No, he was very good,” his uncle, Sadik Omerovic, said Wednesday. Talovic was shot to death by police about six minutes after he began his killing. His family says his father wants to take the body back to his homeland for burial.

The shooting rampage came as a “very big surprise for me,” Omerovic said. “It just happened. We’re shocked.”

Also a mystery to Talovic’s relatives is how he got a shotgun and handgun.

“Nobody knows,” Omerovic said. “We don’t know who [gave] him the guns.”

Lori Dyer, resident agent in charge of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in Utah, said the bureau has no information indicating Talovic obtained the guns or ammunition illegally. But the ATF still needs to do more research on the guns’ histories.

Omerovic said Talovic had no history of violence. “He never, never [hurt anyone]. He was very nice person.”

In an interview with KUTV 2 News, the gunman’s father could not make sense of his son’s violence at Trolley Square. He said his son did not take drugs. “I think somebody push him. I don’t know. I’m almost crazy with what happened. Maybe somebody sell gun or give gun.”

Sulejman Talovic was born in Bosnia in 1988, when that country was a peaceful and a relatively prosperous part of Yugoslavia. In 1993, a year after the Bosnian war began, he and his family were forced from their eastern Bosnian town and became refugees. He arrived in Utah with his mother in 1998, a year after his father, Suljo Talovic, arrived.

The family, which includes three girls, ages 13, 11, and 7, has a home in northwestern Salt Lake City.

Sulejman Talovic’s aunt, Ajka Omerovic, said she doesn’t know why her nephew became a mass murderer, but claimed neither he nor the rest of her family has any lingering psychological effects from the war in Bosnia.

“We all suffered things in war, but, no, we didn’t have anything,” she said.

Ajka Omerovic said she never knew her nephew to shoot firearms.

Although he quit school at 16, Sulejman Talovic often attended Friday prayers at the Al-Noor mosque on 700 East in Salt Lake City, said Salih Omerovic, Ajka’s cousin.

Salih Omerovic said the young man stopped coming to the prayers in December, when he landed a full-time job at Aramark Uniform Services in South Salt Lake. He said Sulejman Talovic’s father had pressured his son to get a job to help out with the family’s living expenses.
Imam Ali Mohamed, the spiritual leader at Al-Noor, said he does not know Talovic.

“I know some Bosnians, but specifically this person, I don’t know him,” said Mohamed, a Somali who has been in Utah since 2000.

Up to 200 people turn out for Friday prayers and there is not much socializing, said Maung Maung, who attends the mosque.

Talovic’s Muslim faith prompted questions about a possible political motivation for his killing spree, but the FBI in Salt Lake City said Wednesday it has no evidence that politics played a role.

FBI spokesman Patrick Kiernan said Wednesday the bureau is trying to help police determine why Sulejman Talovic killed five people, and agents have looked into whether religion or terrorism were factors.

“We’re working closely with the Salt Lake P.D. and we’re obviously aware that that [terrorism] is a potential issue out there,” Kiernan said. “We’ve not seen anything that this is terrorism or an act against the government.”

Before his rampage, Talovic worked from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and gave no one cause for alarm, said his boss, Trent Thorn, Aramark’s general manager.

As always, he said, Talovic “just stayed to himself. He just worked. What people in the community are saying he was like is what he was like here.”

Nothing out of the ordinary happened that day that would explain Talovic’s actions, Thorn added.

The Talovic family’s neighbors also said they knew little about Talovic, describing him as a quiet teen who kept to himself.

That isolation might be making it more difficult to determine why Talovic killed and wounded people at Trolley Square.

Salt Lake City police spokeswoman Robin Snyder said Wednesday that police have not discerned a motive or found anything resembling a suicide note. With the permission of Talovic’s parents, detectives searched their home but did not take any computers or video games, she said.

“The family was very cooperative with officers,” Snyder said. Talovic’s body is at the state medical examiner for autopsy. When it is released to the family, said aunt Ajka Omerovic, Talovic’s father wants to take it to Tuzla, Bosnia, for burial.

Source: Salt Lake Tribune

>Grey Terror File: 18-year-old Bosnian Muslim immigrant kills five shoppers in Salt Lake City shooting spree, shot dead by off-duty officer

>Ajka Omerovic, who said she was Talovic’s aunt, visited the home Tuesday afternoon. She told the Deseret Morning News that Talovic had been “a good boy.” She said the family are Muslims from Bosnia who had lived in the vicinity of Sarajevo.

Munns’ sister-in-law, Jodie Sparrow, said the man heard Talovic say, “Die, mother-(expletive)!” as Munns was shot twice. Munns then stumbled into the Hard Rock Cafe for help.
— Excerpts from article below

Sulejman Talovic: Just another loner, like the 911 skyjackers, the 311 Madrid train bombers, the 2005 London transit bombers, the 2002 Beltway Sniper/Nation of Muslim convert John Allen Muhammad, and the 2005 University of Oklahoma suicide bomber Joel Henry Hinrichs III . . . They were all “good boys.” Spetsnaz and Islamo-Marxists agree: Loners make good recruits. We’ll just sweep this one under the rug, folks. Move along. Nothing to see here. Statement from Utah’s Bosnian community this evening . . . spin cycle, full blast.

Talovic’s shooting spree occurred on February 12.

6 minutes of horror
Shooter aimed to kill as many as he could
By Pat Reavy and Ben Winslow
Deseret Morning News

In just six minutes, 18-year-old Sulejman Talovic left a tragic path of destruction that forever changed the lives of dozens of people.

“His intent was to shoot as many people as he possibly could,” said Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank.

Police released details Tuesday on Talovic’s shooting rampage that left five people dead before off-duty Ogden police officer Ken Hammond and four Salt Lake City police officers killed him in “a shootout,” Burbank said.

Four other shooting victims are hospitalized.

Talovic was armed with a shotgun, a .38-caliber handgun and “a backpack full of ammunition,” Burbank said. Around the man’s waist was a bandolier of shotgun shells.

“He had a pump shotgun,” said one witness, DeEtta Barta. “He was shooting, and he shot about four shots.”

Barta and her friend Ron Mason were celebrating her birthday at the Desert Edge Brewery when they looked out the window and saw Talovic emerging from the parking terrace, firing away.

“It didn’t seem real to me,” Mason said.

Police said Tuesday they did not know where Talovic got his weapons. Investigators believe the shootings were random.

Some of the biggest questions remained unanswered Tuesday — including why Talovic picked Trolley Square and what prompted the tragedy.

“This is something really unheard of in our community,” Burbank said.

Investigators believe that Talovic pulled into the west parking terrace of Trolley Square about 6:44 p.m. on Monday. He got out of his car and shot 52-year-old Jeffery Walker and his son, 16-year-old AJ Walker.

Jeffery Walker was killed. AJ was taken to a local hospital and was listed in critical but stable condition.

Barta, who is an intensive-care nurse, said she rushed to help the young man, who had been shot in the head.

“He had a bullet lodged superficially in his temple, and his ear was bleeding,” she said.

On his way into the mall, Shawn Munns’ family said Talovic shot Munns, 34, in the courtyard near Green Street Social Club. Munns was heading to a car when he heard a noise and turned a little.

Munns’ sister-in-law, Jodie Sparrow, said the man heard Talovic say, “Die, mother-(expletive)!” as Munns was shot twice. Munns then stumbled into the Hard Rock Cafe for help.

He was reported to be in serious condition at a hospital Tuesday but alert and talking to his family.

Salt Lake City police say Talovic entered Trolley Square’s west entrance, where he shot and killed 29-year-old Vanessa Quinn in the hallway. People inside the Bath and Body Works store watched helplessly as the woman was gunned down.

“We saw him go in the back door of the mall and into the store across from Bath and Body Works, and he shot a girl right in front of the door,” Madilee Puttuck said, her voice shaking with fear. She and others locked themselves in a bathroom to hide from the gunman.

Emergency dispatchers were flooded with 911 calls. So many calls were made to the Salt Lake City Police Department’s 911 dispatch center that the city’s overflow system kicked in, and calls started being rerouted to the Valley Emergency Communications Center. The center received approximately 50 calls from Trolley Square in a 10-to 15-minute period.

Police said Talovic next moved to Cabin Fever, a novelty and card shop, where he shot four people inside, killing three. Carolyn Tuft, 44, and her 15-year-old daughter, Kirsten Hinckley, were shot. Hinckley was killed, as were Brad Frantz, 24, and Teresa Ellis, 29.

Tuft was taken to the hospital and was listed in critical but stable condition Tuesday.

Police said Talovic also shot Stacy Hanson, 53. Hanson was reported to be in critical condition at a hospital Tuesday.

A ‘hero’ responds

Witnesses told the Deseret Morning News that Talovic appeared to be “hunting” people. Some described a calm expression on his face as he aimed his shotgun and fired.

Off-duty Ogden police officer Hammond, who was eating dinner with his pregnant wife at the Rodizio Grill, heard the gunfire. Walking into the mall, he spotted people on the ground — and saw Talovic.

“I noticed a man with a shotgun walking out of the business where the people were seriously injured,” he said Tuesday. “He took a shot at me.”

Hammond said he backed up for safety and hit the ground, losing sight of Talovic for a brief time.

Salt Lake City police arrived at Trolley Square at 6:47 p.m., and four officers formed an “Emergency Action Team,” a police tactic in which officers immediately enter a situation to prevent more people from being shot. It’s a change from the days before the Columbine High School tragedy, when officers would wait for more backup and set up a game plan.

The officers “rushed right in” without worry for their own safety, the chief said. Hammond was involved in the shootout with Talovic, and Salt Lake City police arrived and helped corner the gunman.

“There was a shootout,” said Barrett Dodds, an antique-shop owner in the mall.

At approximately 6:50 p.m., officers reported the gunman was down.

“There was blood all over that place,” Dodds said.

Burbank praised the law enforcement agencies involved, which included most officers in the Salt Lake Valley plus the off-duty Ogden officer.

“There’s no question (Hammond’s) quick actions saved the lives of numerous people,” Burbank said.

Burbank called Hammond’s acts “heroic,” but also added that he “cannot be too complimentary” of his own officers who risked their own lives. The four Salt Lake officers and Hammond are on routine paid administrative leave pending the outcome of inquiries into the shooting.

‘A good boy’

Investigators were trying to learn more about the man responsible for causing the tragedy. Burbank said Talovic’s car was searched, but the chief would not discuss whether evidence was found. He also did not say if any suicide notes were left or messages were posted on the Internet that might provide insight.

On Tuesday morning, police detectives were in South Salt Lake, questioning employees at the Aramark Uniform Supply business where Talovic had worked since December. Aramark managers and a company spokeswoman declined to comment. One employee described Talovic as “quiet.”

Police said Talovic had a juvenile record of only four minor offenses. None of his arrests were for violent crimes.

The man had lived at a house with his mother and three younger sisters near the Utah State Fairpark. Neither his mother nor his sisters would answer the door or respond to phone calls Tuesday, although a person inside would pick up the phone and then quickly hang up.

Ajka Omerovic, who said she was Talovic’s aunt, visited the home Tuesday afternoon. She told the Deseret Morning News that Talovic had been “a good boy.” She said the family are Muslims from Bosnia who had lived in the vicinity of Sarajevo.

Omerovic said she believed the young man’s mother had been living here for about four years. Omerovic was extremely distraught and at first said she did not speak English. But she did try to conduct an interview. She and a younger man went inside the home and left with a large cage with two birds in it.

“We want to know what happened, just like you guys,” Omerovic told reporters. “We have no idea…. We know him as a good boy.”

Asked what he was like, she replied, “He liked everybody, so I don’t know what happened.”

His mother is in “a difficult situation — she is very sick,” she added.

A loner

Many neighbors said that while the mother and young girls were always pleasant and the girls often played with other neighborhood children, Talovic kept to himself.

“I don’t even know that there is a man living there,” said neighbor Yasmin Castellanos.

Castellanos said police and an ambulance arrived at the house about 5 a.m. Tuesday.

Neighbor Riana Yellowbear said the few times she’d see Talovic walk by, he would never say anything. Another neighbor, John Buddensick, said he also rarely ever saw Talovic.

“I never would have expected anything like that at all,” he said. “He was really quiet. He’d just walk in and out.”

One of Talovic’s former teachers remembered him as a loner who “didn’t have any friends in class.”

“I just remember a quiet kid, ” said Danny Schwam, Talovic’s former ninth-grade teacher at the Highland High-Garfield alternative program. “He didn’t cause any trouble. He was kind of unassuming. He never acted out.”

Schwam said Talovic only came to school about half the time. When Schwam called his mother to discuss the repeated absences, he said, “I usually got, ‘He’s sick.”‘

“It’s always these kinds of kids,” Schwam said. “It’s the kids who are distraught, who have nothing to live for…who cause the most severe damage. They don’t know what else to do. In their mind, they’re at the end of their rope.”

The aftermath

Many people caught up in Monday night’s shooting rampage are still trying to process what happened to them.

“I can’t sleep, I just can’t get it out of my head,” said shopper Melanie Kenyon. “I try to sleep, but it’s still there.”

Kenyon said she was in Pottery Barn when she heard the shots and was quickly ushered into a back room inside the Restoration Hardware store.

“There was about 25 of us. We were pacing back and forth, talking on cell phones,” she recalled. “We really didn’t know what was going on.”

After about 2 1/2 hours, police officers came and ushered Kenyon and others to safety.

“We all had to walk out with our hands in the air,” she said.

Mall spokeswoman Alicia Bremer said in a statement that the mall would reopen today at 8 a.m.

“It is at the discretion of each mall retailer and restaurant as to when they resume business. We advise retail customers and restaurant patrons to call ahead,” she said.

Some companies were offering grief counseling to their employees who were in the mall when the shooting rampage occurred. The Wells Fargo Bank branch at Trolley Square remains closed, but grief counselors met with employees to offer counseling on Tuesday.

A memorial account for the shooting victims has been established at Wells Fargo Bank.

Source: Deseret News

>Grey Terror File: Quebec police officer injured by car bomb; Canadian media fail to draw link to new FLQ cell’s threat for Feb. 15

>Sherbrooke, the city where this incident is located, is one of Quebec’s larger urban areas, apart from Montreal and Quebec City. The Canadian media is not currently drawing any connection between the blast and the new Front de libération du Québec cell that is supposedly active, and which in several letters over the past four months treatened to initiate a bombing campaign today in the English-speaking districts of Montreal.

Please note the new link in this blogsite’s right column to the Global Incident Map, which updates terrorist and other suspicious incidents throughout the world on an hourly basis. The founders of TerroristWarning.com are responsible for this worthwhile project.

Quebec police officer injured after car bomb destroys his van
Canadian Press
Published: Thursday, February 15, 2007

SHERBROOKE, Que. (CP) – A bomb destroyed a city police van and injured an officer on a downtown street Wednesday.

The explosion occurred after the officer, who parked the van and walked away for a few minutes, returned to his vehicle, a news conference was told.

The blast was strong enough to blow out the windows of a doughnut shop and damage several vehicles parked nearby.

Sherbrooke police Chief Gaetan Labbe said explosives were found at the scene and Quebec provincial police are investigating.

Despite the force of the explosion, the officer was only slightly injured and was treated for shock in hospital, said Sherbrooke police spokeswoman Maryse Boulanger.

Police say they are unsure whether the bomb targeted the officer in particular or the police force in general.

They had no immediate motive for the bombing.

The rest of the Sherbrooke force’s vehicles were inspected as a preventive measure, Boulanger said.

Source: Canada.com

>Asia File: Russia and Saudi Arabia to cooperate in nuclear and military spheres; Moscow and Beijing woo India into full SCO membership

>Before long, the communist strategists might be persuaded that the balance had swung irreversibly in their favor. In that event they might well decide on a Sino-Soviet “reconciliation.” The scissors strategy would give way to the strategy of “one clenched fist.” At that point the shift in the political and military balance would be plain for all to see. Convergence [between East and West] would not be between two equal parties, but would be on terms dictated by the communist bloc.
— Anatoliy Golitsyn, KGB defector, New Lies for Old (1984), pages 345-346

In the long term, they [Russia, China, and India] feel that the whole structure of international relations has to shift in their direction.
— Vinod C. Khanna, Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi; February 15, 2007

In the Western Hemisphere neo-communism is consolidating its power. Further afield, in Asia the Moscow-Beijing Axis is seeking to woo other states, some suspecting, others not, into its orbit. President Vladimir (“There’s No Such Thing as a Former KGB Man”) Putin has set several firsts in preparation for the restored Communist Party of the Soviet Union to openly reassume the reins of power in Russia and throughout the Communist Bloc. In 2000 he was the first Soviet/Russian president-tyrant to visit Cuba following the KGB-managed collapse of communism in Eastern Europe; in 2004 he was the first Soviet/Russian president-tyrant to visit Mexico since the nineteenth century; and he was the first Soviet/Russian president-tyrant to visit Saudi Arabia, earlier this month.

Following his two-day trip to the home of Wahhabism/Salafism, a strict interpretation of Islam, state-run Russian media outlet RIA Novosti signed an agreement with the state-run Saudi Press Agency for the purpose of exchanging news and training journalists. More importantly, the prospect of nuclear energy and military cooperation between the world’s two top petroleum producers, Russia and Saudi Arabia, is a truly frightening prospect. When it suits them to maintain their cash flow, Moscow and Riyadh play nice to the USA. Be assured, however, Putin and King Abdullah, who like fellow Saudi Osama bin Laden follows Salafism, personify the global anti-Western Islamo-Marxist nexus. The Kremlin, in line with KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn’s warning in his second book The Perestroika Deception (1995), openly courts the favor and cooperation of Islamic regimes and, indeed, holds observer status in the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Saudi Arabia is a founding member of the OIC.

Saudi foreign minister: kingdom ready for nuclear cooperation with Russia
Feb 14 2007, 20:03

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) – Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said on Wednesday that the kingdom is ready to cooperate with Russia in the military and nuclear power spheres.

The comment followed a two-day visit this week by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who became the first Russian head of state to visit the kingdom.

“There are no obstacles to cooperation between the two countries in all fields concerning the military and nuclear power,” Saud told reporters.

During his visit, Putin was reported to have offered Russian expertise to the kingdom in the field of nuclear energy.

This came as the six Gulf Arab states, which include Saudi Arabia, are moving ahead with plans to explore development of their first nuclear energy plants – a move seen as a response to Iran’s contentious nuclear program.

Representatives of the region are planning to seek assistance from the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog – the Vienna, Austria based International Atomic Energy Agency – later this month, Abdul Rahman al-Attiyah, the secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council, said on Sunday.

The GCC first announced its intention to study a peaceful nuclear program in December, but has revealed few details about its plans.

Saud said that Moscow and Riyadh are also engaged in talks about Russia helping with arms to the kingdom, based on Saudi Arabia’s military needs and on the kind of weapons Russia can provide. He did not elaborate.

The United States is the kingdom’s main arms supplier but Moscow represents an option for Saudi Arabia to diversify its weapons sources, as the kingdom opens up to new markets. Russian officials have said their country hopes to win a prospective Saudi order for tanks.

In Riyadh, Putin on Monday said his talks with Saudi officials focused on cooperation, adding that the two nations could expand cooperation into new spheres.

“We can cooperate in other sectors … on a mutually beneficial basis,” Putin had told Russian media. “We could expand such opportunities in the metal industries, nuclear energy, high technology, joint efforts to develop transport infrastructure.”

Source: Kyiv Post

BRIC, Goldman Sachs, and the West’s Blindness to Communist Deception

Pictured here, from left to right: The leaders of China, Russia, and India: President Hu Jintao, President Vladimir Putin, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, respectively.

The Moscow-Beijing/Trans-Asian/Eurasian Axis is embodied in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a new communist bloc whose senior partners are Russia and China. India holds observer status in the SCO, communists hold the balance of power in the country’s parliament, and Maoist insurgents hold one third of India’s territory. India’s “Naxalite” rebels network through the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organisation of South Asia with Nepal’s communist rebels, who were admitted last November into the government after the monarchy, weary of 10 years of civil war, capitulated to their demands.

In short, international communism is ready to pluck India like a ripe fruit. By securing India’s full participation in the SCO, the Moscow-Beijing-New Delhi Axis will control, as the report below notes, 40% of the world’s population, 20% of the world’s economy, and 50% of the world’s nuclear warheads. Geopolitical analysts frequently refer to the these three countries and neo-communist Brazil as the “BRIC” group. This term was coined in a 2003 report published by the Goldman Sachs investment bank to refer to the rapid economic development of these countries. Goldman Sachs predicted in 2006: “Over the next 50 years, Brazil, Russia, India and China–the BRICs economies– could become a much larger force in the world economy. We map out GDP growth, income per capita and currency movements in the BRICs economies until 2050.”

While more than likely oblivious to Moscow’s long-range strategic deception, this bastion of Western capitalism unwittingly created a term that aptly encompasses a key, latter-day component of the Communist Bloc. International communism’s “one clenched fist” of which Golitsyn warned in his first book New Lies for Old (1984) is almost ready to strike the West. Notwithstanding Goldman Sachs’ prediction, World War Three/Four will erupt well before 2050. The article below reports: “The foreign ministers, Pranab Mukherjee, Li Zhao Xing and Sergei Lavrov, emphasised that theirs was not an alliance against the United States. It was, ‘on the contrary, intended to promote international harmony and understanding,’ a joint communiqué stated.” Communist Bloc leaders will continue to repeat such lies until Missile Day.

Giants meet to counter US power
February 15, 2007
Jeremy Page in Delhi

India, China and Russia account for 40 per cent of the world’s population, a fifth of its economy and more than half of its nuclear warheads. Now they appear to be forming a partnership to challenge the US-dominated world order that has prevailed since the end of the Cold War.

Foreign ministers from the three emerging giants met in Delhi yesterday to discuss ways to build a more democratic “multipolar world”.

It was the second such meeting in the past two years and came after an unprecedented meeting between their respective leaders, Manmohan Singh, Hu Jintao and Vladimir Putin, during the G8 summit in St Petersburg in July.

It also came only four days after Mr Putin stunned Western officials by railing against American foreign policy at a security conference in Munich.

The foreign ministers, Pranab Mukherjee, Li Zhao Xing and Sergei Lavrov, emphasised that theirs was not an alliance against the United States. It was, “on the contrary, intended to promote international harmony and understanding”, a joint communiqué stated. Their formal agenda covered issues ranging from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East and North Korea to energy security, nuclear non-proliferation and trade. The subtext, however, was clear: how to use their growing economic and political muscle to prevent Washington from tackling such issues alone.

“In the long term, they feel that the whole structure of international relations has to shift in their direction,” said Vinod C. Khanna, of the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. “What has happened is that quite independently they’ve reacted very similarly to recent international events.”

Mr Mukherjee said: “We agreed that cooperation rather than confrontation should govern approaches to regional and global affairs. We also agreed on the importance of the UN.”

Diplomats say that it is premature to talk of a strategic axis between the world’s largest and two most populous nations because they still have more in common with the West than with each other.

Delhi was close to Moscow in Soviet times, but has forged a new friendship with Washington. Chinese relations were soured by its border wars with India in 1962 and the Soviet Union in 1969, and by its arms sales to Pakistan. Russia appears keener than China or India to challenge American hegemony. But there has been a convergence of interests as each struggles to make the transition from a command economy to free markets. Since 2003 they have found further common ground in opposing the US-led invasion of Iraq.

One area of agreement is opposition to outside interference in separatist conflicts in Chechnya, the northeast of India and the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang.

Another is energy. India and China are desperate for Russian oil and gas, and Moscow is worried about its dependence on Western markets. But their most significant common ground is opposition to US military intervention in Iran. The joint statement did not mention Iran, but the three countries have taken a common stance in calling for a negotiated solution through the International Atomic Energy Agency. None of them wants a nuclear-armed Iran, but Russia sells Tehran nuclear technology and India and China need Iranian gas.

Source: TimesOnline

As the previous article notes, this is not the first time that the foreign ministers of Russia, China, and India have held trilateral discussions. A 2002 article in The Hindu concluded: “It would appear that Russia, China and India, by cooperating with each other, are sending a subtle message to the world’s only superpower — that they, too, count for something in international affairs. As of now, these contacts are expected to remain just that.”

>Latin America File: Under auspices of ALBA Venezuelan military delegation arrives in Cuba, Havana and Caracas ship power generators to Managua

>Latin America’s new communist bloc, known as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), is the illicit offspring of the decaying Cuban President-Tyrant Fidel Castro and the red-shirted Venezuelan President-Tyrant-in-Training Hugo Chavez. Prensa Latina reports that the Cuban-Venezuelan strategic alliance is flourishing nicely within the context of ALBA: “In the opinion of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, rather than trying to benefit any party in particular, these joint ventures are the basis of a single homeland. ‘They are structural projects that belong to a structural ALBA; it is not only trade, but a strengthened ALBA,’ he said.”

Pictured here: On December 2, 2001 Cuban soldiers march through Revolution Square in the city of Santiago de Cuba. This military parade commemorated the 45th anniversary of the arrival of President Fidel Castro’s invasion force in 1956, which fought a two-year guerrilla war leading up to the January 1, 1959 Cuban Revolution (REUTERS/Rafael Perez).

Venezuela’s Military Delegation Visits Cuba
February 14, 2007

Havana, (ACN) A delegation from Venezuela’s Higher Military School arrived in Cuba on Sunday at the invitation of the island’s Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. The group made up of students and professors were welcomed at Havana’s Jose Marti International airport by the director of the Maximo Gomez Revolutionary Armed Forces Academy, Division General Urbelino Betancourt and other Cuban high-ranking officers.

The Venezuelan military delegation is headed by Vice-admiral Luis A. Morales, who told the press that their visit is aimed at exchanging experiences with their Cuban counterparts, as part of the ongoing Latin American and Caribbean integration process promoted by the governments of Cuba and Venezuela. The visitors, who will be in Cuba until next Saturday, are scheduled to visit military centers and units, as well as places of historic and cultural interest.

Source: Cuban News Agency

This is not the first Cuban-Venezuelan military exchange program. A Venezuelan military delegation also visited Cuba in 2005.

Cuban President Receives Venezuelan Military Delegation

Havana, Jun 16 (Prensa Latina) Cuba´s President Fidel Castro welcomed at the Palace of the Revolution a delegation from the Venezuela National Defense Military Academy (INADEN) that is wrapping up a five day visit.

Led by Brig. General Rafael Eduardo Arreaza, the Venezuelan representatives arrived in Havana last Sunday to exchange experiences, learn about the Cuban system of defense and discuss economic and social topics of interest to both nations, Granma daily reports.

On completion of their master´s degrees at the Institute, Venezuelan military officers traditionally visit similar academies in the region to share experiences.

This year, after Cuba, the delegation will visit Brazil.

In Cuba, the Venezuelan military also visited La Pradera International Health Center, where they spoke with fellow countrymen, patients who are part of the 1,400 Venezuelans with little resources receiving necessary health care as part of the bilateral cooperation programs.

Source: Cuban Ministry of External Relations

In addition to supplying Comandante Ortega’s neo-Sandinista regime with cheap (free?) oil and thereby offering a little pre-election boost, the Bolivarian/Socialist Republic of Venezuela is now offloading some extra power-generating plants in Nicaragua.

Cuban-Venezuelan Aid to Help Tackle Nicaraguan Power Deficit
February 14, 2007

Havana, (ACN) The first power-generating plants supplied by Venezuela to mitigate Nicaragua’s electricity deficit will be connected to the national energetic grid on Thursday, said Cuban engineer and project manager Mario Gutierrez.

Gutierrez pointed out that work has been finished ahead schedule thanks to Nicaraguan technicians from the National Electric Transmission Company (ENTRESA) under the supervision of Cuban and Venezuelan experts.

The eight German-made power-generating plants, which will produce 15 megawatts, have been installed in Las Brisas, to the northwest of Nicaragua’s capital city of Managua.

Gutierrez noted that another 24 power-generating plants, which will produce 45 megawatts, will be also connected to the national electric grid in late March.This total of 60 megawatts represents half of the current generating deficit in Nicaragua, reports PL news agency.

Cuban and Venezuelan cooperation lent to the Central American nation is an outcome of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas agreement (ALBA), an effort promoted between Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela that seeks Latin American integration. Nicaragua joined ALBA after President Daniel Ortega took office on January 11 of this year.

Source: Cuban News Agency

Meanwhile, the restored Communist Party of the Soviet Union prepares to reassume open control of the Not-So-Former Soviet republics and Russia rearms old and new allies in Latin America: Cuba and Nicaragua falling into the first category, Venezuela and Mexico falling into the second. There are no coincidences in the Communist Bloc.

>Grey Terror File: Al Qaeda threatens to strike Alberta oil patch, "cripple" USA; new FLQ cell threatens bombing campaign February 15

>Al Qaeda? Al Qaeda? How about a few Spetsnaz in the oil patch? More threats of grey terror ala GRU defector Viktor Suvorov, who writes in his history of the Soviet/Russian special forces: “The overture [to World War Three/Four] is carried [out] by agents of the secret services of the Soviet satellite countries and by mercenaries [Islamo-Marxists] recruited by intermediaries. The principal method employed at this stage is ‘grey terror’, that is, a kind of terror which is not conducted in the name of the Soviet Union. The Soviet secret services do not at this stage leave their visiting cards, or leave other people’s cards. The terror is carried out in the name of already existing extremist groups not connected in any way with the Soviet Union, or in the name of fictitious organisations.”

Pictured here: Drilling rig in northern Alberta.

Al-Qa’ida targets Canada
Call to arms. Strike oil patch to cripple U.S.

Al-Qa’ida has called for terrorist strikes against Canadian oil and natural gas facilities to “choke the U.S. economy.”

An online message, posted Thursday by the Al-Qa’ida Organization in the Arabian Peninsula, declares: “We should strike petroleum interests in all areas that supply the United States … like Canada,” the No. 1 exporter of oil and gas to the U.S.

“The biggest party hurt will be the industrial nations, and on top of them, the United States.”

The same group, the Saudi arm of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network, claimed responsibility for last February’s failed attack on the world’s largest oil processing facility, at Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia’s eastern province.

The attack was foiled when guards opened fire on the terrorists, blowing up their vehicles filled with explosives before they could get through the site’s gates.

The message is contained in Sawt al-Jihad (Voice of Jihad), the group’s online magazine.A feature article, titled Bin Laden’s Oil Weapon, encourages operatives to continue to follow earlier directives from bin Laden to strike oil targets not only in Saudi Arabia but elsewhere, according to a translation by the SITE Institute, a non-profit U.S. group that monitors terrorist websites.

Three Western countries are mentioned in the call to arms: Canada first, followed by Mexico and Venezuela. Would-be attackers are instructed to target oil fields, pipelines, loading platforms and carriers.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service said yesterday it was aware of the posting, as is Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada.

“Do we think it’s a serious threat? I can’t get into that,” CSIS spokesperson Barbara Campion said.

Greg Stringham, vice-president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said the threat is similar to a posting made about a year ago, when an Al-Qa’ida-affiliated blog called on Canadian and U.S. jihadists to attack an Alaskan oil pipeline.

The new posting is “not singling out Canada – it specifically mentions Canada, but along with some other countries that are suppliers to the United States,” Stringham said.

“It’s not the first time that it’s happened, and we have no credible threat to substantiate it … but still we are taking it seriously and we’ve informed all of our members and contacts about that – especially those with critical infrastructure – to pay extra attention and be vigilant.

“The Alberta Energy and Utilities Board knew about the threat the day it appeared online thanks to information from Canadian intelligence agencies, spokesperson Darin Barter said.

“We’re aware of this,” he said yesterday, adding the warning wasn’t significant enough to warrant raising the threat level. “There was no evidence that pointed to any imminent or direct threat to Alberta infrastructure.

“Experts have long considered the U.S. dependence on foreign oil – and Al-Qa’ida’s evolving strategy to attempt to deny the United States access to its major oil suppliers – as that country’s Achilles heel.

A major supply disruption would send energy prices soaring. Had the Abqaiq attack been successful, some experts say, oil prices would likely have broken all records.

A catastrophic hit could bring transportation and other sectors of the U.S. and other world economies to a standstill.

“We should not be overly concerned at this exact moment; Al-Qa’ida as an organization has been severely weakened,” said Tom Quiggan, a senior fellow at the Centre of Excellence for National Security at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

The posting appears to be “intended to send a message to its followers that they should consider a wider set of targets than just those in the Middle East,” he said.

It also is “an operational suggestion to the ‘home-grown’jihadists and independent groups that follow the inspiration message of Al-Qa’ida. To them, it outlines a suggested list of potential new targets – Canada is at the top of that list.

“Since 2000, Quiggan said, Canada’s proven oil reserves have risen from about 5 billion barrels of oil to more than 180 billion barrels. That puts Canada in the No. 2 position as an oil reserve country, second only to Saudi Arabia and significantly ahead of such other states as Iraq, Kuwait and Iran. Sawt al-Jihad has correctly analyzed the oil importing situation of the United States and concluded that it is not just Middle Eastern suppliers that are important,” he said.

Martin Rudner, director of Carleton University’s Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies, characterized the posting yesterday as “very serious” and said “the highest levels in our security and intelligence community” have been aware of it since Friday.

He said Al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula are “a bunch of guys with capability and intent. I would ramp up my awareness, all the kinds of things that intelligence and law enforcement agencies are supposed to do.”

Because the Sawt al-Jihad article contains some operational details of the 2006 Abqaiq attack, Rudner said he believes it’s intended as a call to arms rather than a piece of alarmist propaganda.

Kyle Keith, director of operations for the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, said companies have several emergency programs in place.

“The fact that this information is making the rounds and we’re sharing it shows our security programs are working … the sharing of information and the heightened awareness,” he said.

The Saudi group is believed to also have been responsible for a May 2004 incident in which attackers stormed the offices of a Houston-based oil company in the Saudi oil hub of Yanbu. An ensuing gun battle killed six Westerners, a Saudi and the militants. Several weeks later, gunmen stormed oil company compounds in Khobar and took hostages in a siege that killed 22 people.

Months later, in December 2004, bin Laden for the first time called on militants to attack oil targets in the Gulf to stop the flow of oil to the West.

A crackdown on the group by Saudi officials resulted in Sawt al-Jihad going silent in April 2005. Its resurfacing last week “appears to indicate that the Al-Qa’ida presence in Saudi Arabia is trying to reassert itself,” said Quiggan, who has held previous intelligence positions with the Canadian armed forces, the Privy Council Office, Citizenship and Immigration and the RCMP.

Source: Canada.com

In November 2006 we covered the reemergence of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), which has released yet another letter threatening to bomb sites in the English-speaking districts of Montreal this month and in March:

Letters threaten FLQ attacks in Montreal
Threats to bomb crowded areas in largely English-speaking western neighbourhoods
Last Updated: Friday, January 19, 2007 11:34 AM ET
The Canadian Press

An RCMP spokesman says the force is taking “very seriously” a recent threatening letter signed by a group claiming to be a new cell of the FLQ, a Quebec militant group active in the 1960s and 1970s.

The letter, dated Jan. 15, says “strategic targets of importance” will be targeted in the western, largely English-speaking part of Montreal between Feb. 15 and March 15.

“We will especially target traffic on main highways,” says the letter.

The letter says the plan of attack is designed “for maximum impact” and warns “it’s possible there will be injuries and deaths.”

The letter adds that “a combination of vehicles, letter bombs, remote-control explosive devices will be used and most of these devices are already in place.”

RCMP Cpl. Luc Bessette said Thursday that businesses that don’t conform to Quebec’s French-language sign law were also threatened.

Bessette said the RCMP is not dismissing the threats.

“Anything that has to do with the integrity and security of our citizens is always taken seriously,” Bessette said.

The letter was sent to Bob Benedetti, described in the letter as the “loudmouth” mayor of the Montreal suburb of Beaconsfield, as well as Quebec Premier Jean Charest and French President Jacques Chirac. It also said Benedetti was “designated to distribute the message to his colleagues” in more than a dozen predominantly anglophone communities.

The letter, which is signed: “FLQ, Camille-Laurin Cell,” is the second of its kind. The first one was received on Nov. 15, 2006.

Camille Laurin was a Parti Québécois cabinet minister responsible for the province’s language law in the 1970s.

The Front de libération du Québec (Quebec Liberation Front) was a pro-sovereignty militant group that carried out a campaign of bombings in the 1960s and sparked the 1970 October Crisis when a British diplomat was kidnapped and then Quebec’s labour minister, Pierre Laporte, was kidnapped and later killed.

No sign that threats could be carried out: RCMP

The RCMP stressed there was no indication those responsible for the letter could carry out their threats.

“So far we have no indication they can do what they’re saying,” Bessette added.

The Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, which includes Montreal police, provincial police, the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents, have been investigating since mid-November.

Benedetti said his staff were able to extract the letter from the mail and send it to police unopened.

“My staff were able to recognize it in the mail based on information the RCMP gave us regarding the first letter in November,” Benedetti said.

Source: CBC News

>Red Terror File: FARC and Chavez support Soviet Bloc’s 45-year-old narco-subversion plan against USA, Sao Paulo Forum implicated

>Drugs will be a decisive weapon in disrupting the fabric of Western democracies.
— Raul Castro, Acting President of Cuba since July 31, 2006, statement made in late 1960s

The trafficking is a way of waging war on the United States. It also provides a profit.
— General Humberto Ortega, brother of current President of Nicaragua Daniel, former Minister of Defense, retired February 21, 1995; statement made in 1987

[Cocaine trafficker Feris] Domínguez also had said, according to records of his declarations to Colombian investigators obtained by El Nuevo Herald, that he had met personally with Correa [until recently President Chavez’s drug czar] and that Correa had helped coordinate drug shipments for the so-called ”Cartel of the Suns,” allegedly run by top Venezuelan National Guard officers.
— Gerardo Reyes and Steven Dudley, Miami Herald, February 12, 2007

In Red Cocaine (1990), security, intelligence, and security expert Joseph Douglass (pictured above) described in detail, relying on defector testimony such as that of Czech general Jan Sejna, the Communist Bloc’s plan to subvert the West by controlling the international narcotics trade and organized crime, designing new recreational drugs, and compromising Western financial institutions with dirty money.

Douglass presently sits on the board of directors of the Center for Intelligence Studies, which is dedicated to the memory of James Jesus Angleton, the deceased Director of Counterintelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency. Angleton was one of the few US intelligence officials who believed KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn’s warnings concerning the Soviet long-range deception plan, still unfolding around us today in 2007. However, returning to our story . . .

The Soviet Union conducted studies of the effects of the proposed “pink epidemic” in the 1950s and then implemented the plan in the 1960s with the cooperation of foreign communist parties and states. By the end of the 1980s, the Soviets could count on the operational support of the Castro regime in Cuba, the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, and the communist insurgents in Colombia, otherwise known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. “As a Soviet revolutionary center in the Caribbean,” Douglass reveals, “Cuba is the operational center for drug trafficking and for the training of revolutionary terrorists. Nicaragua was becoming a second revolutionary center, and was also active in drug trafficking and in harboring and training revolutionaries” (page 92). As of January 2007, when the FSLN openly reassumed control of Nicaragua, these Latin American lackeys of the neo-Soviet state are still in place, in addition to the new Soviet satellite Venezuela.

“In 1962,” Douglass relates, “Khrushchev formally extended the Soviet narcotics operation to the East European satellites” (page 37). At a meeting in Moscow the Soviet leader declared: “When we discussed this strategy there were some who were concerned that this operation might be immoral. But we must state categorically that anything that speeds the destruction of capitalism is moral” (page 38). The Communist Party of the Soviet Union coordinated every detail of the narco-subversion of the West: “The Administrative Organs Department [of the CPSU] is one of the two or three most important departments of the Central Committee. This department controls the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Interior (KGB), and the Ministry of Justice. This is the department that directed operation Druzhba Narodov [meaning, cynically, “Friendship of Nations”] (pages 39-40). The operational connection between communist policy and narco-subversion is credible because: “[I]ntelligence operations are Communist Party operations that are designed to serve State interests, which only the Party can establish. The intelligence service is strictly an instrument of Party strategy” (page 47). “The Soviets,” Douglass adds, “believed that the corrupted bourgeoise had already accepted the idea of revolution, which was a deliberate Soviet-induced deception (page 42).

The complicity of the Cuban and the first Sandinista regimes in the Soviet Union’s “Friendship of Nations” plan is evident in the following quotes, which Douglass lists in his book:

The goal is to hurt the United States full with drugs.
— Fernando Ravelo-Renedo, Cuban Ambassador to Colombia, 1978

I was ordered to load up the United States with drugs.
— Mario Estevez Gonzalez, Cuban intelligence agent, 1981

Drugs were used as political weapons. The target was the youth of the United States.
— Antonio Farach, High-level Nicaraguan official, 1984

Drugs are the best way to destroy the United States.
— General Barreiro, Chief of Cuban Intelligence, 1987

Drugs are considered to be the best way to destroy the United States . . . by undermining the will of American youth, the enemy is destroyed without firing one bullet.
— Major Juan Rodriguez, Cuban intelligence officer, 1988

Fast forward to 2007, as Latin America’s new Red Axis consolidates its power and, not accidentally, the restored CPSU prepares to reassert itself openly during Russia’s 2007-2008 political season:

Key Farc role in US cocaine trade
Published: 2007/02/12 22:29:59 GMT

Ninety per cent of cocaine reaching the United States comes from Colombia – most of it via Farc rebels, a senior US official has told a magazine.

The Drugs Enforcement Agency’s Michael Braun described the Farc as “half terrorists, half traffickers – the face of global crime in the 21st Century”.

The left-wing guerrilla army is thought to be one of the world’s most powerful.

Colombia’s right-wing paramilitaries – players in the country’s civil conflict – are also involved in the drug trade.

Under what is known as Plan Colombia, the US has given $3bn in mainly military aid to Colombia to fight the drugs trade.

‘Paradigm’

In the interview with the weekly Colombian publication Semana, the DEA’s chief of operations said nine out of every 10 grams of cocaine sent to the US came from Colombia, and that the majority of it had passed through the Farc at some point.

The rebel group, Mr Braun added, were making between $500m (£257m) and $1bn a year from trafficking.

However, he said, he believed the war against the Farc was being won.

Asked about the role of the paramilitary umbrella group AUC – whose members have been demobilising – in the international drugs trade, Mr Braun said he did not want to underestimate it.

But the Farc, he said, was the paradigm of the organised crime of the future because of the way it had transformed itself.

Colombia is the source of more than 70% of the world’s cocaine supply, according to DEA figures.

Source: BBC News

New communist in the bloc, President Hugo Chavez–to whom FARC in a recent communique (which we published at this blogsite) pledged its support should the US invade Venezuela–is providing a haven for the Soviet-Latin American narco-subversion operation. Comrade Hugo’s former drug czar Luis Correa was apparently that: a facilitator of the USA’s death by cocaine. The officer corp of the Venezuelan National Guard provides further logistical support.

Venezuela a hot spot for drug trafficking
Venezuela’s outgoing drug czar is included in a large dossier connecting high-level officials in the country with drug trafficking.
Posted on Mon, Feb. 12, 2007
BY GERARDO REYES AND STEVEN DUDLEY

CARACAS – A Boeing DC-9 can carry as many as 90 passengers or, as one recent drug case showed, about 128 suitcases of cocaine.

Last April, Mexican authorities seized 5.1 tons of cocaine aboard a DC-9 coming from Venezuela. The traffickers had removed the seats in the airplane and packed the drugs in identical suitcases that somehow got past security at Caracas’ principal airport, Maiquetía.

The case was a watershed, illustrating the brazen attitude with which drug traffickers seemed to be operating in Venezuela and apparent cover they could expect from high-level Venezuelan government officials.

Following the bust, officials from three governments who were tracking the shipment, said the traffickers loaded the suitcases at Maiquetía. But Venezuela’s then-drug czar Luis Correa claimed the cocaine had been loaded in the northern Colombian city of Barranquilla. When confronted directly with more evidence — flight path, fuel used by the aircraft, time of the flight — by other officials, Correa held his ground.

The Venezuelan government announced last week that Correa had been removed as head of the National Antidrug Office, but gave no reason, and there is no official investigation into his strange declarations. The DC-9 case nevertheless remains part of a growing dossier on high-level Venezuelan officials possibly involved in an increasing amount of drug trafficking in this country.

MYSTERIOUS ESCAPES

The dossier includes mysterious escapes of wanted drug traffickers who were in Venezuelan custody, documents seized from right-wing Colombian paramilitaries and testimony of accused drug traffickers in jail.

Authorities from Colombia and the United States also say that top traffickers from Colombia and Haiti have made Venezuela their home in order to avoid detection from Colombian and U.S. authorities.

The rise in drug trafficking in Venezuela has coincided with crackdowns in neighboring Colombia, part of a $7 billion effort to fight the illegal drug industry in that country, and the rule of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

A former army lieutenant colonel who became president in 1999, Chávez has banned U.S. surveillance aircraft in Venezuelan airspace and effectively ended cooperation on drug matters with Washington.

Prior to Chávez, Venezuela was a transit point; now it appears to be a sieve: Since 1999, seizures are up four-fold, just one of many signs investigators use to measure the permissiveness of the environment for traffickers.

Another measure is the size of the loads decommissioned.

One trafficker, who allegedly took part in the five-ton DC-9 deal and is now jailed in Colombia, told Colombian authorities that the huge load was split between three organizations, including one that he called ”the generals,” a reference to the high-level Venezuelan officers involved in the trafficking.

The trafficker, Feris Farid Domínguez, told authorities he worked as a “coordinator of aerial routes.”

He told El Nuevo Herald in a jailhouse interview that he had regular contacts with top-level officials in the Venezuelan government’s investigative police, National Guard, the national registry and anti-drug office, including Correa. He added that officials issued him a Venezuelan diplomatic passport, which he showed to El Nuevo Herald, designating him as a Finance Ministry advisor, and they provided him with government bodyguards.

`CARTEL OF THE SUNS’

Domínguez also had said, according to records of his declarations to Colombian investigators obtained by El Nuevo Herald, that he had met personally with Correa and that Correa had helped coordinate drug shipments for the so-called ”Cartel of the Suns,” allegedly run by top Venezuelan National Guard officers. The suns are insignia of rank worn by Venezuelan generals, as U.S. generals wear stars.

It’s not clear whether Domínguez’s declarations, some of which were published last month in El Nuevo Herald, led to Correa’s departure last week.

Correa has denied Domínguez’s allegations, but did not grant repeated Miami Herald requests for an interview.

The Venezuelan government has made strides in recent months to crack down on drug trafficking. Authorities captured two high-level traffickers this year and five last year, including Domínguez, which President Chávez himself trumpeted as a triumph of anti-drug authorities.

OPENING UP

The Venezuelans also have begun to work more openly with foreign governments, most notably the British and the Dutch, which are working closely on intelligence matters with a vetted 15-man Venezuelan police unit.

”We have the impression that they are serious about [combating drug trafficking] at all levels,” Holland’s ambassador to Venezuela, Hinkinus Nijenhuis, told The Miami Herald in an interview.

But U.S. authorities have a decidely different impression. The Venezuelan government cut relations with the Drug Enforcement Administration last year and has yet to sign an addendum to a bilateral cooperation agreement that establishes the guidelines for how U.S. counter-drug officials can operate in Venezuela.

Colombian authorities are also troubled.

Many large-scale drug traffickers have simply moved their operations to Venezuela, a top official at the country’s investigative police told The Miami Herald on the condition of anonymity given the sensitive nature of relations between the nations.

OUTGOING SHIPS

The official said that police had detected an increasing amount of drugs on outgoing Venezuelan ships in a manner that he described as ”blatant” and “wanton.”

In October last year, the head of a Venezuelan counter-drug unit captured, then released, Hermagoras González Polanco, a Colombian man with a $5 million reward and an Interpol red alert attached to his name. The Interpol report said that González, who is wanted in the United States and Colombia, told the Venezuelans that “he had dedicated his whole life to farming.”

Other evidence of Venezuelan officials’ complicity in drug trafficking is piling up at the Colombian attorney general’s office as its investigators sift through computer files confiscated during an arrest of a member of a right-wing paramilitary group.

Both paramilitary units and their leftist guerrilla foes have financed their fight by delving into the profitable drug trade.

In one of the files obtained by The Miami Herald, investigators say the paramilitaries worked through a ”commander general of the National Guard.” The file does not identify the general, but goes on to say that the ”general” facilitated drug trafficking through Venezuela.

Source: Miami Herald

In this blog’s title we stated that the Sao Paulo Forum (FSP) is implicated in the Soviet Bloc’s narco-subversion of the West. How is this so? FARC, the Communist Party of Cuba, the pro-Chavez Communist Party of Venezuela, the Workers’ Party of Brazil, and the Sandinista National Liberation Front hold membership in the FSP.

>MISSILE DAY ALERT: Sec. of Defense Gates: Russia, China are threats; Moscow demands clarification; Hu visits Africa, promotes strategic partnership

>We need the full range of military capabilities. We need … the ability for regular force-on-force conflicts, because we don’t know what’s going to develop in places like Russia and China, in North Korea, in Iran and elsewhere.
— Robert Gates, US Secretary of Defense; statement made to House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, February 7, 2007

We are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations . . . one state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is very dangerous, nobody feels secure anymore because nobody can hide behind international law. I don’t want to accuse anyone of being aggressive [with respect to US plans to install a missile defense system in Poland and Czech Republic]. That balance will be upset completely and one side will have a feeling of complete security and given a free hand in local, and probably in global, conflicts . . . We need to respond to this. The process of NATO expansion has nothing to do with modernization of the alliance or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it is a serious factor provoking reduction of mutual trust. The legitimate use of force can only done by the United Nations, it cannot be replaced by EU or NATO.
— Vladimir Putin, Russian Federation President; statement made at 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy, February 10, 2007

We are surprised and disappointed with President Putin’s comments.
— Gordon Johndroe, White House national security spokesman, February 10, 2007

Is someone in the White House or Pentagon clueing in at last re. the Moscow-Beijing Axis’ war preparations? Or maybe the best and the brightest are reading our blogsite! If only . . . Brrr! Things are getting chilly again.

US military must stand ready to face threats: Gates
February 7, 2007

The United States has to boost its military machine to meet all threats and not just the war in Iraq, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said.

“We need the full range of military capabilities. We need … the ability for regular force-on-force conflicts, because we don’t know what’s going to develop in places like Russia and China, in North Korea, in Iran and elsewhere,” he told the House of Representatives Armed Services committee.

He was defending the 2008 budget unveiled on Monday by US President George W. Bush which called for a mammoth 716.5 billion dollars to fund wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as to pay for a major expansion of the US military.

Bush has pushed a new strategy to curb the violence in Iraq, which calls for 21,500 extra troops to be deployed in the country to secure the capital Baghdad, as well as troubled Anbar province.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Peter Pace, told the House panel that while China posed no immediate threat, “we still need to watch what they’re doing. Their recent anti-satellite test if of great concern.”

Pace said the US military was preparing for several scenarios of regional crises.

“We looked at the possibility of renewed conflict in Korea; we looked at the possibility of one other potential event in Pacific region, which I’d prefer not to say publicly; and we looked at the possibility of one additional event in the Iraq region, using the plans that are on the shelf …”

On Iraq, Gates said, as on Tuesday at a separate hearing in the Senate, that he was beginning to look at contingency plans should the latest strategy fail.”I have asked that we begin to look at other contingencies and other alternatives,” he said Wednesday.

“I think that the Iraqis have a very good understanding at this point that their participation in this role and their role in this activity is critical to its success and that if they do not fulfil their commitments, that the United States as you quoted me as saying, is going to have to look at other alternatives and consequences,” he said.

That could “include withholding financial assistance and other kinds of things, but also withholding forces,” he added.

Source: YahooNews.com

Moscow’s response to Gate’s candor: Sniff, sniff. We’re shocked. We’re appalled. You’re not playing along with our little ruse (that is, communism’s dead, Russia’s your friend, repeat ad nauseum). Pictured below: Russian Federation Foreign Ministry spokesentity Mikhail Kamynin.

Moscow demands clarification from U.S. over remarks about Russia threat
www.chinaview.cn
2007-02-13 09:08:56

MOSCOW, Feb. 12 (Xinhua) Russia has demanded an explanation from the United States over Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ remarks, which suggested that Russia was being identified as a potential threat, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

Russia has asked the United States to clarify whether Gates’ remarks represented the official position of the U.S. administration, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin in a statement.

On Feb. 7, Gates addressed a committee meeting of the U.S. congress, suggesting that Russia poses a potential threat to U.S. security.

He said: “We don’t know what’s going to develop in places like Russia…, in North Korea (DPRK), in Iran and elsewhere.”Kamynin said Russia had noticed what Gates had said, which were among a series of recent remarks by the U.S. military and intelligence officials that has greatly bewildered Russia.

Over the past few days, there have been a series of verbal battles between the United States and Russia.

Addressing a high-profile security conference in Munich, Germany on Saturday, Putin condemned the United States for “almost uncontained” use of force.

He said the United States “has overstepped its national borders in every way” and is fostering a new global arms race.

In response, Washington immediately dismissed Putin’s accusations as false.

In a statement later on Saturday, White House national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe said, “We are surprised and disappointed with President Putin’s comments.”

On Sunday, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov justified Putin’s accusations against the United States after the security conference in Munich.

Ivanov said that Putin’s remarks were simply “a reminder” of the fact that the United States is breaking its promises it made a decade ago that NATO would not move any closer to Russian borders.

Source: XinhuaNet.com

Meanwhile, apparently unaware that Washington considers his country a threat, Chinese President-Tyrant Hu Jintao wraps up a business-boosting junket to the communist states of southern Africa where, no doubt, the red leaders swapped notes in preparation for World War Three/Four. Hu popped in for a visit to Cameroon, Liberia, Sudan, Zambia, Namibia, South Africa, Mozambique and Seychelles. Namibia, South Africa, and Mozambique may be classified as communist states. Zambia is a “former” communist state. The Seychelles have suffered for decades under a socialist government. In the 1990s warlord Charles Taylor, with a little encouragement from Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson, attempted to establish a Marxist dictatorship in Liberia. Sudan suffers under an oppressive, genocidal Islamic republic. Cameroon is a single-party dictatorship. Birds of a feather . . .

Surprisingly, Hu did not squeeze Chinese client state Zimbabwe into his itinerary. So many communist states, so little time. Red China exercises its influence in Africa through various venues, but especially the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, founded in 2000. Pictured below: Hu presses the flesh with President Armando Guebuza, member of the communist Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO), which has ruled that African country without interruption since it achieved independence from Portugal in 1975.

Interview: Chinese FM says President Hu’s African tour successful in promoting ties
February 12, 2007

Chinese President Hu Jintao‘s eight-nation African tour was a great success in promoting friendly and cooperative ties between China and Africa, Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said on Saturday.

It was a journey of friendship and cooperation and another major event in Sino-African relations following the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) last November, Li told Chinese journalists accompanying Hu during his African trip.

The huge success of President Hu’s African tour will have a far-reaching influence on the future development of relations between China and Africa, Li said.

The trip, which began on Jan. 30, has taken the Chinese president to Cameroon, Liberia, Sudan, Zambia, Namibia, South Africa, Mozambique and Seychelles.

CHINA SEEKS FRIENDSHIP FOR GENERATIONS WITH AFRICA

Li said the China-Africa friendship is deep-rooted and forged in years of mutual support.
It is symbolized by Tazara, a railway linking the land-locked Zambia with a port in Tanzania in the 1970s. It is reflected in warm feelings between Chinese medical teams in Africa and their patients. It is embodied by African nations’ steadfast support for the restoration of China’s legal rights in the United Nations.

The entire trip was characterized by the sincere friendship between China and Africa, Li added.

The Chinese leader pointed out on many occasions that the Chinese people will always remain a good friend, good partner and good brother of the African people, said the foreign minister.

President Hu also promised that the Chinese people will never impose its ideology, social system or mode of development on others and will never do anything detrimental to the African people and their countries. His remarks invariably drew warm applause from the audience, said China’s top diplomat.

President Hu’s successful African tour shows people are fully convinced that the China-Africa friendship will be passed on from one generation to another, according to the Chinese minister.

IMPLEMENTING BEIJING SUMMIT OUTCOME, BENEFITING AFRICAN PEOPLE

During his African visit, President Hu briefed African leaders on China’s efforts to carry out the eight steps unveiled during the FOCAC.

The measures will be carried out in accordance with the principles of mutual benefit, friendly consultations, high efficiency and pragmatism, the Chinese president said, adding that they must cater to the needs of the African people.

During the trip, more than 50 cooperation agreements were signed, most of them involving ways of implementing the outcome of the FOCAC, the Chinese minister said.

The eight steps include China’s pledge to double its assistance to Africa by 2009. China will provide 3 billion U.S. dollars of preferential loans and 2 billion dollars of preferential buyer’s credits to Africa. China will also establish a development fund of 5 billion dollars to encourage Chinese firms to invest in Africa. Debt cancellation is among other major steps.

NEW TYPE OF CHINA-AFRICA STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP HAS A BRIGHT FUTURE

At the the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, Chinese and African leaders unanimously agreed to forge and develop a new type of China-Africa strategic partnership featuring political equality and mutual trust, economic win-win cooperation and cultural exchanges, Li said.

During his African tour, President Hu and African leaders jointly laid out plans for future development of China-Africa relations.

Hu said China will adhere to the principles of sincere friendship, equality and mutual benefit, solidarity and cooperation, and common development.

China will join hands with Africa in seriously implementing the outcome and consensus reached at the Beijing summit, enhancing political mutual trust, expanding economic and trade cooperation, strengthening personnel and cultural exchanges, and deepening cooperation in international affairs, so as to push the development of China-Africa relations to a higher level and wider scope, Hu said.

Hu proposed that China and Africa should enhance exchanges, promote common development, jointly safeguard the interests of the developing countries and strive to build a harmonious world of lasting peace and prosperity, according to Li.

African leaders spoke highly of China’s Africa policy, hailing it as “a new practice in international cooperation,” and a model for cooperation between different nations, said Li.

African leaders agreed to President Hu Jintao’s proposals for developing China-Africa relations. They said that strengthening relations with China is a strategic choice for Africa and serves the fundamental interests of the African people, according to Li.

China and Africa have reached wide-ranging consensus on strengthening all-round friendly cooperation and promoting a new type of China-Africa strategic partnership, said Li.

He quoted President Hu as saying in South Africa that the new type of China-Africa strategic partnership will surely have a bright future, through joint efforts of China and Africa.

African leaders spoke highly of President Hu’s African tour, calling it a “historic visit” and “a milestone” in bilateral relations between their countries and China, according to Li.

The visit has achieved the goals of cementing the traditional China-Africa friendship, implementing the outcome of the Beijing summit, expanding pragmatic cooperation between China and Africa, and promoting common development, Li said.

It is an important chapter in the history of China-Africa relations, he said.

Source: XinhuaNet.com

>Breaking News: Blast at US Army base near Tokyo, four years since previous attacks on US installations in Japan; leftist radicals suspected

>Although the Japanese Red Army’s founder was arrested in 2000, it is worth noting at least three things about communist subversion in the Land of the Rising Sun: 1) the Japanese Communist Party is one of the largest non-ruling communist parties in the world, boasting 400,000 members and attracting five million voters in September 2005, 2) the New Age terrorist cult Aum Shinrikyo (now Aleph), which was blamed for the 1995 Tokyo subway gas attacks, was funded, trained, and equipped by the FSB Main Guard Directorate/KGB Ninth Division, and 3) Viktor Suvorov warns the West in his history of the Soviet Special Forces (listed in this blogsite’s right column) that the “overture” preceding World War Three/Four would be characterized by numerous small and large political and military distractions that would render the West unable to retaliate on Missile Day.

Today’s attack on the US base near Tokyo comes exactly four weeks after the Greek leftist formation Revolutionary Struggle fired a rocket at the US embassy in Athens.

Blast near US base in Japan
From correspondents in Tokyo
February 13, 2007

AN explosion was heard near a US Army base south of Tokyo late yesterday local time, with police later finding two steel pipes suspected of having been used in an attempted attack on the base.

Residents heard a late-night explosion near Camp Zama, about 25km south-west of Tokyo, after which police found two steel cylinders, a police spokesman said.

Kyodo News, quoting police, said one metal tube could have been used to launch a rocket from a park near the base in Kanagawa prefecture.

The blast were “believed to be that of a guerrilla attack”, the news agency said, adding there were no injuries.

The US military had no immediate comment on the blast near Camp Zama, which is the base for the US Army in Japan.

“We are aware of an incident,” said a spokesman for the US Forces in Japan.

More than 40,000 US troops are stationed across Japan, a key military ally of Washington.

US Vice-President Dick Cheney is scheduled to visit Japan next week and is reported to plan to stop at the US naval base in Yokosuka, which is also in Kanagawa prefecture.

Despite the close relations between the two countries, US forces have faced a number of similar small-scale incidents.

In 2002 and 2003, projectiles or metal pipes were found in several attempted attacks on US military bases, none of which caused any casualties.

Press reports at the time speculated that the attacks were part of a campaign by opponents of the war in Iraq.

Japan was a strong supporter of the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and took the landmark step of sending troops to Iraq.

The deployment in Iraq marked the first time Japan had sent its military since World War II to a country where fighting was under way.

Japan’s last troops in Iraq returned home in July. But the alliance has seen friction in recent weeks after a series of statements by senior Japanese leaders critical of the US operation in Iraq.

US troops have faced particular tension in the southern island of Okinawa, which makes up some one per cent of Japan’s land mass but plays host to more than half of the US forces in the country.

US forces are stationed under a security alliance forged after Japan was defeated in World War II and forced to renounce its right to a military.

Source: The Australian

A report from one of the 2002 incidents mentioned in the previous article follows:

Rocket attack on US navy oil store
February 12, 2002

JAPANESE left-wing radicals are suspected of being behind the firing of a crude rocket at a United States navy oil storage facility in the city of Yokohama, police said today.

There were no reports of injuries or damage in the incident late last night near the US Navy’s Koshiba Fuel Terminal about 28 miles south-west of Tokyo.

Local residents reported hearing a large explosion at around 11.30pm local time, and police later discovered two steel pipes attached to benches in the grounds of a school about 440 yards away from the US facility, US military officials said.

Frayed wires and a timing device recovered at the scene indicated that one of the pipes was used to fire a projectile in the direction of the fuel terminal, but no traces of it have so far been found.

A spokesman for police in Kanagawa prefecture said they suspected radical left-wing groups that have for decades voiced opposition to the US military presence in Japan.

Police are also investigating the possibility that the incident is connected to a three-day visit by US President George W Bush scheduled to begin on Sunday .

Jon Nylander, assistant public affairs officer for the US Navy in Japan, said their officials were “working closely” with Japanese police to determine the source of the blast.

He declined to comment on whether security at US bases in the area had been increased in response to the incident.

About 47,000 American troops are stationed in Japan as part of a bilateral security agreement.

Source: Scotsman.com

>Latin America File: Obrador’s counter-government establishes web presence, APPO leader arrested; Mexico buys Su-27s, assembles Russian helicopters

>The neo-Soviet state is not only entering agreements to supply its old allies in Latin America, paleo-communist Cuba and neo-Sandinista Nicaragua, with military hardware, but also entering agreements to supply the Bolivarian/Socialist Republic of Venezuela and Mexico, in which three southern states are experiencing communist insurgencies. The Popular Revolutionary Army is active in Guerrero, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation operates in Chiapas, while the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) constitutes an extralegal state-level counter-government.

Although federal police arrested APPO’s titular leader Flavio Sosa (pictured above) on December 4, 2006, the Oaxaca insurgents continue to protest the state government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. On February 3, 2007, as reported by the pro-communist Narco News Bulletin, APPO mustered 30,000 supporters to march through the streets of the state capital, which is also called Oaxaca. A cross-pollination of ideology and personnel exists among Mexico’s insurgent movements.

The fact that Sosa holds membership on the National Council of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD)–which has set up a federal counter-government under the “leadership” of last year’s failed presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador–only proves that Mexico’s parliamentary Left is up to its armpits in political intrigue for the purpose of ousting the country’s ruling National Action Party-Institutional Revolutionary Party regime. Mexico’s counter-government is known as the Legitimate Government of Mexico, which boldly refers to Obrador (AMLO) as the “Legitimate President of Mexico.” AMLO supporters also network through the National Democratic Convention, which serves as a front for the PRD. Pictured above: “President” Obrador visits Chiapas.

Full-blown civil war has thus far been averted–in spite of threats of such by masked Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos against the lawful President of Mexico Felipe Calderon. In the midst of Mexico’s social and political upheaval, Russia’s crypto-communist leadership is seeking to surplant the USA as Mexico’s primary military hardware supplier. In addition to a 2004 agreement in which Mexico will assemble Russian military helicopters in Hidalgo, Mexico will purchase 10 Sukhoi Su-27s for strategic surveillance. Where Russian military hardware appears, Russian technicians, military advisors, and special forces are no doubt soon to follow. The Sukhoi Su-27 is pictured below.

Mexico selects Sukhoi Su-27 for strategic surveillance
September 5, 2006

The Mexican navy has selected Sukhoi’s Su-27 over the Saab/BAE Systems Gripen to equip its first air defence unit.

Head of the service Adm Armando Sánchez Moreno says the new fleet of 10 fighters will enable the navy to carry out “strategic surveillance” over key areas of Mexico’s coastline.

Preliminary selection work was initiated in early 2005, and the navy is now entering into contract negotiations with Russia’s Rosboronexport agency for the purchase of eight single-seat Su-27s and two Su-27UB two-seat trainers. Local sources indicate that the entire package – which also includes spare parts, tools and personnel training – is worth slightly over $410 million.

Source: FlightGlobal.com

Pictured here: Comrade Czar Vladimir (“There’s No Such Thing as a Former KGB Man”) Putin visits Mexico in 2004, accompanied by former Mexican President Vicente Fox.

Putin visits Mexico
UPDATED: 09:26, June 08, 2004

Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to Mexico on Monday for talks with his Mexican counterpart, who has said he hoped to increase military cooperation with Moscow.

The Putin visit was the first by a Russian head of state since the countries established diplomatic relations in 1891, said Agustin Gutierrez, a spokesman for President Vicente Fox.

Also on the agenda were law-enforcement and financial issues, Mexican officials said.

Fox said last week Mexico hoped it would begin assembling some Russian helicopters and importing a mixed civilian-military factory.

Fox and Putin were expected to sign minor agreements on transferring prisoners, the elimination of double taxes on rent, foreign investment and cultural exchanges.

On military matters, Fox has said possible projects include the installation of a large maintenance center for helicopters as the first step in a plan to assemble the Russian aircraft in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz.

The Mexican president said he also hoped to sign an agreement with Putin for a plant that would assemble heavy machinery for the military industry, saying such a factory would be constructed in Ciudad Sahagun, 50 miles northeast of Mexico City.

Mexico largely spurned Russian military equipment during the Cold War, but has begun to adopt some Russian armaments, which are less expensive than those sold by the United States or most European suppliers.

Mexico’s Air Force and Navy operate at least 56 Russian-made transport helicopters, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Source: People’s Daily Online

Spetsnaz are already operating in the USA and Canada under various false business fronts like Russian martial art schools, not to mention stealing across the USA-Canada border in full combat gear, as in the summer 2003 incident reported by Michelle Malkin.

This is not the first time suspicious foreign nationals have been caught around the Maine National Guard site. In June, according to the Border Patrol, a Humvee was stolen from the Limestone facility. While searching for the missing vehicle, agents apprehended a Russian illegal alien nearby. He had a valid New York State commercial driver’s license allowing him to haul hazardous materials and a pass that granted him access to sea ports along the East Coast — including high-level security bonded customs areas. Also this summer, two other Russian nationals, dressed in military battle dress uniforms, were stopped by Canadian authorities as they attempted to enter the U.S. at an unguarded crossing approximately 20 miles south of Limestone.

Consider the following World War Four scenario: Mexico assembles Russian military helicopters. Perfect cover for Russian war preps against USA established. Instead of shipping military helicopters back to Russia, Spetsnaz covertly prepare the helicopters for a northward flight ala Red Dawn, post-nuke blitz.

>MISSILE DAY ALERT: Russia resumes Soviet-era pact with Cuba, Putin visited Havana in 2000, PM Fradkov returned 2006, Gen. Raul Castro inks agreement

>With the loss of the ideological base of our ties, our relations deteriorated. I think that was incorrect, and I reiterate that Cuba is our traditional partner in the world and No. 1 in Latin America.
— Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin, Havana, December 14, 2000

The revitalized Moscow-Managua Axis, which we blogged about yesterday, should not be viewed in isolation from the even more venerable Moscow-Havana Axis, which was revitalized in 2000 and then given another boost in December 2006, only one month before Comandante Ortega reassumed the reins of power in Nicaragua. That the new “post”-communist Russia would maintain political-military alliances with open communist powers–like Cuba and China–only demonstrates that the Russian political elite still views the world through red lenses. On the occasion of Comrade Fidel’s 80th birthday, in August 2006, Comrade Czar Putin sent his warmest regards:

Russia knows you as one of the most authoritative and eminent politicians of contemporaneity. We value high your unfailing adherence to the strengthening of Russian-Cuban relations, which have been knitted of feelings of mutual respect and liking for decades. They are an asset we treasure and seek to develop.”

I am confident that Russia and Cuba will remain active partners targeted for the interaction in various spheres in the interests of peoples of the two countries, peace and stability.

Pictured above: Castro greets Putin at Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport on December 13, 2000. This was the first time since the “collapse” of communism that a Russian president-dictator had visited the Caribbean’s most famous all-inclusive gulag paradise.

The first article below reports: “Cooperation between the KGB and Stasi-trained Cuban espionage services, one of the best in the world, could resume, if it ever stopped, with the Cubans providing special help to the Russians.” This information confirms Joseph Douglass’ thesis in Red Cocaine, namely, that the KGB maintains operational control over the Cuban Dirección General de Inteligencia which–since the publication of Douglass’ eye-opening book on Soviet narco-subversion in 1990–now maintains operational control over the Venezuelan Dirección de los Servicios de Inteligencia y Prevención. In previous months we have suggested several times that Russian/Soviet intelligence may very well indirectly control President Chavez’s intelligence apparatus.

Cuba renews ties with old ally Russia
Miami Herald ^ Dec. 16, 2006 JAIME SUCHLICKI

In his first major policy initiative since assuming power, Gen. Raúl Castro signed a far-reaching military-aid agreement with Russia. In September, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, visited Cuba and signed an economic-aid pact providing Castro with $350 million in credits to upgrade Cuba’s armed forces, including the acquisition of Russian transportation equipment, air-navigation systems, industrial goods for the energy sector and financing of future Russian investments in Cuba, among other projects. Fradkov met with Raúl Castro in a climate described as ”cordial and friendly” by the Cuban press.

This accord with the Russians rounds out Cuba’s international alliances with key strategic countries. They include Venezuela, China and Iran. Whether the Russian deal was in the making prior to Fidel Castro’s surgery or developed as a more recent initiative, it reaffirms Raúl’s long-standing admiration and support for Soviet policies in the past and for Russian policies in the present.

Consolidating power

As a young man, Raúl traveled behind the iron curtain and became a member of Cuba’s Communist Party. Throughout the duration of the Soviet-Cuban relationship (1960-1990), Fidel and Raúl remained steadfast friends and supporters of Soviet policies, particularly in Africa, where several hundred thousand Cuban soldiers aided in bringing pro-Soviet and pro-Cuban regimes to power in the African continent. Raúl seems fascinated by the Soviet military and displays photos and statues of Soviet generals in his office.

It was only natural then that Raúl would turn to his old allies and friends for support as he consolidates power in Cuba. The Russians can provide his military dictatorship, in addition to weapons, with credits to purchase other Russian products. If the relationship with Venezuela were to sour or Venezuela decreases its oil shipments to Cuba, the Russians could step in and help. Much of Cuba’s nonmilitary equipment is Russian made and requires upgrading and replacement. Finally, Russian international positions, influence in the U.N. Security Council and increasing defiance of U.S. policies, fit Raúl’s world view and interests.

What can the Russians expect from a renewed relationship with Cuba? For starters the Russians haven’t given up on what they claim is Cuba’s debt from the Soviet era, approximately $20 billion. In 1991 I participated in a conference on Cuban-Russian relations in Moscow, and the Russian side, both academic and government officials, insisted that the Cuban debt should be paid. My response then was that, even if Cuba had the means, it would not recognize or pay that debt. Castro would always claim that Cuba’s sacrifices in support of Soviet policies throughout the world far surpassed Russian economic help to Cuba. The debt seems to have been off the official agenda during Frandkov’s visit.

Challenge to U.S. interests

The Russians also may be interested in resuming and expanding Cold War era espionage cooperation. The Soviet Union built the Lourdes electronic eavesdropping facility near Havana and used it to spy on U.S. military and technological secrets. It was closed by the Soviets following U.S. pressure in the 1990s, but could be recreated. The Chinese have established a similar facility in Bejucal, Cuba, and the Russians may look with envious eyes at the Chinese capacity to tap into U.S. military and civilian technology. Cooperation between the KGB and Stasi-trained Cuban espionage services, one of the best in the world, could resume, if it ever stopped, with the Cubans providing special help to the Russians.

It is yet too early to tell how far Cuban-Russian cooperation will advance or if it will represent a challenge to U.S. interests and security. Yet the new military-aid agreement and the new spirit of Russian-Cuban cooperation may indicate a continuous Cuban militancy and opposition to U.S. policies and a willingness to restart a relationship with an old, albeit much weaker and somewhat different, ally.

Putin’s December 2000 visit and Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov’s September 2006 mission to Cuba provide a diplomatic framework for the reforging of ties between the neo-Soviet state and her Caribbean outpost, 90 miles south of Key West.

Russian President Putin renews ties with Cuba
December 14, 2000

HAVANA, Cuba — Russian President Vladimir Putin planned to meet with Cuban President Fidel Castro on Thursday, during a visit to renew his nation’s ties with the longtime ally.

The relationship — one that once gave Moscow a strategic foothold in the Western Hemisphere — was shattered by the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago.

With this trip, Putin hopes to rebuild a relationship that once seemed irrevocable. Today, the streets of Havana are still full of Soviet-made cars; Iliushins and Tupolevs still make up the fleet of Cubana Airlines.

But while the former Russian Embassy still looks imposing, there are only a handful of diplomats and their children left in what was once the largest Soviet outpost in the Americas.

Havana and Moscow became allies soon after Castro’s 1959 Cuban Revolution. The two nations faced off against the United States in a diplomatic confrontation — the 1962 missile crisis — that pushed the world close to nuclear war.

Soviet collapse devastated Cuba

For Cuba, the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union — once its main ally and trading partner — was devastating. The island nation was thrown into economic crisis by the loss of its Soviet bloc trading partners.

Castro compared the loss to an inexplicable reversal of nature. “The sun suddenly did not reappear from over the horizon,” he said.

But tides change, and Cuba is slowly learning to become economically self-sufficient.

Putin intends to bring new light and warmth into a relationship that the Russian president concedes should not have been pushed aside.

“With the loss of the ideological base of our ties, our relations deteriorated,” Putin said. “I think that was incorrect, and I reiterate that Cuba is our traditional partner in the world and No. 1 in Latin America.”

Ideological ties are now secondary to economic links, as Russian-Cuban trade replaces Soviet-Cuban aid. During Putin’s four-day visit the two countries will also examine ways to help wipe out the thorniest issue for Putin — Cuba’s $11 billion Soviet-era debt.

Putin’s foreign policy aide, Sergei Prikhodko, said that six documents had been prepared for the trip, including agreements on cooperation in legal affairs and the health field, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

Position of strength lost

Putin said this week his country must revive economic ties with Cuba or risk losing out to companies from other countries.

“We lost a lot of positions which were a top priority for both countries, and our Russian companies in Cuba have been replaced by Western competitors,” he said.

The former Soviet embassy, now the Russian embassy, in Havana, Cuba

But capitalist Russia cannot go back to giving Cuba preferential prices and subsidies, as it did in the past.

“Of course, the trade will be on a completely different basis, conditions, than it was before 1991 when it was the Soviet Union,” said Cuban Foreign Trade Minister Raul de la Nuez.

Putin plans short beach break

The agenda provided by Cuban and Russian officials included an arrival ceremony late Wednesday, the meeting with Castro on Thursday morning and a ceremony later in the afternoon honoring Cuba’s monument here to the Unknown Soviet Soldier.

Putin on Thursday also will meet with Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba’s National Assembly, and Castro’s point man on Cuba-U.S. affairs. The Russian president will also pay tribute Friday to Cuban independence hero Jose Marti and visit Cuba’s Institute of Genetics and Biotechnology.

He will then head to Varadero, Cuba’s premier beach resort, for two days of privacy before going on to Canada on Sunday, officials said.

CNN Havana Bureau Chief Lucia Newman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

>Blogger’s Note: New blogsite feature: Red World 2007 Map

>“Red World 2007 Map” is a new resource at Once Upon a Time in the West. It is also located in the blogsite’s right column. In either case, click on the map for a larger view. With some minor adjustments, I believe the map’s political color key is generally accurate. Please consult previous postings in our Red World communist states series for more detailed information.

Color Key

RED: Communist government, overt or covert; pro-Soviet fascist government; powerful communist opposition; strong communist influences; or past communist regime

PURPLE: Communist insurgency

GREEN: Pro-Soviet Islamic government or Islamic insurgency

DARK PINK: Moderate to strong socialist influences with constitutional safeguards for freedom

LIGHT PINK: Moderate socialist influences with constitutional safeguards for freedom and large, well-armed, anti-communist citizenry

GREY: Assorted states, including non-communist single-party dictatorships

Note: Panama and The Bahamas are color-coded red for communist influence, in view of the fact that the Beijing-linked firm Hutchison-Whampoa manages the Panama Canal and the container facility at Freeport, respectively.

>Latin America File: Russia resumes Soviet-era military pact with neo-Sandinista Nicaragua, ex-PM Stepashin attends Ortega inauguration

>The whole Nicaraguan Army and other power agencies use arms and vehicles mostly of the Soviet and Russian production. We do not return to a bare field in Nicaragua, but resume our relations on a very serious basis, both technological and human.
— Sergei Stepashin, former Russian Federation Prime Minister, personal envoy for President Vladimir Putin; statement made in Managua, January 12, 2007

The Sandinista Connection to Terrorism, the Moscow-Managua Axis, and Communist Deception

On October 4, 2001, US Secretary of State Colin Powell had a meeting with Nicaragua’s foreign minister, at which time Powell mentioned that five Nicaraguan passports had been found (apparently recently) in the apartments of a suspected terrorist linked to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. At the time, according to Robert Morton, US officials were preparing to charge Sandinista leaders Daniel Ortega, Tomás Borge, Lenin Cerna, and Alvaro Baltonado for harboring terrorists should the FSLN take the presidency and the National Assembly in the following month’s elections.

State Department officials say they were concerned about the Sandinistas’ ties to states that sponsor terrorism, such as Libya and Iraq, and international terrorist organizations such as the Colombian leftist guerrilla FARC and the Basque separatist group ETA. They say these ties have been maintained and, if elected, the FSLN would need to drop them or risk being added to a terrorist list that now includes only one country in the Americas, Cuba.

In late October 2001 Russia and Nicaragua signed a military cooperation agreement, but no new arms were transferred from Moscow to Managua . . . until January 2007, when the Sandinistas openly reassumed power, after maintaining a low profile for 17 years. In the wake of the KGB/GRU/StB/Mukhabarat/PLO military-terrorist operation known as “September 11, 2001” did the Russians abruptly delay implementation of the original agreement, fearing US wrath, which was then expressing itself in Afghanistan?

The first article below reports: “[Former Prime Minister Sergei] Stepashin attended the inauguration ceremony there of the newly elected Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega, as the personal envoy of the Russian President Vladimir Putin.” Did that tidbit of news register? No? Read it again: “Stepashin attended the inauguration ceremony there of the newly elected Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega, as the personal envoy of the Russian President Vladimir Putin.” Stepashin’s resume: “ex”-Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Komsomol; Director, Federal Security Service; member of Boris Yeltsin’s clan. Stepashin was prime minister prior to Putin (“ex”-CPSU) assuming that office under Yeltsin’s direction. Yeltsin (“ex”-CPSU) subsequently appointed Putin president. Notice a pattern? Yeltsin and his loyal follower Stepashin pictured here, August 1999.

If there isn’t a sinking feeling in your chest at this point, then there will be in the very near future . . .

Russia Pledges Military Cooperation to Ortega’s Nicaragua
Posted 01/16/07 16:57
By NABI ABDULLAEV, MOSCOW

Russia will resume military and technical cooperation with Nicaragua, the head of the Russian Audit Chamber, former Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, told journalists Jan. 12 in Managua.

“The whole Nicaraguan Army and other power agencies use arms and vehicles mostly of the Soviet and Russian production,” Stepashin said. “We do not return to a bare field in Nicaragua, but resume our relations on a very serious basis, both technological and human.”
Stepashin attended the inauguration ceremony there of the newly elected Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega, as the personal envoy of the Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A staunch critic of the United States, the leftist Ortega is an old ally of Moscow. During his earlier presidency, 1985-’90, the Soviet Union actively backed his regime against the U.S.-supported “contra” guerillas.

In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union delivered to Nicaragua more than 100 light tanks, about 200 armored personnel carriers, Strela and Igla shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles, several minesweepers and torpedo boats, military cargo helicopters and planes, Russian defense experts say. The deliveries stopped in 1990, after Ortega lost his bid for re-election.

In 1996, Russia forgave 90 percent of Nicaragua’s $3.4 billion Soviet-era debt, which stemmed mostly from Managua’s military purchases. Moscow nullified the rest of the debt in 2004.

The two countries signed an agreement on military and technical cooperation in November 2001, but no new arms deliveries from Russia followed. Neighboring Honduras expressed concerns about the agreement, but Nicaraguan officials at the time said it related only to repairs and maintenance of the military’s existing Soviet arms.

Stepashin told journalists in Managua that 18 presidents of Latin American nations who attended Ortega’s inauguration had spoken with him in favor of Russia’s presence in the region.

In the past several years, Russia has tried to build up military cooperation with Latin American countries, succeeding particularly with Venezuela. These attempts — which climaxed last year with a $3 billion deal to supply Caracas with Russian arms — met strong objections from the U.S. administration and are believed to have been the catalyst, in part, for sanctions Washington adopted last year against Russian military companies, including state arms-trader Rosoboronexport.

In a 1995 interview, former Sandinista Interior Minister Borge denied that relations between Russia and Nicaragua survived the staged drawdown of the FSLN in 1990:

No, in these conditions I don’t think we will see a return to the scenario of the ’80s. At that time, we had ties to the Soviet Union – which doesn’t exist any more – and ties to Cuba, in terms of providing solidarity to armed movements. But that solidarity now consists solely of political and moral support. So the factors which led the US to wage war on us have now disappeared.

This is typical communist deceit because in 2001 that relationship, if it did not survive in the common understanding of the term, was most certainly revived as related in the CNN report below:

Nicaragua, Russia sign military agreement
October 25, 2001

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) — Nicaragua and Russia signed a five-year agreement Wednesday aimed at modernizing Nicaragua’s military.

Under the agreement, Nicaragua will receive Russian supplies and technical advice. The majority of Nicaragua’s military equipment was made in Russia and inherited during the pro-Cuban and pro-Soviet Sandinista government of the 1980s.

Wednesday’s agreement was signed by Nicaraguan Defense Minister Jose Adan Guerra, Nicaraguan army chief Gen. Javier Carrion, and Russian Ambassador Anatoly Petrovich Kuznetsov.

Guerra said the accord was signed because of the “necessity to modernize the technical and logistical capacity” of Nicaragua’s military.

America Encircled: The End of the Shopping Mall Regime

Final comments: KGB Anatoliy Golitsyn totally vindicated. US-Mexican border defenseless. NORAD on standby. Collective Security Treaty Organization and Shanghai Cooperation Organization to hold joint wargame in Russia this summer. Former Russian PM Sergei Stepashin, acting as Putin’s personal envoy, attends Comandante Ortega’s presidential inauguration, implements 2001 military agreement called off after 911. Nicaragua still under communist domination. Think Red Dawn. Got preps?

>Blogger’s Note: Extensive updates to blogsite’s right column, including communist fronts for Bolivarians, Sandinistas, and Zapatistas

>On February 6, 2007 Mexican irridentists, communists, and the revived Students for a Democratic Society protested the presence of Carl Braun at the University of California at Los Angeles (pictured here; note protester waving Mexican flag, another wearing a Che T-shirt, and yet another holding poster sporting communist hammer and sickle). The pro-communist Left Spot Blog contains a slanted report of this event. Braun is Executive Director of the 2,000-member-strong Minuteman Civil Defense Corps of California. On October 4, 2006 leftists at Columbia University stormed a meeting at which Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist was scheduled to speak.

The Hate America Left is determined to dismantle the USA through unchecked immigration and the radicalization of “undocumented” immigrants, many of whom have been saturated with Marxist propaganda south of the Rio Grande. By contrast, the Minutemen in both California and Arizona have at great personal expense and sacrifice–and in the face of the federal government’s opposition and obstruction–defended America’s border against the illegal alien invasion from Mexico.

In addition to listing new communist fronts in this blogsite’s right column, we have also posted under our Multimedia Section links to two videos of Oleg Shenin, leader of the restored Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and a video of the inaugural ceremony of Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, in which Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales appear.

>USSR 2 File: Visitors to Russia must register with Federal Migration Service, foreign companies must secure approval from FSB permit minister

>The neo-Soviet bureaucracy expands, and just in time for the reappearance of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on the world stage. Frontman Comrade Czar Putin has performed well. The Federal Migration Service is a division of the Ministry of the Interior, the deputy minister of which, Colonel General Arkadiy Yedelev, is pictured here. “Your papers, please!”

The Russian Federation Interior Ministry building is pictured below.

Registration Rules Stir Up Confusion
By Carl Schreck and Natalya Krainova
Staff Writers, The Moscow Times
Monday, February 5, 2007. Issue 3589. Page 1.

Thinking of jetting up to St. Petersburg for a week to see White Nights this summer? If you’re a foreigner and you want to spare your employer from a possible $30,000 fine, you’d better make sure the government knows you’re leaving town. According to a new law that came into effect Jan. 15, foreigners are now required to hand over their registration papers to migration officials — via their employer or other sponsor — every time they leave the country and re-register upon subsequent entry into the country. But the law is steeped in vagaries. Visa agencies say foreigners could incur heavy fines for their employers if they neglect to inform them of even a short trip out of town.

Hotels, for their part, say the amount of documentation on their foreign guests has become unduly burdensome. At least one St. Petersburg hotel has stopped admitting foreigners altogether.

The new law says a foreigner’s “inviting party” — an employer, landlord, hotel or other Russian host — is required to inform local migration officials of the foreigner’s arrival within three working days of entering the country. The inviting party is also required to inform authorities if the foreigner leaves Russia and it has two working days from the day of departure to do so. “The foreigner has to be stricken off the Federal Migration Service register, because he can’t be registered with the Federal Migration Service if he is not in Russia,” said Zalina Filimonova, spokeswoman for the Moscow branch of the migration service. “That’s pure logic.”

The law has been touted by migration officials as a simplification of the registration process. On paper, after all, the inviting party is merely required to submit information about the foreigner’s passport, visa and migration card to the local branch of the migration service. Migration officials then issue a registration card that the foreigner carries at all times as proof of being in the country legally. The card makes obsolete the previous practice of placing a registration stamp in passports.

In theory, the entire process can even be done at the post office, with a post office receipt serving as confirmation of a foreigner’s registration. But the new procedures could prove to be quite a hassle for foreigners who travel often — either internationally or within Russia, said Yekaterina Elekchyan of Your Lawyer, a legal firm specializing in visa and work-regulation issues. “On the one hand, it’s easier in that the landlord doesn’t have to physically go down to the DEZ,” Elekchyan said, referring to the local building-utilities administrator offices that were obligatory stopovers for foreigners’ landlords under the old registration rules. “But for a foreigner who enters and leaves the country quite often, it’s not very convenient to have to turn in documents every time.” Foreigners must turn in their registration card when they leave for another region, Filimonova said. Then, upon arrival, the inviting party must register the foreigner with local migration officials within three days and inform them of his departure no later than two days after he leaves.

Under the law, the inviting party is fully responsible for registering the foreigner. According to information posted on the web site of the Moscow branch, fines for breaching the rules run up to 4,000 rubles for a Russian citizen hosting a foreigner and up to 800,000 rubles ($30,000) for employers. One large Western-managed company informed its foreign employees recently in an internal memo that they would have any fines deducted from their salaries if they did not inform the company of their international travel plans. Federal Migration Service spokesman Denis Soldatikov said Friday that authorities would not be “hunting” down violators. “But if people are found in violation, they will be fined,” he said.

Inexplicably, Soldatikov contradicted the deadlines and procedures given in the law itself. He said the inviting party must inform authorities of a foreigner’s arrival within 30 days and departure with 10 days. Soldatikov — in another contradiction of what the law says — also insisted that a foreigner does not have to turn in the registration card upon leaving the country.

Alexei Filipenkov, deputy chairman of Association of European Businesses’ visa task force, said the law is so muddled and riddled with holes that it is impossible to enforce. “Nobody knows what is going on,” he said. “I ask one migration official what to do, and he tells me one thing. On the same day I go to another official, and they tell me something completely different. Nobody knows what is going on because the rules are constantly being changed.”

One group that is already lobbying for changes in the law are hoteliers. One large Moscow hotel said it has had to hire two employees to deal exclusively with filling out the increased paperwork for foreign guests, and because the local branch of the migration service is understaffed, the employees themselves must sit down and enter the data into the migration service’s system. “Until our employee sits down and enters every single form in to their system by manually typing, no one is registered,” said an executive from the hotel, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing company policy. Soldatikov, the migration service spokesman, denied that hotel employees might be entering information into the migration service’s database. “Access to those computers is restricted,” he said. Soldatikov said hotels had no grounds for complaint and that the system had changed little for them.

One small hotel chain in St. Petersburg, however, has stopped accepting foreigners for fear that a single violation of the new law could result in a hefty fine. “Fortunately it’s not high season yet, and primarily Russian citizens are on business trips,” Marina Slesareva, deputy head of the Rinaldi chain, told Komsomolskaya Pravda. “It’s scary to think what will happen in the summer. Not one single branch of the Federal Migration Service can tell us what to do under the new rules.”

The re-nationalization, de-privatization, and re-communization of the Russian economy continues apace. Foreign companies seeking to invest in Russia’s strategic resource sectors will very soon have to secure a permit from the all-seeing, all-knowing Federal Security Service, the nom de jure for the Committee for State Security (KGB).

Bill on foreign access to Russian strategic cos. sent to depts.
16:21 03/ 02/ 2007

MOSCOW, February 3 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s Industry and Energy Ministry said Saturday it had sent an updated draft law on foreigners’ access to Russian strategic organizations to interested ministries and departments.

The Russian government approved in general terms January 31 draft laws on foreign investment in the country’s strategic assets, which among other restrictions stipulate that foreigners should only be able to buy controlling stakes in energy, military-related and other enterprises classed as “strategic” with the permission of a government commission, and after approval from the Federal Security Service (FSB).

“The bill has been updated particularly optimizing levels of decision-making on foreign investors’ applications,” a ministry source said.

The source said the document was sent to the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, the Natural Resources Ministry, the Federal Security Service and the Defense Ministry. The bill suggests restricting foreign companies’ access in 39 spheres, including production of arms, military hardware, nuclear materials, and construction of nuclear facilities.

Restrictions also apply to spheres having 2-3% share in the GDP.

Russian officials say the measures aim to make mechanisms of state control over energy deals more transparent and understandable to foreign investors, and ensure the country’s security and interests in sensitive spheres. However, critics say the decisions could harm Russia’s investment climate.

Last year, Russian authorities applied pressure to reduce foreign companies’ shares in oil and gas projects being implemented under production-sharing agreements allowing for major tax and other privileges.

In December 2007, natural gas monopoly Gazprom acquired a 50% plus one share in the Sakhalin II liquefied natural gas project off Russia’s Pacific coast for $7.45 billion. Up until the deal, operator Royal Dutch Shell had come under months of intense pressure from environmental regulators for large-scale ecological destruction caused in the region.

>Blast from the Past File: President Reagan’s March 15, 1986 radio address on Nicaragua more timely than ever as Red Axis takes over Latin America

>In view of the threat posed by the new Latin American Red Axis, the establishment of a full-blown communist dictatorship in Venezuela, the restored Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the global Islamo-Marxist nexus, President Ronald Reagan’s 20-year-old warning about Nicaraguan communism is no less pertinent today. As of November 2006 the KGB-trained Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) commands both the Nicaraguan presidency and National Assembly.

In President Reagan’s address below he makes the following statement regarding the Sandinistas’ past Interior Minister, Tomas Borge: “And new intelligence shows that Tomas Borge, the Communist Interior Minister, is engaging in a brutal campaign to bring the freedom fighters into discredit. You see, Borge’s Communist operatives dress in freedom fighters’ uniforms, go into the countryside, then murder and mutilate ordinary Nicaraguans.” Castro cohort and Soviet-linked drug runner Borge currently sits as deputy in the National Assembly. To Maoist Borge is attributed the following ominously prophetic quote, relevant to the present illegal alien invasion of the USA: “We have Nicaragua, soon we will have El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica and Mexico. One day, tomorrow or 15 years from now, we’re going to take 5 to 10 million Mexicans and they’re going to have one thing in mind – cross the border, go into Dallas, go into Houston, go into New Mexico, go into San Diego, and each one has embedded in his mind the idea of killing 10 Americans (quoted in The Washington Times, March 27, 1985).

Pictured below: Comrades Fidel and Daniel, then and now. First picture is circa 1980, while second picture is of more recent vintage.

A transcript of President Reagan’s address follows:

Radio Address to the Nation on the Situation in Nicaragua
March 15, 1986

My fellow Americans:

I’d like to speak to you this afternoon about a grave threat to our country and continent: the Communist regime in Nicaragua, a nation closer to our own southern border than Washington is to Kansas City. When the pro-Soviet regime took power in Nicaragua in 1979, it claimed to embrace the highest ideals of individual liberty and promised to hold free elections. What happened? Well, not democracy, but internal repression, imprisonment, and torture, the buildup of an army and militia of more than 120,000, and subversion throughout Central America.

Today Communist Nicaragua endangers our national security, it threatens our Caribbean sealanes, and still worse, it is intent on bringing the nations of Central America under Communist domination one by one — a grim achievement that would send millions of refugees flooding into our Southern States. Yet grave as it is, this threat can be averted. The Congress now has before it legislation that would send help to the Nicaraguan freedom fighters, the more than 20,000 brave men and women struggling against the Communists who now control their country. This aid could enable the freedom fighters to reclaim Nicaragua for liberty and the West.

Tomorrow evening I’ll discuss in full our proposal to aid the freedom fighters in a televised address from the Oval Office. For now, however, permit me to consider a single but central question: Why, many have asked, must we send the freedom fighters weapons? Why not try to achieve our objectives by negotiating with the Nicaraguan Communists instead? Well, the answer is simple: We’ve tried again and again. Since 1983 I have appointed three Special Envoys to Central America. These envoys have made 48 trips to the region, eager to engage in a serious dialog. Since June 1984 we have held not 1 but 10 high-level meetings with representatives of the Nicaraguan Communists. Each time we left emptyhanded. Just yesterday my Special Envoy, Philip Habib, returned from a 49th trip to Central America.

Other free nations, too, have attempted to engage the Sandinistas in good-faith negotiations. We have yet to see any concrete results. Nicaragua has indeed participated in the Contadora talks — talks sponsored by Mexico, Panama, Colombia, and Venezuela — only to balk any time agreements seem near. Last November, President Ortega said of a document his own representatives had helped to shape, and I quote, “The peace document that the Contadora group submitted in September 1985 is unacceptable to Nicaragua.” Well, recently the democratically elected President of El Salvador, Jose Napoleon Duarte, made a new and dramatic offer. If the Communists in Nicaragua agree to church-negotiated talks with their democratic opponents, President Duarte said then he would simultaneously agree to negotiate with the Soviet- and Nicaraguan-backed guerrillas in his country. Both the Nicaraguan Communists and the Salvadoran guerrillas whom they support rejected this offer.

Failed attempts by El Salvador and the Contadora group, rebuffed attempts on our part. By now the truth about negotiating with the Nicaragua Communists must be abundantly clear. Yes, the Communists might meet their opponents at the table, but only when they fear meeting them in the field. In the meantime, as recent revelations make clear, the Communists are only tightening their grip on Nicaragua. Somoza, the dictator the Sandinistas overthrew, had 1 prison; the Sandinistas have at least 10 new gulags. And new intelligence shows that Tomas Borge, the Communist Interior Minister, is engaging in a brutal campaign to bring the freedom fighters into discredit. You see, Borge’s Communist operatives dress in freedom fighters’ uniforms, go into the countryside, then murder and mutilate ordinary Nicaraguans.

This, then, is why I’m asking the Congress to provide the Nicaraguan freedom fighters not only with much needed humanitarian aid but with military supplies. They must be given the means to fight back. The freedom fighters seek not to destroy their Communist opponents but to liberate their country. Democracy — this is all the freedom fighters ask. And all we’re asking for is a democratic outcome, because a democratic Central America is vital to the security of our continent and nation. Now that negotiations with the Nicaraguan Communists have failed again and again, the time has come for Congress to give the freedom fighters what they need for their struggle for democracy to succeed.

Until tomorrow evening from the Oval Office, thanks for listening, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 12:06 p.m. from Camp David, MD.

Reagan closed with this plea: “Now that negotiations with the Nicaraguan Communists have failed again and again, the time has come for Congress to give the freedom fighters what they need for their struggle for democracy to succeed.” Where are the freedom fighters in Nicaragua and the USA today, in 2007?

>Latin America File: President Ortega refuses to dismantle Sandinistas’ Soviet-era SAMs under US pressure, renews friendship with Cardinal Bravo

>Here we go again. The Cold War has returned to Central America if, indeed, it ever really went away. Pictured here: Comrades Dan and Hugo at Comandante Ortega’s inauguration in Managua, January 10. Old commies never die, they just change tactics.

Ortega and U.S. head for conflict over old missiles
Reuters
Monday, February 5, 2007; 10:27 PM

MANAGUA (Reuters) – The United States told Nicaragua on Monday to destroy Soviet-era anti-aircraft missiles, setting up its first fight with old Cold War foe President Daniel Ortega since he returned to office last month.

Ortega, a former Marxist guerrilla, reiterated that Nicaragua should keep its arsenal of more than 1,000 SAM-7 missiles because Washington was giving planes to neighbor Honduras.

The United States says it has given Honduras money to buy eight light aircraft to detect drug smugglers and help in natural disasters.

“The U.S. government hopes Nicaragua will continue down the path it has begun of disarmament and destruction of the SAM-7 missiles,” the U.S. Embassy in Managua said in a statement posted on its Web site,

To placate Washington, which says the shoulder-fired missiles could be used by terrorists against airliners, Nicaragua destroyed 1,000 missiles in 2004 out of the 2,000 donated by the Soviet Union when Ortega’s Marxist government was fighting a 1980s civil war against U.S.-backed rebels.

But Ortega, who won November’s presidential election, said Nicaragua should still not drop its defenses while Honduras and El Salvador had much stronger air power.

Ortega invited Central American nations to enter into a pact on regional military weapons.

“I would totally agree to having the missiles destroyed if we had a Central American accord that — at the same time — destroyed the missiles and also other offensive weapons that are getting old,” he told a news conference on Monday.

“But in Central America there are warplanes, and therefore, unfortunately, that obliges us to have these missiles to defend our country,” he said.

Honduras and Nicaragua have a dispute over maritime limits in the Caribbean which is being heard at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Ortega has said he wants good relations with the United States in his second term in office and has told U.S. businessmen their investments are safe in Nicaragua, but he has also formed an alliance with Venezuela’s anti-U.S. president, Hugo Chavez.

Nicaragua’s military has Soviet-made attack helicopters and Antonov transport planes but no fighters or bombers.

The Nicaraguan Congress is considering a proposal by former President Enrique Bolanos to destroy a further 650 of the missiles, keeping the remaining 400 for self-defense purposes.

At one time Archbishop of Managua, Miguel Obando y Bravo is now cardinal. Although Bravo later backtracked and opposed the liberation theology of those Catholic priests who held posts in the first Sandinista government (1979-1990)–like Minister of Culture Ernesto Cardenal–he initially exhorted Nicaraguans in a June 1979 pastoral letter to submit to the socialism of the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Both Bravo and the Roman Curia were apparently embarrassed by the revolutionary Catholic-communist convergence that overtook Nicaragua following the collapse of the Somoza regime. Nevertheless, as the picture here relates, Comandante Ortega and the good cardinal have renewed their friendship following the FSLN’s presidential triumph in November 2006.

In accordance with the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which Pope John Paul II insisted should be enforced in this case, Ernesto and three other priests, including his brother Fernando, a Jesuit, were suspended from the priesthood as a result of their positions in the first Sandinista government. Later, in 1994 Ernesto resigned from the FSLN, protesting against Ortega’s authoritarian leadership. Ernesto eventually moved on to the Bolivarian/Socialist Republic of Venezuela, where he sits on the board of advisors of teleSUR, President Hugo Chavez’s new state-run pan-Latin American television network. TeleSUR provides Comrade Hugo with a fine electronic platform for inciting the masses to “Christian socialist” revolution across the continent. During the 1980s Fernando Cardenal coordinated the Sandinistas’ National Literacy Campaign until his suspension and expulsion from the Jesuit order.

>EU File: Ulster moving toward communism? Paisley to lead new government with Marxist Sinn Fein, London to again devolve power to Belfast

>Vowing in the past that he would never work with Sinn Fein, Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Ian Paisley will be first minister of Northern Ireland as of March 26. Former Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) leader Martin McGuiness will be Paisley’s deputy minister. The power-sharing arrangement is a result of the October 2006 St. Andrews Agreement, which all parties intend to implement, even if the March 7 election is scrapped at the last minute.

In the BBC report below Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams indicates that Irish nationalists/republicans are not in the least deviating from their political ideal of a united Ireland, that is, absorbing Northern Ireland into the republic to the south. “You have created the opportunity to significantly advance our struggle and you have seized the opportunity to further our primary objective of united Ireland through the building of greater political strength,” Adams proclaimed at a January 28 party congress that committed Sinn Fein to supporting the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and, by extension, the St. Andrews Agreement. Sinn Fein is widely considered to be the political wing of the PIRA. On July 28, 2005 the PIRA announced the end of its armed campaign. The PSNI, incidentally, was formerly known as the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Although commonly portrayed as a bastion of Irish Catholic nationalism/republicanism, Sinn Fein holds membership in the communist-dominated European United Left–Nordic Green Left, which also includes:

1. Progressive Party of Working People (Cyprus, ruling)
2. Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (formerly Czech section of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, now third largest party in Czech Republic)
3. Left Alliance (Finland)
4. French Communist Party (past ruling in coalition with Socialist Party)
5. Left Party (formerly German Democratic Republic’s ruling Socialist Unity Party)
6. Synaspismos (Greece, formerly ruling in coalition)
7. Communist Party of Greece (instigated failed insurgency after Second World War)
8. Communist Refoundation Party (Italy, ruling in coalition)
9. Party of the Italian Communists (ruling in coalition)
10. Netherlands Socialist Party
11. Portuguese Communist Party
12. Communist Party of Slovakia (formerly Slovak section of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia)
13. United Left (dominated by Communist Party of Spain)
14. Left Party (Sweden, ruling in coalition until 2006)

Sinn Fein’s communist orientation is revealed in Adams’ controversial meeting with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in 2001 (pictured here), his refusal to testify before the US Congress in 2002 with respect to the arrest of Sinn Fein/IRA members in the company of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in 2002, and in his meeting with Soviet- and Iranian-backed Hamas militants in 2006. In 2005 the Irish politician Michael McDowell characterized Sinn Fein’s secret Marxist agenda as follows:

I would also like to remind this Conference, the media here and public who are joining us that the underlying Provo ideology is an out-dated Marxist ideology. Don’t take my word for it. Leaf through An Phoblacht where the real ideological debate takes place.

Look at the partners that the Sinn Fein leaders chose for Bairbre and Mary Lou in the European Parliament. They keep that list well away from the fundraisers in Irish America. But I have decided that the media might like to ask them a few questions and so I have attached the list to my script.

All the communist parties of Europe are there with Sinn Fein. Is that coincidence? They are not interested in old-fashioned socialism. They want to create a Marxist workers state.

Sinn Fein is the only party in these islands who have a permanent full-time representative to the Castro regime in Havana. Or at least they did have until he joined a team of intrepid peace activists or ornithologists with bomb making experience, travelling on forged Irish passports in the FARC zone of the Colombian jungle.

FARC, by the way, is the armed wing of the Communist Party of Colombia which survives by exporting drugs to the West. FARC have recently been mortaring churches crowded with villagers. The “barrack-buster” technology wasn’t totally redundant, it seems. In Ireland, however, the Provos pose as the enemy of the drugs trade.

And I hope that American papers will copy the recent speech by a leading Sinn Fein public representative outside the Dail in which he said that Sinn Fein were working for the overthrow of “the tyrants, Bush and Blair”. These views are carefully kept under wraps in Washington. If Irish really knew that Gerry spends their dollars on teaming up with Castro, Colombian narco-terrorists and the Euro-communists, things might be a little different.

In reality, Sinn Fein’s crypto-communism typifies the Catholic-communist convergence that we are presently witnessing in Latin America’s Red Axis and about which we have blogged in recent months.

Sinn Fein votes to support police
Last Updated: Sunday, 28 January 2007, 20:59 GMT

Sinn Fein members have voted to support policing in Northern Ireland for the first time in the party’s history.

About 900 party members voted on the motion at a special party conference (ard fheis) in Dublin which was attended by more than 2,000 people.

Sinn Fein support for policing and DUP commitment to power-sharing are seen as essential to restoring NI devolution.

A six hour debate was cut short as the leadership forced a vote which was carried with 90% support.

The decision gives Sinn Fein’s ruling executive the authority to declare its support for the PSNI and the criminal justice system when devolution is restored and policing and justice powers are transferred to the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Speaking after the vote, Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams said the decision was truly historic.
“Today you have created the potential to change the political landscape on this island forever,” he said.

“You have created the opportunity to significantly advance our struggle and you have seized the opportunity to further our primary objective of united Ireland through the building of greater political strength.”

Mr Adams also said that republicanism and unionism had reached an historic compromise.

“If the promise and hope of the peace process is to deliver peace and prosperity, that means beginning a real dialogue, an anti-sectarian dialogue, a dialogue which will move us to a real future,” he added.

A spokesman for Tony Blair said the prime minister welcomed the “historic decision and recognised the leadership it has taken to get to this point”.

Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said the ballot was a “landmark decision” which opened the way to Northern Ireland power-sharing.

He said: “It is vital that we continue to maintain the momentum from the St Andrews agreement and the timetable set out in that agreement.”

Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain described the vote as a breakthrough.

“What had always been a massive impediment to stable and lasting government (in Northern Ireland) has been removed,” he said.

PSNI Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde also welcomed the move.

“Our view has always been that policing is a public service which every member of the community should be able to access on an equal and equitable basis,” he said.

“I have always said that no ideology or individual should stand between the public and that service and that the community is entitled to have their public representatives hold this police service to account.”

Professor Sir Desmond Rea, chairman of the Policing Board, said he was now looking forward to Sinn Fein joining the body.

“Full political and community support for policing will be for the benefit of the whole community,” he added.

DUP MP for East Antrim Sammy Wilson said he accepted Sinn Fein had taken a step forward.
He said: “The ultimate test of this, because there is no trust in Sinn Fein, is will they deliver on supporting policing before they get into government?

“They cannot get into government and not support the police.”

‘Massive step’

Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey said the move was “a massive step change in the republican psyche”.

“It is an admission that the violent ’cause’ has been abandoned and that Sinn Fein are prepared to support the forces of law and order in this part of the United Kingdom,” he added.
SDLP leader Mark Durkan said: “They now need to sign with no ifs or buts. As Gerry Adams now accepts, nationalist areas need policing.”

Mr Blair and Mr Ahern have identified Sinn Fein support for the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) as being crucial to persuading the DUP to share power in a devolved government with Sinn Fein by 26 March.

If an election does not occur, Stormont will be dissolved indefinitely.

The transitional assembly at Stormont will dissolve on 30 January in anticipation of an election on 7 March.

>Breaking News: Palestinian Authority forces in Gaza capture Iranian general, implicated as Hamas’ weapons program director

> Iranian General Was Hamas’ Bomb Maker
12:57 Feb 02, ’07 / 14 Shevat 5767
(IsraelNN.com)

The Iranian general captured by PA security forces in a raid Thursday was in charge of Hamas’ weapons and explosive production program, an Arab source told Ynet news service.

The source said the Iranian general was in charge of several chemistry laboratories in the university, where he supervised Hamas students employed in the production of explosives. At least 20 female students were arrested in the raid, according to the source.

The Iranian general was also involved in developing shells and rockets. He is currently being interrogated by Fatah men and it is not clear what his fate will be. There has been no official confirmation of the raid from Fatah, Hamas or the PA.

And if that isn’t enough to consume the Middle East in a massive conflagration, Syrian state media reports that Damascus and Tehran are initiating direct air routes to their new strategic partner, Red Venezuela.

Air trips open Soon between Tehran, Damascus and Caracas
Thursday, February 01, 2007 – 12:10 PM

Damascus, (SANA)- A new air route will be opened soon this month between Tehran, Damascus and Caracas within a framework of the strong relations that tie Syria, Iran and Venezuela, Syrian daily newspaper of Tishreen said Thursday.

The new route will shorten distances and cancel some stops-over for the passengers in their journey from Syria or Iran to Venezuela.

“Commercial” flights between the Middle East’s chief Soviet-backed terrorist-sponsoring regimes to Venezuela will provide superb cover for Iran and Syria to transfer military, intelligence, and security personnel, not to mention military hardware to the Chavez regime. These flights will also permit the continued use by Al Qaeda of Venezuela as a base of operations for waging war against the USA, solidifying the global Islamo-Marxist network. The report below indicates that Osama bin Laden established a terrorist training camp on an island off the coast of Venezuela at least four years ago. The defecting Venezuelan Air Force Major Juan Diaz Castillo mentioned in the same article was interviewed by Jeff Nyquist in 2003. Nyquist posed the following question to Diaz, nearly four years before Comrade Hugo announced his intention to establish a single-party dictatorship: “Is President Chavez a communist?” Diaz replied: “Openly.”

Gatwick Grenade Terrorist May Have Trained In Bin Laden Camp In Venezuela
By Johan Freitas, in Caracas
February 18, 2003

Scotland Yard detectives arrived in Venezuela Sunday to investigate claims that the man caught with a live hand grenade at Gatwick airport, England, has ties with Al Qaeda. The man, who is believed to have been born in Bangladesh but travels with an officially issued Venezuelan identity, flew in to England on Thursday on a British Airways jet which he had boarded in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas.

He was arrested at Gatwick and is currently in custody at a London police station being questioned by anti-terrorism officers. The man has been identified as Rahaman Hazil Muhaman, 37. Members of the Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorism squad flew to Caracas to investigate whether he was trained in Venezuela by Al Qaeda.

Four weeks ago a US Defense Department official formally notified Venezuela that Osama Bin Laden had established a training camp on Margarita Island, off the country’s coast. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, is hardline dictator with close personal ties to both Cuba and Iraq, is in the process of converting the nation – a major oil producer – into his personal fiefdom. In August 2000 he went to Baghdad where he was photographed with a smiling Saddam Hussein personally chauffeuring him around.

Since then, Chavez has allegedly turned Venezuela into a safe haven for Al Qaeda leaders who are believed to have recruited a “significant” number of the thousands of Muslim immigrants to Venezuela who work in the oil fields. Many are from Bangladesh as well as Algeria and Libya. “Chavez encourages these immigrants because the country is teetering on the brink of civil war and he believes they will support him against the middle classes”, an American oil company executive based in Caracas explained. “Chavez isn’t a terrorist himself, but he supports the anti-democratic views of terrorists and once you do that things can get out of control.”

The report follows the case of Hakim Mamad Ali Diab, a 9/11 suspect with Al Qaeda links, who also carried a Venezuelan passport and was brought into safety and protection in Venezuelan by Hugo Chavez’s secret police, DISIP. General Marcos Ferreira, who recently resigned as director of the Venezuelan national guard’s border control, Departamento de Extranjeria (DIEX), has publicly revealed how a well-orchestrated plan by the highest level of Chavez’s government issued false identities and official Venezuelan passports to a large number of terrorist operatives.

A Venezuelan air force major who formerly worked as a private pilot for Chavez defected to the United States and unveiled details of a plan by the Venezuelan president to deliver $1 million to Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Chavez denied the charges. But they have alarmed British police, who fear Rahaman was planning to detonate the grenade at the airport in a new Al Qaeda terror plot. “It could be that he is just a loner but Scotland Yard are seriously considering the possibility that he has ties to Al Qaeda,” an undercover Venezuelan official who opposes Chavez said last night. “He was carrying what appeared to be a genuine Venezuelan passport and apparently was born in Bangladesh.”

Rahaman is said to have planned to fly from Gatwick to Malaysia, which is yet another hotbed for an extremist group tied to Osama Bin Laden that is trying to establish a giant Islamic republic linking Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.

The group which allegedly masterminded the Bali bombing which killed nearly 200 people, including 30 Britons, is believed to be planning more atrocities against Western tourists.

The Venezuelan ambassador to London, Alfredo Toro Hardy, initially attempted to play down the reports, claiming Rahaman was a Saudi citizen. But last night he admitted: “The British special task force investigating the case says his passport looks genuine, though we will have to examine it when we receive a copy.” Mr. Hardy said the grenade was in Rahaman’s checked luggage. He was detained after the grenade was discovered during a random search of his bags. Amid chaotic scenes, thousands of people had to be evacuated from Gatwick’s North Terminal.

British Airways suspended flights to Venezuela on Friday amid growing fears that the political turmoil there is playing havoc with safety at Caracas airport. Chavez’s law enforcement forces are preoccupied with suppressing the opposition, and devoting little or no resources to airport security.

>Latin America File: Chavez exports red revolution to Ecuador, Correa’s defense minister killed in helicopter crash, FARC sends condolences

>Pictured here: Supporters of neo-communist Chavez chum President Rafael Correa storm the Ecuadorian Parliament, demanding constitutional reform.

Now that three-term President Chavez is moving ahead full throttle to transform Venezuela into a single-party socialist dictatorship, the Bolivarian Republic’s commitment to exporting red revolution will no doubt escalate. According to the report below, Ecuadorian military intelligence has discovered links between a new communist insurgent group in that country, the Alfarist Liberation Army, Venezuela, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Colombia’s insurgent army has openly pledged its support for Comrade Hugo’s feverish and delusional plans to repel a hypothetical US invasion of his country.

Intel report: Venezuela training Ecuador rebels
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Venezuela’s leftist government is training communist rebels in Ecuador, according to an Ecuadorian military intelligence report.

The El Comercio newspaper reported that the Alfarist Liberation Army has been operating since 2001.

The four-page report said a new subversive group was germinating in Ecuador and that certain of its members had sporadic contacts with members of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and had received training in Venezuela.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez denied the reports.

According to the report in the Ecuador newspaper, Venezuelans are behind a military link with the group in Ecuador.

Rene Vargas of the Pro-Bolivarian Movement indicated that the tie had been proposed. “The military are on the trail of the ELA, which is presumed to be linked to Alfarist Bolivarian organizations,” he said.

Another report stated that FARC terrorist Rodrigo Granda was hiding in Ecuador.

“An armed group called the ELA has begun activities and its leaders are receiving strategic and military training from the FARC at a hacienda in north Ecuador,” the report said.

The People’s Republic of China is also moving big time into Latin America, establishing strategic partnerships with Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Mexico. The apperance of Chinese military hardware in Ecuador should not be surprising.

China military shipment found in Ecuador
Special to World Tribune.com
EAST-ASIA-INTEL.COM
Wednesday, July 13, 2005

The Ecuadorian government is investigating a large shipment of military goods to the Ecuadorian military that was not declared in customs documents.

The Quito Hoy newspaper reported last week that four containers were discovered in Guayaquil during a ceremony. The shipment included 12,000 uniforms, two helicopters, nine dump trucks and other military equipment.

Ecuadorian Defense Minister Solon Espinosa said the goods arrived June 30 but that he was unaware of the final destination.

The goods are being held in a warehouse until the investigation is completed.

China has been courting South American governments and has supplied military goods to Cuba in the past.

Per pre-election promises, Ecuador’s neo-communist president, Rafael Correa is moving ahead with political reforms to transform his country into yet another socialist republic via a Constituent Assembly that will rewrite the Ecuadorian constitution. Correa’s personal style and modus operandi is very much like Brazilian President Lula da Silva: Think Chavez Lite. By contrast, newly re-elected Comandante Ortega of Nicaragua cannot disguise the fact that he’s an old communist revolutionary. Notwithstanding the personality quirks and differing degrees of decline into socialism within Latin America’s Red Axis, Comrade Rafael’s cohorts recently turned up outside the national legislature to threaten parliamentarians for the slow pace of red revolution:

Ecuador Protests Shut Down Congress
January 31, 2007

Ecuadorian legislators suspended Tuesday´s ordinary session faced with a multitude of people around Congress demanding an immediate call to a referendum.

Shouting “no more cheese to the Congress rats,” “we want the referendum to call the Constituent Assembly,” and waving flags of Ecuador and several social and political movements, thousands of demonstrators demanded the referendum.

Faced with the siege and threats to occupy the building, from Ecuadorians from all the country´s provinces, the congressmen had to leave through the back door, guarded by security forces.

One of the first legislators to come out was Legislature President Jorge Cevallos, amid extreme security measures when it was learned that students broke the police cordon in one of the streets neighboring the building.

A group of protesters was able to reach the patio, but withdrew shortly after a teargas charge by the police.
A crowd of Ecuadorians remained around congressional headquarters, demanding immediate organization of a referendum to establish the Constituent Assembly.

The deputies were in the middle of analyzing a report by the Constitutional Affairs Committee rejecting the referendum proposal to establish a Constituent Assembly, considering it a violation of the Constitution.

In an apparently unrelated development, on January 24–only days after receiving her ministerial portfolio–President Correa’s defense minister Guadalupe Larriva perished in a helicopter crash near the Manta Air Base, where US troops have been stationed to combat narcoterrorism and which Comrade Rafael has threatened to shut down. Larriva was leader of the Ecuadorian Socialist Party-Broad Front, which is part of Correa’s governing alliance. Larriva’s teenage daughter and two pilots also perished in the crash. On January 30 President Correa appointed another woman, Lorena Escudero, to replace Larriva. Both women were university professors. Prensa Latina reports: “According to several radio station eyewitnesses the wreck occurred after one of the planes was closely following the other, and apparently hit it while trying to pass.”

In response to Larriva’s demise, FARC dispatched a note of condolence to Comrade Rafael. A Babelfish translation of the original Spanish follows:

P?me of the CRAF to President Rafael Draws out The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia Ej?ito of the Town, we expressed our m?sentido p?me by tr?ca desaparici?.?ca of its Minister of Defense, to President Rafael Strap, his Ministers, the militancy of the Socialist Party Extended front, and to the towns of Ecuador, the relatives and friends of. Guadalupe Larriva; who I stand out with loyalty to the revolutionary cause of its Mother country until giving its own life in pr?.ra builds of construcci?.el new Ecuador, worthy, it frees, just and sovereign, where the poor men restitute his liberties and rights, clipped by the voracity of oligarqu? and imperialism. Insurances we are that its libertarios example, its flags and their ideals, ondear?con m?fuerza in our grounds and bolivarianos campings, because its commitment ser?sumido by all the towns that we looked for ours second and definitive ind! ependencia, by means of the exercise of all the forms of fight of masses. Its immense love by the cause of pressed, ser?n referring of revolutionary fight. Peace in its tomb. ?Contra the oligarqu?por the town… ?Contra imperialism by the mother country, we are the CRAF-Ej?ito of the Town. Kindly, Ra?yes Comisi?.nternacional Monta?.de Colombia, January 24 of 2007

Missives such as these expose the interlocking network and harmony of purpose among Latin America’s ruling socialist parties and communist insurgents. The shopping mall regime, however, shrugs, and staggers onward to its destruction.

The Tricontinental Center, the Jesuits, the World Social Forum, and the Catholic-Communist Convergence in the Third World

It was only in Sri Lanka that I discovered Karl Marx. When I was doing my thesis I began to work with the theories of Max Weber. Then I gradually discovered that the Weberian approach was not enough, though Weber was interesting. Although I already had an introduction to Marxism, it was only in the Kandy Library of the University of Peradeniya that I began to read Marx and Marxist literature in earnest. At that time all the walls of the campus were full of Marxist and Leninist slogans because of the student movement. I spent hours and hours in Kandy Library in extremely hot weather. I read Grundrisse and finally I adopted a Marxist approach because I found it was the best approach for understanding pre-capitalist societies. I also read Althusser and Bourdieu at that time.
— Father Francois Houtart, Jesuit priest; founder Tricontinental Center, Universite catholique de Louvain; co-founder, World Social Forum; interviewed by Jerome Sahabandhu, July 2005, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

Dr. Correa, who earned his PhD in economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, previously obtained a master’s degree in the same field at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, where Francois Houtart–Jesuit priest, liberation theologian, Castro advisor, and World Social Forum (WSF) prime mover–runs the subversive Tricontinental Center (CETRI). A plug for the 2007 World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya, which took place between January 20 and 25, can be found at the CETRI website. Father Houtart is a signatory to the Bamako Appeal, a new communist manifesto that emerged from the 2006 World Social Forum, held in Caracas, Bamako (Mali), and Karachi (Pakistan).

In addition to futher empowering the United Nations and punishing “economic” and “ecological” crimes, the Bamako Appeal states: “The goal is a radical transformation of the capitalist system.” Other signatories include the Communist Party of Brazil, ruling in coalition with President Lula da Silva; Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement, which is inspired by liberation theology and other Marxist ideologies; and the International Action Center, a front for the pro-North Korea Workers’ World Party and a project of former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, legal counsel for the deceased war criminals Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milošević, and fugitive war criminal Radovan Karadžić.

Houtart, who is pictured above, attended Castro’s 80th birthday celebration in Havana on November 28, 2006.

Father Houtart and Comrade Rafael’s left-wing Catholicism represent the Third World’s Catholic-communist convergence par excellence. To this convergence belong Comrades Ortega and Chavez who are fond of mixing references to Jesus Christ and socialism. According to the Catholic Alliance, which is committed to promoting the Vatican’s communist economic theories, Catholic priests like Oliverio Medina can be found in the trenches along side the FARC guerrillas. Medina affirms: “Communist Cuba is the proof that capitalism is not the panacea for humanity, while socialism is. Cuba is like a sister which shines with her own light. I say this because I lived there.” The bishops of Rome agree: “The Church’s social doctrine requires that ownership of goods be equally accessible to all, so that all may become, at least in some measure, owners . . .” In spite of the caveat, “[I]t excludes recourse to forms of ‘common and promiscuous dominion,'” one paragraph down, the Catholic Church declares: “Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute and untouchable.” While eschewing outright communism, Catholic economic teaching makes a plea for “communism lite,” “Third Way” fascism, or social democracy. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches in Article 2425:

The Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated in modern times with “communism” or “socialism.” She has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of “capitalism,” individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor. Regulating the economy solely by centralized planning perverts the basis of social bonds; regulating it solely by the law of the marketplace fails social justice, for “there are many human needs which cannot be satisfied by the market.” Reasonable regulation of the marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to the common good, is to be commended.

Within this official commendation for “reasonable regulation of the marketplace” there is apparently much latitude for totalitarians to implement socialist republics ala Chavez et al. Although Pope John Paul II endeavored to rein in the Jesuits, who are the primary advocates of liberation theology, or Marxism applied to Christianity, the Catholic hierarchy in Latin America, as we have documented, has run with the Vatican’s economic theories straight into the arms of the region’s new Red Axis, which includes Ecuador’s new president.

“Christian tradition” might not recognize the absolute right to private property, but the Holy Bible states: “Thou shalt not steal” (Exodus 20:15, (Catholic) Douay-Rheims Version). As communism advances throughout the Western Hemisphere, in particular, the complicity of an important institution like the Catholic Church in its spread cannot be ignored.