USA/USSR2 Files: Obama, Biden secretly met Gorbachev at White House on March 20, last Nov. ex-Soviet leader urged US president to initiate perestroika

– Russian Diplomat in Ottawa Calls Canada’s Testy Response to Bomber Intrusion “Cold War Mentality,” Washington Silent on Incident

– Obama as Soviet Mole: Tom Fife’s Controversial 1992 Conversation with Anonymous Russian Scientist’s Wife Revisited

– Council on Foreign Relations Website Quotes US National Security Adviser James L. Jones: “I Take My Daily Orders from Dr. Kissinger”

– Male Secondary Students in Russia to Receive “Voluntary” Pre-Military Training under Interior Ministry Directive, Assigned to Regular Troop Units

– People’s Bank of China Governor Joins Neo-Soviet Leadership in Urging Establishment of Global Currency to Replace US Dollar, Praises Economist John Maynard Keynes

The tiff between Russia and Canada over the former’s revived Arctic military activities continues. As previously blogged, Dmitry Trofimov, head of the political section of Russia’s embassy in Ottawa, has been summoned to appear before the Canadian parliament’s defense committee to explain the presence of two strategic bombers near the Yukon coast several hours before the arrival of US President Barack Hussein Obama in the Canadian capital last month.

“It was nothing but a coincidence,” Trofimov protested, “From the point of international law, nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. Military training flights will continue so long as other countries conduct them on the boundaries of Russia’s airspace.” Canada’s conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, and his defense minister, Peter MacKay, “raised a stink” about the bomber intrusion. Trofimov, in turn, responded to the Canadian government’s testy reaction by saying: “The Cold War mentality is still there, which is deplorable.”

By contrast, the US government, which is determined to “press the reset button” on bilateral relations with Moscow, has been silent about the February 18 bomber incident near Canadian airspace. It is evident from the statements of the neo-Soviet leadership that the Kremlin views Obama as a pliable friend, if not an outright covert asset, as discussed below. It is expected that Obama will meet his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev for the first time at next month’s London Group of 20 summit.

The US government has also been silent with respect to two important, apparently related incidents that took place on March 20. The MSM revealed yesterday that Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met former Soviet tyrant Mikhail (“I’ll Always Be a Communist”) Gorbachev at the White House last Friday, in what can only be described as a “secret meeting” since the encounter was not previously published on the US president’s official daily schedule. Reuters news agency acquired the revelation via Gorby’s spokesman Konstantin Petrenko, who refused to divulge details of the discussion.

When White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was grilled at a news conference about why the meeting between Obama, Biden, and Gorbachev was not previously disclosed, Gibbs offered an incredible explanation: “The president tends to roam around the larger (White) House and sometimes walks into meetings that weren’t previously on his schedule.” We can only speculate about the subject matter that President Obama discussed with the Soviet strategists’ top PR man. However, a clue may be afforded from Gorbachev’s praise for Obama last November.

Following the president’s election Gorbachev, in an interview with Italy’s La Stampa, urged Obama to implement “perestroika” (restructuring) in the USA to “overcome the financial crisis and restore balance in the world.” He complained that “The Republicans have failed to realize that the Soviet Union no longer exists, that Europe has changed, and that new powers like China, Brazil and Mexico have emerged as important players on the world stage. The world is waiting for Obama to act. The White House needs to restore trust in cooperation with the United States among the Russians.” Gorbachev then referred to Obama as a “man of our times”:

This is a man of our times, he is capable of restarting dialogue, all the more since the circumstances will allow him to get out of a dead-end situation. Barack Obama has not had a very long career, but it is hard to find faults, and he has led an election campaign winning over the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton herself. We can judge from this that this person is capable of engaging in dialogue and understanding current realities.

Novosti picked up Gorbachev’s La Stampa interview, as well as Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s opinion of the US president, expressed in the Russian business daily Vedomosti. Khodorkovsky founded the now defunct Yukos oil giant but is presently serving a prison term on fraud and tax evasion charges. Like Gorbachev, he used the word perestroika in describing the future direction of the Obama administration. “Being a liberal myself,” Khodorkovsky pontificated, “I think that the world will take a left turn and that a global perestroika would be a logical response to the global crisis.” Sounding like a communist rather than a capitalist, he added: “The paradigm of global development is about to change. The era inaugurated by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher 30 years ago is over. Decisions in neoliberal economies have been made mainly by supranational institutions and transnational corporations.” Khodorkovsky predicted:

Globalization will slow to a crawl, but will not stop. The ‘golden billion’ of the world’s richest people will have to abandon hopes of increasing their wealth, but high consumer standards which developed at the end of the 20th century will be unaffected by the change. The striving for political freedom and open competition of personalities and ideas will not disappear.

To what sort of “restructuring” is master communist deceiver Gorbachev and Komsomol capitalist Khodorkovsky alluding? Why, socialism, of course. In the 1980s Gorbachev outlined his vision of a “mature socialist society” in Russia and a world conquered for communism. In Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World (Harper & Row, 1987), the not-so-retired Soviet dictator writes:

Perestroika is closely connected with socialism as a system. That side of the matter is being widely discussed, especially abroad, and our talk about perestroika won’t be entirely clear if we don’t touch upon that aspect.

Does perestroika mean that we are giving up socialism or at least some of its foundations? Some ask this question with hope, others with misgiving.

. . .To put an end to all the rumors and speculations that abound in the West about this, I would like to point out once again that we are conducting our reforms in accordance with the socialist choice. We are looking within socialism, rather than outside it, for the answers to all the questions that arise. We assess our successes and errors alike by socialist standards. Those who hope that we shall move away from the socialist path will be greatly disappointed. Every part of our program of perestroika–and the program as a whole, for that matter–is fully based on the principle of more socialism and more democracy.

More socialism means a more dynamic pace and creative endeavor, more organization, law and order, more scientific methods and initiative in economic management, efficiency in administration, and a better and materially richer life for the people.

More socialism means more democracy, openness and collectivism in everyday life, more culture and humanism in production, social and personal relations among people, more dignity and self-respect for the individual.

More socialism means more patriotism and aspiration to noble ideals, more active civic concern about the country’s internal affairs and about their positive influence on international affairs.

In other words, more of all those things which are inherent in socialism and in the theoretical precepts which characterize it as a distinct socio-economic formation.

We will proceed toward better socialism rather than away from it.

. . .We want more socialism and, therefore, more democracy.[pages 36-37]

If the socialist nature of perestroika is still unclear, in spite of the above quote, then consider the following excerpt from a report that Gorbachev delivered to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s Central Committee and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on November 2, 1987:

The idea of perestroika rests upon our seventy-year history, on the sound foundation of the basically new social edifice erected in the Soviet Union; it combines continuity and innovation, the historical experience of Bolshevism and what socialism is today. It is up to us to continue and carry forward the cause of the pioneers of the Revolution and of socialism. And we are certain to achieve this by our work, by making creative use of the experience of the generations that blazed the October trail before us [October and Perestroika: The Revolution Continues. Ottawa: Soviet Embassy, 1987].

Last Friday, at the secret White House meeting, did Gorbachev personally urge President Obama to implement socialist restructuring in the USA? Since Obama is in fact an under-the-radar socialist this scenario is very possible, which means America has most certainly entered its last days as a free country. A startling essay by Tom Fife, “The First Time I Heard of Barack,” exposes the US president as a veritable “Manchurian Candidate.” Fife is a software developer who visited Russia between 1992 and 1994 in order to launch a business in collaboration with “some people from the Russian scientific community.” We cannot vouch for the authenticity of Fife’s sources, but simply reproduce below, for the reader’s consideration, the statements of “T.M.,” a Russian woman devoted to the “communist cause,” uttered in 1992.

Well, I think you are going to be surprised when you get a black president very soon. What if I told you that you will have a black president very soon and he will be a Communist?

Well, you will; and he will be a Communist. Yes, it is true. This is not some idle talk. He is already born and he is educated and being groomed to be president right now. You will be impressed to know that he has gone to the best schools of Presidents. He is what you call “Ivy League”. You don’t believe me, but he is real and I even know his name. His name is Barack. His mother is white and American and his father is black from Africa. That’s right, a chocolate baby! And he’s going to be your President.

It’s all been thought out. His father is not an American black so he won’t have that social slave stigma. He is intelligent and he is half white and has been raised from the cradle to be an atheist and a Communist. He’s gone to the finest schools. He is being guided every step of the way and he will be irresistible to America.

“She was full of little details about him,” Fife continues, “that she was eager to relate. I thought that maybe she was trying to show off that this truly was a real person and not just hot air. She rattled off a complete litany. He was from Hawaii. He went to school in California. He lived in Chicago. He was soon to be elected to the legislature.”

“Have no doubt,” T.M. gushed, “he is one of us, a Soviet. . . . he will be a blessing for world Communism. We will regain our strength and become the number one power in the world.”

“So, what does this conversation from 1992 prove? Well, it’s definitely anecdotal,” Fife admits, adding:

It doesn’t prove that Obama has had Soviet Communist training nor that he was groomed to be the first black American president, but it does show one thing that I think is very important. It shows that Soviet Russian Communists knew of Barack from a very early date. It also shows that they truly believed among themselves that he was raised and groomed Communist to pave the way for their future. This report on Barack came personally to me from one of them long before America knew he existed. Although I had never before heard of him, at the time of this conversation Obama was 30+ years old and was obviously tested enough that he was their anticipated rising star.

Secretive, high-level discussions between Moscow and Washington have in fact taken place since former US secretary of state and alleged Soviet agent “Bor” Henry Kissinger established a “strategic working group” with former KGB chief Yevgeny Primakov at then Russian President Vladimir Putin’s private residence in 2007. On the very same day that Obama and Biden accidentally “bumped” into Gorby at the White House, “Dr. K” was leading a delegation of retired US statesmen, including former secretaries of state George Shultz and James Baker, to Moscow where they conferred with Soviet Komsomol graduate Medvedev.

The US contingent on this committee, it should be pointed out, is stacked with Council on Foreign Relations alumni, which should come as no surprise to astute observers of elite politics. The CFR, like the Soviet strategists, is committed in its own fashion to the demise of US sovereignty, East-West convergence, and the establishment of world government. The current global financial crisis provides these elite manipulators with an ideal crisis to advance the much-touted “New (Red) World Order,” articulated last November by Britain’s Labour prime minister Gordon Brown.

How much behind-the-scenes authority does Dr. K, the subject of numerous conspiracy theories, wield today? The comments of National Security Adviser James L. Jones at the 45th Munich Conference on Security Policy, held at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof on February 8, 2009, are instructive:

Thank you for that wonderful tribute to Henry Kissinger yesterday. Congratulations. As the most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger, filtered down through General Brent Scowcroft and Sandy Berger, who is also here. We have a chain of command in the National Security Council that exists today.

If these remarks were not posted at the CFR website, we would consider them apocryphal, like Fife’s otherwise dramatic, Hollywoodesque assertions above. Incidentally, Scowcroft was National Security Adviser to President Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush, while Berger held the same capacity in the administration of President (and alleged KGB asset) Bill Clinton.

Bilateral ties between Moscow and Washington nose-dived last year, with Russia complaining about NATO “expansionism” and US plans for a missile shield in Central Europe, and the USA chastising Russia for re-invading and re-occupying Georgia. In light of President Obama’s determination to reduce the US military stockpile of nuclear weapons and achieve a new détente with the Russians, as well as the furtive manipulations of the Kissinger-Primakov cabal, Fife’s supposed revelations assume new significance.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin continues to prepare Russia’s citizen-slaves for war with the West by activating air raid sirens, silent since the old Soviet era, and brainwashing male students with military discipline and patriotism lessons under the auspices of Interior Ministry police troops. Not content to harness the street-fighting muscle of United Russia’s Young Guard, Nashi, Young Russia, and other Putinist youth groups, earlier this month Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev signed an order to create educational squadrons. These will be attached to 85 Interior Ministry units and comprised of 14- to 16-year-old students, called “sons of regiments.” The latter term hearkens back to the Second World War when Soviet troops took (kidnapped?) orphan boys to the front lines, fed and dressed them, and taught them how to play martial music. A famous Russian children’s book by Valentin Kataev, published in 1944 and titled Son of the Regiment, narrates the story of such a boy.

Modern “sons of regiments” will follow the same tradition. The educational squadrons will form the regular field bands of Interior Ministry units, be supplied with food and uniforms, attend compulsory secondary school classes, and receive a salary equivalent to that of involuntary service soldiers. All “volunteers” will require parental consent to enlist in the Kremlin’s new educational squadrons. Like Prime Minister Putin, his boss, Interior Minister Nurgaliev is a career Chekist.

Finally, the ruling Communist Party of China has joined the neo-Soviet leadership of Russia and Kazakhstan in demanding the institution of a global currency to replace the dying US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. In an essay posted on the People’s Bank of China’s website, Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank’s governor, stated: “The goal is to create a reserve currency that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies.” Remarked Qu Hongbin, chief China economist for HSBC, in response to the proposal: “This is a clear sign that China, as the largest holder of US dollar financial assets, is concerned about the potential inflationary risk of the US Federal Reserve printing money.”

Although Zhou did not mention the US dollar, his essay expressly rejected the current dollar-dominated (capitalist) monetary system: “The outbreak of the crisis and its spillover to the entire world reflected the inherent vulnerabilities and systemic risks in the existing international monetary system.” Instead, Zhou proposed expanding the role of special drawing rights (SDRs), a function of the International Monetary Fund founded in 1969 to support the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate regime. The value of SDRs is currently based on a basket of four currencies, the US dollar, Japanese yen, European Union euro, and British pound sterling. The IMF primarily uses SDRs as a unit of account.

Under the Chinese proposal, the valuation of SDRs would be based on all major economies. Zhou’s “economic prescription” would also organize a settlement system between SDRs and other currencies for the purpose of international trade and financial transactions. Comrade Zhou acknowledged the role of socialist economist John Maynard Keynes in making a similar suggestion in the 1940s. ‘Nuff said.

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>Communism with Canadian Characteristics: Ottawa summons Russian embassy official before defense committee, grilled over Arctic bomber, sub intrusions

>Pictured here: A helicopter takes off with the bodies of four Canadian soldiers killed after an IED exploded yesterday, during a mission in the Taliban stronghold of Zhari in Kandahar, a province in southern Afghanistan.

As a rule, regardless of the party in power, Canadians are sensitive about issues of national sovereignty, especially with their closest ally, the USA. In recent weeks, Canada’s Conservative government has reacted testily to the presence of Russian strategic bombers near the country’s airspace. A senior Russian embassy official in Ottawa has been summoned to appear before a parliamentary committee to explain Russia’s military presence in Canada’s Far North. The Globe and Mail reports today:

The scheduled appearance by Dmitry Trofimov, the embassy’s head of political section, before the House of Commons defence committee comes just one month after a diplomatic dustup between the two countries. After Canada revealed it sent fighter jets to intercept two Russian bombers near Canadian airspace on the eve of U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Canada, politicians here unleashed a flurry of strong words for their Arctic neighbour.

Following Obama’s visit to Ottawa, Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke of “increasingly aggressive Russian actions around the globe and Russian intrusions into our airspace.” Offended Russian officials retorted that their aircraft, which materialized near the Northwest Territories on February 18, were conducting regular military training, that Canada was given advance notice of the flight, and that there was no violation of Canadian airspace.

Trofimov is scheduled to discuss the bomber incident, but opposition MPs have vowed to interrogate Moscow’s representative about Russia’s submarine policies in the Arctic Ocean. In light of the government’s feisty response to airspace violations, the opposition has expressed puzzlement over its unwillingness to discuss the presence of a foreign submarine in Canada’s Eastern Arctic last summer.

The Globe and Mail reports “federal officials attempted to play down the sighting, which was made by hunters and was deemed ‘reliable,’ according to internal documents. The Canadian Forces said they could not comment on the subsequent investigation.” An official in the Foreign Affairs Ministry was quoted as saying: “All information regarding submarine movements is classified, but that Canada does share information with allied nations operating submarines to avoid underwater collisions.”

Government party MP Laurie Hawn, a defence committee member and former fighter pilot, rejects Russia’s contention that Moscow informs other countries about flight plans. He’s also dubious about gathering reliable information regarding submarine traffic in Canada’s Arctic region. “People who operate submarines don’t generally talk about where they go,” observed Hawn.

About this incident, which occured on August 9, 2008, at the northern end of Baffin Island near a hunting camp, another Globe and Mail article relates: “The sub sighting occurred kilometres away from the location of a mysterious explosion that had been reported to authorities 10 days earlier and made news across Canada.”

Last Friday the Russian Navy admitted that at least 10 of its nuclear-armed attack submarines are presently patrolling the world’s oceans. It is possible, of course, that the submarine under investigation in Canada’s Eastern Arctic belonged to the US Navy. For decades Ottawa has insisted that the Americans first request permission to use the Northwest Passage. “Experts,” reports state-run CBC, “say that for decades, U.S. submarines have been sneaking around Arctic waters inside what Canada considers its territory. Russian, French and British submarines are believed to have gone in the waters as well.”

>Communist Bloc Military Updates: 3rd Sino-Soviet war game dubbed "Peace Mission 2009"; Russian Navy: 10 nuke-armed subs on patrol in world’s oceans

>– Six Strategic Bombers Launch Cruise Missiles and Drop Precision-Guided Bombs at Pemboi Test Range in Arctic Russia

– Two Russian Maritime Patrol Aircraft Fly Within 500 Feet of Aircraft Carrier USS Stennis in Sea of Japan this Past Monday (source)

The Moscow-Beijing Axis will hold its third joint war game, dubbed Peace Mission 2009, this summer in northeast China, the Russian Defense Ministry disclosed on Wednesday. The two previous Sino-Soviet drills were also called “Peace Mission” and took place in 2005 and 2007 in both countries. “The final decision on the date, venue, name and forces involved will be made at bilateral consultations to be held in the last 10 days of March,” a ministry source explained. For its part, the Chinese Defense Ministry stated this past Tuesday that “the joint maneuvers were aimed at developing a strategic partnership between Russia and China.”

The agreement to hold Peace Mission 2009 was reached at last year’s meeting between Russia and China’s defense ministers. The two communist allies established their first military hotline in December.

The progress of military coordination by the Moscow-Beijing Axis was predicted as far back as 1984 when KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn exposed the so-called Sino-Soviet split as a strategic deception designed to promote the idea among Western analysts that there were ideological and practical divisions within the Communist Bloc. After predicting the fake demise of communism in Eastern Europe under the guidance of a “reformist” Soviet leader (realized under Mikhail Gorbachev, 1985-1991), Golitsyn then warned that “post”-communist Russia would ally itself with Communist China as “one clenched fist” (realized in 2001). The “reconstructed” Soviet Union would then neutralize both NATO and the United States of America, the first through the admission of “ex”-Soviet Bloc states into the North Atlantic Alliance (realized in 1999), the second through the promotion of socialist governments (realized under Presidents Bill Clinton, 1993-2001; and Barack Obama, 2009-present).

At this point, it would become obvious to the whole world that the balance of power had shifted away from the “bourgeois states” and toward the socialist states. Such a ruse was necessary, Golitsyn argued, since during the Cold War NATO would have been greatly alarmed by open military cooperation between the two communist superpowers. In validation of his accurate method of analysis, Golitsyn’s two books–New Lies for Old (especially Chapter 25, “The Final Phase”) and The Perestroika Deception (1995, 1998)–read like a script of the last 25 years of world history.

With refreshing candor the Russian Navy admitted this week that 10 attack submarines armed with nuclear weapons are presently patrolling the world’s oceans. “Up to 10 submarines are conducting various missions around the globe, including training and combat patrol missions with nuclear weapons on board,” a source in the naval general staff told Novosti today. Most of these submarines belong to the Northern and Pacific Fleets. The Kremlin maintains a fleet of 60 nuclear-powered and diesel-electric submarines in active service, including 10 nuclear-powered strategic submarines and more than 30 nuclear-powered attack submarines.

“The Navy General Staff believe that strategic submarines will continue playing an important role in safeguarding Russia’s national security because they remain one of the key components of Russia’s military might and serve as a reliable deterrent to potential threats and aggression against the country,” the same source explained.

Russia, continues Novosti, plans to completely modernize the naval component of its nuclear triad by 2016. Its navy recently began mooring trials of the first Borey-class nuclear-powered strategic submarine, which will be equipped with Bulava SLBMs. The Yury Dolgoruky, built at the Sevmash plant in northern Russia, left its dry dock in April 2007. The vessel is 170 meters (580 feet) long, carries a crew of 107, can dive to a maximum depth of 450 meters (1,500 feet), sustain a submerged speed of 29 knots, and launch 16 ballistic missiles and torpedoes. Two other Borey-class submarines, the Alexander Nevsky and the Vladimir Monomakh, will be completed in 2009 and 2011, respectively. Russia plans to build a total of eight Borey-class submarines by 2015.

A fourth-generation Graney class nuclear-powered attack submarine will be delivered to the Russian Navy in 2010 or 2011. The Severodvinsk submarine will be able to launch long-range cruise missiles with nuclear warheads, as well as engage “hostile” (meaning US Navy) submarines and surface warships. The second vessel of the Graney class is expected to enter service by 2015.

In a related story, the Russian Air Force, Novosti reports, has launched a four-day exercise near the city of Vorkuta, north of the Arctic Circle. Six Tu-160 Blackjack and Tu-95 Bear-H strategic bombers will test-launch cruise missiles and drop precision-guided bombs at the Pemboi test range. The exercise is part of a command-and-staff drill supervised by Major General Pavel Androsov, commander of Russia’s strategic aviation, and will last until March 20.

Concurrently, in southwest Siberia 5,000 troops and 400 armored vehicles are carrying out a large land-and-air war game (pictured at top), as 7,000 NATO troops begin their third Cold Response drill in Norway. The latter entails countering a simulated invasion of Western Europe’s offshore oil fields.

>Communist Bloc Military Updates: 7,000 NATO troops hold “Cold Response” war game in Norway as Russian armed forces carry out Siberian drill

>– President Dmitry Medvedev: Armed Forces Will Begin Large-Scale Modernization Program in 2011, Finish by 2020

– Russian Military Deploys Second S-400 Triumf Air Defense Regiment, First Regiment Deployed near Moscow in 2007

– Alleged Soviet Agent Henry Kissinger Leads Team of Former Statesmen to Moscow to Negotiate America’s Surrender

– Russia and Kazakhstan’s “Ex”-Communist Leaders to Pitch Idea of Global Currency at April’s Group of 20 Summit in London

Pictured above: Norwegian Air Force F-16 fighter jet participates in NATO’s last Cold Response exercise in 2007.

On Monday the US Defense Department, foolishly in our opinion, made light of Russia’s proposed use of air bases in Cuba and Venezuela for its strategic bombers, a prospect that was first broached in the Kremlin media last July and then again last week. “That would be quite a long way for those old planes to fly,” Geoff Morrell, Pentagon press secretary, scoffed to the AFP news agency. “Admiral Mike Mullen is not overly concerned about other nations [like Cuba and Venezuela] trying to forge bilateral relations with other partners and friends,” huffed an anonymous defense official, referring to the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.

We are also concerned that Moscow may try to station its bombers in neo-Sandinista Nicaragua. Although Managua is still participating in joint military drills, like Tradewinds 2009, with the USA, this could change in the near future since Marxist dictator Daniel Ortega is also closely allied with Havana and Caracas and insists, against Washington’s wishes, upon retaining at least 400 Soviet-built SA-7 SAMs.

The US Air Force certainly possesses more modern technology than its Russian counterpart, such as the 1990s-era B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. However, the US military’s fleet of 1950s-era B-52 Stratofortress bombers is roughly comparable with the Tu-95 Bear, the fastest propeller-driven plane in the world, while the 1970s-era B-1 Lancer is comparable to the 1980s-era Tu-160 Blackjack, the largest combat aircraft in the world. The latter, in fact, is once again rolling off the assembly line, one every year or so. Some estimates place the number of operational Blackjacks at 19 or 20, not the commonly touted 14 or 16.

In April 2006 the Kremlin boasted that at least two Blackjacks reached the coast of Alaska without tripping NORAD’s alert system. The next year a Tu-160 flew within 20 miles of the British city Kingston upon Hull before Royal Air Force planes intercepted the bomber. Russia’s most advanced strategic bomber, as far as we are aware, is not equipped with stealth technology, although these incidents suggest otherwise. The Sukhoi PAK-FA multi-role fighter under development will probably possess this capability. Both the US and Russian air forces, in fact, are in a race to develop the 21st century’s first generation of strategic bombers.

On Tuesday Russian “President” Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s compliant lackey, announced that beginning in 2011 the Russian military will begin a large-scale modernization program. One result will be to boost the share of modern weaponry in the Kremlin arsenal to 30% by 2015 and 70% by 2020. Speaking to Defense Ministry apparatchiks, Medvedev said:

Last year we equipped a number of military units with new weaponry, and we will start large-scale rearmament of the Armed Forces in 2011. They must be able to accomplish all tasks aimed at ensuring Russia’s military security. This process would involve the enhancement of combat readiness of all military units.

Despite the current financial difficulties, Russia has never had better favorable conditions to create modern and highly efficient armed forces. Long-term plans in the defense sphere should be based on a Russian national security strategy for the period up to 2020, which the [Russian] Security Council should endorse in the near future.

The drum of NATO “expansionism” is the pretext that the neo-Soviet leadership is beating to justify its own militaristic adventurism. “There are attempts to continue broadening the military infrastructure of the North Atlantic Alliance near our borders,” Medvedev rumbled at the same meeting, intimating future warfare with the West: “An analysis of the military and political situation in the world shows that in a number of regions serious potential for conflict remains.”

The modernization of the Russian Armed Forces includes the deployment of the country’s most advanced air defense missile system, the S-400 Triumf, which was first tested in 2007. According to Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, the second S-400 regiment was this week placed on combat duty. The first operational S-400 regiment was deployed in 2007 and tasked with protecting the airspace around Moscow and industrial centers in the heart of European Russia. The S-400 (NATO designation SA-21 Growler) is expected to form the core of Russia’s new theater air and missile defenses until 2020 or 2025.

The S-400 can intercept and destroy airborne targets at a maximum distance of 400 kilometers (250 miles), twice the range of the US military’s MIM-104 Patriot, and two and a half times that of Russia’s “late-model” S-300 system. Military analysts believe that the S-400 can also destroy stealth aircraft, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles. A typical S-400 regiment consists of eight launchers with four missiles each, and a mobile command post. The new state arms procurement program will arm 18 S-400 battalions as of 2015.

Meanwhile, Russia and NATO are carrying out concurrent war games that belie diplomatic gestures for restored relations severed after Russia’s five-day war with Georgia. For its part, the Kremlin, as we previously blogged, is deploying more than 5,000 troops in land-and-air exercises in Siberia. Russian Defense Ministry publication Krasnaya Zvezda (“Red Star”) reports that General Vladimir Boldyrev, chief of the Russian Ground Forces, is overseeing the seven-day drill, which includes fighter planes, helicopters, and 400 armored vehicles.

Four thousand miles to the west, NATO member Norway is hosting 7,000 soldiers from 12 countries in the “Cold Response” exercise, which simulates an invasion to control Arctic oil fields. This threat is implied by Moscow’s assertion of sovereignty over a large chunk of the resource-rich polar region in 2007. Participating countries include France, Germany, and Spain, as well as neutral neighbors Sweden and Finland, the latter bravely fending off a Soviet invasion in 1939. The Cold Response war game scenario involves a hostile power called “Northland” (Russia?) attacking fictional “Midland” (a hapless Baltic state?), which is home to minority “Northlanders” (ethnic Russians?) and offshore oil fields. Cold Response exercises previously took place in 2006 and 2007.

In a related story, the Russian Navy is rotating the single warship that it has contributed to the United Nations-sanctioned anti-piracy mission near the coast of Somalia. The Admiral Vinogradov will be replaced by the Admiral Panteleyev. Both ships are Udaloy-class destroyers from the Pacific Fleet and each is armed with anti-ship missiles, 30-mm and 100-mm guns, and Ka-27 Helix anti-submarine helicopters. Although its “post”-Soviet presence is slight in the Indian Ocean, the Russian Navy has over the last year trumpeted its intention to expand and project its power throughout the world’s oceans. This endeavor will include the addition of three yet-to-be-built aircraft carriers to its current complement of one, the Northern Fleet’s carrier Admiral Kuznetsov.

Modernizing Russia’s nuclear deterrent, according to Medvedev, will be another top priority, notwithstanding US President Barack Hussein Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and roving statesman Henry Kissinger’s treasonous peace overtures to Moscow.

Since the early 1970s Kissinger has been accused of being a KGB asset, specifically Agent “Bor.” In any case, President Richard Nixon’s former secretary of state co-chairs, along with former KGB chief Yevgeny Primakov, a “strategic working group” on US-Russian relations that was founded in 2007 at Putin’s private residence. This cabal has furtively met on several occasions since then, including at the White House in January 2008 with then President George W. Bush in attendance. One of the main purposes of the Kissinger-Primakov group is to provide continuity between Bush and Obama’s policies toward Russia. In reality, there is little substantive difference between both administrations with respect to acknowledging and countering the 50-year-old Soviet deception strategy.

According to the US embassy in Moscow, Kissinger, who last met with Medvedev in December, will fly to Moscow for talks with the neo-Soviet leadership on March 20. He will be accompanied by James Baker and George Shultz, two other former secretaries of state, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and ex-US Senator Sam Nunn. Obama, who may encounter Medvedev for the first time at the Group of 20 meeting in London next month, will probably visit Russia in July, Moscow-based Kommersant Daily reports. It is well known that the Obama Administration is seeking to “reset” relations with Russia and secure Kremlin support for US policies on Afghanistan, Iran, and mutual nuclear arms reduction. The G20 industrialized and developing nations include Russia, although not without some objections by members who rightly deny that Russia is a true democracy.

On Monday the Soviet communists published their agenda for the upcoming G20 meeting, in which they called for the formation of a supranational reserve currency as part of a reform of the global capitalist system. “The International Monetary Fund should investigate the possible creation of a new reserve currency, widening the list of reserve currencies or using its already existing Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, as a superreserve currency accepted by the whole of the international community,” the Kremlin urged in a statement issued on its website. Both Medvedev and Putin have repeatedly called for the ruble to be used as a regional reserve currency, although the idea has received little support outside Russia.

Moscow’s plea for a global currency is not the first to emerge from the Not-So-Former Soviet Union in recent days. Speaking at a G20 forum in Astana earlier last week, Kazakhstan’s “ex”-communist president Nursultan Nazarbayev defended his proposal for the oddly named “acmetal.” The proposal was seconded by Canadian economist Robert Mundell, who helped to design the euro. “I must say that I agree with President Nazarbayev on his statement and many of the things he said in his plan, the project he made for the world currency, and I believe I’m right on track with what he’s saying,” Mundell gushed, adding: “The idea has great promise.” Nazarbayev and Mundell urged the G20 states to form a working group on the proposal at the next month’s summit, which will focus on the world economic crisis. “We should deliver our thoughts and the thoughts of this conference to the leaders of those countries,” Nazarbayev intoned.

The establishment of a global government and currency is not only an objective of the Soviet communists and their Western globalist bagmen and mouthpieces, but is viewed by Bible prophecy scholars as a forerunner of the mark of the beast, in which the world’s inhabitants will during the tribulation period receive an imprint on the forehead or right hand that permits them to buy and sell.

>Africa File: Madagascar’s Ravalomanana cedes power to mutinous military, army transfers presidency to Rajoelina, highest court approves coup

>– Madagascar’s De Facto President Andry Rajoelina Constitutionally Too Young to Hold Office

– United Nations Protected Rajoelina from Arrest under Ravalomanana Government

– Family of Deposed Communist Dictator Didier Ratsiraka Backing Rajoelina

– Ex-President Marc Ravalomanana Haunted by Shady Privatization Deal with Last Ratsiraka Regime, Former State Company Formed Nucleus of Tiko Group Business Empire

A pro-opposition military coup took place in Madagascar beginning on Monday, reports Bloomberg, ending seven weeks of conflict between President Marc Ravalomanana and young political upstart Andry Rajoelina. A mutinous faction of Madagascar’s armed forces surrounded the presidential palace in Antananarivo, the country’s capital, and demanded that Ravalomanana resign, a course that the former businessman has for weeks insisted that he will not follow. On Tuesday, at least 2,000 oppositionists gathered at Place du 13 Mai, the main city square in Antananarivo, ahead of an appearance by usurper Rajoelina. Most of Ravalomanana’s family fled the country last week, while Ravalomanana himself has vowed to die with loyal elements of the presidential guard holed up in Iavoloha Palace, rather than surrender. As many as 500 pro-government supporters formed a human shield around the compound.

BBC journalist Jonah Fisher asserts that it may be only a matter of time until pro-opposition troops march on Ravalomanana’s personal residence, 15 kilometers (nine miles) from downtown Antananarivo. Fisher confirms that any attempt by the military to seize the president’s official residence could result in bloodshed if they meet resistance from the presidential guard and Ravalomanana loyalists. The head of the pro-opposition army faction, however, has confided that he does not seek “bloodletting” and intends to avoid confrontation.

“Many ministers have handed in their resignation to me,” Rajoelina confidently bragged to Reuters news agency on Tuesday. The 34-year-old Rajoelina insists that the democratically elected Ravalomanana has “no right to stay in power.” A spokesman for Rajoelina’s Determined Malagasy Youth party insists that the former disk jockey plans to move into the presidential office immediately. Watching his popular support ebb away, President Ravalomanana ceded power to the military, rather than directly to Rajoelina, yesterday afternoon. Madagascar’s highest court approved Rajoelina accession to the presidency, even though he is six years too young to hold the office, according to the constitution. Gloating over his triumph, Rajoelina then paraded about the streets of Antananarivo, accompanied by armed soldiers and followed by adoring supporters (pictured above).

The African Union’s Peace and Security Council, reports Bloomberg above, citing an email press release, will hold a second meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, to “consider the situation in Madagascar.” The AU condemned the power transfer as a “coup d’etat.” In view of the fact that Libyan strongman Muammar al-Qaddafi, the AU’s new chairman, attained power in 1969 through a anti-monarchist coup, the organization’s stance is ironic. The United Nations dispatched Tiebile Drame, Mali’s former foreign minister, to mediate on its behalf.

The large island state of Madagascar is situated in the Indian Ocean, near the southeast coast of Africa. Geographically, therefore, Madagascar is considered part of Africa, but the island’s 20 million inhabitants are ethnically related to the people groups of East Africa, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific islands. The Malagasy language is of Malayo-Polynesian origin. Madagascar is one of the world’s poorest countries, with a per capita income of US$290 in 2005, according to the World Bank. Rio Tinto Group, the world’s third-largest mining company, reports that its US$1 billion ilmenite mining operation in Madagascar has been undisturbed by the unrest.

A least 135 people have died since January 26 amid clashes between government security forces and opposition supporters in Madagascar. On February 19 police regained control of four government ministries seized by pro-Rajoelina activists and arrested 50 of the same. On Friday, in the last rally prior to Tuesday’s, 2,000 protesters gathered in Place du 13 Mai, which has become the makeshift headquarters for Determined Malagasy Youth, to support Rajoelina’s illegal bid for the presidency. Rajoelina, who apparently enjoys UN protection since evading arrest last week, once again demanded Ravalomanana’s resignation, calling the president a “dictator,” and the installation of his “transitional government.” “The army is with us now. Ravalomanana is now packing his bags, and his ministers as well,” gloated Augustin Andriamananoro, another opposition official, at the time.

President Ravalomanana was legitimately elected to a second term in 2006 and recently endorsed the idea of holding a referendum to reconfirm popular support for his government. Presidential pretender Rajoelina was mayor of the country’s capital from December 2007 until February 3 of this year, when he was dismissed. On January 31 Rajoelina first proclaimed himself president of the country and organized a counter-government.

On December 13, 2008 the government shut down Rajoelina’s Viva TV, following the broadcast of an interview with Madagascar’s exiled communist dictator Didier Ratsiraka, known as the “Red Admiral.” Ratsiraka presided over a socialist dictatorship between 1975 and 1993, when he was forced out of office by widespread dissent, and attempted to reconsolidate his dictatorship after 1997, when he was surprisingly re-elected to his old post. A dispute between Ravalomanana and Ratsiraka after the 2001 election left the country divided with two governments, two capitals, and two presidents. By the end of February 2002, Ravalomanana assumed control over Antananarivo, where he enjoys considerable support, but Ratsiraka maintained control over the provinces and established his capital at Toamasina. In June 2002 Ratsiraka fled to France where, as far as we know, he still resides.

For their part, Ravalomanana loyalists claim that Rajoelina is supported in some capacity by Ratsiraka’s family. This is very possible. Ratsiraka’s nephew Roland is mayor of Toamasina and achieved third place in the 2001 presidential election. He is viewed as a senior opposition leader in Madagascar. “It has been poverty for seven years,” complained Roland Ratsiraka of the Ravalomanana regime, adding: “The transitional government is going to change all that.” If Rajoelina is merely a front for the Ratsiraka dynasty, then the coup in progress against Ravalomanana represents an attempt by Madagascar’s old red regime to reassert itself in the executive office. The UN’s reported aegis over Rajoelina is also suspect, indicating that that the world body is clearly aligned with Madagascar’s opposition communist forces.

In an article published last month, however, Madagascarian writer Jean-Luc Raharimanana contends that the political struggle that took place between Ravalomanana and Ratsiraka in 2002 is deceptive. Since Ravalomanana personally benefited from the privatization of a state company that eventually formed the nucleus of his Tiko Group agribusiness, some sort of collusion between the two erstwhile rivals is apparent:

. . . Ravalomanana had already enriched himself under the dictatorship of Ratsiraka. He was jailed for corruption in 1988. He was released by Ratsiraka and somehow managed to win the tender for privatisation of the same company for which he had been convicted; this is the cornerstone of the Tiko business empire. Tiko was funded by the World Bank and went on to benefit from all manner of favours, never paying taxes. The government only realised all of this too late.

Ratsiraka had hoped that Ravalomanana would serve as his front man, while Ravalomanana himself was after power. He [Ravalomanana] benefited his company through tax exemption, massive duty rebates on raw materials (with maximum duties for his competitors), absolute control over tender calls, delayed payments to peasant producers, ridiculously low purchase prices for public land, annexation of land, monopolistic control of all sectors of the economy, control of the media and the imprisonment of intellectuals and opponents.

If Rajoelina’s military-backed coup is successful, then it should soon become apparent that the Ravalomanana regime is a “placeholder” for Madagascar’s old communist regime.

>Latin America File: El Salvador falls to communism as FMLN candidate wins presidency, Obama mulls National Guard deployments to US-Mexican border

>My victory is your dream come true.
— Salvadoran President-Elect Mauricio Funes, victory speech addressed to former FMLN guerrillas, March 15, 2009

El Salvador has become the latest casualty in Latin America’s capitulation to the regional Red Axis. Yesterday, in harmony with recent public opinion polls, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front’s (FMLN) candidate for president, dapper ex-journalist Mauricio Funes, won the election. Although Funes is professedly moderate, Vice President-Elect Salvador Sanchez Ceren is a hard-core leftist and veteran of the Salvadoran Civil War, which raged between 1980 and 1992. Both men are pictured above in San Salvador on Sunday.

During this conflict the Soviet Union and Cuba funneled weapons to the guerrillas who were seeking to overthrow a series of US-backed, right-wing governments. “The nearest the rebels came to taking power,” relates Reuters, “was in late 1989 when they poured into the capital in an offensive that was only halted when the military bombed and shelled guerrilla positions in residential areas.” Funes won a slim victory over Rodrigo Avila, the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) candidate, who conceded defeat. Funes did not fight in the civil war but, rather, pursued a career in television journalism. Between 2001 and 2007 he served as correspondent for CNN’s Spanish service, billionaire leftist Ted Turner’s propaganda arm.

Not surprisingly, during Funes’ victory speech, “a sea of red filled the streets Sunday night as FMLN supporters raised their fists and sang their old anthem.” The CBC notes that “Funes paid homage to the tens of thousands of rebels who died in the war, saying his victory is their dream come true.” He gushed: “This is the happiest night of my life, and I want it to be the night of El Salvador’s greatest hope. I want to thank all the people who voted for me and chose that path of hope and change.” Funes declared that his first priority would be to ameliorate the impact of the global financial crisis on his homeland. The global recession has diminished US demand for El Salvador’s textiles and manufactured goods despite a regional free trade deal with Washington.

During his victory speech, Funes also dedicated his presidency to Archbishop Oscar Romero, the Catholic cleric who embraced leftist causes shortly before he was assassinated by a right-wing death squad in 1980. “My only weapon is the constitution,” he pledged, “and I will use it to build a social democratic state based on human rights.” For the unreconstructed Marxists who direct the FMLN and issue marching orders to Funes, “building a social democratic state” in El Salvador simply means building communism under a different name. Observers from the Organization of American States, according to Xinhua, placed their stamp of approval on Sunday’s ballot, calling the election “orderly.”

That may be so, but it can be expected that El Salvador’s new FMLN regime will shortly join the Havana/Caracas-led socialist bloc of nations known as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA). Even neo-Soviet Russia has expressed an interest in joining ALBA, which Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega would like to transform into an anti-USA military coalition.

Incidentally, the Mara Salvatrucha narco-terrorist gang, which operates throughout Central America, the USA, and Canada, is a spinoff from the FMLN. During the 1990s demobilized, jobless guerrilla fighters emerged from the jungles to run drugs for the Latin American cartels, forming the core of the vicious MS-13, which is also known for periodically staging riots in Central American jails.

Meanwhile, leaders from established member states of the Latin American Red Axis continue to make pilgrimages to Havana, there to consult with Cuba’s venerable communist dictatorship. Earlier this month, on March 4, a delegation from Haiti arrived in Cuba to discuss the subjects of bilateral cooperation in the fields of medical care and education. The Haitian delegation was headed by Paul Antoine Bien-Aime, Interior and Territorial Communities Minister; Evans Lescouflair, Health, Youth and Civic Action Minister; and Jean Victor Geneus, Haiti’s ambassador to Cuba. The Cuban delegation was headed by Rodrigo Malmierca, Cuban Foreign Trade and Investment Minister.

On March 3, Ricardo Cabrisas, Vice President of the Cuban Council of Ministers, welcomed Jose Manuel Zelaya to Havana, where the Honduran president participated in the 11th International Meeting of Economists on Globalization and Development Problems. Honduras is the most recent country to be absorbed by ALBA. Zelaya, according to the Cuban News Agency, expressed solidarity with Cuba against the “hostile and aggressive policy of the US Government over the last 50 years.” Both Cabrisas and Zelaya spoke in favour of regional unity and integration, highlighting the importance of the First Latin American and Caribbean Summit on Integration and Development that took place in Brazil in December

The next day Zelaya met with his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro, a known KGB asset whose communist dictatorship is currently holding at least 19 independent journalists in prison. “To the 19 journalists imprisoned in March 2003,” states Reporters without Borders, “four more have been added since 2005, three of them after Raúl Castro succeeded his brother, temporarily at first, on 31 July 2006.” A bilateral trade accord was signed by Honduran Trade Minister Freddy Cerrato and Cuban Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment Rodrigo Malmierca. The Honduran Council for Private Enterprise favored this commercial agreement before the arrival of Zelaya, believing that it will open new market opportunities.

Finally, the Sandinista National Liberation Front, peacefully ousted from Nicaragua’s executive office between 1990 and 2006, is once again building political, economic, and cultural bridges to Cuba’s communist regime. On March 4 Cuba’s National Association of Economists and Accountants (ANEC) and the Central University of Nicaragua (UCN) established an agreement for cooperation in economic sciences. Signing the agreement at Havana’s Convention Palace was ANEC president Roberto Verrier and UCN vice-rector Francisco Lopez. Now academics from the two institutions will be able to lead exchanges in the area of economic sciences, “focused on achieving a socially responsible economic development.” This is a round-about way of saying that Cuban and Nicaraguan economists will agitate for the application of Marxism to the economies of the Caribbean Basin and Central America.

Moscow’s Red Cocaine Plot, the Mexican Narco-State, and US National Security

Pictured here: Five thousand Mexican soldiers arrive at the border city of Ciudad Juarez on March 13, relieving some soldiers of their tours of duty and bringing the total number of military personnel to 7,500 in Mexico’s most violent city. There are also 2,500 federal police in Ciudad Juarez.

Over the last decade Mexico, with the able assistance of the KGB-controlled Russian Mafiya, has joined Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Peru in the ranks of Latin America’s narco-states. Internecine rivalries among competing drug cartels left 5,800 people dead in 2008 and 1,000 dead in January 2009 alone. Last year Ciudad Juarez, a large city across the border from El Paso, Texas, sustained 1,800 of Mexico’s nearly 6,000 drug-related homicides. “The cities of Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, Reynosa and Monterrey,” writes Tom Dolz in a sobering article about the implications of Mexico’s drug wars on US national security, “are virtually under drug cartel control and many other cities are tottering.” Dolz continues: “President Calderon has deployed 45,000 Mexican army troops to the border to take back control of key cities but the loyalty of those troops is compromised by bribes from the cartels which do $140 billion in trade along the border.”

On March 2, reports the Washington Post, Texas Governor Rick Perry requested the deployment of 1,000 US troops along the international border. Governor Perry briefly placed the Texas National Guard on a state of alert during the recent blockade of the El Paso-Ciudad Juarez bridges instigated by cartel operatives. Janet Napolitano, former governor of Arizona and now head of the US Department of Homeland Security, agrees that the risk of cartel violence spilling into the USA is “a serious and growing threat.” Texas Homeland Security director Steve McCraw told legislative committees in recent days that state officials are closely monitoring the increasing violence in Mexican border areas, and have drafted contingency plans to address any northward “spillover.”

Last Wednesday, US President Barack Hussein Obama acknowledged to reporters that the White House is considering the possible deployment of National Guard troops to the porous US-Mexican border:

We’re going to examine whether and if National Guard deployments would make sense and under what circumstances they would make sense. I don’t have a particular tipping point in mind. I think it’s unacceptable if you’ve got drug gangs crossing our borders and killing U.S. citizens.

While Obama’s comments were somewhat assuring, he offered the usual politically correct caveat: “We’ve got a very big border with Mexico. I’m not interested in militarizing the border.” Former president, George W. Bush, who hails from Texas and counts Mexican President Felipe Calderon as a bud, was not enthusiastic about sending troops to the border either. “We expect to have a comprehensive approach to dealing with these issues of border security that will involve supporting Calderon and his efforts in a partnership, also making sure we are dealing with the flow of drug money and guns south, because it’s really a two-way situation there,” related Obama, adding: “As a consequence, these cartels have gained extraordinary power.”

National Guard troops previously patrolled the US-Mexican border during Operation Jump Start, which began in June 2006 and terminated in July 2008. President Bush refused to extend their mission, despite pleas from border state governors.

The Pentagon, according to an exclusive March 3 Washington Times article, believes that Mexico’s two most deadly drug cartels, the Juarez Cartel based in Ciudad Juarez and the Gulf Cartel, also known as the Los Zetas, which is active across the border from Laredo, Texas, can together field 100,000 foot soldiers. By comparison, the Mexican government commands 130,000 troops.

“It’s moving to crisis proportions,” an anonymous senior US defense official told the newspaper. The Juarez and Gulf Cartels appear to be negotiating a truce or merger to wipe out rivals, like the Sinaloa Cartel on the Pacific coast, and respond with still greater firepower against Mexico’s federal government. “I think if they merge or decide to cooperate in a greater way, Mexico could potentially have a national security crisis,” the US defense official fretted, adding: “The two have amassed so many people and weapons that Mexican President Felipe Calderon is fighting for his life and for the life of Mexico right now.” Obama may not be interested in “militarizing” the northern side of the US-Mexican border, but that in fact may be the long-needed solution for breaking the backs of the drug cartels in both countries.

In light of these developments, it would appear that the Soviet strategists have little need for Mexico’s miniscule Marxist guerrilla groups, like the People’s Revolutionary Army and the Zapatista National Army of Liberation, to transform Mexico into a proletarian dictatorship. In fact the Epristas and Zapatistas can probably hang up their weapons and go home. Mexico’s drug lords are not only doing a fine and dandy job of transforming Mexico into a failed state but also, potentially, the USA, where millions of Mexican refugees could potentially rush the border and push the US economy into oblivion, where radical Mexican irredentist agitators could foment revolution in the streets, and where millions of patriotic US citizens could find themselves blocked by a politically correct Obama Presidency from defending their country against an illegal alien invasion that is already out of control.

>Communist Bloc Military Updates: Soviets’ Red Dawn coalition emerges as Chavez re-offers bases for bombers, Moscow waits for Havana’s go-ahead

>– Kremlin Delighted Faux Rightist President Sarkozy Preparing to Reintegrate French Military into NATO Command Structure

– Russian and Chinese Foreign Ministers Promote the Moscow-Beijing Axis’ “One Clenched Fist”

Last July the Kremlin media cautiously broached the subject of basing strategic bombers in Cuba and Venezuela. The Russian Defense Ministry promptly distanced itself from the “revelation,” while General Norton Schwartz, then nominee for the post of US Air Force chief, warned the Russians against contemplating such a move. “If they did I think we should stand strong and indicate that is something that crosses a threshold, crosses a red line for the United States of America,” Schwartz rumbled. This trial balloon released by the Soviets took place during the Bush Administration, which was already guilty of coddling Russia’s KGB-communist dictator since 2001, when then President George W. Bush looked into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and “saw his soul.”

Now (Kenyan-born?) President Barack Hussein Obama is in office. America’s first hard-core socialist president is not only determined to ruin the US economy with his ill-conceived, astronomically expensive stimulus plan, but also slash the US military’s nuclear arsenal by 80 percent and restore ties with Communist Cuba, albeit incrementally, a move that will no doubt facilitate an influx of personnel from Cuba’s Intelligence Directorate, three agents of which are currently imprisoned on US soil.

The Russian media is once again publishing reports, picked up by the Western MSM, that the Kremlin is still considering its options with respect to parking a few ALCM-equipped bombers in Cuba, which reportedly boasts four or five suitable runways, or the military air field on Venezuela’s La Orchila Island. Major General Anatoly Zhikharev, chief of staff of Russia’s long-range aviation was quoted by Interfax today as saying:

Russian strategic bombers may be based in Cuba in the future. Cuba could be used to base Russian bombers if the two countries display a political will. We are ready to fly there. Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez has offered an island as a temporary base for Russian planes. Chavez has offered a whole island with an airdrome, which we can use as a temporary base for strategic bombers. If there is a corresponding political decision, then the use of the island by the Russian Air Force is possible.

The waters around La Orchila Island were the site of a June 2008 naval drill designed to showcase Chavez’s Russian-built military hardware, including Sukhoi fighter jets. Defense Minister Gustavo Rangel Briceno commanded the troops, ordering them to fire at “mock enemy units” (meaning invading US forces) with French/Italian-made Otomat MK2 missiles, the Venezuelan military’s first live missile launches in 13 years. In September two supersonic Tu-160 Blackjack bombers landed at El Libertador air base in Venezuela (pictured above), in what was the first Western Hemisphere touchdown of Russian military craft since the Cold War.

For its part, Cuba, reports Reuters, never permanently hosted Soviet strategic aircraft, but Tu-95 Bear bombers cruising up and down the US East Coast often made stopovers at Fidel Castro’s gulag paradise during the Cold War. Russia officially resumed long-range bomber patrols in 2007, after a 15-year hiatus.

So, it’s official. The Soviets are seriously considering the deployment of bombers in Cuba, Venezuela, and possibly in Nicaragua, where the Russians intend to renovate their 22-year-old, never-used military runway at Punta Huete, north of Lake Managua. Russia and the USA–whose foreign policy formation is now guided by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a left-wing Democrat whose husband Bill, the former president, is a suspected KGB asset–have vowed to use the change of power in Washington to “press the reset button” on their relationship. However, Russia remains opposed to US plans for an anti-missile system in Central Europe and the reception of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO.

If Moscow actually parks its bombers in Cuba, Venezuela or, for that matter, Nicaragua, would President Obama reprise John F. Kennedy’s role and stare down the Soviet Bear until the Russians blink? Or would he hold out the olive branch of East-West convergence under the political and economic pressure created by millions of Mexican refugees storming the border to escape that country’s internecine, KGB-directed drug war? Stay tuned for the Fourth World War and the demise of America.

As usual, Americans should expect no help from the white flag-wavers in the French Ministry of Surrender. The Kremlin is delighted that France’s faux rightist President Nicolas Sarkozy intends to reintegrate that country’s military into the NATO command structure after a four-decade rift. Such a prospect in no way disturbs the Soviets because, according to Russian political analysts, Sarkozy’s benign view of Moscow “will strengthen the position of those countries within the alliance who don’t seek conflict with Russia.” Sergei Markov, director of the Centre of Political Studies, opines: “France is increasing its influence and as a consequence limits the influence of Washington and minimizes anti-Russian attitudes in the alliance fuelled by Eastern European countries, in particular, the Baltic states.”

Aleksey Makarkin, deputy head of the Center of Political Technologies, agrees: “The withdrawal of France from NATO’s military command in the 1960s indicated [President Charles] de Gaulle’s intention to build Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals and be a middleman between the West and Moscow.” Makarkin added that “The French return is a positive move for Russia, because it will hamper such initiatives as the integration of Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance.” Indeed, just what the Soviet strategists ordered. A “common European home,” of course, was and is former Soviet tyrant Mikhail Gorbachev’s vision for a communist Europe, a vision shared by his devoted admirer, Russian “President” Dmitry Medvedev. Komsomol graduate Medvedev’s praise for Gorbachev exposes the continuity in the Soviet leadership from the “collapse” of the Soviet Union to the present.

“French policy towards Russia is quite predictable. I believe Paris will now be able to promote normalization of NATO’s relations with Russia more efficiently,” concludes Russian military expert Aleksandr Sharavin. Sarkozy expects to fix the old rift within NATO during the military coalition’s April summit. Polls indicate that slightly more than half of the French population support the idea of fully joining the North Atlantic alliance. In short, NATO is dead and the Soviet communists know this, but is anyone in the shopping mall regimes paying attention?

Last but not least, Moscow’s strategic partnership with the Communist Party of China received another boost this past week when Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov discussed by telephone their countries’ bilateral relationship. “During the conversation initiated by Lavrov,” relates Xinhua, “both sides agreed to take the opportunity of the 60th anniversary of China-Russia diplomatic ties to further move their strategic cooperative partnership forward by making joint efforts and enhancing exchanges and cooperation in various fields.” Among other “joint efforts,” Russia and China are scheduled to carry out their third joint war game this year.

Yang and Lavrov also reviewed the “situation on the Korean Peninsula” and agreed that “peace and stability” are desirable which, translated out of commiespeak, means that the communization of South Korea via reunification with North Korea should be pursued under the guise of friendly inter-Korean dialogue. Yang is currently on a five-day visit to the USA to woo the new Obama White House.

>Communist Bloc Military Updates: Hungary’s ex"-red PM flies to Moscow for energy talks, Russian troops to rehearse transfer from peace to war footing

>Hungary: Compliant Soviet Bloc Satellite in 2009

Neo-Soviet Russia, as predicted by KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn in the 1980s and confirmed in the 1990s, continues to exert covert lines of influence throughout its “former” satellites in the East Bloc. Personal networking among “ex”-communist leaders is certainly one such venue for maintaining solidarity among “post”-communist regimes. Yesterday Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, who has never been popular in his homeland, flew to Moscow to meet with Russian “President” Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for bilateral talks focusing on trade and energy issues (pictured above).

Medvedev and Putin, of course, are both connected to the old Soviet regime. Russia’s president is a Soviet Komsomol graduate, while Russia’s prime minister and former president is an “ex”-cadre of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its “sword and shield,” the Committee for State Security (KGB), now known by the Westernized title, Federal Security Service. For his part, Gyurcsany was an important leader of the youth section of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, which ruled Communist Hungary until 1989, before morphing into the presently ruling Hungarian Socialist Party. The “hardliners” in the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party reorganized themselves into the Hungarian Communist Workers’ Party, which networks with communist and socialist parties worldwide. Hence, Putin, Medvedev, and Gyurcsany are all cut out of the same bolt of red cloth.

In 2007 Gyurcsany pushed through the appointment of Sandor Laborc as director of the country’s counterintelligence National Security Office. Laborc trained for six years at the KGB Dzerzhinzky Academy in Moscow during the 1980s, and became chairman of NATO’s intelligence committee in January 2008. The position is rotated among NATO members, but even still the placement of a KGB asset on an important NATO committee is indefensible.

In 2008 Soviet-Hungarian trade attained a record high of US$13 billion, making Russia Hungary’s second most important trade partner after Germany. Hungary exports machinery, equipment, pharmaceuticals, chemical products, and food to Russia.

Petroleum and its derivatives dominate Russia’s exports to Hungary. Privately owned crude producer Lukoil supplies about 5 million metric tons of crude oil annually to Hungary and operates over 70 filling stations in the country. In 2008 Moscow and Budapest inked an agreement on the construction of the Hungarian section of the South Stream natural gas pipeline. South Stream is expected to come “online” in 2013 and will annually pump 31 billion cubic meters of Central Asian and Russian gas to the Balkans and other European countries. South Stream also involves Bulgaria, Serbia, Italy, and Greece.

Reds can be found in leadership positions in the governments of the first three South Stream countries: Bulgaria’s president is an “ex”-communist, Serbia’s Interior Minister heads up the deceased Slobodan Milosevic’s Socialist Party, and Italy’s largely ceremonial president is also an “ex”-communist. For its part, the faux rightist regime in Athens has not hesitated to snuggle up to Moscow by purchasing Russian military equipment, as well as opening its airspace for Russian naval aviation drills, even though Greece is a NATO member.

Russia’s Visa-Free Regimes with South American States Will Expand Soviet Subversion across Continent

In addition to re-forging links with old Eastern European allies, the neo-Soviet leadership is also expanding ties with new allies in the Western Hemisphere, including and especially Venezuela, which conducted its first joint naval exercise with Russia last fall. In a policy move that will permit the unhindered entrance of Russian citizens to South America, Moscow and Caracas have established a visa-free regime that came into effect last Friday. “This greatly eases interaction between the countries and mutual travel of citizens, including businessmen… It simplifies the establishment of contacts as well as humanitarian, student and tourist exchanges,” commented Sergei Akopov, deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Latin American department.

This is intriguing because, as Akopov admitted, “tourist turnover” between Russia and Venezuela is “not strong,” suggesting that in addition to businessmen, Russian military and intelligence personnel could also freely enter Venezuela. The visa deal was signed on November 26, 2008 in Caracas during “President” Medvedev’s first official visit to the South American country.

Venezuela is in fact the fifth Latin America state to dump visa requirements for Russian citizens, following Communist Cuba, Socialist Ecuador, Peru, and the Dominican Republic. Russia expects to sign similar agreements with Brazil and Argentina. Last Wednesday, the Colombian Foreign Ministry announced that it too was planning to unilaterally introduce a visa-free agreement for Russia, which would enter into force within 30 days. In view of the fact that Russia is ideologically allied with Chavez–who has adopted a hostile stance against the Colombian government–openly arming the Venezuelan military, and covertly supplying weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, this is a remarkably stupid decision on Bogota’s part.

Belarus–whose communist dictator Alexander Lukashenko is a close buddy of both Putin and Hugo Chavez–already enjoys a visa-free regime with Venezuela.

Third Mobile Topol-M ICBM Battalion Activated for Combat Duty, Russian Navy to Monitor US Attack Submarine Drill near Alaska

Meanwhile, Novosti quotes General Vladimir Popovkin as saying that the Russian military intends to “enhance” the defense capabilities of troops deployed in the southern part of European Russia, including the Black Sea Fleet. After thoroughly analyzing “the outcome of the South Ossetian conflict,”—meaning Russia’s re-invasion and re-occupation of Georgia last summer—the Defense Ministry will equip the Ground Forces with new multiple-rocket launching systems and reconnaissance assets, while supplies of general arms and military equipment will be increased. The Air Force will received modernized MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters, Su-25 Frogfoot ground attack planes, and Mi-28H Night Hunter helicopter gunships, as well as new warplanes such as the Su-27SM Flanker and Su-30MK-2 Flanker-C, and combat helicopters such as the Ka-52 Alligator, Mi-28N Havoc, Mi-24M Hind, and Mi-8MTB5 Hip. Air defense units will receive new Pantsir-S surface-to-air missile systems.

Finally, Popovkin revealed that naval units will be supplied with new Lada Project 677 diesel-electric submarines, modernized versions of the Varshavyanka-class submarine, and Bal-U mobile coastal missile systems. Last month the Russian Navy dismissed media reports claiming that its Black Sea Fleet, based in Sevastopol, Ukraine, had been placed on emergency alert and was preparing to urgently set sail. In 2008 Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko, whose “pro”-Western stance is suspect in the context of the Soviet deception strategy, announced that Kiev will not extend the lease of the base beyond 2017 and urged Moscow to begin preparations for a withdrawal. Russian media previously reported that the Kremlin is considering naval facilities in Yemen, Syria, Libya, and Abkhazia, one of Georgia’s breakaway regions, as a possible future home base for its Black Sea Fleet.

In addition to increasing the strength of its units in southern European Russia, the Kremlin military will be rehearsing for war in southwest Siberia later this month. Between March 16 and 23, 5,000 soldiers and 400 armored vehicles will carry out war games in Siberia’s Kemerovo region. Under the watchful eye of commanding officer General Vladimir Boldyrev, chief of Russia’s Ground Forces, the exercise will involve ground attack, fighter, and reconnaissance aircraft, and combat and transport helicopters. Among other exercises, Russian troops will practice “interoperability and transfer from a peacetime to wartime footing.”

With typical communist paranoia, Russia’s Pacific Fleet will “closely monitor” the US Navy’s Ice Exercise 2009 near the Alaska coast, to begin later this month and span two weeks. ICEX 2009 will involve two nuclear-powered Los Angeles-class attack submarines, which will test submarine tactics under Arctic conditions. “Any action by foreign submarines in the vicinity of Russia’s maritime borders naturally demand heightened scrutiny on our part, especially in the light of an accident involving a British submarine during a previous exercise,” a Russian military official grumbled. The last ICEX exercise was held in 2007, when the British attack submarine HMS Tireless joined its American counterparts. Two Royal Navy submariners died and one was injured aboard Tireless, when an onboard blast caused a fire. The same Russian official continued: “The Pacific Fleet will use all of its reconnaissance capability deployed on the Kamchatka Peninsula to track the activities of the U.S. exercise. Our primary goal is to monitor our territorial waters to prevent the violation of Russia’s maritime border.”

As a result of the Soviets’ imperialistic designs in the polar region, other countries with Arctic shores have re-asserted their sovereignty in this area that could contain many natural resources like petroleum. In 2007 a Russian submarine crew dramatically planted their country’s flag on the Arctic seabed.

The Kremlin continues to modernize its Strategic Missile Forces with the activation of its third mobile Topol-M (SS-27 Stalin) ICBM battalion in central Russia. “The first two Topol-M mobile missile battalions, equipped with six road-mobile systems,” reported Novosti on March 10, “had already been put on combat duty with the 54th Strategic Missile Division near the town of Teikovo, about 150 miles (240 km) northeast of Moscow.”

>Latin America File: Chavez ready for war if Bogota attacks FARC, Ecuador fortifies border with Colombia; Mexican drug cartels infiltrate 230 US cities

>– KGB Asset Daniel Ortega Emboldened by Hugo Chavez’s “President for Life” Referendum Victory, Advocates Abolition of Term Limits for Nicaraguan Presidency

– US Justice Department: Mexican Drug Cartels Have Infiltrated Operatives into as Many as 230 US Cities, Utilizing Houston and Atlanta as Primary Distribution Centers

Pictured above: In this photograph of a Salvadoran election billboard taken today, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez embraces Mauricio Funes, presidential candidate of the opposition Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front. The banner, paid for by the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance, reads in Spanish “Who will decide your destiny?” Salvadorans head for the polls on March 15, at which time Funes will probably become El Salvador’s first leftist president. The dapper Funes’ vice presidential running mate Salvador Sanchez Ceren is a hard-core Marxist and former guerrilla commander.

In March 2008 South America came perilously close to war when the communist regimes in Venezuela and Ecuador rushed tanks and troops to their border with Colombia, one of the USA’s few allies in Latin America. Nicaragua’s past and present Marxist dictator Daniel Ortega joined his allies Hugo Chavez and Rafael Correa in condemning the assassination by Colombian security forces of Raul Reyes, a commander in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, then hiding out at a FARC base on Ecuadorean soil. After a few weeks of simmering tensions and overheated rhetoric the region’s Red Axis leaders abruptly backed off and “made peace” with Colombia’s “fascist criminal” president, Alvaro Uribe. However, although Venezuela and Nicaragua patched up relations with Colombia, Ecuador has yet to restore ambassadorial-level diplomatic relations with Colombia.

One year later Chavez is once again accusing Bogota of provoking war. “In case of a provocation on the part of Colombia’s armed forces or infringements on Venezuela’s sovereignty, I will give an order to strike with [Soviet-built Sukhoi] Su aircraft and tanks. I will not let anyone disrespect Venezuela and its sovereignty,” growled Chavez this past Sunday on his weekly televised rant, “Hello, President.” Chavez’s threat was uttered in response to Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, who recently stated that his country’s military “will keep killing rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on the territory of other states.”

Numerous MSM reports confirm that Colombia’s Moscow-backed Marxist guerrillas operate bases in neighboring Venezuela and Ecuador. This week, reports Novosti, Colombia’s National Radio, citing a high-ranking intelligence source in that country, broadcast that nine officers from the FARC General Staff are hiding in Venezuela, while another two are skulking about in Ecuador.

Venezuela and Ecuador, like FARC, are closely aligned with the neo-Soviet leadership, the first since 2001, when Russia and Venezuela founded an anti-USA strategic partnership, the second since December 2008, when former Federal Security Service (FSB/KGB) chief Nikolai Patrushev arrived in Quito to discuss joint intelligence gathering ventures with Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa. In addition to evicting 300 US counter-narcotics troops from the Manta Air Base later this year, a move that can only please Correa’s Soviet masters, Ecuador, reports Prensa Latina, has deployed an “additional” 3,000 troops to the border with Colombia, putatively to “stop illegal groups, drug traffickers and fuel smugglers.” According to Ecuador’s Security Minister Miguel Carvajal 7,000 soldiers and 3,541 police are already stationed alongside the 720-kilometer (450-mile) border. In total Ecuador will shortly maintain nearly 14,000 troops and police along its border with Colombia. Carvajal disclosed that five new military bases and 10 police stations will be built in the northern part of the country. Air patrols along the Ecuadorean-Colombian border will increase.

Ecuador’s red regime asserts that Colombian right-wing paramilitaries, primarily the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia and Black Eagles, are violating Ecuadorean territory and that President Uribe’s government is doing nothing to secure the border. On Sunday President Correa, who like Chavez hosts a weekly nationally televised rant, declared: “We are taking very drastic measures now, because the situation also is tremendously drastic.”

Thus, we see that under the pretense of combating terrorism and countering the Colombian government’s aggressive crackdown on the FARC narco-terrorists, Venezuela and Ecuador are threatening war and positioning military assets hard against the borders of their ideological foe. Time will tell if Latin America’s Red Axis intends to forcibly remove the US-backed regime in Bogota, however, Venezuela’s frequent military drills simulating a US invasion suggest that Colombia could be the intended target.

In Central America the Red Axis continues to consolidate its power. The Costa Rican media reports that Nicaraguan President Ortega, no doubt emboldened by the recent Venezuelan referendum that effectively made his comrade Chavez “President for Life,” is vocalizing his preference to end a ban on consecutive presidential terms and implement a parliamentary system. In an interview with British journalist David Frost for Al-Jazeera, the former guerrilla commander explained that the term limit ban was “introduced to the Nicaraguan Constitution in 1995 by a right-wing government.” Ortega asserted that the constitutional amendment was designed “partially to prevent the people from being able to exercise their right to elect authorities as they felt was fit.” He continued:

Since 1996 . . . we [the Sandinista National Liberation Front] have felt strongly that we need to change our presidential system to a parliamentary system that would then not have these constraints for successive terms.

I support the idea that the people have the right to elect the candidate, or not in a direct democracy. Now that our party is back in government, if those conditions permit, yes, I would run again for president. And if those conditions were not present, then yes, I would be fine serving as prime minister, and then running again for president in another five years.

When Frost asked Ortega about reports that the Nicaraguan president is suffering from leukemia, KGB asset Ortega retorted: “My mother lived to be 97 years old. And I just hope that I will be able to live long enough to contribute to this new stage of development of the revolution . . . These are very exciting times.” Ortega’s stated intention of assuming an as-yet-uncreated post of prime minister is similar to the political maneuver that some analysts have attributed to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is believed to be fishing for his old job as Russian president, a post currently occupied by compliant lackey Dmitry Medvedev.

Amendments to the Nicaraguan Constitution must be ratified by two separate National Assemblies and by at least two-thirds of the body’s 92 deputies. Liberal lawmakers currently hold a supermajority and although they opened negotiations to reform the constitution, including the presidential office, in October 2007, the contested municipal elections of November 2008 have stalled constitutional reform.

Finally, although big-mouth commie thug Chavez has publicly floated the idea of transforming the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas into an anti-USA military alliance, progress has yet to be seen in this direction. In a troubling development, though, Russia has expressed interest in joining this Latin American political-economic-cultural bloc of socialist nations. For the present, cocaine haven Nicaragua, latest ALBA member Honduras, and other Caribbean nations will join US Southern Command’s Tradewinds 2009 counter-narcotics maritime interdiction operations between March 4 and 18. When the Latin American Red Axis determines that the time is ripe to begin joint military drills under the auspices of ALBA or the new South American Defense Council, led by Caracas and Brasilia, we would expect Nicaragua and possibly Honduras to withdraw from their commitment to combined exercises with the US military.

Closer to home, USA Today reports that Mexican drug cartels have established trafficking operations in 195 US cities, including Houston and Atlanta, which have become primary regional distribution centers for narcotics. A March 7, 2009 article by the Houston Chronicle estimates the number of population centers infiltrated by the Mexican mafia at 230. Both sources cite the US Justice Department for these statistics. In either case, according to the first source, in 2008 federal drug authorities seized US$70 million in drug-related cash in Atlanta. Since January 2009 more than US$30 million has been intercepted in the Atlanta area, far more than the US$19 million in Los Angeles and US$18 million in Chicago.

The Mexican drug cartels, explain Atlanta US Attorney David Nahmias and Rodney Benson, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta chief, are subverting America’s Hispanic communities, a fact that must no doubt disturb patriotic citizens in that group. Nahmias identifies suburban Gwinnett County, about 30 miles northeast of Atlanta, as the “epicenter” of the region’s drug activity. Gwinnett’s Hispanic population surged from 8,470 in 1990 to 64,137 in 2000 so that 17 percent of the county’s 776,000 people are now Hispanic. Benson describes the situation:

You see Mexican drug-trafficking operations deploying representatives to hide within these communities in plain sight. They were attempting to blend into the same communities as those who were hard-working, law-abiding people. We’ve got direct linkages between cartel representatives who take their orders from cartel leadership in Mexico.

From the US-Mexican border, Benson relates, shipments of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin are routed over land to Atlanta for storage in a network of “stash houses.” The drugs are then moved to other distribution operations in the Carolinas, Tennessee, the Mid-Atlantic States, New York, and New England. Cash is channeled through the same routes back to Atlanta, where distributors take their “cut,” and then bundles of money are turned over to “transportation units for bulk shipments back to Mexico.”

The extreme violence that engulfs northern Mexico has not yet reached Houston or Atlanta, but US law enforcement is worried that this scenario could change for the worse. “The same folks who are rolling heads in the streets of Ciudad Juárez are operating in Atlanta. Here, they are just better behaved,” comments Jack Killorin, who heads the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s federal task force in Atlanta. “International drug trafficking organizations pose a sustained, serious threat to the safety and security of our communities,” US Attorney General Eric Holder warns, adding: “We can provide our communities the safety and the security that they deserve only by confronting these dangerous cartels head-on without reservation.”

>Communist Bloc Military Updates: Russian Defense Ministry announces development of anti-satellite weapons following freak orbital collision

>– Kremlin’s United Shipbuilding Corporation, Russian Naval Brass Eye French Design for New- Generation Aircraft Carrier, 5th-Generation PAK FA Fighter for Strike/Air Defense Roles

– Severodvinsk-Based Sevmash Shipyard Building Dry Dock for Vessels with Displacement of 100,000 Metric Tons, Supercarriers Typically 75,000 Tons or Greater

– Kremlin Admits Refueling Operation near Ireland Produced Oil Spill, Claims First Such Incident for Russian Navy in International Waters

– Russia Begins Delivery of S-300 Air Defense Missile Systems to Kazakhstan under Terms of Collective Security Treaty Organization

Earlier this week the retired chief of Russian space intelligence accused the USA of purposely using the privately owned Iridium 33 comsat to destroy the apparently defunct Kosmos 2251 milsat last month. Major General Leonid Shershnev insisted that a covert continuation of a project officially completed in 2007 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was reponsible for the alleged attack on the Russian satellite.

On Thursday, Deputy Defense Minister General Valentin Popovkin announced that Russia, in response to US experiments in the field of anti-satellite technology, is “working to develop anti-satellite weapons to match efforts by other nations.” At the same time Popovkin was quick to add that Moscow opposes the militarization of outer space. “We can’t sit back and quietly watch others doing that, such work is being conducted in Russia,” Popovkin was quoted as saying. Russia, he admitted, “already has some basic, key elements of such weapons,” but he refused to provide details.

Popovkin is former chief of the Russian Space Forces, which is responsible for military space operations. He made the statement at a news conference in response to a question about US and Chinese anti-satellite weapon tests. In February 2008 a US Navy ship launched a missile that hit a dying spy satellite. In 2007 the People’s Republic of China destroyed a defunct satellite with a ballistic missile. In light of Shershnev’s accusation against the USA and Popovkin’s annoucement about Russia’s intent to create space-based weapon platforms, the MSM’s depiction of the Kosmos 2251-Iridium 33 collision as a “freak accident” is becoming less and less credible.

Pictured above: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attends a news conference at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament at the UN’s European headquarters in Geneva today. Russia is calling on the USA to ink a “successor deal” to the two countries’ Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I). Since 1945, when the UN was established, the Soviets have used the organization’s main headquarters in New York City as a base to subvert America from within.

The flagship of the Russian Navy and of its Northern Fleet, the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, and the anti-submarine destroyer Admiral Chabanenko have returned to their home base Severomorsk, on the Arctic Ocean, after months of sailing the world’s oceans. The Admiral Kuznetsov has been on a tour of duty since December 5, 2008, holding exercises with its deck-based aircraft in both the North Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Some of these drills took place in Greek airspace, even though Greece is a NATO member, while others took place with the Turkish Navy, even though Turkey is also a NATO member. Russia’s sole carrier also made a port of call at Moscow’s naval maintenance facility in Syria, a terrorist-sponsoring country with which socialist US President Barack Hussein Obama would like to defrost relations.

For its part, the Admiral Chabanenko participated in the first Soviet-Venezuelan drill Venrus-2008, transited the Panama Canal–the first Soviet/Russian naval vessel to do so since the Second World War–and made ports of call in neo-Sandinista Nicaragua and Communist Cuba. The Admiral Chabanenko left Severomorsk on September 22.

In line with earlier posts here, reports Novosti, the Kremlin-controlled United Shipbuilding Corporation is moving ahead with plans to build a new generation of aircraft carriers for Russia’s navy. There are plans to commission between three to six carriers. Russian military analysts speculate that the new warship will resemble advanced NATO carriers that displace 60,000 metric tons, but will not carry cruise missiles. They also speculate that the new carrier will be based on one of several designs, including possibly that of the operational Admiral Kuznetsov; the Ulyanovsk, the last Soviet-era carrier; the new 40,000-ton carrier ordered by the Indian Navy and co-designed by Russian maritime engineers; or the French Navy’s Carrier Vessel Future (CVF), which is under development and scheduled for commissioning in 2017.

The possibility that the Kremlin is eyeing a French design was confirmed by media reports revealing the interest of Russia’s top naval brass in Thales Naval France, the electronics company that is building the CVF. The new Russian carrier will reportedly match the CVF with a standard displacement of 59,000 metric tons, while her full displacement will total 75,000 metric tons. Unlike the French carrier, which will have a gas-turbine propulsion unit, the Russian ship will be powered by a nuclear reactor.

At the same time, Russian naval aviation is attempting to meet the challenge of matching a new generation of carriers with appropriate combat aircraft. At present Russia operates two types of carrier-borne fighter jets, namely, the Sukhoi Su-33 Flanker-D and the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29K Fulcrum-D. The Su-33 planes based on the Admiral Kuznetsov are becoming obsolete. Furthermore, although batch production of MiG-29K fighters can begin within the next 12 to 24 months, this aircraft, to quote Novosti, is not suitable for “full-fledged” strike missions.

Consequently, a carrier-borne version of Russia’s fifth-generation fighter, namely, the Prospective Aircraft System of the Frontline Aviation (PAK FA), now in development by the Kremlin-controlled Sukhoi Design Bureau, is under consideration. The heavy-duty PAK FA will boast a standard take-off weight of 30 metric tons and will be equipped with 117-S power plants that produce a thrust of 14.5 metric tons. The PAK FA can be used as a multi-role fighter and will be able to fly strike and air defense missions. The new-generation carrier will be able to accommodate an air wing consisting of 30 to 36 PAK FA fighters, as well as aircraft of other types.

A third issue is whether the new carrier will feature catapults or a ramp, like the one decorating the bow of the Admiral Kuznetsov. Russian military analysts, states Novosti, are “hotly debating” the advantages and disadvantages of each take-off method.

Lastly, although a construction site has yet to be selected, the Russian Navy is currently restricted to St. Petersburg’s Baltic Shipyard and the Severodvinsk-based Sevmash Shipyard in Arctic Russia. The Baltic Shipyard has already built large-tonnage civil vessels and the Project 1144 Orlan nuclear-powered cruisers of the Kirov class. The Sevmash Shipyard is presently upgrading the air-capable cruiser Admiral Gorshkov for strategic partner India and building a dry dock for ships with a displacement of up to 100,000 metric tons.

Incidentally, the Russian aerospace industry, which is almost totally dominated by the Kremlin via the United Aircraft Corporation, has begun manufacturing MiG-29K fighters for the Vikramaditya, the Indian Navy’s name for the Admiral Gorshkov. Last year, a report by Kommersant suggested that the Russians were renovating the Admiral Gorshkov under the pretense of fulfilling a contract to India, but with the intent of re-commissioning the ship for the Russian Navy.

In the midst of the Kremlin’s drive to modernize its military kit, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov’s reform of the command and control structure extends to the navy. On March 4 Novosti, citing a naval source, reported that the Pacific Fleet, which is headquartered in Vladivostok, will chop its numbers by 5,000 personnel and eliminate more than 100 units in the next three to four years. The Russian Navy also maintains a Baltic Fleet, Black Sea Fleet, and Caspian Sea Flotilla. In February the Russian General Staff asserted that the military will become “more compact, more mobile and better equipped.” “The focus of the reform,” the Kremlin media explains, “is the reorganization of the military command and control system from a four-tier (military district – army – division – regiment) to a three-tier structure (military district – operational command – brigade).”

Across all branches the Russian military will shed 150,000 officers, a move that has predictably generated political dissent and anti-Putinism in the officer corps, especially among those who remember the “good ol’ days of Soviet glory.” In response to Serdyukov’s army reforms, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is championing Russia’s soldiers and military traditions. As we have previously blogged, this is probably the whole point of the “reforms”: make the crypto-Stalinist United Russia regime look bad and the open communists look good.

In a related story, the Russian Navy has admitted responsibility for a 500-ton oil spill off the south coast of Ireland last month. The accident happened when the Admiral Kuznetsov was bunkering, or refueling, from a tanker about 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Fastnet Rock on February 14. A high-level Russian military delegation subsequently visited Dublin to placate officials of the Irish Defense Ministry and coast guard. “The Russians carried out an internal investigation. They confirmed that a fuel spill had occurred during the bunkering operation and they expressed their regret. They were very co-operative and said it was the first time in their naval history that a spill of this size had happened in international waters,” an Irish government official related. A laboratory in Scotland confirmed that the spilled oil was of Russian origin. “We continue to monitor the slick. It has broken up very significantly but the incident is not closed. No oil has made landfall yet. Coast guard officials will be briefed on Friday on how to deal with it if it does come ashore,” the same Irish source explained.

By way of conclusion we can only comment that if the spill was deliberate, then the Russians are not only “out” 500 tons of fuel, but also the incident’s strategic value is hard to discern, except possibly to somehow promote Soviet-Irish political-military contacts and thus “encircle” the United Kingdom. Soviet-British relations, by contrast, have been tense ever since self-exiled Russian oligarchs and FSB/KGB defectors began taking up residence in London in the early 2000s.

Meanwhile, under the aegis of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which unites Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in an anti-NATO military alliance, Kazakhstan has signed a contract with Russia on the purchase of S-300 air defense missile systems. “We have recently signed a contract with Russia and are buying S-300 systems,” Kazakh Defense Minister Danial Akhmetov revealed on Wednesday. Last month, Kazakhstan announced plans to equip 10 battalions with Russian-made S-300 air defense missile systems, with deliveries to begin in 2009. At the time Akhmetov boasted that “The S-300 system will help the republic’s integration into the CSTO and significantly enhance the protection of the country’s airspace.”

The S-300, which Iran has also purchased according to conflicting reports, is considered one of the world’s most effective all-altitude regional air defense systems, comparable in performance to the US-made Patriot system, to be deployed in “post”-communist Poland by 2012.

>Latin America File: Mexican government faces collapse before Soviet-backed drug cartels as US Joint Chiefs of Staff head offers military assistance

>I think the Colombian example is a great example of a very broad program that wasn’t just military to support a friend at a time when, effectively, they were very close to a failed state. Similar support could help Mexico.
— Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff, statement made at Princeton University, February 5, 2009

The cartels are retaliating. It clearly is a serious problem.
— US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, statement made to NBC News, March 1, 2009

A long-time Soviet tactic for the destruction of the USA is perilously close to realization but few in the shopping mall regime are paying attention: Mexico is about to become a failed state, possessing no legitimacy, ripe for the plucking by the country’s pro-Moscow Left. The arrival in Mexico City this week of Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, is a major heads up that not only is Mexico’s government caving in to pressure from the country’s heavily armed, Soviet-backed drug cartels, but also Washington DC is finally taking stock of this very significant threat to America’s national security.

Pictured above: On March 5 soldiers patrol a main avenue in Ciudad Juarez. By week’s end the Mexican army intends to deploy 7,500 soldiers and federal police in the border city, which witnessed the murder of 250 people in February at the hands of the country’s drug cartels. Note the masks. Even Mexico’s military fears reprisals.

In 2008 Mexico’s vicious drug cartels, some staffed by ex-special forces soldiers from Mexico and Guatemala, killed 5,300 civilians, government officials, police officers, and regular troops, many in the most vicious ways possible, including decapitation. Most of the violence is occurring in Mexico’s northern states. In Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, the cartels have threatened to decapitate the mayor of this large city and his family. The Aztecas drug gang is known to operate in Ciudad Juarez and believed to be allied with the Juarez cartel, which is fighting Mexico’s most-wanted man, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, for control of smuggling routes into the USA.

Mexican and US authorities have traced over 90 percent of the guns used by the cartels to American gun shops and shows, even though US laws forbid foreign nationals from acquiring fire arms. Each year an estimated US$15 to 20 billion heads south across the poorly-unsecured, post-September 11 US-Mexican border into the coffers of Latin America’s drug lords.

“The cartels are retaliating,” US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told NBC News last Sunday. “It clearly is a serious problem. I think we are beginning to be in a position to help the Mexicans more than we have in the past. Some of the old biases against cooperation between our militaries and so on, I think, are being satisfied.” Pentagon spokesman Commander Jeffrey Gordon revealed that Washington started sharing narcotics intelligence with Mexico City in November 2008 and under a new program plans to provide the Mexican military with helicopters, maritime surveillance aircraft, and other equipment.

Mullen, who visited Brazil on Monday as part of a week-long Latin American tour that includes pitstops in Chile, Peru, and Colombia, admitted last week that “The USA is looking for ways to assist the Mexican government.” On February 5, while speaking at Princeton University, Mullen confided: “I think the Colombian example is a great example of a very broad program that wasn’t just military to support a friend at a time when, effectively, they were very close to a failed state. Similar support could help Mexico.” Captain John Kirby, spokesman for Mullen, told the AFP news agency: “Clearly one of the things he expects to talk to his counterparts in Mexico and other officials about is the growing violence and growing threat with regard to narco-trafficking and the drug cartels. We would welcome the opportunity to increase and enhance our military-to-military cooperation,” Kirby stated by telephone after Mullen’s visit to Brazil. “There’s clearly room to do more.”

The two countries have been cooperating in anti-cartel operations for some time, but last year the effort advanced with the US-sponsored Merida Initiative that awards Mexico US$1.4 billion over three years and US$200 million to Central America and Caribbean countries. The initiative nabbed some top drug lords and their shipments, but the cartels remain defiant.

Writing for American Chronicle in 2008, Michael Webster outlines the working relationship between the Russian Mafiya, which is staffed with “ex”-KGB agents, and Mexico’s drug lords:

Reforma a leading Mexican newspaper reported that U.S. intelligence agencies had detected a partnership between the Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix Organization (AFO) and Russian mafia groups based in southern California.

In a separate story, Reforma reported that members of the former KGB-affiliated Kurganskaya group in San Diego had met with AFO operative Humberto Rodríguez Banuelos.

Reforma reported that for at least the last ten years the Russian mafia was supplying Mexican drug traffickers with radars, automatic weapons, grenade launchers, and small submersibles in exchange for cocaine, amphetamines, and heroin. It cited a 1996 sting operation in which undercover DEA agents posing as Russian mafia members sold Carillo Fuentes operatives 300 AK-47s and ammunition in Costa Rica.

In 2006 then Russian President Vladimir Putin, a career Chekist, declared: “There is no such thing as a former KGB man.” The Mexican drug cartels are only component in the Soviet Bloc’s narco-subversion plot against the USA, which extends from Colombia’s communist guerrillas to Soviet agents operating on US soil.

The US-led war against the Latin American drug cartels received another setback following the expulsion of Washington’s ambassador to the narco-communist state of Bolivia in 2008. The US military has received an eviction notice from Ecuador’s socialist government to vacate the Manta military base later this year. US ambassador to Ecuador Heather M. Hodges reaffirmed Washington’s promise to withdraw 300 troops and Airborne Warning and Control System planes, involved for the last decade in counter-narcotics operations in South America. “We are thankful for being able to use the air base at Manta so our planes could land. The government of President Rafael Correa has requested that we leave the place and we will leave,” Hodges explained. Correa is a close ally of Cuba and Venezuela’s communist dictators Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez, both of whom are up to their armpits in red cocaine, as well as other regional leftist leaders like Bolivian President Evo Morales. In 2007 Correa pledged that he would not renew the lease, which was signed in 1999, and notified the USA of the decision last year.

The eviction of US counter-narcotics troops from Ecuador lately follows “post”-communist Kyrgyzstan’s closure of the US air base at Manas, which supported NATO’s counter-insurgency program against Afghanistan’s formerly ruling Taliban.

>Africa File: Guinea-Bissau’s long-time communist dictator, top general killed in tit-for-tat assassinations; W. African nation narco-state

>This past Monday, President Joao Bernardo Vieira, the long-time communist dictator of Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony in West Africa, was assassinated by renegade soldiers loyal to General Batista Tagme Na Wai, who himself was killed in a bomb attack the previous day. Representing the Marxist African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, Vieira was prime minister between 1978 and 1980 and president between 1980 and 1999 (with the exception of two days in 1984), and again between 2005 and his death on March 2.

Pictured above: A soldier stands outside a collapsed section of Guinea-Bissau’s military headquarters, in the country’s capital Bissau. On March 1 a bomb killed armed forces chief of staff General Wai.

The African Union, the European Union, Portugal, and the USA roundly condemned the tit-for-tat assassinations and urged Guinea-Bissau’s leaders to respect the constitutional order. Portugal’s Foreign Affairs Secretary of State Joao Gomes Cravinho, who was interviewed by the Portuguese news agency Lusa in Cape Verde after visiting Guinea-Bissau, disavowed any intention on Lisbon’s part to militarily intervene in its former colony. In an editorial representing the stance of the US government, the Voice of America stated: “Thus it was encouraging to hear a senior military leader, Naval Commander Jose Zamora Induta, say the attack on the president was an isolated incident, it did not represent a coup d’etat, and the armed forces will respect democratic principles as the nation’s leaders work through the crisis.” It is not clear whether the assassins were motivated by ideology or possibly corrupted by red cocaine, which has flooded West Africa of late.

As it turns out, last Friday the US State Department, in its annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, exposed Guinea-Bissau as a strategic transshipment point for Latin American narco-operatives en route to Europe. The report asserts: “Drug traffickers transiting between Latin America and Europe have increased their use of the country. Guinea-Bissau is often the placement point for proceeds from drug payoffs, theft of foreign aid, and corrupt diversion of oil and other state resources headed for investment abroad.” Most of Latin America’s cocaine originates from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, implicating beyond question the international communist conspiracy’s role in the 50-year-old, Moscow-orchestrated narco-subversion of the West.

Douglas Farah, a Washington, DC-based consultant on international drug trafficking issues, observes that Guinea-Bissau and other West African countries “have fallen prey to hostile Latin American drug lords, who are using Africa’s Atlantic coast airstrips as transit points for smuggling cocaine to Europe.” VOA quotes Farah at length below:

Guinea-Bissau is not an isolated case any longer, unfortunately in West Africa. You have Guinea-Conakry [or, simply, Guinea]. You have Sierra Leone. You have Liberia. You certainly have Nigeria, all major transit points for drugs moving into Europe and into other markets in Africa itself.

This should be a lesson or a warning to other African states, where the drug trafficking trade has penetrated so deeply that if you don’t eradicate this type of corruption, this inflow of illicit funds that completely undermines already weak states, you can end up very easily down the road to widespread assassinations, to unredeemable corruption. I think if you see competent states like Mexico and Colombia almost caving when the drug traffickers move in there in a serious way and concentrate on them, those tiny countries with no functioning institutions are far more challenged. And if they don’t unite to take this on, I think Guinea-Bissau will be the first of many.

It’s essentially a European problem now because those drugs are not going to the United States. They’re going to Europe. And Europe has to step up and take a much more active and aggressive role if they want to control that avenue of entrance into their continent.

It’s a testament to how lucrative the traffic is. If you still make an enormous profit going from Latin America to West Africa and then north to Europe, I think it’s a whole new route that the law enforcement community in the European countries were not thinking about and were not dealing with, and as water runs downhill to the easiest possible terrain, that’s how drug trafficking will move into Europe, in the US markets, or wherever the new market exists. And so they will find the seams in the global structure and move there.

Of the contest between, on the one hand, Western governments, intelligence agencies, and law enforcement bodies and, on the other hand, global organized crime, Farah comments: “And we’re always playing catch-up with them.” The massive wealth of the Latin American drug cartels and criminal syndicates worldwide, along with skilful manipulation by the Soviet strategists via the Russian Mafiya, have ensured the permanence of this scenario . . . until such time as the capitalist countries finally collapse under the deadweight of drugged populations, brainwashed voters, pro-communist businessmen, and hopelessly corrupt politicians.

>Communist Bloc Military Updates: Former head of Kremlin space intelligence accuses DARPA, NASA of purposely destroying Russian milsat

>Medvedev in Madrid: Russia Did not Influence Kyrgyzstan’s Decision to Evict US Military from Manas Air Base (Moscow’s US$2 Billion Loan to Bishkek Was Merely a Coincidence)

The Cold War has once again moved into outer space. In an interview published by the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper on Tuesday, retired Major General Leonid Shershnev, former head of Russia’s military space intelligence, accused the USA of using new technology to destroy Kosmos 2251, in what most published reports state was simply a rare orbital collision between the Russian military satellite (milsat), launched in 1993, and the US telecommunications satellite Iridium 33. The collision occurred on February 10 about 800 kilometers (500 miles) above Siberia.

Shershnev asserted that the privately owned Iridium 33 was used by the US military as part of the dual-purpose Orbital Express research project, which began and supposedly ended in 2007. Orbital Express was a space mission managed by the US Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and a team of NASA engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center. According to Shershnev, the DARPA-NASA program was tasked with validating “the technical feasibility of robotic, autonomous on-orbit refueling and reconfiguration of satellites to support a broad range of future U.S. national security and commercial space programs.”

Under the Orbital Express program the US Air Force Space Test Program launched the STP-1 mission in March 2007, testing a prototype servicing satellite (ASTRO) and a “surrogate next-generation” serviceable satellite (NextSat). The pilot program, reports Novosti at the link above, was officially and successfully completed in July 2007. Shershnev, however, claims that the US military decided to covertly continue with the project to “develop technology that would allow monitoring and inspections of orbital spacecraft by fully-automated satellites equipped with robotic devices.”

The Kosmos 2251-Iridium 33 collision, Shershnev concludes, “could be an indication that the U.S. has successfully developed such technology and is capable of manipulating ‘hostile satellites,’ including their destruction, with a single command from a ground control center . . .” It is very possible that the US military possesses this technology, but it is also possible that Russia possesses this technology too. Following Red China’s first killer satellite test in 2007, Novosti admitted the Soviet Union’s involvement in such experiments: “The killer satellite system was adopted in 1972, and several silo-based missiles were deployed at the Baikonur space center. The U.S.S.R. continued to test this system until the early 1980s. The last launch took place on June 18, 1982 when a Kosmos-1379 satellite intercepted a simulated U.S. TRANSIT satellite.”

When we initially reported on this incident, we speculated that the Russian military used Kosmos 2251 to destroy Iridium 33, in a scenario opposite to that articulated by Shershnev. One thing is clear, though. Whether the US comsat purposely destroyed the Russian milsat, or vice versa, the Kremlin will use this incident as yet another pretext to portray Washington DC as the aggressor and carry out its war preparations against the Western Alliance.

Meanwhile, Russian “President” Dmitry Medvedev, who is visiting Socialist Spain, denied that his country was responsible for the closure of the Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan, the only US facility in Central Asia and the primary logistics center for US-led NATO operations in Afghanistan. “The Kyrgyzstan leadership’s decision to close the Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan was a sovereign one. They gave their reasons for this decision, as far as I understand,” huffed Medvedev, adding: “Ultimately…they have made the decision. It should be respected as any decision made by a sovereign state.” “Post”-communist Kyrgyzstan’s decision to close Manas, however, followed a seductive US$2 billion loan from Moscow, but that’s just a coincidence. Medvedev continued, ignoring the decades-old Soviet role in the creation of international terrorism:

As to our cooperation on Afghanistan, I would like to say that we are interested in stepping it up rather than in stopping it. We can see what threats radical groups operating in Afghanistan, Pakistan and some other countries pose. Those groups are threatening all of humanity and largely, or primarily, their own peoples. That is why we are ready to step up this cooperation in all areas and also with the Unites States.

The Russian president would like to transfer NATO’s leading role in overthrowing Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgency to the Moscow/ Beijing-led Shanghai Cooperation Orgazation: “We agreed to hold a conference to deal with this issue, during the SCO Summit not long ago. I believe that a conference on Afghanistan can take place soon this year under the auspices of the SCO. In any case, Russia and other SCO members are interested in seeing Afghanistan develop into a civilized and democratic state.” In reality, Russia and other SCO members are interested in re-absorbing Afghanistan into the Communist Bloc.

>Latin America File: ALBA absorbs Nicaragua: Ortega welcomes new oil refinery; Russia, ALBA to build "Hugo Chavez," "Che Guevara" geothermal stations

>– ALBA Agency Buys up Luxury Hotel in Managua, Ranches; Sandinistas Counter Demonstrations to Thwart Opposition

– Chavez in Collaboration with OPEC Once Again Threatens to Inflate Oil Prices to Export and Sustain Red Revolution

– Narco-Communist Bolivia to Take Delivery of First Shipment of Russian Mi-17 Multi-Purpose Helicopters in Early April

– Greek Communist Party Expresses Solidarity with Cuba and Palestinian Arabs

– 25 Years after Operation Urgent Fury Deposes Soviet-Backed Regime, Grenada’s “Non”-Communist Government Cozies Up to Cuba

The revitalized Moscow-Managua-Axis is one that all students of the twenty-first-century communist conspiracy need to watch carefully. In the 1980s the first Sandinista regime maintained the largest army in Central America, but after three consecutive non-communist governments, that strength declined although cadres of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) remained in control over the armed forces, police, and judiciary. Today, Nicaragua’s top general, Omar Halleslevens, is a Sandinista and thus subservient to the country’s past and present Marxist dictator, Daniel Ortega. Since Ortega reassumed the presidency slightly more than two years ago numerous high-level diplomatic and military exchanges have occurred between Managua and Moscow. Last December Ortega travelled to Russia for the first time since the Cold War.

Pictured above: A police officer stops an opponent of President Ortega during clashes between FSLN and opposition supporters in Managua, on February 28.

In a troubling development that has for the most part been ignored by the MSM, Ortega invited the Russians to renovate the never-used military runway that the Soviet Union built 22 years ago at Punta Huete, north of Lake Managua. This landing strip can accommodate Russia’s Blackjack, and possibly Bear, strategic bombers. In cooperation with Soviet allies Venezuela and Iran, Moscow has also pledged to build a deep-water port at Monkey Point, on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, a facility that could conceivably host warships and freighters offloading military hardware. Punta Huete and Monkey Point were reportedly on Ortega’s agenda in Moscow, but nothing substantive appears to have taken place yet in terms of bringing the projects to fruition. However, if Russian “experts” and engineers arrive at these sites to commence work in the near future we will post and analyze such news here.

Would the neo-Soviet leadership be bold (or stupid?) enough to station their nuclear-capable bombers in Nicaragua, from which attacks could be launched against the US West and Gulf coasts within 90 minutes? Yes, possibly under the new socialist, globalist, capitulationist administration in the White House. President Barack Hussein Obama has already indicated that he wishes to slash the country’s nuclear arsenal by 80 percent, a prospect that the Soviets would no doubt readily endorse while pretending to comply with the terms of such a treaty. In spite of the global recession, which has adversely impacted Russia’s state-dominated economy, President Dmitry Medvedev has clearly indicated that bolstering and modernizing his country’s nuclear strike capability is top priority.

Among the raft of agreements signed by Ortega and Medvedev in Moscow was the Kremlin’s pledge to develop Nicaragua’s meager energy sector. “Russian companies will assist Nicaragua in building hydroelectric and geothermal plants,” Ernesto Tiffer, president of the Nicaraguan Electricity Company, stated at the time. Tiffer, who accompanied Ortega to Moscow, added: “At least two power generating plants, with capacities of 150 MW and 100 MW, are under consideration in Nicaragua’s volcanically active parts.” During the first four months of 2009, he explained, Nicaraguan and Russian “experts” will assess potential construction sites.

Soviet ally Iran also plans to invest US$202 million in Nicaragua’s under-developed energy sector under projects that include a dam and a hydroelectric plant. In return Iran’s fanatical mullahs would like to buy Nicaragua’s beef, coffee, rice, and beans. The world headquarters for Islamic revolution also plans to build five milk plants and 10 collection centers at a cost of US$10 million to boost milk production in Nicaragua. These bilateral ventures sound harmless enough, but one should bear in mind that Iran has the most imposing embassy in Managua while Iranian military personnel were spotted at Monkey Point in early 2007, shortly after Ortega’s re-inauguration.

Not content to panhandle in Moscow and Tehran, Ortega has also gone cap in hand to the Inter-American Development Bank, requesting a US$300 million loan to “weather” the global economic crisis. With typical communist hypocrisy, the former guerrilla leader blames “developed countries” like the USA, which buys 30 percent of Nicaragua’s exports, for the hardships experienced in his red banana republic. “We are facing the gravest economic crisis that humanity has ever faced,” Ortega sobbed, “Developed countries, which are injecting financing into their economies, have an obligation to inject financing into the economies of those countries that have no responsibility for causing this crisis.”

On the domestic front, more street violence shook Nicaragua on Saturday as the neo-Sandinista regime countered opposition protest marches in nine cities across Nicaragua. The country’s rightist opposition (rightly) contends that President Ortega is re-installing himself as dictator. The FSLN and its youth section summoned party cadres to instigate a “nationwide mobilization on the same day.” The Sandinista Youth subsequently took to the streets in a “massive mobilization to celebrate the revolution throughout the country.” The cities targeted for both marches and counter-marches included the national capital Managua, as well as León, Chinandega, Chontales, Jinotega, Boaco, Puerto Cabezas, and Ometepe Island.

The Sandinistas, however, believe that controlling the streets is part of their revolutionary struggle. “Last month,” reports the Christian Science Monitor today, “Sandinista union leader and lawmaker Gustavo Porras called on all Sandinistas to assume permanent control of the streets, ‘because it is our natural form of struggle.’ ‘With this struggle we have gotten where we are today, and we have to continue forward,’ Mr. Porras said.”

This past week, First Lady (and former guerrilla girl) Rosario Murillo, who also coordinates the local Citizens’ Power Councils throughout the country, rallied FSLN cadres to start a permanent campaign aimed at retaining the presidency in 2011. No doubt, Comandante Ortega is jealous of Comrade Hugo Chavez’s new Venezuelan role as “President for Life.” “The call by President Daniel Ortega to mobilize his people the same day as the opposition march is a way of trying to provoke and intimidate people,” Marcos Carmona, executive secretary of the Permanent Commission on Human Rights, told the Costa Rica-based Nica Times. Since November, Carmona continued, Sandinista mobs have attacked protest marches with machetes, mortars, knives, sticks, and stones. Carmona mentioned that his group dispatched a letter to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ascribing responsibility to the Ortega administration for any political violence during Saturday’s marches.

Meanwhile, President Ortega is not only re-building his communist dictatorship, but also extending the Sandinistas’ subversive influence into various international and regional forums. Nicaragua, for example, holds the rotating presidencies of the United Nations General Assembly, via stridently anti-USA Catholic priest Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, the Central American Integration System (SICA) and, most recently, the Central American Court of Justice (CACJ). The history of the CACJ dates back to a 1907 peace conference between Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. The regional court was resuscitated through SICA in 1991. Belize, Costa Rica, and Panama, however, have not ratified the Tegucigalpa Protocol in order to gain membership in the regional court.

Nicaragua has also become an important testing ground for state enterprises sponsored by Latin America’s Red Axis, including the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas socialist bloc of nations, to which Russia is an aspiring member. An ALBA agency called Alba Alimentos de Nicaragua (Albalinisa), reported El Universal on February 24, has purchased the Nicaraguan assets of the US-based firm Seminole S.A. These include the five-star Seminole Hotel, located in downtown Managua, and two ranches with 3,000 head of cattle. Calixto García, who is both president of Seminole S.A. and manager of the Seminole Hotel, confirmed the transaction to the Nicaraguan opposition newspaper La Prensa. The amount of the deal was not disclosed but according to estimates it would total about US$10 million. “We have reached an agreement with a Venezuelan-Nicaraguan company, which is a subsidiary of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) group, called Alba Alimentos de Nicaragua (Albalinisa). The transaction was completed a few days ago,” revealed García. Thus, we see the communist regimes in Managua and Caracas using an ALBA entity as a front to expropriate private property in Nicaragua.

On February 26, according to Prensa Latina, operations commenced at ALBA’s El Supremo Sueno de Bolivar oil refinery in Nicaragua. Multinoticias Canal 4 TV station aired statements by Francisco Lopez, the director of Petroleum of Nicaragua (Petronic), who unveiled the conclusion of the first phase of the oil refining complex, which consists of three storage tanks built with the help of Venezuela. “The project was the target of criticism by local right-wing media for months,” the Cuban media complained. This phase of the project cost more than US$25 million, out of a total investment of US$2.5 billion, and will store 602,000 barrels of oil. The current arrangement between Managua and Caracas will facilitate the importing and storage of nine million barrels of crude oil and derivatives from Venezuela. Until now only the US oil giant Esso boasted such storage capacity in Nicaragua, monopolizing 70 percent of the national oil and oil derivative markets.

ALBA’s El Supremo Sueno de Bolivar oil refinery will also supply fuel to the two geothermal electricity generating stations that Managua plans to build with Russia’s assistance, mentioned above. Prensa Latina notes that the two stations will be called “Hugo Chavez” and “Che Guevara.” The ideological significance of the names of these new energy-generating facilities provides some insight into the orientation and objectives of the neo-Sandinista regime. Under ALBA’s auspices and with Cuban and Venezuelan technical assistance, Nicaragua has already brought a 40-megawatt electricity-generating plant called “Che Guevara 4” online (pictured above, note FSLN party flags).

Although Brazil is not part of ALBA, the Brazilian company Andrade Gutierrez is prepared to invest some US$600 million into the construction of two dams near the border with Costa Rica, which will use the waters of Lake Nicaragua to regulate the reservoirs. The Nicaraguan government will have a 10 percent stake in the venture.

Hugo Chavez’s ability to export communist revolution throughout Latin America on behalf of Havana and Moscow depends in large part on the price of crude oil. Since an historic high of US$147 per barrel last summer, the price of crude futures has bottomed out by nearly US$100, hurting oil revenues in OPEC states like Venezuela. In reaction, OPEC is once again tossing about the idea of restricting output to bolster low prices. “In the next meeting in March, Venezuela — jointly with other countries in accordance with information from the (OPEC) committee monitoring (supply) — will propose new cuts as needed,” Venezuelan Finance Minister Ali Rodriguez told a local television station. Rodriguez further explained: “The reason is that even though OPEC has achieved its basic goal of putting the brake on the drastic oil price fall, there are still roller-coaster, up-and-down price movements. And just as the speculation in the market has fallen off, the oil price has fallen to an artificially low level so that there are still oscillations in the market, which has not yet stabilized completely.”

Elsewhere in Latin America, Bolivia’s neo-communist regime will receive two Russian Mi-17 multi-purpose helicopters in the first weeks of April. This arrangement follows Bolivian President Evo Morales’ visit to Moscow in February. Morales was the third regional leftist leader, after Ortega and Raul Castro, to visit Moscow in as many months. “As far as I know, two Russian helicopters will be shipped to Bolivia in the first weeks of April. They will be used to destroy cocaine plantations in the country,” explained Felipe Caceres, Bolivia’s deputy minister for social defense, last Thursday. Caceres’ comments are little more than disinformation since Bolivia’s coca plantations have become an integral part in the Soviet Bloc’s 50-year-old narco-subversion plot against the West.

Prior to becoming president in 2006 Morales organized Bolivia’s coca growers into a union that eventually threw its support behind the ruling Movement towards Socialism party. In 2008 La Paz expelled the US ambassador and suspended US Drug Enforcement Administration operations in Bolivia after Washington criticized Morales’ ineffective anti-narcotics campaign. Rushing in to fill the political void created by the departure of US influence in Bolivia, the Kremlin has announced plans to supply a large number of helicopters to the South American country as part of an expansion of Russia’s economic and military-technical ties with Latin American countries.

Elsewhere in the world, the 18th Congress of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), which lately organized numerous riots to oust the faux rightist, pro-Moscow government of Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis, has expressed solidarity with Cuba and the Palestinian terrorist regime. Granma reports that the KKE “approved main working guidelines for their new period, which included the setting up a people’s anti-imperialist front and a program of actions in solidarity with Cuba and Palestine.” The Greek communists also unanimously re-elected Aleka Papariga as general secretary of the 77-member central committee. The session welcomed 435 delegates and 400 guests from around the country, in addition to representatives from communist parties in 72 countries worldwide, including Cuba. The Red International, as can be seen, is alive and well.

Finally, more than 25 years after a US-led Caribbean invasion force ousted the Soviet/Cuban-backed Marxist regime in Grenada, the ostensibly “non”-communist government of Prime Minister Tillman Thomas is cozying up to Cuba. Two days ago Cuban Vice-President Esteban Lazo and Grenadian Foreign Affairs and Tourism Minister Peter Charles David, who was then visiting Havana, declared their countries’ commitment to strengthen and expand bilateral cooperation. For his part, David reiterated Grenada’s opposition to the US economic, financial, and commercial blockade of Cuba. Accompanying David was Grenada’s Labor, Physical Planning, Public Utilities and Environment Minister Joseph Gilbert, as well as Grenada’s ambassador to Cuba Raphael Joseph. The Cuban delegation also consisted of Deputy Foreign Minister Yiliam Jimnez Expsito and Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee official Otto Marrero Nuez. So much for Operation Urgent Fury.