>End Times File: Moscow, Tehran coordinate naval deployments in Persian Gulf, Gulf of Aden; Muslims: Netanyahu supports Third Temple construction

>For Bible prophecy enthusiasts events in the Middle East portend key tribulation period events, including the Magog-Persian-Arab invasion of Israel, the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and the formation of a Palestinian terrorist “statelet.” The physical translation of born-again Christians to heaven will likely take place weeks and months before this prophetic scenario unfolds.

Pictured above: Golden menorah to be used in Third Temple worship services.

Many Bible scholars rightly identify Magog as Russia or the “former” Soviet Union. Moscow’s disdain for Israel and infatuation with the Palestinians (“Philistines”) originates in the anti-Semitism that has historically plagued Russia and which was manifested in the production of the nefarious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s contrived “Jewish Doctors’ Plot” and, following the “collapse” of communism, in the politically motivated legal attacks against the country’s high-profile Jewish oligarchs. Most recently, Russia’s opposition to Israel originates in the latter’s military support for the “former” Soviet republic of Georgia, the “Israel of the Caucasus.”

In connection with Iran’s determination to wipe Israel off the map with Moscow’s nuclear “know how,” Debkafile reports that Russia has for the first time acquired a “maritime foothold” in the Persian Gulf by way of taking on fuel and provisions at Omani and Bahraini ports previously open only to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet:

Russian warships are due to call Wednesday, May 27, at the Bahrain port of Manama, seat of the US Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf, DEBKAfile’s military sources reveal. They will be following in the wake of the Russian vessels already docked at the Omani port of Salalah, the first to avail themselves of facilities at Gulf ports.

Their arrival is fully coordinated between the Russian and Iranian naval commands. According to our sources, this is the first time a Russian flotilla will have taken on provisions and fuel at the same Gulf ports which hitherto serviced only the US Navy. Moscow has thus gained its first maritime foothold in the Persian Gulf.

The flotilla consists of four vessels from Russia’s Pacific Fleet: The submarine fighter Admiral Panteleyev is due at Manama Wednesday, escorted by the refueling-supply ship Izhorai. The supply-battleship Irkut and the rescue craft BM-37 are already docked in Salalah.

DEBKAfile opines: “[M]ilitary sources report that the Russians, like the Iranians, cover their stealthy advance into new waters by apparent movements for joining the international task force combating Somali pirates.” This is what we have been saying for several months in our reports about the Russian Navy’s participation in the United Nations-sanctioned anti-piracy flotilla near Somalia. On May 26 President Nicolas Sarkozy, during a one-day visit to the United Arab Emirates, formally inaugurated a 900-foot quay allocated to the French Navy in Abu Dhabi’s Zayed Port, a French air force installation at the Dhafra Air Base near the city, and a downtown military barracks for several hundred French soldiers. Russia will no doubt use France’s military new permanent presence in the Persian Gulf to justify its own geopolitical maneuvers.

While the Russian Navy sails unopposed into the Persian Gulf, the Iranian navy is taking up positions in the Gulf of Aden, near the entrance to the Red Sea and neo-communist Eritrea, where Tehran has reportedly deployed ballistic missiles, presumably targeted against Israel to the north.

On Monday, May 25, the Iranian naval chief, Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, announced that six Iranian warships had been dispatched to “the international waters” of the Gulf of Aden in a “historically unprecedented move… to show its ability to confront any foreign threats.” He did not bother to mention the pirates. Russian and Iranian naval movements in the two strategic seas are clearly synchronized at the highest levels in Tehran and Moscow.

Fox News confirms Iran’s naval deployment in the Gulf of Aden, quoting Jim Phillips, senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Heritage Institute: “What’s very important here is the timing of this move — and this naval muscle flexing comes after Iran’s missile test earlier this week, which was saber rattling that was meant to send the same signal as this naval dispatch.” It should be pointed out, too, that Russian and Iranian naval movements in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Aden are “clearly synchronized” with Pyongyang’s saber rattling on the Korean Peninsula.

Meanwhile, Israeli Islamists have got their headdress in a twist over the rumor that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intends to sanction the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple, historically located on the Temple Mount but long desecrated by the Dome of the Rock shrine and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Speaking at a conference in Qatar, Sheikh Raad Salah, leader of the Northern Wing of the Islamic Movement in Israel, ranted: “Netanyahu is about to build the false Temple and the Jews will only build the Temple upon the ruins of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The solution to the threat against Jerusalem is a complete mobilization of the Arab world, including the religious imams, who need to act and recruit the masses.”

According to Bible prophecy a Third Temple will stand briefly on the Temple Mount, only to be defiled by “that man of sin” (2 Thessalonians 2:3), Israel’s coming false Messiah-King, the Gentilized Jewish leader of the revived Roman Empire. Orthodox Jews are in fact in an advanced state of readiness to ascend the Temple Mount and reinstate the bloody animal sacrifices of the Levitical worship system. Two things are stopping them: the “rapture of the church” and a certain seven-year covenant with the “many,” brokered by the “prince that shall come” (Daniel 9:26) has yet to come into effect. Yeshua Ha’Mashiach referred to this imposter in John 5:43 when He said: ” I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.”

Finally, almost the entire world, as represented by the Middle East Diplomatic Quartet, is resolved to wrest territory from Israel in order to appease the Palestinian Arabs. The Global Islamic Caliphate, however, will not be satiated by territorial concessions, but only by the blood of every Jew and Christian on the planet.

>WW4 File: Russia fears Korean conflict could go nuclear, takes “precautionary security measures”; US, S. Korean WATCHCON level boosted, DEFCON stable

>Pictured here: A US Air Force AWACS aircraft taxis at Kadena AFB, on the Japanese island of Okinawa, on May 29, 2009.

On Thursday Itar-Tass quoted a Russian Foreign Ministry official as saying that his country is taking “precautionary security measures” because the Kremlin believes that international tensions over Communist North Korea’s May 25 nuclear test, the second in less than three years, “could descend into nuclear war.” Reuters picked up the Itar-Tass interview in which the anonymous source raised the spectre of atomic war and then promptly backtracked:

The need has emerged for an appropriate package of precautionary measures. We are not talking about stepping up military efforts but rather about measures in case a military conflict, perhaps with the use of nuclear weapons, flares up on the Korean Peninsula. We assume that a dangerous brinkmanship, a war of nerves, is under way, but it will not grow into a hot war. Restraint is needed.

Seoul’s full participation in the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative, which entails interdicting weapons of mass destruction on the high seas, earned Pyongyang’s wrath earlier this week, prompting its second underground nuke test and at least three missile test-launches.

Also on Thursday South Korea’s armed forces and the 28,500 US troops stationed in the Republic of Korea boosted their surveillance to the second highest level for the first time since October 2006, when the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea conducted its first nuclear test. The so-called WATCHCON system has five stages and the new heightened alert entails the deployment of more intelligence assets and enhanced reconnaissance operations “over” North Korea, presumably meaning aerial and satellite surveillance. South Korean defense spokesman Won Tae-jae insisted, however, that the five-stage combat alert level, DEFCON remains at four.

South Korean military authorities, according to the Korean Times, believe there is a high possibility that North Korea could soon provoke conflicts near the Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the West Sea, or Sea of Japan, where two bloody naval battles occurred between the two Koreas in 1999 and 2002. The NLL, drawn up by the United Nations Command at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, has served as the de facto inter-Korean sea border. The North, however, does not recognize this boundary. The Republic of Korea’s navy has deployed a 3,500-ton KDX-I light destroyer off the country’s west coast to counter a possible attack by North Korean patrol ships.

The South Korean army has increased the number of K-9 howitzers and surface-to-air missile systems on islands near the sea border to counter potential North Korean artillery attacks. Pyongyang is reported to have hidden thousands of weapons in mountain caves and tunnels near the inter-Korean land and sea borders. The North Korean army has eight 27-kilometer-range 130 mm guns and eight other 76.2 mm artillery units with a range of 12 kilometers on islands located just north of the NLL. Pyongyang is also reported to be deploying about 100 152 mm howitzer guns with a range of 17 kilometers near the port of Haeju.

“I cannot elaborate, but we are constantly bolstering equipment,” a South Korean military official told the Korean Times, adding: “We are also devising a range of countermeasures in accordance with scenarios on North Korea’s provocative action.”

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported on Friday morning that North Korea test-fired its sixth short-range missile since the beginning of the week. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, however, denied that the situation had reached “crisis levels” and there had been “no unusual moves” by the North Korean military since Monday’s nuclear test. “I don’t think there is a need for us to reinforce our military presence in the South,” Gates soothed, adding: “Should the North Koreans do something extremely provocative militarily, then we have the forces to deal with it.”

Despite the Kremlin’s blather about “restraint,” a new Korean hot war, which would tie down a good chunk of the US military in the Western Pacific theatre, would provide the Moscow-Beijing Axis and its allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization and Shanghai Cooperation Organization ideal cover to launch preemptive strikes against NATO countries. Specifically, a surprise Soviet missile assault against the USA, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France could be followed by armoured thrusts by land into “former” Soviet Bloc states like Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, “former” Soviet republics like the Baltic countries, Ukraine, and Georgia, and neutral countries like Finland.

A “neutral, socialist” federal Europe, as predicted by KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn 25 years ago, would offer only token resistance to the Soviet re-occupation of Eastern and Central Europe. Faux rightist regimes with entangling military-commercial alliances with Moscow, such as those found among NATO’s Mediterranean members like Italy, Greece, and Turkey, would no doubt capitulate. A new Korean hot war could also be accompanied by a Red Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and a combined thrust into Thailand by communist troops from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

The above scenario could occur in the near future if circumstances suddenly became favourable to the Soviet strategists, but more likely in several years, after Russia completes its military modernization program.

>Asia File: North Korea dumps 1953 armistice, threatens to attack South over US-led Proliferation Security Initiative; detonates 2nd nuclear device

>Over the past week tensions have once again risen on the Korean Peninsula, where Crazy Kim’s communist nuthouse– otherwise known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a Stalinist regime backed by Moscow, Beijing, former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, and the lobotomized Marxists in the US-based Workers’ World Party–is once again threatening to blow up the world for some misguided cause called “proletarian revolution.”

Pictured above: South Korean soldiers look at the North Korean side of the Demilitarized Zone at Dora Observation Post, near the border village of Panmunjom, on May 27, 2009.

Earlier today the official media of North Korea warned that the communist regime was no longer bound by the provisions of the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War. Pyongyang’s pretext for saber rattling was the Republic of Korea’s participation in the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), which entails the interdiction of ships suspected of smuggling weapons of mass destruction. The DPRK’s role in WMD smuggling is disputed, but the Stalinist regime regularly ships missiles and parts to terrorist states like Iran, Syria, and Libya.

North Korea’s official media retaliated by stating that the leadership of the Korean Workers’ Party could no longer guarantee the safety of vessels off the peninsula’s west coast, in the Sea of Japan. It also ranted that the PSI was “tantamount” to a declaration of war. “Any tiny hostile acts against our republic, including the stopping and searching of our peaceful vessels… will face an immediate and strong military strike in response,” Pyongyang’s military representative at the border truce village of Panmunjom spluttered. For good measure he added: “Our military will no longer be bound by the armistice accord as the current US leadership… has drawn the puppets [meaning South Korea] into the PSI.” One wonders if “tiny hostile acts” includes negative comments about Kimmy’s hair-do and wardrobe.

The violent blast of rhetoric from the North Korean capital comes hard on the heels of the country’s detonation of a second nuclear device this past Monday. Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed that North Korea did in fact conduct an underground nuclear test on May 25. “According to our data, North Korea indeed conducted a nuclear test in the northeast of the country on Monday morning,” a ministry spokesentity intoned to Novosti. Pyongyang withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 and conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006.

“The information on North Korea’s nuclear test causes concern but before we draw any final conclusions it should be thoroughly checked,” Russian defense ministry officials said dismissively. According to Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting later that day to discuss the North Korean provocation. Churkin presently holds the council’s rotating presidency. The Russian Federation, like its predecessor state, the Soviet Union, is a permanent member of this body.

Following the nuke test, reports Novosti at the link above, Pyongyang test-fired a ground-to-air missile with a range of 80 miles (130 kilometers) from its northeastern Musudan-ri launch site. This was followed on Tuesday by the launch of two more short-range missiles into the western Pacific Ocean. North Korea has threatened for several weeks to resume work at its Yongbyon nuclear facility, which produces weapons-grade plutonium, after bailing out from the largely useless six-party talks. The move came in response to international condemnation of a failed April 5 rocket launch, which Pyongyang insisted was carrying a harmless communications satellite.

North Korea is banned from nuclear and ballistic activities under UN Security Council Resolution 1718, passed in 2006 after the North’s first nuclear test, and is already subject to various international sanctions. However, neo-Soviet officialdom is loath to pass another resolution against Pyongyang on account of its Russian-built nuclear program. “In any case it is counterproductive to raise the question of the DPRK’s international isolation. The path to dialogue should not be disrupted, and the problem can be solved only in political and diplomatic ways,” an unidentified Russian official huffed to Itar-Tass.

Like the Islamo-Nazi regime in Iran, North Korea enjoys Russia’s benevolent oversight. And so advances the Soviet tactic of creating political-military “hot spots” and “flash points” around the world to divert the attention of Western governments away from Moscow and Beijing’s own preparations for the Fourth World War.

>Latin America File: Chavez to make ninth trip to Russia, El Salvador’s new FMLN president dutifully troops to Caracas, Ecuador eyes full ALBA role

>Moscow-Caracas Axis: Maturing after 10 Years of Collaboration

Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s president and arguably the second most dangerous commie thug in the Western Hemisphere, after Raul Castro, intends to make his ninth official trip to Moscow in the second half of June. El Universal states that this is Comrade Hugo’s sixth trip, but by our reckoning Chavez has actually averaged about one trip to Russia per year since his inauguration in 1999. After conferring with his handler, KGB-communist dictator Vladimir Putin, Chavez will sashay on over to St. Petersburg where he will attend the Russian-Venezuelan committee for cooperation and planning of joint projects.

This past Monday, strategic partners Chavez and Putin, both of whom along with Noam Chomsky are committed to the destruction of “US unipolar hegemony,” conversed by telephone and set the agenda for their upcoming meeting. According to the AFP and Itar-Tass news agencies, the two leaders discussed bilateral military-technical, energy, financial, and economic cooperation. Chavez dutifully related to Putin his May 24 encounter with Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa (see below) and planned encounter with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, two Soviet allies, as well as his meeting this week with the foreign ministers of the socialist states of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), to which Moscow has expressed an interest in joining. (“Earth to shopping mall regime. Earth to shopping mall regime. Heeellooo, anyone there?”)

Venezuela and Russia held their first-ever joint naval drill in the southern Caribbean Sea last November and later this year are scheduled to hold another combined naval drill in the North Sea, as well as joint air force exercises, presumably in the skies over Venezuela. Last September, in another “post”-Cold War “first,” the Russian Air Force dispatched two supersonic Blackjack bombers to Venezuela for a week-long regimen of maneuvers, as above, over the southern Caribbean. According to the Kremlin media, Russia’s bomber pilots were acquainting themselves with combat in a tropical climate. That’s nice. No worries, mate. Nothing to see here, move along.

Caracas-San Salvador Axis: New Communist on the Bloc

During El Salvador’s March general election, the long-ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) government accused Mauricio Funes, presidential candidate of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), of being in the pay of the Chavezista regime. Although such accusations were stridently denied, it should not be surprising that President-Elect Funes has already made his pilgrimage to the Red Mecca in Caracas. Funes and Chavez are pictured above at Miraflores Palace in Caracas on May 19. In much the same fashion, Paraguay’s leftist president Fernando Lugo, before his formal installation, also flew to the Venezuelan capital to confer with Chavez. Lugo is profiled below.

High on Funes’ agenda was the subsidized oil supply that Venezuela is already funneling to El Salvador via the mayor’s office in San Salvador, which is also controlled by the FMLN, and a joint venture set up by ALBA and called ALBANISA. FMLN party leader Medardo Gonzalez informed Cuba’s Prensa Latina that Venezuela will increase its current oil supply to El Salvador by 10,000 barrels per day. It is expected that El Salvador will, after many years of ARENA’s opposition to Soviet influence in the region, seek membership in the communist-dominated ALBA.

President-Elect Funes, a former correspondent for CNN’s Spanish service, has stated that FMLN cadres, many of whom are veterans of the 1980-1992 civil war, will have a “visible presence” in El Salvador’s new government and that this is “logical.” Funes’ vice president, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, was formerly the FMLN’s battlefield commander who sanctioned numerous assassinations, which means he is a hardened communist revolutionary. Journalist John Thomson, writing for the Hispanic American Center for Economic Research, asserts that Sanchez’s low profile during the election was not accidental:

Veteran local journalist Lafitte Fernandez is one of several with whom I spoke who believe the heretofore unknown role of Sanchez Ceren will be a major issue, once the story becomes widely known. “Sanchez has been practically out of sight, ever since he was nominated,” Mr. Fernandez observed. “They want the presidential candidate, Mauricio Funes, to be the FMLN face, this time, unlike previous elections when the top of the ticket was always a senior terrorist officer.”

Caracas-Quito Axis: Chavez and His “Mini Me” Correa

El Salvador is not the only Latin American leftist country seeking admission to ALBA. On May 24, while hosting Chavez in Ecuador’s national capital of Quito, recently re-elected socialist President Correa announced that his country intends to secure full membership in the organization. Thus far, the ALBA bloc of nations consists of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Dominica, and Honduras, and serves as a socialist vehicle to resist the “imperialist” designs of the Washington-led Organization of American States, Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, and the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement. Chavez and his Ecuadorean “mini me” signed five cooperation agreements on energy, mining, tourism, agriculture, and banking.

“With these agreements, Liberator Simon Bolivar’s dream of working on the construction of a large homeland comes true,” Correa enthused, referring to the nineteenth-century South American liberal revolutionary, who would have probably condemned communism, then in its infancy. The Ecuadorean president, in the presence of his Venezuelan protector, announced that state-run Petroleos de Venezuela plans to begin construction of a US$10-billion oil refinery on Ecuador’s Pacific coast by 2010.

Moscow-Managua Axis: Cold War-Era Linkages Revived Amidst New Round of Political Repression

On May 18 Nicaragua’s past/present Marxist dictator Daniel Ortega praised Russia for its donation of 130 buses to alleviate the country’s public transit problems. “Brotherly Russia helped us, without any political or economic conditions,” Ortega gushed at a ceremony in the country’s capital, Managua. In September, Nicaragua became the only country other than Russia to recognize the independence of the separatist Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. “The Russian and Nicaraguan people are connected by the long, strong bonds of friendship, and the buses are just one more vivid confirmation of this,” intoned Russia’s consul in Nicaragua, Igor Kondrashev, who was also present at the ceremony. The buses were provided by GAZ Group, Oleg Deripaska’s financially troubled company. The Russian-built buses will be used on suburban routes connecting Managua with regional cities. Incidentally, oligarch Deripaska is buddy buddies with Russian Prime Minister Putin.

This is only the beginning of many bilateral projects planned by Managua and Moscow, as we have blogged previously. Others include replacing Nicaragua’s Soviet-era military hardware with new combat and troop transport helicopters; the rehabilitation of the Soviet-built, never-used, nuclear bomber-capable air base at Punta Huete; the dredging of a deep-water port at Monkey Point on Nicaragua’s anarchic, cocaine-drenched Caribbean coast; and the construction of geothermal energy plants, to be named “Che Guevara” and “Hugo Chavez.”

On the domestic front, Nicaragua’s liberal opposition is coalescing behind the country’s non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which have declared that they will resist the neo-Sandinista regime’s attempt to quash dissent. The leaders of the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center (CENIDH), Federation of Non-Governmental Organizations, and Civil Coordinating Committee released this manifesto to reporters this past Saturday. They singled out the Interior Ministry as spearheading the charge against freedom in Nicaragua, much as the Sandinista Interior Minister Tomas Borge (now Nicaragua’s ambassador to Peru), targeted anti-communists in the 1980s.

CENIDH director Bayardo Izaba noted that ever since the government of President Arnoldo (“Fatso”) Aleman (1997-2002), there have been official attempts to control the activities of NGOs. In 2001 Aleman entered into a sordid agreement with Ortega called El Pacto, the purpose of which was to lock out smaller parties from power while handing control of the levers of state exclusively to the Sandinista National Liberation Front and the Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC). Beginning with Ortega’s re-inauguration as president in January 2007, the neo-Sandinista regime has turned on its former allies in the PLC in order to vanquish all opposition.

Comandante Ortega is also determined to control the pace and direction of Central American integration via his pro tempore presidency over the Central American Integration System (SICA). On Monday Nicaragua’s Vice Foreign Minister Manuel Coronel Kautz insisted that the rotating leadership of SICA should be passed to Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom instead of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who is slated to take over in July. Unlike Arias, Colom, Guatemala’s first social democratic president in five decades, is more energetic in his leftist commitments and his pro-Cuban orientation. Arias has shunned all SICA meetings held over the past half-year, three of which convened in Managua.

“We can’t afford to put Central American integration at risk,” Coronel opined to the Nica Times. Costa Rica, the English-language news source points out, has been the least receptive Central American country to regional integration, refusing to join the Central American Court of Justice, the Central American Parliament, and the CA-4 immigration initiative. Venezuelan strongman Chavez has not hesitated to express his disdain for Arias, who spearheaded the Esquipulas Peace Agreement that ended Central America’s civil wars of the 1980s. “My experience is that these meetings are not good; the agendas are not made to address the principal problems facing Central American countries,” retorted Arias in statements published in the Costa Rican daily La Prensa Libre. Nicaragua’s neo-Sandinista regime, however, has interpreted President Arias’ stance as a personal insult against President Ortega, who has over the last six months set the SICA agenda.

It should be observed that Latin America’s Red Axis is using ALBA, SICA, the Caribbean Community, and the Union of South American Nations, as well as regional institutions like the South American Defense Council (a counterweight to NATO), the Bank of the South (a counterweight to the World Bank and the IMF), and TeleSur (a counterweight to the not-so-leftist North America media), to transform the Western Hemisphere into a regional socialist monolith under Moscow’s tutelage.

Catholic-Communist Cohabitation in Paraguay (In More Ways than One)

Meanwhile, Paraguay’s first-ever leftist president, Fernando Lugo, has admitted that he fathered a child out of wedlock. The boy is now two years old. Big deal, right? Ahem, Lugo was a Catholic cleric, under a vow of celibacy, when his relationship with a female parishoner became a little too friendly. Two other women have come forward to claim he is the father of their sons. Lugo has meekly agreed to submit to a DNA test. He calls clerical celibacy a “flawed” institution. Indeed.

In a related story, President Lugo dismissed the chiefs of Paraguay’s army, navy, and engineering corps for permitting 800 Marxist youth from across Latin America to host a three-day congress at a military facility, in early May. While Lugo refused to comment on the dismissals, opposition leaders called on the president to also sack two government ministers who allegedly sponsored the gathering, namely, Youth Minister Karina Rodriguez and National Emergency Minister Camilo Soares. Although Paraguay was perceived as a bastion of anti-communism during the Cold War, it appears that the country’s armed forces are infiltrated by communists at the highest level.

During Lugo’s stint as liberation theologian, moreover, the “Red Bishop,” as he is known, denied any affiliation with Venezuela’s red dictator Chavez. After last year’s election in Paraguay, then president-elect Lugo suddenly materialized in Caracas where he shmoozed with Comrade Hugo. “I hope the friendship between Venezuela and Paraguay may be a symbol of brotherhood and solidarity within Latin America,” gushed Lugo. For his part, Chavez urged Lugo to lead Paraguay into full membership in ALBA.

The New Washington-Havana Axis? Obama’s Overtures to KGB Asset Raul Castro

Finally, in a sign that the Obama administration intends to defrost the last vestiges of the Cold War in Latin America, the White House, reports UPI, has sent Cuban diplomats an official request to resume talks about the migration of Cuban citizens to the USA. The discussions, which were suspended in 2004 by President George W. Bush, had been held every two years, with Cuba and the USA alternating as the venue. “We intend to use the renewal of talks to reaffirm both sides’ commitment to safe, legal and orderly migration,” explained Sara Mangiaracina, a US State Department spokesentity.

In our assessment, this is a foolish policy on President Barack Hussein Obama’s part, but it reflects his subterranean socialist commitments and his pro-communist orientation. Havana’s Intelligence Directorate, as we have stated before, will no doubt use the Washington-initiated detente to infiltrate even more KGB-trained communist agents into the USA.

>WW4 File: Soviets to hold “large-scale” Zapad 2009, Ladoga 2009 maneuvers near Poland, Finland in Sept.; Kavkaz 2009 drill near Georgia in July

>On March 10 Novosti reported that Russia and Belarus, united since 1997 in the Union State, will stage a “large-scale strategic military exercise” this September and October. The drill, called Zapad 2009, will involve around 13,000 service personnel from both countries. Zapad means “west” in the Russian language. Belarusian Defense Minister Leonid Maltsev revealed that the Russian military will contribute elements of its Ground Forces, Air Force, Air Defense Forces, and reconnaissance units. He elaborated: “The drill will, among other things, rehearse interoperability within the framework of the Belarusian-Russian integrated air defense system, which the two countries agreed to establish recently.”

In Belarus the KGB still operates under its old name and the Belarusian armed forces, like their Russian counterparts, proudly display the Bolshevik red star as their emblem. Belarus’ unreformed communist dictator Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russia’s KGB-communist dictator Vladimir Putin, soothed over the troubling ramifications of a Soviet military drill next to former Warsaw Pact state Poland by saying: “Belarus is pursuing a peaceful foreign policy and does not regard any state as an enemy, but military force could not be discounted as an essential security factor.” The last combined Russian-Belarusian maneuver took place last fall, during the multi-theater Stability 2008 exercise, and before that, three years ago, during Union Shield 2006. Lukashenko is pictured above at the May 9 Victory Day celebration in Minsk.

Much to the Kremlin’s displeasure, Poland is to host 100 US service personnel and a Patriot theater anti-missile defense network by year’s end. “This will be the first time U.S. soldiers are stationed on Polish soil, other than those who come under NATO control, on exercises for example . . . This will be symbolic for Poland,” Poland’s deputy defense minister Stanislaw Komorowski is quoted by Novosti as saying on Thursday. The Patriot (MIM-104) system is designed to counter tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and advanced aircraft. It is in service in Egypt, Germany, Greece, Israel, Japan, Kuwait, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, and Taiwan.

On April 6 and 7 Nikolai Makarov, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, visited Minsk, where the Russian delegation conferred with Maltsev and Makarov’s Belarusian counterpart Syarhei Hurulyou. On April 21 Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, speaking from Minsk, described the intent behind and extent of Zapad 2009:

This will be the most spectacular military event since the establishment of the Union State of Russia and Belarus. Significant Russian land, naval, and air forces will be deployed. The Zapad exercises will involve nearly 13,000 military personnel, including about 7,000 Russian soldiers. These exercises are both operational and tactical, and will objectively assess the state of combat readiness of both armies. Zapad 2009 will aim to counter a possible aggression against the Union State of Russia and Belarus.

Previous Soviet military exercises designated “Zapad” occurred in 1981, when the Russians were still known as the “Soviets,” and again in 1999, after Soviet communism was supposedly defunct. Zapad 81 was the largest drill ever to be carried out by the Soviet Union, rivaled only by another that took place in 1984 and, in the “post”-Soviet era, last year’s Stability-2008 exercise. Zapad 81 began on September 4, 1981, lasted eight days, involved all branches of the Soviet Armed Forces, and introduced the RSD-20 medium-range strategic missile and the Kiev Project 1143 aircraft carrier. Zapad 81 included amphibious landings in Poland, near Gdańsk, reminding Poland’s striking shipyard workers and other dissidents that the Soviet Union could resort to military force if deemed necessary. The new Reagan Administration criticized Moscow for violating the Helsinki Final Act of Notification of Military Exercises. In response, the Kremlin broadcast propaganda tapes of the military offensives.

When “ex”-communist Boris Yeltsin was president of Russia, another large-scale military exercise, Zapad 99, was carried out in June 1999. The exercise revealed that Russia’s conventional armed forces could not repel a NATO offensive, which increased Moscow’s interest in employing tactical nuclear weapons. Zapad 99 sparked international tensions when US fighter jets intercepted Russian strategic bombers allegedly in violation of Icelandic and Norwegian airspace. That December Putin became prime minister of Russia for the first time and in March 2000 replaced Yeltsin as president.

The online Spanish edition of Novosti and Cuba’s Prensa Latina admit that Zapad-2009 and other scheduled drills are the Kremlin’s direct response to NATO’s ongoing Cooperative Longbow/Lancer 2009 exercise in the former Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, an aspirant to NATO membership. Referring to the “anti-Russian provocations” taking place under the watch of President Mikhail Saakashvili, Colonel-General Alexander Kolmakov, Russia’s deputy defense minister, explained: “We examined and analyzed these maneuvers carefully and we anticipate that it will result in certain corrective combat actions on our part.”

In particular, Russia’s North Caucasus Military District, which is located just to the north of Georgia, will hold, in collaboration with other military districts, the Kavkaz 2009 maneuvers this July. “These exercises,” Kolmakov continued, “will involve overcoming aquatic barriers and airborne assaults. Special attention will be given to the formation of sniper groups. This is extremely important and will help us to effectively judge our experience of antiterrorist operations in the Northern Caucasus [such as in Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan].”

It should not be forgotten that the Kremlin positioned its military to re-invade and re-occupy Georgia last August under the guise of the Caucasus Frontier 2008 drill. In contravention of last year’s European Union-brokered ceasefire, at least 15,000 Russian troops currently occupy Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Since Russia imposed a unilateral moratorium on its adherence to the Cold War-era Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty in 2007 and to this day maintains 900 tanks in the Kaliningrad Oblast, wedged between Poland and Lithuania, Western governments should view with concern any Soviet military drill in Belarus, which is to the immediate east of Poland.

Kremlinologists should also be concerned by the possibility that Russia will hold a military maneuver near the Finnish border this September, concurrently with Zapad-2009. The Spanish edition of Novosti and Prensa Latina, linked above, mention in passing an operation by the name of Ladoga 2009. Internet search engines yield no additional information on this subject, suggesting that this is brand-new, open-source data. However, we speculate that Ladoga 2009 will take place near Lake Ladoga, a freshwater lake located in the Leningrad Oblast in northwestern Russia, near Saint Petersburg.

Ladoga is the largest lake in Europe, and the 14th largest lake by area in the world. As a stipulation of the criminal 1940 Moscow “Peace” Treaty, Lake Ladoga, previously shared with Finland, became an internal basin of the Soviet Union. Finland is not a member of NATO and has been discouraged by Russia from pursuing such a course. During the 1939-1940 Winter War the plucky Finns fended off an ineptly planned Soviet invasion that mistakenly took into account little resistance.

Last year Finnish military officials accused the Russians of ripping off a patented, computer-designed boreal camouflage pattern used by their forces. At the time Finnish Defense Staff spokesman Captain Eero Karhuvaara warned: “If Russian Ministry of the Interior troops were to invade Finland, we would have big trouble.”

Moscow Holds Belarus, Lures Sri Lanka within Its Orbit with Missile, Weapons Sales

As the Shanghai Cooperation Organization considers bringing Belarus and Sri Lanka on board as “dialogue partners,” Moscow, not so coincidentally, is seeking to offload military hardware in these two small communist-controlled states. On May 19 Rosoboronexport chief Anatoly Isaikin declared that “There are no problems with the sale of Tor-M2 and Buk-M2 air defense systems to Belarus. Today, major problems at the negotiations have been resolved and the issues are being discussed from the technical viewpoint. Price guidelines are being determined.” Isaikin issued this statement at the opening of the MILEX 2009 arms exhibition in the Belarusian capital. He revealed that the issue of Belarus’ purchase of Russia’s most advanced air defense system, the S-400 Triumf (NATO designation SA-21 Growler) and Iskander-E (SS-26 Stone), was being reviewed by an intergovernmental commission but “no decision had been made.”

The S-400 is believed to be able to destroy stealth aircraft, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles. The Iskander-E, which is an export version of the Iskander-M system in service with the Russian Ground Forces, is a tactical surface-to-surface missile that can deliver high-precision strikes at ground targets from a distance of up to 280 kilometers (170 miles).

Last November and again this past February Moscow and Minsk signed agreements to implement an integrated regional air defense system. The network will consist of five air force units, 10 anti-aircraft units, five technical service and support units, and one electronic warfare unit. The system will be placed under the command of a Russian or Belarusian Air Force or Air Defense Force senior commander. These developments, as noted above, are taking place within the political framework of the Union State of Russia and Belarus. Pavel Borodin, who is state secretary of the Union State, underscored the fact that the new integrated air defense system is “vital” in countering NATO’s ongoing eastward expansion: “Military speaking, it is virtually a shield against NATO.”

Soviets Relish Victory in the Indian Ocean: Sri Lankan Government Endorses Power-Sharing Arrangement with “Defeated” Marxist Tamil Tigers

According to Novosti, Sri Lanka has ordered a number of military helicopters and other weapons from Russia, the country’s defense secretary revealed in an exclusive interview with the Kremlin propaganda outlet. “I have managed to reach an agreement with Russia on a loan to purchase military equipment, primarily helicopters for the air force, and other weaponry,” Sri Lankan Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa explained, adding: “The helicopters had been already ordered.” Rajapaksa did not specify the dollar amount of the deal or the number of helicopters. He did admit, however, that they were needed to transport military personnel:

We will need them in the future. We are already using [Soviet/Russian-made] Mi-17 and Mi-24 helicopters, and we need more. Sri Lanka is willing to develop stronger military ties with Russia. We would like to bring our relations to the level where we could share [combat] experience.

In addition, the Sri Lankan government may secure Russia’s help in clearing mines in the northern part of the country, where Colombo has waged war against the separatist Tamil Tigers since 1976. The pending shipment of Russian military hardware to Sri Lanka, interestingly, occurs as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have conceded defeat in the wake of a major government offensive against rebel positions. On May 20 the Kremlin, no doubt to grease the weapons sale, issued a congratulatory statement to Colombo: “The government of Russia has extended warmest congratulations to the president and the government of Sri Lanka on the success achieved by the island nation in defeating LTTE terrorism.”

However, the reported death of rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran has not been confirmed by military officials and the threat of renewed guerrilla warfare remains. The Tamil Tigers once controlled a “shadow state” complete with courts, police, and a tax system across 5,400 square miles, or nearly one-fifth of this Indian Ocean island state. This past Sunday, though, government troops surrounded the remaining rebels in a 0.4-square-mile patch of land and were fighting off suicide bombers. More than 80,000 people have died in the conflict since 1983. The United Nations states that over 6,000 civilians have died in fighting since January 2009.

Rebel official Selvarasa Pathmanathan emailed a statement to the Associated Press, saying:

This battle has reached its bitter end. It is our people who are dying now from bombs, shells, illness and hunger. We cannot permit any more harm to befall them. We remain with one last choice — to remove the last weak excuse of the enemy for killing our people. We have decided to silence our guns.

Military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara denied that the rebels had laid down their weapons: “Fighting is still going on in small pockets.” Sri Lankan Media Minister Anura Yapa dismissed Pathmanathan’s appeal: “We want to free this country from the terrorist LTTE.”

At one time the LTTE also maintained a conventional army, fielded artillery batteries, operated a large navy, and even boasted a nascent air force, funded by an estimated US$200 to $300 million per year accrued from smuggling, fraud, and appeals to Tamil expatriates. The Tamil Tigers carried out hundreds of suicide attacks, including the 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and were listed as a terror group by the USA and European Union.

That the Soviet strategists would commend Colombo for decimating a Marxist insurgency, as noted above, may seem confusing, but is possibly understandable in view of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s offer to the rebels “to begin talks toward power sharing and political reconciliation.” Rajapaksa is a socialist who leads a center-left coalition containing communist members. The Wall Street Journal opines: “The war quickly became more about Prabhakaran’s determination to form an independent Tamil state under the exclusive control of his Marxist Tigers than about those Tamil grievances. The Tigers killed many moderate Tamil politicians who would have been willing to cooperate politically with Colombo.”

New Indian Government Dumps Communists but Maintains Strategic Partnership with Moscow

Meanwhile, north of Palk Strait, the social democratic Indian National Congress scored a resounding victory in that country’s five-week parliamentary election. On May 22, under the leadership of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh the INC will organize a second government with a stronger mandate that will not require the backing of India’s parliamentary communist parties. With more than 700 million eligible voters, India is the largest multiparty democracy in the world. The 76-year-old Singh is the first Indian head of government to win re-election after serving a five-year term since Indira Gandhi in 1971. Born into a Sikh family, Singh studied economics at Oxford University. As finance minister in the INC government of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao from 1991 to 1996, Singh abandoned Soviet-style state planning and introduced free-market policies that have quadrupled the size of India’s economy. Sonia Gandhi, Italian-born widow of Rajiv, mentioned above, is the dynastic head of the ruling party.

Strategic partners Russia and India are cooperating in the development of the BrahMos missile and a fifth-generation T-50 PAK-FA multi-role fighter. The latter, which is viewed as a competitor to the US Air Force’s F-22 Raptor stealth fighter, was jointly designed and developed by the Sukhoi design bureau, which is part of the Kremlin’s United Aircraft Corporation, along with India’s Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd., under an intergovernmental agreement signed in October 2007. Russia and India have also conducted joint military exercises, the last being this past January’s Indra-2009, which saw the arrival of Russia’s Peter the Great missile cruiser in the Indian Ocean.

>Final Phase Backgrounder: Russia’s putative ruler meets Communist Party boss Zyuganov; Medvedev: “We are in touch with each other on a regular basis”

>– Lenin’s “World Soviet Republic,” Gorbachev’s “Common European Home” Alive and Well: Medvedev Re-Floats Proposal for Merger of EU/NATO and CIS/CSTO

Pictured above: Russian Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov (center) pays his respects to party founder Vladimir Lenin at his mausoleum on Red Square in Moscow on April 22, 2009, the 138th anniversary of Lenin’s birth. Party vice chairman Ivan Melnikov is standing on Zyuganov’s right. A professor at Moscow State University, Melnikov is also chairman of the Russian State Duma’s Education Committee, which means an open communist is guiding the education of Russia’s youth.

That the putative rulers of Russia, President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, are in reality merely frontmen for the continuing Communist Party of the Soviet Union, otherwise known as the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, was made evident yet again when Medvedev consulted with CPRF Chairman Gennady Zyuganov at Medvedev’s Barvikha residence outside Moscow, on May 12.

The text of Medvedev’s speech to the CPRF delegation is posted at the Kremlin website. Noteworthy comments that reveal a unity of ideology and purpose between Russia’s potemkin politicians and the secretly governing Communist Party apparatus are boldfaced below. Most revealing is Medvedev’s admission: “I have consulted from time to time with Mr. Zyuganov on this subject and we are in touch with each other on a regular basis.” Kremlin-friendly journalists were initially present at the meeting but then Medvedev announced their departure with the obvious intent of pursuing a “closed door” strategy session: “We will spend some time with the media so that they know what we’re talking about, what we’re discussing, and then we’ll send them away.”

The full text of the May 12 Medvedev-Zyuganov encounter follows:

We continue the tradition of meeting with our major parties represented in the parliament. Today I am meeting with members of the Communist Party.

The agenda is wide open, as Mr. Zyuganov agreed when we spoke. So I don’t have anything earth shattering to announce. First and foremost I would of course like to thank our colleagues in the Communist Party for their active involvement in the foreign policy area. The Communist Party is the opposition party and it is very critical concerning many aspects of modern life: both its political aspects and the performance of public institutions.

Nevertheless in my opinion it is very important that we coordinate our efforts to further the foreign policy interests of our country and ensure its security. This is done in a range of areas. Here we have had almost no disagreements in formulating a coherent and unified position for the benefit of our nation.

I have consulted from time to time with Mr Zyuganov on this subject and we are in touch with each other on a regular basis. I am in touch with other colleagues as well. So in my opinion this is an extremely important aspect of our cooperation.

Concerning other issues, of course there are subjects on which we don’t see eye to eye. In particular, there is the question of how to deal with the current [financial] crisis. The Communist Party has its own view of the situation. No doubt that is a good thing, because if we all saw things the same way then the results of our respective efforts would be the same.

It is to be expected that there are points of view that differ from those of the President and the Government Cabinet concerning how our economic life should develop, how to get out of this crisis. Especially since some of your suggestions concerning war veterans, or how certain social issues might be addressed, are in so many ways similar to my own feelings, I am naturally ready to discuss your proposals on these issues, because only by engaging in such discussions can we come up with reasonable solutions. We have done this sort of thing before, and I would like to see it continue.

There are a number of policy initiatives, a number of policy decisions that also have to go through the crucible of the State Duma. The various parliamentary parties and factions have different views on these, including the Communist Party; however, I would also like to thank you for your participation in the critical discussion of these initiatives. In my view this has ultimately helped the Duma to come up with measures that are more precise, more sound, and more interesting.

By the way, I would like to inform you that today I will be signing the law On Guaranteeing Equal Coverage of the Activities of Parliamentary Parties on State Television and Radio Channels. The State Duma worked on this and I know that the Communist Party had its own position on it as well. Nevertheless, I believe that this law will be an important guarantee of the presence of opposition forces and parties in the electronic media. This is an important area in which we have been working.

Actually, that is probably all I want to say to launch our conversation. Now of course the floor is yours, Mr Zyuganov. As the leader you go first. We will spend some time with the media so that they know what we’re talking about, what we’re discussing, and then we’ll send them away.

From this unimpeachable source, it is therefore evident that a line of control extends from the “non-ruling” Communist Party of the Russian Federation/Soviet Union to the country’s “ex”-communist government leaders. News like this provides the hard facts that validate KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn’s 25-year-old prediction that the collapse of Soviet communism was a long-range deception designed to disarm the West, morally and militarily, prior to conquest, either by convergence or nuclear blackmail.

Although the Russian head of state addressed his communist guests as “dear colleagues,” it should be remembered that Medvedev is a Soviet Komsomol graduate and lackey of KGB-communist dictator Putin. When Nicaragua’s past/present Marxist dictator Daniel Ortega visited Moscow last December, for the first time since the Cold War, Medvedev and Ortega referred to the other as “comrade.” When Medvedev and US President Barack Hussein Obama (a possible Soviet mole) rubbed elbows for the first time at the G20 summit in London last month, the former referred to the latter as “my new comrade.”

Pictured here: Brainwashing Russian youth with communism: CPRF Chairman Zyuganov recognizes accomplishments of party’s Young Pioneers.

Beyond Medvedev’s introductory speech, in which he refers to the Communist Party’s participation in the formation of foreign policy and national security stances, we can only speculate on the specific topics broached at his meeting with Zyuganov.

Perhaps Medvedev and Zyuganov discussed Putin’s concurrent visit to Tokyo, where the government of Prime Minister Taro Aso is urging a settlement over the Kuril Islands dispute. Technically, Russia and Japan have been in a state of war since 1945, when Soviet troops seized and occupied the four southern Kuril Islands. “This peace treaty can only be done in a way that will meet the national interests of the Russian Federation,” Putin, without mincing words, told reporters, adding: “The content of a peace treaty will be a focus of future bilateral negotiations.”

Putin revealed on Tuesday, when he began his state visit to Japan, that Medvedev will discuss territorial issues and a formal peace treaty with Aso at the upcoming G8 summit in Italy. It should be pointed out that Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s center-right prime minister, is a close friend of Putin and a staunch advocate of Russia’s merger with the European Union (or, more accurately, the EU’s absorption into the 21^st-century Communist Bloc). By forcing a peace treaty on Japan “that will meet the national interests of the Russian Federation,” the Soviet strategists can proceed to woo Tokyo away from its well-established military alliance with Washington.

Perhaps the Russian president and the Communist Party chairman also discussed the Russian Security Council’s new “Arctic zone” policy, which Medvedev signed off on that very day. The new Kremlin policy document, which is effective until 2020, identifies Russia’s Arctic region as “a national strategic resource base capable of fulfilling the socio-economic tasks associated with national growth.” It also refers to the deployment of armed forces in the Arctic that are “capable of ensuring security under various military and political circumstances.” The secretary of the Russian Security Council is former Federal Security Service (FSB/KGB) boss Nikolai Patrushev.

In a previous post we reported on Russia’s proposal to organize a new Arctic Group of Forces to counter the influence of other polar states, namely, the USA (Alaska), Canada, Norway, and Denmark (Greenland). The Russian Navy has already been deployed to the seas around Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, where the Soviets maintain a mining settlement to this day. After meeting last week with her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, US Secretary of State Clinton admitted that control over and exploitation of the Arctic seabed is one of the areas on the expanding US-Russian agenda. “We think it is in our interest to cooperate and it is in the interest of the world that the United States and Russia do so,” Clinton stated.

Perhaps, too, Medvedev and Zyuganov discussed the manufactured conflict between Russia and Georgia, a conflict that is providing Moscow with a pretext to attack the West over the issue of “NATO expansionism” in the “former” Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. On Monday Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili–a US-educated lawyer who began his political career under the tutelage of “former” Georgian Communist Party boss Eduard Shevardnadze–met opposition leaders with the intent of finding a compromise to end anti-government protests that began on April 9.

The meeting took place in the Interior Ministry building, behind closed doors. After the meeting, Salome Zurabishvili, leader of the Path of Georgia party, informed reporters: “During the so-called negotiations, Saakashvili alleged that I was a GRU [Russian military intelligence] agent, that Nino Burdzhanadze [former parliament speaker, who now heads Democratic Movement-United Georgia] was receiving money from Russia.” Zurabishvili related that she challenged Saakashvili to produce any facts to substantiate his allegations. She then threatened to continue the protests outside the state television station until the president resigns.

Perhaps the Russian president and the Communist Party chairman, furthermore, discussed Moscow’s proposed European security treaty that would unite the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union (EU), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in one framework. “A new document should be drafted to ensure security in Europe and it should not be aimed against NATO,” Medvedev explained to Rossiya TV channel, in an interview to be aired on Saturday, May 16. Alluding to the Cold War as “hard history lessons of the 20^th century,” he continued:

The existing set of European security institutions was created in the 1970s and has become obsolete. Unfortunately, security in Europe is not improving… NATO is becoming larger, while security is being split into fragments. We cannot accept this approach [NATO expansion], and we will react to it.

An efficient mechanism of European security should involve all supranational organizations on the continent, such as NATO, the European Union, the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States, and the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

We are simply striving for a new level of security for our country, for our people, considering the hard history lessons of the 20th century.

Medvedev first floated the idea of a new European security treaty in Berlin last June. The merger of EU/NATO and CIS/CSTO into one gargantuan political-military structure, of course, is the fulfillment of Vladimir Lenin’s dream of a worldwide federation of communist states. Medvedev, Putin, Zyuganov, Mikhail Gorbachev—who promoted the concept of a “Common European Home” from the Atlantic to the Urals and whom Medvedev lauded on the occasion of the roving statesman’s last birthday—are faithfully carrying out the objectives of the Soviet Union’s founder. Behind them all lurks Oleg (“Man in the Shadows”) Shenin, former first secretary of the “old” CPSU Central Committee and ringleader of the potemkin anti-Gorbachevist coup of 1991.

Lastly, perhaps Medvedev and Zyuganov discussed the next summit of leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) states, to take place in Yekaterinburg from June 15 to16. The SCO represents another stepping stone—along with the EU, CIS, CSTO, the United Nations, and other regional supranational bodies like the African Union and the Union of South American Nations—along Lenin’s path toward world government or, to use a term favored by the communist-friendly Council on Foreign Relations, “global governance.”

On Friday the Russian president, still entertaining “guests” at his Barvikha residence, received the SCO foreign ministers to hammer out the agenda for the June shindig. “As far as I understand, today you have finally put in the full form the documents that will be considered in Yekaterinburg,” he said, adding: “It can be said that the preparation for the summit has gained its full form. Foreign and defense ministers always meet before meetings of leaders.” Issues that will be considered at the SCO leaders’ summit will be the organization’s development and the consolidation of its authority over member states. SCO interior ministers and heads of security councils and counter-narcotics departments will also converge before the summit.

The pending mini-summit of counter-narcotics chiefs from the “former” Soviet republics should be analyzed in the light of the Communist Bloc’s five-decade-old narco-subversion plot against the West. These men will pretend to aid the “war on drugs” when, in fact, they are facilitating the “drugging of America and the West,” to quote the subtitle of Joseph Douglass’ 1990 book Red Cocaine.

After meeting at Barvikha, Foreign Minister Lavrov revealed that the SCO foreign ministers agreed to grant the status of dialogue partner to Belarus and Sri Lanka. “Many countries have shown the striving to interact with the SCO, so we’ve worked out a special status of partner in the dialogue with the SCO. Today, we’ve agreed to recommend to the heads of states, who will gather in Yekaterinburg on June 15-16, to grant such a status to Belarus and Sri Lanka.” Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is an unreformed communist who pines for the good ol’ days of Soviet glory, while war-wracked Sri Lanka labors under a center-left-communist government, the United People’s Freedom Alliance.

>Latin America File: USA grants asylum to Nicaraguan reporter; Chavez threatens to shut down opposition-run TV channel, troops seize oil service firms

>At the blog of the University of Texas at Austin’s Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, Dean Graber, citing Nicaragua’s La Prensa newspaper, reports that the USA has granted asylum to journalist Georgina Lupiac, the first decision of its type since the return to power of communist Daniel Ortega in January 2007. US immigration lawyer Alfonso Oviedo, who is also president of the Nicaraguan American Fraternity, declared that the ruling was a victory because Lupiac successfully demonstrated that she was a victim of persecution and that her personal safety was endangered by pro-government forces.

Speaking to La Prensa’s Miami correspondent, Judith Flores, Lupiac asserted that supporters of Managua’s neo-Sandinista regime “are totalitarian and don’t accept when their errors are pointed out.” In November 2008 Lupiac, Flores, and members of the Nicaraguan Civic Task Force were threatened outside the Nicaraguan consulate in Miami by a group of Ortegistas, or sympathizers of the Sandinista National Liberation Front. According to the Miami newspaper La Estrella de Nicaragua (The Star of Nicaragua), consulate employees were the culprits. One of the “protesters” threatened Lupiac over a megaphone: “Georgina Lupiac, remember that your children are in Nicaragua under the control of the Sandinista Front.” According to La Estrella, Ortegistas in Nicaragua not only threatened to kill Lupiac but also torched her house, prompting her to seek political refuge in the USA.

In a related story the Costa Rican media, citing Miskito Indian Chief Steadman Fagoth, contends that the US government is conspiring with Nicaragua’s opposition parties to foment indigenous separatism in the country’s North Atlantic Autonomous Region. On a recent visit to Puerto Cabezas Fagoth allegedly witnessed US Department of State officials and US ambassador to Nicaragua Robert Callahan holding talks with leaders of the Liberal Constitutionalist Party and Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance. The putative subject under discussion was the destabilization of the neo-Sandinista regime.

This is not the first time that Ortega has raised the specter of “US meddling” in his country’s internal affairs. Ideological comrade Hugo Chavez rants about the same thing as he consolidates yet another red regime in America’s backyard. On May 14 the Kremlin media reported that the Chavezista regime plans to nationalize a major private bank, Banco de Venezuela, a subsidiary of Spanish banking group Santander. President Chavez unveiled the scheme in July 2008. Banco de Venezuela is one of the country’s four largest banking institutions, with assets estimated at US$1.2-1.9 billion. Last year’s post-summer slump in global oil prices, which dented the coffers of Chavez and his communist cronies, put the deal on hold.

Venezuela’s finance minister is scheduled to meet with bank representatives to finalize the deal by May 22. Chavez crowed: “This financial institution will be transferred to public ownership for all Venezuelans to strengthen the Venezuelan nation and stimulate economic development.” The bank’s takeover price has not been disclosed. In 1996 Santander acquired Banco de Venezuela for US$351.5 million through a public tender.

Since 1999 the Chavezista regime, which as we have copiously documented is closely aligned with Moscow, Beijing, and Havana, has embarked on a nationalization campaign, targeting large domestic companies in strategic economic sectors, including steel, cement, petroleum, and telecommunications, as well as seizing 2.3 million hectares of agricultural land.

In order to neutralize criticism of Venezuela’s submission to communism, Nicolas Maduro, president of Chavez’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), has launched a salvo of accusations against the country’s last opposition-run television station. According to The Telegraph, Maduro accused 24-hour news channel Globovision of “media terrorism,” labeled the station and its director, Alberto Ravell, as “violators of the constitution and of the rights of Venezuelans,” as well as being “anti-democratic, failed and fascist.” The last comment about “fascism” is standard communist rhetoric. Pictured above, Ravell denies all allegations and retorted that the criminal probe into Globovision was “laughable intimidation.” Following the verbal assault on Globovision, Maria Corina Machado, director of an anti-Chavez organization called Sumate, predicted: “This is a mechanism to silence voices that have great credibility within and outside the country.”

In 2007 Chavez and his revolutionary buddies refused to renew the radio broadcast license of another opposition-run media network, RCTV, provoking outrage from journalists around the world. The fact that many of those very journalists are leftists, although not necessarily reds, exposes the truly dangerous character of Venezuela’s “Bolivarian Revolution.” RCTV continues to transmit TV programming via satellite and cable.

Last week, reports the Financial Times, Chavez sent troops to seize the operations of 60 foreign-owned oil service companies, in a bid to counter the adverse effects of the slide in crude futures. “We have started to nationalize all these activities connected to oil exploitation,” Comrade Chavez was quoted by The Telegraph as saying, adding: “This is a revolutionary offensive.” Under a new law passed by the National Assembly, which is dominated by the PSUV, the Communist Party of Venezuela, and allied leftist groupings, “all funding will pass through a central account managed by the government.”

Meanwhile, the same link reports, Chavez’s leading political rival, Manuel Rosales, who challenged him for the presidency in 2006 and was then charged with corruption, has fled to Peru where he received asylum. Rosales’ presence in Peru will no doubt sour relations between Caracas and Lima. Peru’s pro-USA president Alan Garcia is a social democrat like his “guest” Rosales, but faces a resurgent Sendoro Luminoso guerrilla insurgency. The Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path possesses subterranean links to Latin America’s many-tentacled Red Axis, embodied in the highly subversive but little-known Bolivarian Continental Coordination and the somewhat more well-known Sao Paulo Forum. In reality, most denizens of the shopping mall regime have probably heard of neither organization.

In view of US President Barack Hussein Obama’s friendly handshaking session with Chavez at the Summit of the Americas, we fully expect Washington to turn a blind eye to Latin America’s “Red Spread” and the Soviets’ revitalized interest in the region. The governments of Peru, Mexico, Colombia, and Panama–the voters of which recently and wisely rejected the Chavez-backed presidential candidate–are the only ones south of the Rio Grande River that may be described as having a “non-adversarial” relationship with the USA. However, Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s comments at Port of Spain, in which he denounced the US embargo against Cuba, and Colombia’s interest in purchasing Russian military hardware would appear to diminish the number of truly “US-friendly” regimes in the region still further. For all of its media image blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan, at least the Bush Administration took a dim view of the communist dictatorships in Havana and Caracas.

>USSR2 File: Soviet leadership flaunts missile power in Victory Day parade, warns of resurgent "fascism" in thinly veiled, verbal attack against NATO

>Today, for the second year in a row after an 18-year hiatus, tanks and missiles rumbled across Red Square during Russia’s Victory Day celebration. On this day Russians commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany at the hands of the Allied Powers, then including the Soviet Union. The AFP news agency reports that:

Thousands of soldiers marched past [President Dmitry] Medvedev and [Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin, before dozens of heavy tanks, including the main T-90 battle tank and the Sprut self-propelled anti-tank gun, thundered through Red Square to the sound of martial music. There was a rare public showing for some of Russia’s best known missile systems, including the S-300 and S-400 anti-aircraft missiles, the short range Iskander-M and the medium-range Buk.

The road-mobile Topol ICBM is pictured above. The USA has no equivalent launch platform. On April 28 Russia Today quoted Ruslan Pukhov of Moscow’s Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies as saying: “Russia and China are the only ones who can take the challenge of the U.S. in the military field; others are unable to do it technically.”

Rather than survey the military parade from the top of Lenin’s Mausoleum, as Soviet leaders did in time past, Medvedev and Putin watched the troops from a podium.

“We are sure that any aggression against our citizens will be given a worthy reply,” Medvedev, flanked by his mentor Putin, addressed Muscovites. Betraying his training in the Soviet Komsomol and taking a swipe at NATO “expansionism” in Georgia and elsewhere in the “post”-Soviet sphere, he added: “The victory over fascism is a great example and a great lesson for all peoples and is still current today when people are again starting military adventures. Protecting the motherland is our holy duty, it is a moral foundation for all generations. The future of Russia will be peaceful, happy and successful.”

During the parade, Russia’s defense minister, Anatoly Serdyukov, brimmed with neo-Soviet patriotism. “Greetings comrades!” he barked at the assembled soldiers, standing in an open-top ZiL limousine, “I congratulate you on the 64th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War.” “Hurrah!” the soldiers returned. Hurrah, indeed. Although Lenin’s ghoulish crypt was largely obscured by festive decorations, it is apparent that the founder of the Soviet Union still lives in the hearts of “new/old” Russia’s ruling cabal.

>Latin America File: Nicaragua to buy Russian planes, choppers to upgrade Soviet-era fleet, Sandinista-controlled army denies "irregular forces" claim

>Since his re-installation as president in January 2007, Nicaragua’s past/present Marxist dictator Daniel Ortega has reverted to his “old ways,” by reconsolidating Soviet-era political-military-economic linkages with Russia, aggressively moving against the country’s political opposition, cozying up to the region’s other communist and leftist states like Cuba and Venezuela, and harboring fugitives from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and exiled political figures, like Thailand’s left-populist former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Pictured above: Ortega speaks with fellow leftist US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Fifth Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, Trinidad, on April 19, 2009. US President Barack Hussein Obama, whose attention above is drawn elsewhere, met with Central American leaders on the summit sidelines.

Yesterday, Novosti published the specific military hardware that Managua intends to buy from Moscow. “We are holding talks with Russia on the purchase of 4 to 8 helicopters and two aircraft for Nicaragua’s Armed Forces,” revealed General Omar Halleslevens, chief of the Nicaraguan National Army (NNA) and a veteran Sandinista. Halleslevens did not identify the type of the aircraft, but smoothed over the planned transaction by saying: “They will be used in the fight against drug-trafficking in the country and will not undermine the military balance in Central America.” This is a disengenuous statement since Managua appears to be purposely overlooking the state of anarchy that prevails in the Caribbean port of Bluefields, an important transit point for northbound FARC cocaine.

According to open sources, the Nicaraguan air force still operates several Soviet-made M-8 Hip military transport helicopters, at least five Mi-24 Hind attack helicopters, which were used to pulverize Contra positions during the 1980s civil war, and two An-26 Curl military transport planes. Last November, in a post-Cold War “first,” a Russian missile destroyer briefly weighed anchor at Bluefields, to discharge “humanitarian assistance” to the hurricane-wracked country. The political opposition in Managua reacted vehemently to the presence of the Russian Navy near its shores, going so far as to demand that the Nicaraguan armed forces repel the “invaders.”

Undaunted, the next month President Ortega made his first post-Cold War pilgrimage to Moscow since 1985, or 1987, depending on which source is consulted. Last month we also reported that the Nicaraguan military recently dispatched a small contingent of cadets to Russia for military, academic, and languge training.

Meanwhile, the NNA is denying “the existence of armed groups organized for political ends” (death squads?) operating in northern Nicaragua, near or along the Honduran border. General Adolfo Zepeda, head of the NNA public relations department, refuted claims to this effect by Episcopal Conference Vice President Bishop Abelardo Mata. This was the second time that Mata issued such claims about “irregular forces,” only to be “shot down,” so to speak, by the military’s PR man. In 2005, two years prior to Ortega’s re-admission to the executive office, Honduran officials charged that FARC was carrying out sales of drugs for weapons in Nicaragua. At the time Edwin Cordero, director of the Nicaraguan National Police, denied the claims.

Last November we published a report from the Nicaraguan media that Russian special forces are lurking about the country’s sparsely settled northeast sector. The country’s North Atlantic Autonomous Region is the location of a thus far non-violent secessionist movement by Moskito Indians.

>Communist Bloc Military Updates: State Duma deputy proposes joint Russian-Cuban- Venezuelan drill in Caribbean, Bear bombers carry out routine patrol

>On Thursday, reports Novosti, two Tu-95 Bear bombers carried out a 15-hour mission over the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. “The crews practiced instrumental flight maneuvers and conducted a series of other drills,” Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Drik, a familiar spokesentity for the Russian Air Force, told the Kremlin media. During the patrol the bombers refueled from Il-78 Midas aerial tankers.

The Russian aircraft, grumbled Drik, were “shadowed” by NATO F-16 and Tornado fighters. As usual, he hastened to add: “All flights by Russian aircraft are performed in strict compliance with international law on the use of airspace over neutral waters, without violating the borders of other states.” The Soviets formally resumed strategic bomber flights over the world’s oceans in August 2007, following an order signed by then President, now Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin.

Pictured above: The opening scene from the iconic, Cold War-era movie Red Dawn (1984): Soviet and Cuban paratroopers pay a not-so-friendly visit to Calumet, Colorado.

The Communist Bloc has a full schedule of military exercises lined up for the remainder of this year and into the next. In fact, the tempo of so-called “anti-terrorism” drills appears to be picking up as Russia rattles its sabers against the “expansionist” practices of NATO, especially in Georgia. Last month, Russia, China, and the other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization completed their third combined war game in Tajikistan, Norak Antiterror 2009. This summer the Moscow-Beijing Axis will carry out Peace Mission 2009 in northeast China and next year Peace Mission 2010 in Kazakhstan. The first two “Peace Mission” maneuvers took place in Russia and China in 2005 and 2007.

These joint drills reflect the growing relationship of open, anti-Western coordination between the two communist superpowers since 2001, when Moscow and Beijing, per KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn’s prediction, signed their treaty of friendship. During the second half of 2009, as reported in our last post, the People’s Liberation Army will also hold its own large-scale exercise across four military districts, involving 50,000 troops, airborne assault operations, and special forces missions.

The Kremlin media reports today that the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which binds seven Not-So-Former Soviet republics into a military alliance, will hold joint rapid reaction exercises in Kazakhstan in August and September. The CSTO includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. In early February the alliance decided to organize a rapid reaction force. Russia’s first deputy foreign minister Andrei Denisov announced today that the CSTO’s new military formation was a topic of discussion at an ongoing meeting of CSTO deputy foreign, defense, and economics ministers at the Russian Foreign Ministry.

At the time of its announcement, Russian “President” Dmitry Medvedev boasted that the rapid reaction force “will be just as good as comparable NATO forces, will be used to repulse military aggression, conduct anti-terrorist operations, fight transnational crime and drug trafficking, and neutralize the effects of natural disasters.” No doubt in an effort to preempt possible dissent in the Soviet hinterland, “Moscow stressed that the collective forces will not interfere in the domestic conflicts of the bloc’s member countries.”

We have for several months contended that the Soviets are patiently and incrementally assembling a “Red Dawn” military coalition in Latin America, presumably with the intention of attacking the USA on the pretext that the North Atlantic Alliance is meddling in their old stomping grounds, like Georgia, Ukraine, and the Baltic states. The latest rantings from one of Russia’s potemkin politicians prove our point yet again.

This week a Russian State Duma deputy, Sergei Abeltsev from Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s KGB-founded Liberal Democratic Party, proposed responding to the NATO military exercises in Georgia by inviting Cuba and Venezuela to take part in “large-scale” drills in the Caribbean Sea on July 2. The Cooperative Longbow/Lancer 2009 command-and-staff exercise, which Moscow vehemently opposes even as its troops occupy Georgia’s separatist regimes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, began on Wednesday and will end on June 1. More than 1,300 troops from 19 NATO member and ally states were originally slated to participate. However, the “former” Yugoslav republic of Serbia and five “former” Soviet republics— Armenia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Moldova—withdrew before the exercises commenced.

For their part, Russia and Venezuela held their first combined naval drill in the Caribbean in early December, following a week-long visit in September of two Tu-160 Blackjack bombers to the South American country.

“So that our U.S. partners do not question our peaceful intentions, I propose holding the exercises under the codename of ‘Reset-2009,’” Abeltsev mocked. The Obama Administration recently articulated its intention to “reset” relations with Moscow. Abeltsev continued his rant: “The decision to hold the drills in Georgia during [Russia’s] WWII Victory Day celebrations is a total revision of the history of the Great Patriotic War. It is a direct insult to Moscow that borders on a malicious humiliation.” Abeltsev’s selection of July 2 as the date for the proposed Russian-Cuban-Venezuelan maneuver is obviously intended as a stab at America’s Fourth of July celebrations. In light of this report, one must ask if Abeltsev is speaking off the cuff or is he releasing a trial balloon that reflects the Soviet strategists’ true intentions for destroying America by conquest or convergence?

Incidentally, after the assassination of FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko in November 2006, Abeltsev, Zhirinovsky’s former bodyguard, rumbled: “The deserved punishment reached the traitor. I am sure his terrible death will be a warning to all the traitors that in Russia treason is not to be forgiven. I would recommend to citizen [Boris] Berezovsky to avoid any food at the commemorative feast for Litvinenko.”

The Victory Day celebrations to which Abeltsev refers will take place in Moscow’s Red Square on May 9 and commemorate the capitulation of Nazi Germany to the Allied Powers, which then included the Soviet Union. “Last year the S-300 air defense systems took part in the parade for the first time ever, and this year we will show the S-400,” Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov disclosed in today’s issue of Rossiiskaya Gazeta. Last year, for the first time since 1990, the Victory Day parade included the presence of tanks and missile launchers.

The S-400 Triumf (NATO designation SA-21 Growler) is expected to form the new backbone of Russia’s theater air and missile defenses until at least 2020. Two missile regiments equipped with the S-400 system have already been deployed to guard the airspace around Moscow and industrial zones in the heartland of European Russia. Saturday’s Victory Day parade will feature over 9,000 servicemen, 112 military vehicles, and 70 aircraft.

Meanwhile, the controversial NATO drill mentioned above kicked off yesterday in the midst of violent protests against President Mikhail Saakashvili, protests that led to the injury of 23 oppositionists at a police compound last night, and in the wake of Tuesday’s reported mutiny at a tank base. NATO, according to the Kremlin media, has “dismissed Russia’s concerns” about the drills, insisting that “they were not aimed against Russia.” Instead, Cooperative Longbow/ Lancer is designed to “improve interoperability and will not involve any light or heavy weaponry.” In a Russian radio interview yesterday, NATO spokesman James Appathurai protested: “The exercise had been planned before the Georgia war, and is not a show of support for Georgia.”

“The opposition, which has demanded Saakashvili step down over the war with Russia and his backsliding on democracy,” propagandizes Novosti, “said on Tuesday the coup reports were a ‘theatrical show’ staged by the president, and ‘virtual reality.’” Among the oppositionsts reported injured on Wednesday night are Levan Gachechiladze; Giya Maisashvili, Party of the Future leader; and Shalva Ogbaidze, from Democratic Movement-United Georgia. “We are fighting for democracy, and we will not disperse until we see President Mikheil Saakashvili resign,” declared Nino Burdzhanadze, the ex-parliamentary speaker who heads Democratic Movement- United Georgia.

In spite of the political turmoil and international intrigue in the Caucasus country, Saakashvili apparently has no plans to cancel his visit to the European Union’s Eastern Partnership summit in Prague on Thursday. “The president’s trip to Prague has not been cancelled. He will go as scheduled,” a presidential spokesentity related. Jan Fischer, the new caretaker prime minister of the Czech Republic, as we previously blogged, is an “ex”-communist.

>Communist Bloc Military Updates: China to hold large-scale drills later this year, Kuayue-2009 exercise to involve 50,000 troops

>In mid-April China completed its third joint war game with Russia and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Tajikistan, Norak Antiterror 2009. The Moscow-Beijing Axis is slated to hold two more combined maneuvers, Peace Mission 2009 in northeast China this summer and Peace Mission 2010 in Kazakhstan next year. In the meanwhile, Communist China is preparing to carry out its own large-scale military exercise, Kuayue-2009, involving 50,000 troops. Novosti, citing Xinhua, reports:

Four divisions supported by air force units will take part in the Kuayue-2009 drills, which will be conducted on the territory of the Shenyang, Lanzhou, Jinan and Guangzhou military districts.

The exercises will test the People Liberation Army’s (PLA) command and decision-making capabilities and the interoperability of ground troops and air units in intense electronic warfare conditions. The drills will also involve airborne assault operations and special forces missions.

The 2008 China Military Power Report, published by the US Congress, states that Beijing allocated as much as US$139 billion last year on modernizing its military forces. This sum is more than three times China’s officially announced defense budget. According to official Chinese data, the PLA boasts 2.3 million active personnel deployed in seven military districts, with over 800,000 reserves.

>WW4 File: Georgia accuses Russia of backing army mutiny earlier today, assassination plot against interior minister; NATO drill to begin on May 6

>– May 6 Update: Russia Expels Canadian Director of NATO Information Office in Moscow (source)

– Kremlin Pulls Out of Russia-NATO Council Meeting Following Expulsion of Russian Diplomats in Brussels (source)

Earlier today an army mutiny took place at the Mukhrovani tank base, 20 kilometers from Tbilisi. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, whom we suspect is party to the Soviets’ long-range deception plan, assured the republic in a televised address that the situation was under control. Not surprisingly, the president and the Interior Ministry accused Russia of backing mutinous Georgian military officers as part of a plot to overthrow the country’s leadership.

“The Georgian state did not yield to this provocation from Russia. This is an isolated incident–it did not spread to other military units, and the situation is under control,” Saakashvili announced. The president explained that he personally intervened by negotiating with the rebel soldiers and persuading them to surrender to police. Saakashvili continued: “The rebellion was aimed at creating unrest in Georgia, to damage the country’s security and democratic system. Before these events, Russia tripled its military presence in Georgia in a bid to provoke unrest, which was aimed against democracy and Georgia’s integration into Euro-Atlantic bodies.”

“Watching the country being torn apart by the current standoff is unbearable,” mutinous battalion commander Colonel Mamuka Gorgishvili was quoted as saying. He added: “There is a possibility of this standoff turning violent.” Later, in a public confession that was televised later on Tuesday, Gorgishvili admitted that he received orders from the National Guard commander Koba Otanadze to move 24 tanks under his command toward Tbilisi to support opposition rallies.

The Georgian Interior Ministry insisted that the mutiny was aimed at disrupting NATO military exercises due to start near Tbilisi on Wednesday. According to the ministry, 13 civilians were arrested and 500 military personnel are being interrogated. Police are preventing reporters from approaching the Mukhrovani tank base. The ministry also revealed that a Georgian national was arrested on charges of plotting to assassinate Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili. The Interior Ministry stated that Russia’s Black Sea Fleet was put on high alert after the rebellion. The Russian Navy denied the report.

The Kremlin itself declined to comment on Saakashvili’s allegations, but a source in Moscow facetiously told Novosti that the Georgian leader “needs to see a doctor.” A senior Russian security official, moreover, labeled reports of the Georgian army mutiny as a diversionary tactic “to ease pressure on the government amid ongoing protests against Saakashvili.” On April 30 Russia’s NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin warned in connection with NATO’s expulsion of two diplomats from its Brussels headquarters: “We shall not yield to the attempts to throw us off balance. Russia’s reaction is still to follow. It will be absolutely cold-blooded and balanced.”

Meanwhile, “post”-communist Armenia, which is closely allied with Russia, has announced its withdrawal from the highly controversial NATO drill, Cooperative Longbow/Lancer 2009, even as Azerbaijan, which was the target of an obvious and bloody provocation last Thursday, has confirmed its participation.

>Latin America File: Supermarket magnate wins Panama’s presidential election, trouncing Chavez-backed candidate, halting regional "Red Spread"

>The “Red Spread” has gobbled up much of Latin America since unabashed Marxist Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela in 1998. Yesterday Panamanian supermarket magnate Ricardo Martinelli won the country’s presidential election, trouncing Balbina Herrera of the ruling center-left Democratic Revolutionary Party and halting the region’s almost total landslide toward communism. “Ricardo Martinelli’s success as a business magnate,” opines The Times, “persuaded voters that he was the best person to help Panama survive the global recession, which has slowed the country’s recent stellar economic growth.” Martinelli, who was educated in the USA, is pictured above.

Herrera was outgoing President Martin Torrijos’ anointed successor and allegedly a recipient of petrodollars from Venezuela’s communist dictator Hugo Chavez. Last October Panama Guide covered this shady connection:

Mega TV, a television channel produced by the opposition to the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chavez, made public information regarding the sources of financing for the presidential campaign of Balbina Herrera. The report contains details on connections to Chavez and an important business group that buys cheap fuel in Venezuela in order to resell it here locally in Panama in order to realize substantial profits. Balbina Herrera reacted to the information, but leftist groups such as Suntracs says it is a campaign looking to discredit them, and they denied any bond to Chavez.

If this subversive nexus between Venezuela’s red regime and Panamanian leftists is true, then Chavez can only nurse his defeat and disappointment this time around. Although it’s unlikely that Martinelli will curtail Red Chinese influence in Panama, we can only hope that the Soviets will be discouraged by the presence of a rightist government in Panama City and refrain from pulling more stunts in the region, like sending another destroyer through the Panama Canal, as they did last December.

>Latin America File: Venezuela hosts secret Iranian-Palestinian huddle, enters defense arrangement with Iran; Moskito Indians secede from Nicaragua

>– Panama’s Chavez-Financed Presidential Pawn Accuses Businessman Rival of Being “Narco-Candidate”

– Ecuador’s Socialist President Correa Re-Elected as Rightist Opposition Disintegrates

According to Israeli media source Debkafile, during Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammed Najjar’s April 27-30 visit to Caracas, Tehran’s intelligence chiefs secretly met with visiting Palestinian Authority officials, led by Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyadh al-Maliki. The matchmakers were Venezuela’s communist dictator Hugo Chavez and Qatar’s monarch Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa. Najjar is pictured above, during a visit to a Venezuelan military establishment.

“If true,” warns Debkafile, “this would signal a drastic policy turnabout by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas away from Cairo and over to the radical Tehran and Damascus. The Ramallah-Tehran opening, if confirmed, could help bury the hatchet between the warring Fatah and Hamas and pave the way for a Palestinian unity government governed by rejectionist ideology.” A new Ramallah-Tehran Axis, of course, would also slam the door shut to future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations under the administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In MSM reports, cited this week at our blog, Najjar’s presence in Caracas was simply characterized as a move to strengthen bilateral military relations between allies Iran and Venezuela. “Iran pledges its full support to promote the Venezuelan military’s defense capabilities in the framework of mutual defensive agreements,” Najjar declared on April 30, after huddling with Chavez. The Iranian defense minister also conferred with Venezuelan Vice President and acting Defense Minister Ramon Carrizalez, at which time they signed a memorandum of understanding that governs “training and mutual exchange of military experiences.”

At the same time, the Iranian and Palestinian delegations conspired under cover of celebrations marking Venezuela’s decision to sever diplomatic relations with Israel and open a Palestinian embassy in Caracas instead. KGB-trained President Mahmoud Abbas is reported to have welcomed the proposal for a clandestine Iranian-Palestinian meeting in Venezuela when it was suggested to him by Sheikh Khalifa at the Second Summit of Heads of State of South America and Arab Countries, held in Doha about one month ago. Debkafile’s “authoritative Caracas sources” reveal that the on-the-sly summit lasted about four hours and ended with a decision to continue the encounters in Doha, Moscow (which seeks to re-project its influence throughout the Middle East and undermine the West’s only ally in the region, Israel), and Ankara (which, even though a NATO member, is realigning with Russia and the Arab states).

Elsewhere in Latin America, Panamanians will march to the polling stations to vote for a new president on May 3. The two frontrunning candidates are Balbina Herrera, outgoing President Martin Torrijos’ anointed successor from the ruling Revolutionary Democratic Party, and businessman Ricardo Martinelli, from the opposition Alliance for Change. Martinelli enjoys a significant lead over Herrera in public opinion polls. On March 12 Herrera, possibly sensing defeat, accused Martinelli of chumming around with David Murcia Guzmán, a Colombian “businessman” who is currently jailed and facing trial on charges of money laundering. Herrera alleges that she has supplied proof to Panamanian authorities that links Martinelli’s Super99 grocery business with Murcia. She has stigmatized Martinelli as a “narco-candidate.”

Herrera’s accusations are either ironic or disengenuous, because in a past post we reported that Herrera apparently enjoys the financial backing of Venezuela’s Chavez, who has flung his petrodollars far and wide throughout Latin America to install and reinstall center-leftist and communist regimes. US and Colombian counter-narcotics authorities, moreover, have identified the involvement of corrupt elements in Venezuela’s National Guard and General Intelligence Office (known as DISIP until 2008) in the movement of FARC cocaine through South America into the USA. Lastly, we have reported that Panama itself has become an important networking hub for the Colombian and Mexican drug cartels as they relay red cocaine shipments northward to the USA and Europe via African narco-states like Guinea-Bissau.

Further south, on April 26 Ecuador’s socialist president and Chavez “mini me” Rafael Correa obtained a solid lead over closest rival, former president Lucio Gutierrez, following last Sunday’s general election. Correa’s re-election was confirmed in the first round of balloting. His Proud and Sovereign Fatherland Alliance, which dominates the Constituent Assembly elected in April 2007, obtained 46 percent of the votes in the National Congress, followed by the conservative Christian Social Party at 15 percent, and Gutierrez’s nationalist Patriotic Society Party at 14 percent.

The failure of Ecuadorean rightists to recapture the presidency and national legislature will not only further the communization of the country’s constitution, but also perpetuate the presence of a hostile, Moscow-backed regime south of Colombia. Bogota has for 50 years battled a major Marxist insurgency, which over the last decade has enjoyed financial and logistical support from Caracas, another Moscow-backed regime to Colombia’s east. In the final analysis, Latin America’s Red Axis will continue to outflank the region’s only pro-Washington state.

Finally, Nicaragua’s Moscow-backed neo-Sandinista regime faces a new challenge in the form of an under-reported secessionist movement along the country’s rural, poverty-stricken, cocaine-flooded Caribbean coast. On April 19 the indigenous peoples of the region, known as the Moskito Indians, declared the independence of the Communitarian Nation of the Moskitia and fired off a letter to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon demanding recognition. The 400-member Indigenous Army of the Moskitia consists of mostly aging ex-combatants from the YATAMA uprising against the first Sandinista government in the 1980s, a wider part of the Nicaraguan Civil War propelled by the US-backed Contras.

An indigenous rebel Norman Molina, who travels under the nom de guerre Comandante Wild Dog, staged an unarmed takeover of the headquarters of the YATAMA party on April 22. Another separatist, Rev. Hector Williams, declared: “We are not puppets. We are men. And now we have the weight of a nation on our shoulders.” The good reverend also sports the grand title of Wihta Tara, or Great Judge of the Nation of Moskitia. However, it is unclear whether the group presents a real threat to Managua.

Organized in 1987, the North and South Atlantic Autonomous Regions (RAAN and RAAS) are geographically and culturally isolated from the rest of Nicaragua. The RAAN is mostly inhabited by Miskito and Mayangna Indians, while its southern neighbor is home to most of the country’s black Creole population. Nicaragua’s past/present Marxist dictator Daniel Ortega, who claims indigenous blood and is the only leader in the world to recognize the Russian-backed “statelets” of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, is tight-lipped about the popular uprising in his own stomping grounds. The ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front has not yet issued any formal response to the claims of the Communitarian Nation of the Moskitia. “How are they going to take control of the police and military? Please!” scoffed RAAN Governor Reynaldo Francis.

Brooklyn Rivera, a Miskito lawmaker with the YATAMA party, outlines the prospects of the separatist movement:

It will depend on how the government reacts. If the government takes the situation seriously and addresses the demands of the people, the situation could be controlled. But if it’s ignored, it could fester and grow. There are lots of ex-combatants who are very unsatisfied with the government, they’ve been waiting for over two years for the government to comply with its promises. The worst-case scenario would be if the government responded with force. If they did, there would be a situation like there was in the 1980s.

The Bush Admin’s response to the on-again, off-again street violence that followed Nicaragua’s November municipal election was rather tepid. The Obama Team’s response to a full-blown anti-Sandinista insurgency could be tempered by the White House’s pre-occupation with thawing relations with Communist Cuba.

>WW4 File: Medvedev denounces NATO exercise in Georgia as “open provocation,” Georgia condemns Moscow’s security agreements with Abkhazia, S. Ossetia

>– Kremlin Envoy Rogozin Castigates NATO’s Expulsion of Russian Diplomats in Brussels

– South Ossetian “Prime Minister” Aslanbek Bulantsev Served as Head of KGB/FSB Financial Department in Russia’s North Ossetia

– Georgian Gunman Massacres 13 Students at Azerbaijan State Oil Academy, Follows February Assassination of Country’s Air Force Chief

– Baku to Still Participate in NATO’s Cooperative Longbow/Lancer 2009 Command-and-Staff Drill near Tbilisi; Serbia Joins Kazakhstan and Moldova in Withdrawing from Same

For a number of weeks the Kremlin has destabilized the political situation in the Caucasus region by issuing ominous warnings against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The latter is preparing for the Cooperative Longbow/Lancer 2009 command-and-staff drill at a military base near the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. Nineteen NATO member and “post”-communist states are participating in the maneuver, which will involve 1,300 soldiers but feature neither light nor heavy weaponry. The drill will take place under the aegis of the Partnership for Peace program. Kazakhstan, openly communist Moldova, and Serbia, where Slobodan Milosevic’s “ex”-communist Socialist Party of Serbia holds key government posts, have withdrawn from this particular drill.

By contrast, Azerbaijan, which we have shown is still under secret communist control, is pressing ahead with its promised participation. In a development that reeks of Kremlin intrigue, a “Georgian” gunman yesterday massacred 13 students at a college in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Was this an attempt by Moscow, using its agents on the ground in the Caucasus, to dissuade Azerbaijan’s covert communist leadership from joining the NATO drill in Georgia?

On April 30 “President” Dmitry Medvedev, a lackey of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Russia’s KGB-communist dictator, once again denounced the NATO drill in the “former” Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic:

NATO’s plans to hold exercises in Georgia…are an open provocation. Exercises must not be held there where a war has been fought. The exercises could have negative consequences for those who made the decision to hold them.

We view any actions that could be considered by Tbilisi as encouragement of a course towards the country’s remilitarization and the senseless strengthening of military components as measures that run counter to the six principles of conflict settlement agreed last August.

In an exclusive interview with the Kremlin’s international propaganda platform Russia Today, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov intoned: “Now, when the situation in the Caucasus is tense, the decision looks short-sighted and not partner-like. It will hardly help restore our full-fledged relations with the alliance.”

Georgian Defense Minister David Sikharulidze retorted by saying: “The exercises will be launched next week, and they are the necessary ingredient for attaining Georgia’s major goal of getting integrated into the North Atlantic alliance.” A source at the NATO headquarters in Brussels informed Novosti that Moscow was overreacting: “The drills are not the end of the world and no one is being forced to participate.”

For its part, Georgia’s Foreign Ministry has sternly condemned Russia’s signing of border protection agreements with the “puppet regimes” in Abkhazia and South Ossetia: “Georgia sharply criticizes the so called agreements signed by the Russian Federation and the representatives of the puppet regimes of Abkhazia and South Ossetia on April 30. In reality the ‘agreements’ are another attempt by Russia to increase its military potential on Georgia’s occupied territory and legitimize the occupation.” NATO also verbally retaliated by stating that the documents are in breach of previous post-conflict agreements, such as the ceasefire brokered by French President and former European Union President Nicolas Sarkozy last August, and “not in the interests of long-term peace and security in the South Caucasus region.”

Pictured above: President Medvedev hosts South Ossetian “President” Eduard Kokoity (right) and Abkhazian “President” Sergei Bagapsh (left) at the Kremlin, on April 30. Each of these men began his career in the old Soviet regime.

Under renewable five-year agreements, or until the two regions can form their own border guard services, Russian forces will guard Abkhazia and South Ossetia’s borders with Georgia proper, including “maritime frontiers” in the case of Abkhazia. The last will no doubt entail patrols by the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet. Only Russia and neo-Sandinista Nicaragua recognize the “independence” of the regimes in Sukhumi and Tskhinvali.

The three parties also signed interdepartmental agreements on cooperation between the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB/KGB), Abkhaz State Security Service, and South Ossetian Committee of State Security. “The fact that the South Ossetia counter-intelligence service,” writes former KGB agent Konstantin Preobrazhensky (1976-1991), “headed by Russian citizens, has been named in the Soviet manner as the KGB (and not the FSB like in contemporary Russia) merits attention.” He continues:

The abbreviation “KGB” has come to be pronounced with great respect in Putin’s Russia. But this name cannot be used openly inside Russia, given the negative Soviet connotations, not least internationally. However, this does not apply to South Ossetia, where the acronym symbolizes the nostalgia for the USSR prevalent not only among the South Ossetian leadership but among the Russian officers tasked to administer the enclave.

South Ossetian “Prime Minister” Aslanbek Bulantsev served as head of the KGB/FSB Financial Department in Russia’s North Ossetia between 1986 and 2006.

Bilateral relations between NATO and the Soviets deteriorated even further this week when the Western Alliance expelled from the organization’s Brussels headquarters two Russian diplomats on charges of spying. The expulsion was connected to the Estonian spy scandal, in which the Estonian Defense Ministry’s former security chief Herman Simm handed NATO secrets to Moscow. One diplomat is the son of Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s ambassador to the European Union. Russia’s NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin responded angrily to the expulsions at a news conference in Brussels on Thursday:

We shall not yield to the attempts to throw us off balance. Russia’s reaction is still to follow. It will be absolutely cold-blooded and balanced. The provocation’s masterminds will fail to upset Russia’s determination to clear away the garbage of confrontation in relations with NATO. The spying charges are utterly groundless. The place, the timing, and the leakage of information to the media that ensued, point to a pre-planned, deliberate action.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan’s participation in the Cooperative Longbow/ Lancer drill was endangered yesterday in what appears to be a possible Moscow-orchestrated provocation. According to Novosti, Georgia’s ambassador to Azerbaijan has confirmed that a Georgian gunman was responsible for massacring students at a college in Baku earlier in the day. “Official sources have confirmed the information,” Nikoloz Natbiladze related. At least thirteen people were killed and 11 wounded when the gunman opened fire at the State Oil Academy. Azerbaijan’s Interior Ministry identified the shooter as Farda Gadyrov. Born in 1980, Gadyrov is a Georgian national but of Azerbaijani origin. After shooting indiscriminately at students and staff with a Makarov pistol, he killed himself.

Azerbaijan’s State Oil Academy is a major international center for the training of oil industry specialists. Past students include Soviet-era secret police chief Lavrenty Beria and Vagit Alekperov, president of Russia’s largest independent oil producer, LUKoil. An investigation into the incident has been launched under the supervision of President Ilham Aliyev, son of the former Soviet republic’s KGB-communist party boss Heydar, who died in 2003. The chief of Aliyev’s presidential staff, Ramiz Mehtiev, was the Communist Party of Azerbaijan’s chief ideologist during the 1980s. In February of this year the chief of Azerbaijan’s air force was also gunned down in the streets of Baku.

Notwithstanding the mayhem in Baku, Azerbaijan’s defense ministry confirmed today that its troops will take part in the controversial NATO drill in Georgia. The announcement follows a meeting on Wednesday in Brussels between Aliyev and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. President Aliyev reiterated Azerbaijan’s commitment to expanding NATO-Azerbaijan relations and the country’s active participation in the Individual Partnership Action Plan. Like Georgian president and alleged KGB asset Mikhail Saakashvili, Aliyev, who remains in contact with his masters in Moscow, is obediently stirring the pot of international tensions in the Caucasus, to NATO’s detriment.