>Buncha Commies Corner: Empire State Building managers commemorate 60th anniversary of Communist China by lighting up skyscraper in red and yellow

>Fox News reports that today the managers of the Empire State Building will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the communist takeover in China by lighting up their world-famous skyscraper in red and yellow, the colors of the People’s Republic of China. In spite of its so-called “socialist market economy,” has the Communist Party of China abandoned communism as its ultimate goal? Not according to Zhao Rongxian, the PRC’s ambassador to Cuba:

The Chinese people have chosen the path of Socialism because we believe that it is the most convenient and advisable one as it responds to the needs of the historical process of China.

Only Socialism can save and promote its development. Our goal is to build a prosperous, civilized, democratic and harmonious country. . . .

Of course, we remain loyal to the principles of Marxism-Leninism, the socialist system and the leadership of the Communist Party with the people at the center of our attention.

Frankly, if you ask me, it looks like the commies have taken over the USA. Visiting 2009, the Founding Fathers of the American Republic would barely recognize their beloved country. Time to lock, load, and pray.

BTW, Buncha Commies Corner is our new news category, and is closely related to our equally shameful Useful Idiots Bin.

>Latin America File: US military to establish 2 new bases in Panama after 10-year absence, 30 South American, African leaders converge in Venezuela

>– Libyan Strongman, Soviet Stooge Qaddafi Urges South America and Africa to Form “NATO of the South” Military Pact to Oppose West

– Heavy Communist Bloc Power Networking: Presidents of Vietnam, Cyprus, Palestine, Algeria, Zambia, and Mali Troop to Havana, Confer with Raul Castro over the Weekend

Pictured above: Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi and Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez, greet sympathizers on Margarita Island, Venezuela, on September 28, 2009. The island hosted the second summit of South America-Africa.

On the one hand, the USA’s socialist president, Barack Hussein Obama, and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, appear to be committed to fighting the Latin American drug cartels. Among other thrusts, they are maintaining military counter-narcotics operations in strife-torn Honduras and the sleepy Netherlands Antilles, greatly expanding Washington’s anti-drug pact with war-wracked Colombia, and opening two new bases in Panama. Panama’s Minister of Government and Justice, Jose Raul Mulino offered some details into the new US-Panamanian agreement:

The U.S. and Panama will sign before October 30 an agreement on the deployment of two naval bases on the Pacific coast of our country to fight international drug-trafficking. One of the bases will be located in Bahia Pina, 450 kilometers [280 miles] east of the capital, Panama City, and another one–in Punta Coca about 350 km [217 miles] west of the capital.

The US military last pulled out of Panama in 1999, under the stipulations of a 1977 treaty that ended Washington’s administration of the Canal Zone. Hutchison-Whampoa, a Red China front company, subsequently moved in to take over operation of port facilities at either end of the canal, a situation that continues to this day. Then, in December 2008, a Russian warship, fresh from joint maneuvers in the Caribbean Sea with the Venezuelan Navy, transited the canal for the first time since the Second World War.

It appeared that the Moscow-Beijing Axis was about to extend its grip over this strategically vital country, then under the center-left, pro-Cuban government of President Martin Torrijos. Earlier this year, though, US-educated supermarket magnate Ricardo Martinelli won the presidential election on a campaign pledge of reversing the region’s ten-year slide to the political left. A reported scheme by Venezuela’s communist dictator Hugo Chavez to finance the campaign of Torrijos’ anointed successor, Herrara Balbina, bombed as Panamanian voters shifted right.

On the surface, the US military’s renewed presence in Panama appears to be a positive development that should counter neo-Soviet Russia’s revitalized support for its Latin American client states. By contrast, chilly diplomatic relations with the narco-communist regimes in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia have forced US anti-drug troops and agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration to beat a hasty retreat from South America.

Busting up jungle drug labs, severing cocaine supply routes, and arresting billionaire drug lords, though, will not lead to Washington’s victory in the 40-year-old War on Drugs. The center-left and communist governments that predominate throughout Latin America are working hand in glove with the drug lords by either passively offering safe shipping routes or actively arming and financing narco-terrorist outfits like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. By extension, they are also working hand in glove with Moscow, which around 1960 launched its “red cocaine” plot for subverting the West.

On the other hand, the Obama White House’s sympathy for deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, still holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, exposes the US government’s blindness to the Soviet strategic deception in Latin America. Zelaya is a compliant lackey of the region’s Red Axis, mainly embodied by Chavez, Raul Castro, and Daniel Ortega. Last Wednesday, while speaking to reporters in New York City, the Venezuelan president offered a brief sketch of the international conspiracy that facilitated Zelaya’s return to Honduras. Chavez cockily admitted that “Zelaya and I staged a fake telephone conversation—just in case anyone [US Southern Command?] was listening—in which we discussed plans to attend the UN General Assembly meeting in New York.” In this light, the only other interpretation is that Obama and his cabinet are well aware of Moscow’s intentions for communizing the region, now well advanced and mostly unopposed.

On Sunday Zelaya, speaking by phone, contended that Honduras’ legitimate government detained representatives of the Organization of American States at Toncontin International Airport. He also asserted that the Honduran military is bombarding the Brazilian embassy with toxic gases, sonic blasts, and electromagnetic radiation to dislodge him and his 50 supporters from the facility. On the same day, the government of President Roberto Micheletti issued a 10-day ultimatum in which Brazil must hand over Zelaya or face a revocation of its diplomatic credentials. On Monday Zelaya countered by urging his supporters to “converge” on Tegucigalpa for a “final offensive.” In response to this open call for insurrection, the Micheletti government issued a state of emergency, suspending civil liberties for 45 days and giving the military the authority to close down two pro-Zelaya media outlets, Radio Globo and Cholusat Sur TV.

The political crisis in Honduras was one of several items on the agenda at the second summit of South America-Africa, an anti-USA hate/gripe fest hosted by Comrade Hugo over the weekend on Venezuela’s Margarita Island. There Libyan strongman, Soviet stooge, and unrepentant archterrorist Muammar al-Qaddafi, who lately addressed the United Nations General Assembly, urged South America and Africa to form a “NATO of the South” military pact to oppose the West. “When they had a chance to help us, they treated use like animals, destroyed our land. Now we have to fight to build our own power,” Colonel Qaddafi ranted.

The African Union (AU) and the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) have yet to formally unite along the lines dreamed by first Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin. A “NATO of the South,” however, already exists in incipient form on both continents. The AU’s Peace and Security Council and the South American Defense Council, for example, coordinate the defense policies of AU and Unasur member states. Chavez and Morales, are also urging the transformation of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas into an “anti-imperialist” (meaning anti-USA) military coalition. On July 1 Comrade Hugo clearly articulated his view that United Nations military intervention in Honduras (consisting of Latin American troops?) was a valid option:

Aggression against the delegation that goes to Honduras would open another type of door. Then, we would have to consider, for example, a military intervention by the United Nations. I am not a supporter of this measure, but I throw it out there as a hypothesis: A United Nations or OAS resolution, a political and diplomatic force with international military backup, this would have to be considered.

Other attendees at the bicontinental bash included Zimbabwe’s genocidal communist megalomaniac Robert Mugabe, Algeria’s socialist dictator Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Bolivia’s communist dictator Evo Morales, Chile’s Salvador Allende-worshipping president Michelle Bachelet, and Argentina’s Peronist president “Comrade” Cristina Kirchner. Together, they launched a new development bank for South America, Banco del Sur, with an initial capitalization of US$20 billion. Thumbing his nose at the “neo-liberal” World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Chavez recommended the formation of a “South-South bank” that would pool the financial resources of South America and Africa.

Meanwhile, Cuba’s top commie thug, President Castro, received a parade of Eurasian and African allies in Havana over the weekend, much as he did at the beginning of the year when a number of Latin American leaders left their calling cards in Communist Cuba’s capital. The latest procession of visitors included Palestine’s President Mahmoud Abbas, a KGB-trained terrorist who has never renounced his commitment to the destruction of Israel; Cyprus’ communist president Demetris Christofias, a slavish Kremlin pawn who after his election received Russian communist leader Gennady Zyuganov in Nicosia; Vietnam’s communist dictator Nguyen Minh Triet, a dependable recipient of Russian arms; Bouteflika, mentioned above; Zambian president Rupiah Bwezani Banda, a cadre of the formerly ruling United National Independence Party, founded by socialist dictator Kenneth Kaunda; and Malian president Amadou Toumani Toure, a former paratrooper who was trained in the Soviet Union and whose ruling Alliance for Democracy and Progress is infiltrated by communists.

Although Caracas has eclipsed Havana and Managua as the Western Hemisphere’s “Red Mecca,” the Cuban capital apparently has not lost its allure for Hollywood directors like Oliver Stone and starry-eyed artists like Colombian pop musician Juanes.

Finally, Guatemala’s center-left president, Alvaro Colom, is once again flying his true color (pink, but not quite red) as he took to the podium at the UNGS last week and urged the USA to end its economic blockade against Cuba. He also “expressed satisfaction,” according to the Cuban media, with Zelaya’s return to Honduras. “A change of head of state by way of rifles can’t be allowed,” the bespectacled Colom lectured, adding: “Guatemala supports the Honduran people in whatever is necessary, because it’s the Honduran people who must decide. We support the efforts of Latin America and the United Nations, the Rio Group, the Caribbean Community, and the Organization of American States to achieve the restoration of democracy in Honduras.” In exchange for Colom’s vocal support for compliant fellow Red Axis lackey Zelaya, Chavez has shipped rice and other basic grains to impoverished Guatemala.

>Communist Bloc Military Updates: Makarov: USA pretending to scrap NMD, therefore Russia will not shelve Kaliningrad missile deployment

>– Warsaw’s Defense Minister: Russian-Belarusian War Game near Polish Border “Clear Warning from the Kremlin,” “Clear Demonstration of Its Power”

– Moscow’s NATO Envoy Jabs Thumb at Zapad 2009 Drill, Warns: USA Must Recognize Russia’s “Sphere of Influence”

Pictured above: The Russian Navy’s Mordovia air cushioned landing craft holds amphibious assault drills in the Baltic Sea during Zapad 2009.

Contradicting a statement from Russia’s deputy defense minister over the prior weekend, last Monday General Nikolai Makarov, Chief of the Russian General Staff, insisted that his country will not scrap plans to deploy short-range Iskander missiles in Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave, on the Baltic Sea.

“There has been no such decision [to scrap the Kaliningrad deployment],” huffed General Makaraov, adding: “It should be a political decision. It should be made by the president [Dmitry Medvedev]. They [the Americans] have not given up the anti-missile shield; they have replaced it with a sea-based component.” The good general spoke to reporters as he accompanied Medvedev on an aircraft flying from Moscow to Zurich.

“It is highly unusual in Russia for two senior officials to contradict each other publicly on a sensitive matter of national and international importance,” editorializes Reuters. Since the US military, notwithstanding Obama’s peace overture to the Kremlin, intends to proceed with the installation of a Patriot anti-missile battery in Poland, a project separate from National Missile Defense, it appears, in reality, that both Washington and Moscow are only pretending to play the peace card.

Russia’s KGB-communist dictator Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, of course, was thrilled that the USA’s socialist, pro-Islamic president Barack Hussein Obama conceded to Moscow’s demand that the Pentagon refrain from installing interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic. The neo-Soviet leadership’s belligerent intentions are not only evident in Kaliningrad, but also along the nearby Polish-Belarusian border. This boundary constitutes part of the front between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Warsaw Pact Version 2.0, the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

On September 24 the Kremlin media reported that Sukhoi 24M tactical bombers and Tu-22M3 strategic bombers carried out mock air strikes during the second phase of the Union State of Russia and Belarus’ Zapad (“West”) 2009 war game. The drill offered Russian Air Force pilots an opportunity to train with automated target acquisition, and command and control systems. Between September 28 and 29 two representatives of the Lithuanian Armed Forces will attend this active stage of Zapad 2009. In addition to the Lithuanians, Belarus has invited observers from other “ex”-communist states such as Latvia, Poland, and Ukraine. Forty Kazakh military personnel are also participating in the drill. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Belarusian counterpart and host Alexander Lukashenko will also personally view the exercise at this time.

During the final phase of Zapad 2009 eight amphibious warfare ships from the Baltic, Black Sea, and Northern Fleets will land naval infantry units in an area near Kaliningrad’s Khmelevka base to rehearse a coastal defense operation. The landing operation will be supported by Baltic Fleet warships and aircraft and be observed by Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov.

Even though Putin and Makarov enjoyed a little-reported, cordial meeting with the chief of the Polish General Staff on September 1, Polish Defense Minister Bogdan Klich professes “concern” over the Russian-Belarusian war game near his country’s eastern border. In an interview published in Gazeta Wyborcza and picked up by Belarusian opposition media outlet Charter 97, Klich frets:

We are following them and carrying out monitoring of Zapad 2009 exercises in Belarus. Russian and Belarusian military training on such a large scale near the Polish border is a clear warning from the Kremlin. Russia’s actions are ambiguous. On the one hand, Russian politicians are calling for open dialogue with Poland and, on the other hand, Russia organizes large-scale military exercises, which are a clear demonstration of its power.

“According to the mock scenario,” states Charter 97, “NATO forces are attacking from the West, and a counterattack of the Union State must follow.” The same source concludes that “the democratic forces of Belarus are convinced that the exercise poses a threat to the independence of Belarus.”

Meanwhile, Russia’s NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin is once again banging the desk with his shoe by demanding that NATO, meaning the USA, recognize Russia’s “sphere of influence” in the world, in this case, CSTO. “It is time for the West and Russia to start discussing mutual recognition of their military alliances,” Rogozin rumbled a week ago this past Friday. He continued with more pointed remarks:

The transatlantic alliance must establish ties with our own military union, the Collective Security Treaty Organization. We want our sphere of influence recognized. NATO and CSTO must establish formal relations. We fail to understand why the USA can have a global sphere of influence, but Russia is denied even a regional sphere. NATO means the USA, because the Alliance is not the sphere of influence of Bulgaria or Romania, but of Washington.

Rogozin admitted that NATO and CSTO have “similar interests” in Afghanistan, but emphasized that Russia will not help the West contain the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in that country, particularly the (Kremlin-backed) Taliban insurgency. “We’ve already been in Afghanistan and we didn’t like it,” he stated, referring to the Soviet occupation between 1979 and 1989. “They [NATO] have a United Nations mandate in Afghanistan, let them implement it,” Rogozin snapped, concluding ominously, “We find ourselves on the threshold of important events.”

After NATO recognizes Moscow’s turf in the “post”-Soviet space, expect Moscow and Beijing to go one step further by demanding official recognition for their military alliance, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Then the other shoe will really drop in Washington.

>Red Dawn Alert: Nicaraguan National Assembly approves ”urgent request" from Ortega for small US(?), Venezuelan troop deployments

>According to a September 25 story in the Costa Rican media, “Based on a Sept. 23 ‘urgent request’ from President Daniel Ortega, the National Assembly quickly approved entrance into Nicaragua of 10 U.S. Special Forces troops and 30 Venezuelan troops, scheduled to arrive in October and November, reportedly for ‘humanitarian’ and training purposes.'” The Nicaraguan National Assembly is dominated by Ortega’s Sandinista National Liberation Front. The same source continues: “According to the congressional approval, 10 U.S. Special Forces troops, along with the USS Wasp, an amphibious assault ship, are authorized to enter Nicaragua from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31. The 30 Venezuelan troops, along with ships and Venezuelan Air Force planes, are authorized to enter the country on a rotating basis from Nov. 1, 2009 to April 10, 2010.”

Pictured above: Ortega and Nicaragua’s Sandinista army chief, General Omar Hallesleven, wave during a military parade commemorating the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Nicaraguan National Army, at the John Paul II Square in Managua, on September 12, 2009. US Marines also joined the parade.

Within the context of Communist Bloc machinations, the entrance of 10 US commandos into Nicaragua, which has historically denounced US intervention in Central America, makes sense only in that the White House is presently controlled by the communist-infiltrated Democratic Party and its titular head, socialist President Barack Hussein Obama. By contrast, the presence of 30 troops from Red Venezuela is to be expected. In fact, since the June 28 “coup” that deposed leftist President Manuel Zelaya, a compliant lackey of Raul Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Ortega, we have been sketching this very scenario, in which Latin America’s Red Axis re-installs Zelaya at the head of a multilateral invasion force.

The chair of Nicaragua’s Foreign Affairs Commission denies that Ortega’s approval of foreign troop deployments in Nicaragua is related to the political crisis in neighboring Honduras, where Zelaya returned this past Monday. Last December Ortega sanctioned the arrival of the Russian destroyer Admiral Chabanenko in Nicaraguan waters, ostensibly for “humanitarian” purposes. Nicaragua’s liberal opposition vehemently protested the Kremlin’s revived military presence in the region, even calling upon the country’s armed forces to resist the Russians.

“Am I naive? Perhaps,” commission chair Francisco Aguirre told The Nica Times in an email, adding: “But I honestly don’t think any of this has to do with Honduras. If there were any covert military actions planned against the de-facto Honduran government of Roberto Micheletti, those operations would be completely invisible. The actors have no interest in having the National Assembly give them a green light. Like mushrooms, they prefer moist, dark spaces to prosper.” Aguirre’s assessment of the intentions of President Micheletti’s domestic and international enemies, however, is no doubt based on limited information, or even disinformation. He is a member of the Nicaraguan opposition.

On September 24 the organ of the ruling Communist Party of Cuba published this statement in support of Zelaya’s “courageous” return to his homeland: “Zelaya’s presence in Tegucigalpa constitutes a gesture of courage and is based on his legitimate right as the constitutional president of Honduras.”

>Latin America File: Chavez: Loyalists in Honduran army aided Zelaya’s return; Nicaraguan army again denies rumor troops mobilizing along border

>– Hollywood Director Oliver Stone Snuggles Up to Latin America’s Neo-Communist Demagogues, Enjoys Self-Serving Photo Ops with Venezuela’s Red Dictator

– Honduras’ Constitutional Government Cuts off Electrical, Water, and Telephone Land Line Services to Brazil’s Embassy in Tegucigalpa

– Brazilian, Argentine, Chilean, and Uruguayan Presidents Demand Zelaya’s Re-installation from Podium of United Nations General Assembly

– Chavez Threatens to Shoot Down US and Colombian “Drug Planes,” Labels USA World’s Chief Narcotics Trafficker, Donates Fighter Jets to Ally Ecuador

– Pentagon-Sponsored Report: Fidel Castro Urged Soviet Union to Carry Out Nuclear Strikes against the USA in 1982

Shortly after the constitutional transfer of power that deposed President Manuel Zelaya on June 28, Venezuela’s communist dictator Hugo Chavez warned that a “patriotic current” (meaning leftist elements) in the Honduran military would shortly stage a counter-coup to restore the Latin American Red Axis’ compliant lackey. This did not come to pass but on September 23, two days after Zelaya slunk back into his homeland to take refuge in the Brazilian embassy, Chavez announced that Zelaya loyalists in the Honduran military secretly transported the deposed leader from the Nicaraguan border via aircraft, car trunk, and (amusingly) tractor.

“It was a secret operation, one of deception,” gloated Chavez. “Zelaya is the one who came up with the plan. You know that he is a cowboy . . . brave. He has courage.” According to Chavez, last Sunday, before making his way to Honduras, Zelaya flew to El Salvador where he met with a sympathetic President Mauricio Funes and the Marxist leaders of the ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN).

Chavez, who refused to provide more details of Zelaya’s journey, issued his revelations to reporters at the Lincoln Center in Manhattan, where he viewed a 75-minute Oliver Stone propaganda piece called “South of the Border,” which eulogizes Latin America’s neo-communist demagogues. Director Stone himself, a craven leftist, beamed during a self-serving photo op with President Chavez. Pictured above: Chavez and Stone are pictured above at an earlier screening of the latter’s so-called “documentary,” at the 66th Venice Film Festival on September 7.

In addition to regaling reporters and schmoozing with Stone, Comrade Hugo meandered over to the United Nations Building to attend the ongoing session of the General Assembly. There the assembled dignitaries(?) endured 90 minutes of “insane musings” from Chavez’s North African ally, Muammar al-Qaddafi (“Duck”). In August the Libyan strongman, who is also Secretary-General of the African Union, welcomed convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi back home following an early release by Scottish authorities. For his part, Chavez recently tripped to Tripoli as part of an 11-day “Axis of Evil Tour” that included a debriefing session with his KGB handler, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

During his appearance at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, Brazilian President Luis Lula da Silva justified his government’s intervention in the Honduran crisis:

Unless there is more political will, we will see more coups, like the one which toppled the constitutional president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, who has been granted refuge in Brazil’s embassy in Tegucigalpa since Monday. The international community demands that Mr. Zelaya immediately return to the presidency of his country, and must be alert to insure the inviolability of Brazil’s diplomatic mission in the capital of Honduras.

In 1990 former union organizer Lula da Silva co-founded the Sao Paulo Forum (FSP) with Cuba’s then-serving dictator Fidel Castro. Since then the narco-terrorist FSP, embodying the region’s Red Axis, has successfully installed neo-communist regimes throughout Latin America. Zelaya’s ouster represents a “hiccough” in their schemes.

On Wednesday President Lula da Silva’s government also requested that the UN Security Council (UNSG) meet to “discuss the safety and security of Mr. Zelaya and Brazilian facilities in Honduras.” The constitutional government of Honduras has cut off electrical, water, and telephone land line services to Brazil’s embassy in Tegucigalpa. The UNSG’s rotating presidency is currently held by the USA’s leftist president, Barack Hussein Obama, who has not concealed his support for Zelaya.

During her UN appearance, Argentina’s embattled Peronist president Cristina Kirchner also took a swipe against the lawful government of Honduran President Roberto Micheletti. “Not even in Chile under the dictatorship of General Pinochet, nor in Argentina under the dictatorship of General Videla,” Comrade Cristina ranted, “perhaps the most cruel dictatorships in Latin America—even then, we didn’t see similar conduct with embassies that were actively working to give shelter to refugees. If multi-lateral political action fails to return democracy to Honduras, it will set a very serious precedent.” In Kirchner’s last statement, in our opinion, resides the germination for a pan-Latin American military coalition to forcibly reinstate Zelaya.

Chile’s East German-educated, Salvador Allende-worshipping president Michelle Bachelet and Ururguay’s center-left president Tabare Vazquez also took to the podium at the UNGS session to demand Zelaya’s restoration. Bachelet is also president pro tempore of the new Union of South American Nations, which fulfils Vladimir Lenin’s scheme for communizing that part of the world.

Along the same theme, on September 23 Nicaragua’s ambassador to Venezuela, Ramon Leets, articulated the official position of the Sandinista National Liberation Front regime in Managua. “We are doing everything possible worldwide at a diplomatic level to restore the constitutional order in Honduras,” Leets told Cuba’s Prensa Latina, adding: “The coup is Honduras is not only against the constitutional president Manuel Zelaya, but against all ALBA [Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas] member countries. We will always be willing to support Honduras or any other Latin American nation that goes through the same situation.” Zelaya led Honduras into ALBA last year. The ideological core of ALBA is the Havana-Caracas-Managua Axis. Not so coincidentally, the president of the UN General Assembly is Sandinista cadre and Catholic priest Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann. Father D’Escoto was Nicaragua’s foreign minister during the first FSLN regime in the 1980s.

As Hollywood director Stone’s colleagues throughout Latin America urge the constitutional government of Honduras to re-install Zelaya, the Nicaraguan military is once again deflecting rumors that it has mobilized troops along its neighbor’s southern border. General Omar Hallesleven, another Sandinista, declared:

We have been clear and precise: The Army of Nicaragua has not mobilized a man or small unit to the border with Honduras, even to meet domestic affairs, much less for something related to our brother country. The problems in our neighbor country must be solved only by Hondurans.

We have undertaken to raise the level of combat readiness, even though we have different levels and what exists is normal. We have maintained from the outset of the [Honduran] crisis the same positions and the same number of men in each position.

Nicaraguan units only have the instructions to maintain safety and security of our border.

Today, after the return of President Jose Manuel Zelaya, there is no communication with the Honduran military. I believe that the Honduran military are busy and have much work there.

During the week after Zelaya’s exile President Micheletti asserted that Venezuela and Nicaragua were preparing to invade his country. Although Nicaragua’s past/present Sandinista dictator Daniel Ortega, who allowed Zelaya to hole up in Managua since his ouster, assured “brother” Hondurans that this was not the case, Chavez was his typical blunt self: Venezuela would not hesitate to use military force to both protect its diplomats in Tegucigalpa and also restore Zelaya to his office. Thus we see, once again, Nicaragua’s top general is denying any connection between events in Honduras and rumored troop movements in his own country.

Drawing together the disparate threads of this story, it appears that Zelaya decamped from the Honduran embassy in Managua, still under the control of the deposed president’s partisans, this past Sunday with Ortega’s full knowledge. Zelaya then made a brief detour to San Salvador to consult with that country’s supportive FMLN regime. Since Funes, who attended the UNGS session in New York, denied that his government facilitated Zelaya’s journey, the deposed president evidently returned to Nicaragua the same day.

Meanwhile, Ortega probably issued an order to General Hallesleven to secure the Honduran-Nicaraguan border for the purpose of aiding Zelaya’s trek across the mountainous frontier. From this order emerged rumors of troop movements by the Sandinista Popular Army/Nicaraguan National Army. Finally, if Chavez’s version of events is trustworthy, then Zelaya, no doubt nursing bruises from his bumpy ride in a car trunk, arrived in Tegucigalpa on Monday, sought shelter in a United Nations facility (surprise!), and then scuttled over to the Brazilian embassy, where he touched base with sympathetic President Lula da Silva via cell phone.

Not content with bullying errant Red Axis member Honduras, Latin America’s leftist leaders are also confronting anti-communist hold-out Colombia. On September 22 the Chinese state media reported that Chavez plans to donate a fleet of combat aircraft to Ecuadorean ally, President Rafael Correa. Citing Ecuadorean military sources, TV Ecuavisa stated that the Chavezista regime would like to unload a number of 1970s-era French-built Mirage 50 planes, a type of aircraft already in service with the Ecuadorean Air Force. Xinhua notes that at this time “Ecuador is strengthening its military equipment for territorial defense, mainly at the border with Colombia.” The Venezuelan Air Force can probably afford to dump these old fighter jets in view of its own recent acquisitions of more technologically advanced Russian planes.

Colombia’s eastern and southern borders with Venezuela and Ecuador have been particularly tense since the March 2008 Andean Crisis, when Colombian troops raided a jungle camp maintained by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on Ecuadorean soil. Chavez and his “mini me” Correa responded by dispatching troops and tanks to their respective border with Colombia. They also denounced the assassination of FARC commander Raul Reyes who, until his laptop computer was analyzed by Interpol, enjoyed a secret flow of money, guns, and shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles from Chavez. Venezuela restored relations with Colombia after the fracas but earlier this year once again withdrew its ambassador. To this day, neither Caracas nor Quito has diplomatic relations with Bogota, even though all three countries are members of the new, European Union-style confederacy known as the Union of South American Nations (Unasur). Ecuador currently holds Unasur’s rotating presidency.

Two weeks ago Unasur foreign ministers reviewed Colombia’s new counter-narcotics pact with the USA. This expansion of Plan Colombia will permit Washington to deploy its troops on Colombian military bases. The Colombian government is threatening to withdraw from Unasur if the organization does not express “sensitivity” to its domestic issues, like the FARC insurgency. The region’s Red Axis leaders, like Chavez and Ortega, have launched tirades against the US-Colombian alliance. Chavez, in particular, has articulated the belief that the USA intends to use Colombia as a springboard to dislodge his regime, which isn’t such a bad idea since Venezuela’s La Orchila Island may shortly become a base for Russian strategic bombers.

The Chavezista regime plays a documented role in the Kremlin’s narco-subversion plot against the USA, facilitating the transfer of FARC cocaine from South America through Central America and Mexico to the US border. On September 15 the US government named Venezuela as one of three countries that “fails to meet international obligations to fight the drug trade.” Not surprisingly, big fat hypocrite Chavez was quick to fling the accusation back in Washington’s teeth. According to the Voice of America, he declared: “We our doing everything we can to combat drugs. The US is the number one country responsible for drug production and trafficking.” The Hate America Left, which since at least the 1980s has regularly spun tales of CIA (rather than FSB/KGB) complicity in the international drug trade, could not agree more. In what amounts to a declaration of war, Chavez threatened to shoot down US and Colombian aircraft suspected of transporting narcotics.

The above are significant developments that reveal a concerted intent by the Latin American Red Axis to militarily surround Colombia and politically isolate the pro-Washington government of President Alvaro Uribe in Bogota.

Finally, as Unasur and ALBA press the USA to end its economic embargo against Cuba, it turns out that in 1982 retired dictator Fidel urged the Soviet Union to carry out nuclear strikes against the USA, that is, until the Kremlin explained how the resultant radioactive fallout would also devastate the communist island. This revelation is attributed to Andrian Danilevich, a Soviet general staff officer between 1964 and 1990, and was published in a 1995 Pentagon-sponsored study. A redacted copy of the report, says the New York Times, was released this year.

>Middle East File: Israeli Air Force, US Navy to hold "largest drill ever"; simulate missile attacks from Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas

>Pictured here: A US soldier from V Corps’ Alpha Battery, 5th Battalion, 7th Air Defense Artillery, positions a Patriot missile launcher in Tel Yona, Israel, as part of field training supporting exercise Juniper Cobra 05. The biannual exercise comes at a time of heightened tensions between Israel and Iran.

The long-expected attempt by Israel and the USA to militarily neutralize Iran’s nuclear capacity appears to be looming on the horizon. On September 20 the Israeli media reported that the “largest drill ever” to take place between these two allies has been scheduled for the coming days. YnetNews.com reveals:

The report says the drill will simulate missile attacks on Israel from Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas, and will test the Israeli Air Force as well as the US Navy.

The IDF stated in response to the report that the drill, codenamed ‘Juniper Cobra,’ was routine. No other details were given.

“The US and Israel conduct drills together on Israeli land now and then,” the IDF Spokesperson’s Office stated. “The drills are preplanned and constitute part of the annual training plan for the air forces and mutual understanding between the sides.”

The statement added that the drill does not simulate any specific occurrence in the region.

“Like any joint drill, ‘Juniper Cobra’ reflects the US and Israel’s commitment to regional stability and security,” it said.

‘Hefty price on the political front’

The report in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, which is based on Israeli sources, said maneuvers in the drill will be conducted mostly by the IAF and the US Navy. IDF officials told Ynet that a few hundred US combat soldiers are also expected, and will conduct drills on the ground along with Israeli forces.

The report adds that a number of American ships have arrived in Haifa’s port, and that the crew on one of the vessels has already begun to prepare for its maneuver.

The drill will also make use of missile defense systems, including the American ‘Patriot’ system and the Israeli ‘Arrow 2’, the report said.

The paper quotes an Israeli official as saying that Israel will attempt to avail the US of some of the weaponry it plans to use in the drill for use in its own defense.

Al-Sharq Al-Awsat stressed the bolstering of ties between the US and Israel, and quoted Israeli sources as saying that these ties may come with a price. One official said US President Barack Obama was “guarding Israel” in exchange for political concessions later on.

“The cooperation on the defense front will have a hefty price on the political front,” the source was quoted as saying.

In view of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s secret trip to Moscow on September 7 and the Arctic Sea mystery–in which it is hypothesized that Russia was covertly delivering S-300 air defense systems to Iran–the above scenario is likely. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has denied that the Arctic Sea freighter was carrying a clandestine shipment of missile interceptors to Iran.

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>Latin America File: Zelaya returns secretly to Honduras, holes up in Brazilian embassy; Micheletti calls on Brazil to hand over deposed president

>– Ortega Receives Russia’s Deputy Interior Minister, Nicaraguan National Police to Train in Russia

– “Back in the USSR” General Ovchinnikov Resuscitates Soviet-Era “Self-Defense Squads” and “People’s Guards”

– Time ‘Fesses Up 18 Years after the Bogus Collapse of Communism: Ortega Still a Marxist, Albeit “Erstwhile”

– “Talk like a Communist, Walk like a Democrat”: Latin America’s Red Axis Leaders Sovietize the Region and Muzzle the Media

Yesterday deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, a close ally of Latin America’s Red Axis leaders, especially Raul Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Daniel Ortega, returned secretly to his homeland. Ousted by his own ruling party on June 28, Zelaya made the Honduran embassy in Managua, which is under the control of his partisans, a base of operations to plot his return. After hiding out briefly in a United Nations facility in Tegucigalpa, Zelaya and his retinue scurried to the Brazilian embassy, which was promptly besieged by his supporters defying a government curfew. In addition to the curfew, Honduran authorities shut down the capital’s airport and set up roadblocks on highways leading to the city.

Pictured above: Zelaya speaks by cellphone with Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, on September 22, 2009.

Security forces dispersed the mob, which included labor leader and Zelaya ally Juan Barahona, as the country’s lawfully installed president Roberto Micheletti urged Brazil to hand over Zelaya. “I call on the Brazilian government to respect the judicial order handed down against Mr. Zelaya and deliver him to the competent authorities of Honduras,” demanded Micheletti in remarks broadcast over radio and television. Brazil’s Foreign Minister Celso Amorim countered by saying that: “Any threat against Mr. Zelaya or the Brazilian embassy would be a grave breach of international law.”

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Costa Rican President Oscar Arias took advantage of the surprise development to press for Zelaya’s immediate re-installation. “Now that President Zelaya is back,” intoned Clinton, “it would be opportune to restore him to his position under appropriate circumstances, get on with the election that is currently scheduled for November, have a peaceful transition of presidential authority and get Honduras back to constitutional and democratic order.” Micheletti has promised to step down after the November 28 presidential election.

For his part, Chavez, speaking from Caracas, gloated over the return of his puppet to Tegucigalpa by declaring: “Viva Zelaya! And viva Honduras!” On Monday the Organization of American States summoned an emergency session to grapple with this new “twist” in the Honduran crisis.

Thus we see the leftist governments of the USA and Brazil aiding and abetting the communist-controlled United Nations and Latin America’s Red Axis in reinstating Chavez’s lackey against the wishes of the majority of the Honduran people, nearly all of the deputies in the Honduran Congress, all of the judges on the Honduran Supreme Court, and the country’s military leadership.

Meanwhile, as Russia pledges to modernize the Cuban, Venezuelan, and Nicaraguan militaries, hold more joint exercises with these communist states, train the personnel of their armed forces, and form joint business enterprises with their governments, on September 8 Nicaragua’s past/present dictator Daniel Ortega–who provided safe haven for Zelaya–received Russia’s deputy interior minister, General Nikolai Ovchinnikov. Accompanying Comandante Ortega was Carlos Najar, Nicaragua’s vice minister of the interior, and Aminta Granera Sacasa, chief of the Nicaraguan National Police (NNP). The purpose of the meeting was to arrange for the training of NNP officers in Russia.

Not surprisingly, General Ovchinnikov backs the resuscitation of Soviet-era civilian militias in his homeland, which he also describes as “self-defense squads.” In March 2009 he defined the squads as “the organization of community activity, based on a local approach, in order to handle problems of protecting the public order in the community, in the residence, or where there is personal property.” Last spring, the Russian Ministry of the Interior endorsed draft legislation that would not only create these “self-defense squads” but also “people’s guards,” which would have additional powers to “safeguard” public events. Thus, we see the Putinist regime restoring the old Soviet system lock, stock, and barrel, with barely a peep from the Obama White House, which has similar plans to organize a “national civilian security force” for the USA.

One is forced to ask therefore: Will the Nicaraguan police force’s Soviet trainers accompany their students back to the streets of Managua for follow-up coaching? We would not be surprised if this should be the case.

In a related story, on September 12, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Sandinista Popular Army/Nicaraguan National Army, military delegations from 12 countries were slated to march with Nicaraguan troops through Managua. The military parade was to include representatives from Russia, core states in Latin America’s Red Axis—namely, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador—as well as other countries.

“Talk like a communist, walk like a democrat. That has been the paradoxical strategy pursued by Latin America’s new radical left,” reports Time in a September 22 expose of the region’s Red Axis and its leaders’ persecution of dissenters. Self-avowed communists like Chavez and Bolivian toady Evo Morales are not the only ones guilty of hounding the opposition. “Moderate” center-leftists like Argentine President Cristina Kirchner are equally culpable.

For example, the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela recently revoked the broadcast licenses of 32 private radio stations and two television stations. In Bolivia, press freedom still exists, according to the Miami-based Inter American Press Association (IAPA), but opposition media face an increasingly “dangerous climate” from President Morales.

In Ecuador, the constituent assembly, which is dominated by President Rafael Correa’s socialist Proud and Sovereign Fatherland Alliance, is debating a bill that would award the government more control over private media content. On September 18 Correa shut down the TV network Teleamazonas, which he insists was conspiring to overthrow him.

In Nicaragua Ortega is urging legislators to pass a bill that would require all private media to employ only reporters affiliated with the Nicaraguan Journalists’ Association. Not so coincidentally, this obscure professional association is controlled by the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front. Under those circumstances, independent journalism in Nicaragua would be considered illegal and subject to criminal punishment. To its credit, this Time article calls the repackaged Ortega an “erstwhile Marxist,” a refreshing moment of candor for the MSM, 18 years after the “collapse” of Soviet communism.

Incidentally, the Correa regime recently sponsored the organization of neighborhood “revolutionary defense committees,” which opponents rightly brand “Cuban-style organs for spying on citizens.” In similar fashion, Chavez has organized local-level “socialist battalions” and “socialist workers’ committees,” while in Nicaragua Ortega and his politically powerful wife Rosario Murillo have formed Councils of Citizens’ Power, which replicate the functions of the Sandinista Defense Committees of the 1980s. Comandante Ortega is also trying to ram through a bill that would abolish presidential term limits, a putsch successfully implemented by Chavez, Morales, and Correa in their respective countries, but unsuccessfully by Zelaya.

Further south, in Argentina, Kirchner, whose Justicialist Party traces its origin to semi-fascist dictator Juan Peron, is about to secure a measure that will severely reduce the number of licenses for privately owned media, while increasing the number of state-owned broadcasters. “Comrade Cristina” is targeting the Clarín media conglomerate, whose directors she calls “multimedia generals,” to sell off chunks of their media assets to the government. The bill is likely to win final passage next week in the Argentine Congress, where the Peronists recently lost their electoral majority.

Robert Rivard, editor of the San Antonio Express-News and chair of the IAPA committee on freedom of expression, summarizes the bleak situation for press freedom in Latin America: “President Chávez and his bloc of allies all want to consolidate power, neutralize any opposition and remain in office beyond their elected terms. They probably can’t gain the kind of grip on their respective countries without passing laws to legitimize their moves and limit independent media.” The IAPA held an emergency forum in Caracas over the weekend.

During the Cold War Latin America’s leftist guerrillas denounced the suppression of media freedom by the ruling US-backed military juntas. Two decades later, after discarding their machine guns, donning dress jackets, and securing power by the ballot box, the region’s “ex”-guerrillas are now doing the same thing. What a surprise.

>Latin America File: Chavez’s “Axis of Evil Tour” solidifies Communist Bloc linkages; Turkmen dictator urged to join Moscow-backed “natural gas OPEC"

>South America’s globe-trotting red tyrant recently wrapped up his ambitious 11-day Axis of Evil tour. The usual groupies materialized as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez rubbed elbows with Communist Bloc leaders in Africa, Asia, and Europe, and then presented a report to his KGB handler in Moscow, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. We have already blogged about Chavez’s annual pilgrimage to Moscow, so let’s review his other pitstops.

Comrade Hugo’s first appearance was in Tripoli, where he arrived on August 31 to be feted by long-time Soviet stooge Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi. Chavez then addressed a meeting of the African Union (AU) on the subject of the upcoming African-South American Summit, a USA-bashing hate-fest to be held in Caracas at the end of September. He was also slated to attend a military parade held in honor of the 40th anniversary of Libya’s socialist revolution and the 10th anniversary of the formation of the AU. Qaddafi is presently secretary-general of this body.

Venezuela’s top commie thug then ambled to Algiers, where he huddled with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, whose National Liberation Front has ruled Algeria, with some disruption by Islamic militants in the 1990s, since 1962, when left-leaning nationalists threw off the ”yoke” of French colonialism. Algeria and Venezuelan are both members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). According to eTaiwan News, the purpose of Hugo’s Axis of Evil tour was to “counter US influence around the globe.”

The third appearance in Chavez’s grand tour of the Communist Bloc was Syria, where he schemed with counterpart Bashar al-Assad in Damascus (pictured above on September 3). Syria’s ruling Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party and the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela are united in their hatred of Israel and support for the Palestinian terrorist governments in Ramallah and Gaza. Chavez previously visited Damascus in 2006 but, sadly, unlike Saul of Tarsus, he has never had a “Damascus road experience.” He’s still a dangerous red revolutionary with too many petrodollars to throw around.

From Damascus, Comrade Hugo thundered toward Tehran, where he embraced fellow anti-Jewish dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and swore to the world that Iran is in no way interested in building a nuclear bomb. Instead, Chavez urged Iran’s maniacal Islamo-Nazi clerics to form a “nuclear village” of peaceful civilian power plants with Venezuela. Lifting lines from the tedious proletarian script penned by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Comrade Mahmoud concurred with Chavez by stressing the importance of supporting “revolutionary nations” and forming “anti-imperialist fronts.”

From Tehran, Chavez whirled like a dervish to the “former” Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, where he met with President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov. There he urged the “ex”-Soviet apparatchik who rules Turkmenistan in a single-party dictatorship to shorten his name for the sake of the pronunciation challenged. Seriously, folks, Chavez urged the Turkmen dictator to join a new natural gas cartel modeled on OPEC. Turkmenistan has the world’s fourth-largest natural gas reserves, Venezuela has Latin America’s largest such reserves, while together Russia and Iran possess 40 percent of the world’s such reserves. Venezuela and Iran are leading calls to transform the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which includes Russia, into a full-fledged cartel with a permanent secretariat.

From Turkmenistan, Chavez meandered to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, where in true Leninist fashion he proposed the creation of a global “lite version” of the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” “We should create a new alliance of republics. It will not be a union of Soviet or socialist republics, those will be independent republics with their own systems united in an alliance,” he trumpeted. Comrade Hugo is best of buddies with Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, an unreconstructed communist who sports a Hitler-style mustache. The “former” Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and Venezuela have established numerous joint oil producing and construction ventures that have permitted the Belarusian government to open offices in Caracas. Chavez previously visited Belarus in 2006, 2007, and 2008, while Lukashenko returned the favor by popping up in Caracas in December 2007.

From Minsk, Comrade Hugo marched to Moscow and then on to his final photo op in Madrid. There he patched up a tense relationship with King Juan Carlos II, who at an Ibero-American summit in Chile in 2007 told Venezuela’s communist dictator to “shut up.” (Good suggestion, Juan!) Chavez also talked energy with Spain’s socialist prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who was taken to task for “receiving a dictator.” In response, Spain’s deputy PM huffed: “Spain has political relations with all Ibero-American countries, including Venezuela.”

Last week Colombia rejected a Spanish offer to mediate Bogota’s diplomatic flap with Caracas, which withdrew its ambassador to Colombia for a second time since the March 2008 Andean Crisis. Colombia also dismissed Chavez’s personal exhortation to President Alvaro Uribe to make peace with the insurgent Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which enjoys the Chavezista regime’s covert financial and weapons support. Incidentally, NATO member Spain is not part of the Axis of Evil, but a few more years of leftist misgovernment in Madrid might permit Spain to qualify for that “honor.”

>USA File: Obama’s strategic surrender in Europe: President scraps missile defense plans; informs “ex”-red PM Fischer in Prague, Tusk in Warsaw

>Pictured here: On September 9 Belarusian riot police arrest oppositionists protesting against the importation of 6,000 Russian troops for the Union State’s Zapad 2009 exercise.

In a move that should surprise no observer of leftist US President Barack Hussein Obama, the White House has scrapped its missile defense deals with Poland and the Czech Republic. Yesterday and today Obama personally telephoned Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer, an “ex”-communist running the country’s caretaker government, and Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk, a putative center-rightist who migrated through parties that ultimately trace their origins to the communist-dominated trade union Solidarity. In his predictive expose of Soviet strategy, New Lies for Old (1984), KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn contends that Solidarity contained one million active communist party members (pages 331-332).

Fischer related the substance of Obama’s remarks to reporters: “The US government is pulling out of plans to build a missile defense radar on Czech territory. However, Obama assured me that the strategic cooperation between the Czech Republic and the US will continue. Washington considers our country among its closet allies.” Fischer then offered an improbable explanation for the White House’s change of heart: “After a review of the missile defense system, the US now considers the threat of an attack using short- and mid-range missiles greater than one using long-range rockets. That’s what the Americans assessed as the most serious threat and Obama’s decision was based on that.” Uh, will the Iranians be launching those short- and mid-ranged missiles at Manhattan from, Russian-manned, Maltese-flagged freighters laden with Finnish lumber and sailing with doctored manifests? For his part, Tusk stated: “The proposal of an alternative strategy [for National Missile Defense] should not affect the security of Poland or of Europe.”

Peace activists in Europe were ecstatic about Obama’s capitulation to the Leninist masterminds in Moscow. “It is a big victory for the Czech Republic,” gushed Czech peacenik Jan Tamas, adding “We are happy that we will be able to continue to live in our beautiful country without the presence of foreign soldiers.” Indeed but for how long? Will Tamas and his simple-minded friends sing the same tune when 150,000 Soviet troops, drilling in Belarus for another thrust into Central Europe, surge into his country as they did in 1968? I think not.

In Brussels NATO’s new secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen fell over himself in praise of the olive branch that Obama extended to the Soviets: “It is my clear impression that the American plan on missile defense will involve NATO . . . to a higher degree in the future. This is a positive step in the direction of an inclusive and transparent process, which I also think is in the interest of . . . the NATO alliance.” The Soviet strategists could not agree more. On September 24 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will hold a one-on-one meeting with Rasmussen during the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. “Clearly, Moscow is studying with great interest all recent statements by Rasmussen,” remarked Russia’s NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin. The Kremlin was quick to ratify Obama’s capitulation by pledging not to station short-range missiles in Kaliningrad, which is probably a ruse since the Soviets have probably never removed their arsenal from the Baltic exclave.

This story, though, has a twist, albeit emanating from Washington. According to Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski the US military will still proceed with plans to deploy 100 Patriot anti-missile missiles between now and 2011, at which point a permanent battery will be placed in the Central European country. Reuters editorializes: “For Poland, the Patriot battery is an important symbol of the US commitment to its defense at a time when Russia, its communist-era overlord, is becoming more assertive and in foreign and security policy.”

Not so coincidentally, the first, five-day phase of the Union State of Russia and Belarus’ Zapad (“West”) 2009 war game began on Friday at the Abuz-Lyasnowski training ground near Brest. The official Belarusian media announced that the maneuver would repel “possible military aggression” against the Union State. Some 12,600 servicemen are participating in the drill, including 6,500 Belarusian troops, 6,000 Russian troops and, with a tip of the hat to new/old Soviet linkages, 30 Kazakh troops. The maneuver will include 220 tanks, 470 armored personnel carriers, 230 self-propelled and truck-drawn artillery guns, mortars, and multiple rocket launchers, as well as 60 warplanes and 40 helicopters.

Participating military units from Russia include officers serving with the Joint Command of the Russian-Belarusian Regional Group of Forces, 20th Army of the Moscow Military District, the Russian Air Force, the Military Transport Aviation Command, and the 98th Paratroops Division. Belarusian units include the staff of the Interior, Emergency Management, Health, and Transportation Ministries, as well as the State Border Committee and the State Security Committee, which is the Belarusian KGB.

The second phase of Zapad 2009 will test the effectiveness of the Union State’s integrated air defense command. Belarusian S-300 air defense units will hold live-fire exercises at the Ashuluk and Telemba training grounds in Russia.

A separate exercise, coordinated by the Russian General Staff, will take place at the Barysaw training grounds, near Minsk, on September 27 and 28.

If the Soviets are really planning to re-invade Central Europe, then Moscow and Minsk especially will be most anxious to allay the concerns and secure the fidelity of the “ex”-communists who rule throughout most of the “former” Soviet republics and the East Bloc. The hush-hush September 1 meeting between Russia and Poland’s top generals and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin may be one such example. Another could be Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s trip to neighboring Lithuania, a rare journey for “Europe’s last dictator” to a European Union state but one which, like Belarus, is a “former” Soviet republic.

In Vilnius Lukashenko was met with protests before conferring with the country’s new president, Dalia Grybauskaite, who was elected in July. Officially nonpartisan but endorsed by the Lithuanian Conservative Party, Grybauskaite was born in 1956 to a working class family in Vilnius. Lithuania’s “Iron Lady” managed to gain admission to Leningrad State University, where Putin was recruited into the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and then taught agricultural economics at the CPSU’s party college until 1990. After their meeting, Lukashenko insisted that he and Grybauskaite agreed on all issues that were discussed. Economic integration was certainly on the agenda. Were Soviet re-expansionism and Zapad 2009 two other issues? We can only speculate.

Soviets and Red Chinese Hold First-Ever Combined Naval Drill in Gulf of Aden under Pretense of “Anti-Piracy” Operation

The Kremlin is also flexing its muscles near the Horn of Africa. After four years of joint army and air force drills—a prospect never seriously considered by NATO “strategists” during the phony “Sino-Soviet split” of the Cold War—the Soviets and Red Chinese are now cooperating on the high seas. Under the title Blue Peace Shield 2009 warships of the Russian Navy and People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) are jointly patrolling the pirate-infested waters off Somalia as part of a larger United Nations-sanctioned flotilla. Under cover of “anti-piracy” operations, the combined maneuvers began on September 10 and consisted of helicopter patrols, resupply efforts, and live firing of deck guns.

“The exercise will help our navy further develop its ability to coordinate a range of activities with foreign militaries far out at sea,” explained Wen Xinchao, deputy commander of the PLAN task force, adding: “Cooperation with the Russian Navy marks a further step toward greater openness by the People’s Liberation Army Navy.” The PLAN first deployed warships to the Gulf of Aden in December 2008, while Russia sent its first task force in October of that year.

India Mobilizes Troops in Response to Beijing’s Unprecedented Two-Month-Long Kuayue 2009 Drill; Prime Minister Singh Admits Government Losing War against Maoist Rebels

Although Moscow and Beijing are endeavoring to woo India into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, where New Delhi holds observer status, the communist masterminds in Beijing are still holding the military card close to their chest. Along its hotly disputed northwestern and northeastern borders with the People’s Republic of China, India has mobilized about one half of its troops to forward posts under Operation Alert. “About 50% troops on the Line of Actual Control have been mobilized to their forward posts. The mobilization would last for nearly a month,” a senior Indian Army official explained.

The Indian deployment comes in response to the People’s Liberation Army’s recent Kuayue 2009 drill, which mobilized an unprecedented 50,000 soldiers across the country, putatively for the purpose of reinforcing Beijing’s grip over Tibet. According to The Times of India, the Red Chinese exercise “sent alarm bells ringing in India.” In past months PLA troops have intruded into Indian territory in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir, prompting anxiety about Beijing’s aggressive designs.

Both India and Red China, the world’s two most populous countries, possess nuclear weapons. In May of this year the social democratic Indian National Congress won the last parliamentary election, increasing its mandate so as to no longer require support from the country’s communist parties. Undaunted, a Maoist insurgency, backed by the red regimes in Beijing and Kathmandu, rages across one third of India’s states and threatens to topple neighboring Bhutan’s Dragon King. This past week Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh admitted at a meeting of state police chiefs that the government is losing the war against the communist rebels:

I have consistently held that in many ways, left-wing extremism poses perhaps the gravest internal security threat our country faces. We have discussed this in the last five years and I would like to state frankly that we have not achieved as much success as we would have liked in containing this menace.

>Red Dawn Alert: Cuba bumps Bastion 2008 drill to end of 2009, Russian Navy to arrive same time; Castro indefinitely postpones Communist Party congress

>– Chief of Russia’s General Staff Pledges to Modernize Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, Havana’s Request to Train Cuban Soldiers to Be “Fully Satisfied”

– Moscow’s Latest High-Ranking Delegation to Havana Includes Chief of Military Intelligence (GRU); Soviets’ Lourdes SIGINT Base Closed Down Weeks after 911 Terrorist Attacks

On July 31 Cuba’s communist dictator Raul Castro announced that the first party congress in 12 years had been indefinitely postponed, pending a re-evaluation of the island’s economy, which has been hit hard by the global recession (and hamstrung by decades of socialist market controls). The overall tone of Castro’s remarks was ominous, to say the least:

Given the law of life it will most probably be the last [congress] headed by the historical leadership of the Revolution.

The things that we have been discussing are very serious matters. The principle issue is the economy, what we have done and what needs to be improved or even eliminated because we are confronting the imperative of working out what the country really has at its disposal, how much we really have to live on and develop. The first thing we have to do is finish preparing the [Communist] Party, and then discuss everything with the people as a whole, and only then should we convene the Congress, when that whole process has concluded. If we want to have a real congress, one that is seeking solutions to problems and looking to the future, that is the way we have to do it. It has to be the people, with their party in the vanguard, who decide.

The Central Committee has thereby agreed to postpone the party congress until this crucial stage of prior preparation has been completed.

Note: Previous and subsequent links to Post Zambia must be accessed via Google.

By “historical leadership of the Revolution,” Comrade Raul is probably referring to himself, older brother Fidel, who is still titular head of the Communist Party of Cuba (CPC), and “Hero of the Revolution” Juan Almeida Bosque, who was later buried with full revolutionary honors on September 15. On January 1, 1959 Comandante Almeida accompanied the Castro Bros. into the city of Santiago de Cuba, which had fallen to the communist insurgents seeking the ouster of General Fulgencio Batista who, ironically, was once backed by the old Communist Party of Cuba.

Among other issues, this past July the CPC Central Committee (CC) addressed the functioning of the party, national defense, and the “immediate measures” needed to alleviate the impact on Cuba of the global recession. The Central Committee was also apprised of the extended meeting of the National Defense Council that took place several days after the Honduran coup of June 28. At the time Cuba’s defense establishment assessed actions taken between 2003 and 2008 to “increase” the island’s defense capacity, “in line” with decisions adopted by the CPC’s extraordinary plenum of July 15, 2003 to resist “US aggression.” Castro elaborated on the Cuban defense strategy, which has for nearly 50 years played up fears of a US invasion:

For 30 years the war of the people strategy adopted by Cuba to face US-led aggression had succeeded. Since the disappearance of the Soviet Union the country has acquired very few armaments. Efforts are therefore directed at upgrading existing ones, thanks to the efforts of scientists, specialists and workers from both the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the economic sector. We must continue to strengthen the nation’s defense, taking into account its real economic possibilities.

Second, Castro revealed that the CPC CC endorsed all of the conclusions reached by the National Defense Council, which rescheduled last year’s planned Bastion strategic exercise: “Therefore, in continuity with the work undertaken, the Bastion 2009 Strategic Exercise is to take place at the end of this year. The current plan is to carry out the activity every four years. Thus, while it was initially planned for November 2008, it was decided after the hurricanes to postpone the exercise and concentrate on recovery tasks.” A similarly named exercise that mobilized the island’s entire populace occurred in 2004 and, before that, as far back as 1986, during the Cold War.

In addition to this past summer’s meetings of the National Defense Council and the CPC CC, additional factors may have encouraged Cuba’s communist leaders to move ahead with the Bastion drill. For example, in May Russian State Duma deputy Sergei Abeltsev publicly suggested that the Russian and Cuban militaries should replicate last year’s Soviet-Venezuelan naval and air force drills by holding a similar exercise in the Caribbean Sea. Later, in July Moscow extended a US$150 million loan to Havana, putatively for the purchase of construction and agricultural equipment.

By the way, following the murder of exiled FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko in November 2006, Abeltsev growled: “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.”

Later still, on September 17 General Nikolai Makarov, Chief of the Russian General Staff, completed an under-reported three-day working trip to Havana, which involved inspecting “numerous” military installations, according to Russia’s ambassador in Cuba. By week’s end details of the general’s personal discussions with President Castro (pictured above), Castro’s defense minister Julio Casas Regueiro, and Alvaro Lopez Miera, Chief of the General Staff of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, were published in official media. Accompanying General Makarov in the Russian delegation were Moscow’s ambassador to Havana, Mikhail Kamynin; Lieutenant General Alexander Shlyakhturov, chief of Russian military intelligence (GRU); Major General Vyacheslav Proshkin, head of the Russian General Staff’s International Military Cooperation Department; and Colonel Vladimir Androsov, Russia’s air, naval, and military attaché in Cuba.

“Modernization of the Soviet-made military equipment and training of Cuban military personnel will be the focus of Russian-Cuban military cooperation in the near future,” Makarov declared, adding:

During the Soviet era we delivered a large number of military equipment to Cuba, and after all these years most of this weaponry has become obsolete and needs repairs. We inspected the condition of this equipment, and outlined the measures to be taken to maintain the defense capability of this country…I think a lot of work needs to be done in this respect, and I hope we will be able to accomplish this task.

Cuba’s request for assistance with training of military personnel will also be fully satisfied.

To reassure Havana of its commitment to upgrading the Cuban military, Moscow will once again dispatch warships to Cuba this December, the first time since last December and the second time since the “end” of the Cold War. “We are currently preparing a plan for the ships’ visit,” explained Makarov, continuing: “Undoubtedly, it would be closely linked to our military cooperation with the Republic of Cuba.” Not so coincidentally, the arrival of the Russian warships will occur within the same timeframe of the Bastion 2009 drill which, as Castro himself pointed out, was postponed last year due to the ravages of Hurricanes Ike and Gustav. Will the Russians join the Cubans in their “strategic exercise”? Regular visitors to this blog know that we’ll be watching . . .

Manuel Zelaya Transforms Honduran Embassy in Managua into Base of Subversion, Facility under Control of Deposed President’s Partisans

Havana’s planned Bastion 2008/2009 “strategic exercise” should also be analyzed in the light of other developments in Latin America.

In June 2007 the Castro Bros.’ most reliable disciple, Hugo Chavez, urged fellow member states in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) to transform the organization into an “anti-imperialist” (meaning anti-USA) military coalition. In November of that year, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev paid a friendly visit to Caracas, where he met with not only Venezuela’s top commie thug, but also Nicaraguan and Bolivian presidents Daniel Ortega and Evo Morales, who were present for an ALBA summit. At this time Medvedev indicated that Russia was interested in joining the bloc of socialist Latin American states. Not surprisingly, the Russian president’s strategically significant remark was completely ignored by the MSM’s brain-dead pundits.

Incidentally, like their paranoid mentor Castro, both Chavez and Ortega fear a US invasion to dislodge their red regimes, although this is highly unlikely under the leftist administration of President Barack Hussein Obama.

There are more dots to connect. Within 24 hours of the “coup” that removed Manuel Zelaya from the presidency on June 28, Chavez threatened to send his military into Honduras to protect his diplomats (meaning, spies and saboteurs) and restore his compliant lackey. In 2008 Zelaya led an unwilling Honduras into ALBA membership and was widely perceived as a puppet of Venezuela’s red tyrant. In spite of the negative spin imparted to the Honduran coup by the world media, Zelaya’s ouster was constitutional, although his exile, by the admission of the Honduran army’s top lawyer, was legally questionable. To implement Zelaya’s ouster, the ruling Liberal Party secured the nearly unanimous backing of the national congress, supreme court, and military brass.

Following the so-called coup, Bolivia’s self-avowed communist president Morales floated a similar idea concerning the alleged necessity of organizing a pan-Latin American military coalition. Not so coincidentally, ALBA, which now embraces nine South American, Central American, and Caribbean states, is slated to hold a summit in Bolivia in mid-October. This subject, according to Morales, will be on the agenda.

We thus continue to speculate that the neo-Soviet leadership is quietly re-assembling a “Red Dawn-style” military coalition in the Western Hemisphere. General Makarov’s visit to Cuba on Monday certainly confirms that idea. The Kremlin’s first attempt to organize a coalition of Latin American amigos, primarily with Cuba and Nicaragua’s first Sandinista regime, took place in the 1980s, but was quickly crushed by US President Ronald Reagan’s far-sighted view of regional geopolitics. Since then Venezuela’s powerful armed forces have entered the equation on Moscow’s side.

Potential targets for this confederacy are errant Red Axis member Honduras, anti-communist hold-out Colombia, and Panama, which lurched right in its presidential election earlier this year. If the Micheletti government, in particular, fails to submit to the accord brokered by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who has reprised his 1980s role as international peacemaker, then in the coming months we suspect that ALBA may seek the imprimatur of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and/or the Union of South American Nations to reinstall Zelaya at the head of a multi-national invasion force.

Meanwhile, the deposed Honduran president, with Ortega’s blessing, has transformed the Honduran embassy in Managua, which remains under the control of his partisans, into a base of subversion to plot his return. From this muster point Zelaya incites the Honduran left to overthrow Micheletti, who during the first week after his rival’s ouster accused Venezuela and Nicaragua of planning to invade his country. Apparently in concord with Havana, Caracas, and Managua, a vindictive Obama White House has revoked the visas of Micheletti, Micheletti’s foreign minister, and 14 Honduran Supreme Court judges, denounced elections scheduled for November and demanded Zelaya’s restoration. Last Wednesday Honduran embassy staff in Managua denied that Zelaya had called for the assassination of Liberal candidate Elvin Santos.

>Red Dawn Alert: Russia’s top general visits Cuba; Zapad 2009 simulates Soviet counter-thrust against NATO invasion of Belarus

>– Belarus’ Beleaguered Opposition Protests Arrival of Russian Soldiers for Joint Maneuvers, Faces Swift Government Crackdown

– Presidents Medvedev and Lukashenko to Attend Belarusian Phase of Zapad 2009 Drill on September 29; Planned Deployment of 150,000 Russian Troops Scaled Back to 6,000

– The Collapse of NATO: General Makarov Holds Cordial Meeting with Polish Counterpart Gagor, Putin in Attendance at September 1 Conference

– Red Dawn fo’ Real: Makarov Meets Cuban Counterpart Lopez, Visits a “Number of Military Installations” on Island; Follows High-Level Political-Military Delegations from Moscow in 2008

– Putin and Chavez Cut Civilian Nuclear Power Deal, Deny Venezuela Intending to Build Atomic Bomb; US State Department: Venezuela Poses “Serious Challenge” to Regional Stability

– Red Dawn Faux Real: Movie Re-make to Hit Screens in 2010, Depict Sino-Russian Invasion of North America, Original Actor Swayze Dies

Pictured above: Admiral Michael Mullen, head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, shakes hands with General Nikolai Makarov, Chief of the Russian General Staff, in Moscow on June 26, 2009. Looks like someone forgot to take down the hammer and sickle, 18 years after the so-called collapse of Soviet communism.

On September 10 Belarus’ beleaguered opposition, represented by the youth group Malady Front and small business activist Alexander Makayew, protested in the streets of Minsk, demanding the withdrawal of 6,000 Russian troops, deployed to Belarus that day. Belarusian oppositionists waved signs that read: “Russian Army Go Home!” and “No to Russian Military Bases!” Plainclothes and riot police arrested 20 protesters. Pavel Yukhnevish, leader of the pro-Western opposition group European Belarus, questioned Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s commitment to the sovereignty of the Eastern European country vis-à-vis Moscow:

The purpose of our protest is to defend the independence of our country in connection with the fact that a 6,000-strong Russian military contingent was brought into Belarus today. That’s why we’ve come here to express this. We’ve succeeded, judging by the authorities’ reaction. The police’s actions are absolutely unreasonable and unnecessary. Lukashenka insists he is an advocate of independence. We also advocate independence. But we probably have a different notion of independence.

Lukashenko is an unreconstructed communist and a close ally of Russia’s “ex”-communist prime minister and president, Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, as well as Gennady Zyuganov, Chairman of the (secretly ruling) Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The Communist Party of Belarus openly supports Lukashenko, whose personal dictatorship has perpetuated Belarus’ Soviet-era command economy since 1994. In an August 27 interview with Izvestiya, Lukashenko shamelessly confided that he tampered with the results of the 2006 presidential election. Instead of fudging the figures upward, though, he fudged them downward to fabricate a more “realistic” lead that would be palatable to European Union leaders. On September 1 Charter 97, a Belarusian opposition media outlet, grilled Putin over his alliance with Lukashenko. Russia’s KGB-communist dictator sheepishly insisted that his Belarusian buddy was duly elected, in spite of certain “weaknesses” in “post”-Soviet “democracies.” Uh, right.

The Russian soldiers are present on Belarusian soil to carry out the joint military exercise Zapad (“West”) 2009, which expressly simulates a Soviet counter-thrust against a NATO invasion of Belarus. Russia and Belarus are joined at the hip politically and economically in the Union State of Russia and Belarus, a building block of the soon-to-be-restored Soviet Union. The Polish-Belarusian border, moreover, constitutes part of the front between NATO and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which embraces part of the old USSR. Original reports concerning Zapad 2009, quoting Nikolai Makarov, Chief of the Russian General Staff, indicated that two Russian army groups, consisting of 150,000 soldiers, would be deployed to Belarus for the maneuver. This news greatly alarmed Belarusians, as well as EU and NATO leaders. If this plan really existed, then it was quickly shelved and a more “modest” one involving only 6,000 Russian soldiers substituted under the direction of Makarov and Belarusian comrade in arms, General Syarhey Huruleu.

The extent to which the “post”-communist regime in Warsaw, moreover, can be trusted to hold the line against a neo-Soviet military thrust into Central Europe is suspect in light of the recent, cordial meeting between General Makarov and his Polish counterpart Franciszek Gagor on September 1. Janes reports: “Declaring that there are ‘no actual barriers’ to re-establishing military co-operation, the generals said that the first cross-border contacts would be between units in northern Poland and in Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave.” The same source does not indicate where the meeting occurred but, significantly, Putin was in attendance.

For its part the Belarusian military has shipped some of its S-300 air defense systems to the Ashuluk training grounds in southern Russia to participate in that phase of Zapad 2009. Overall, the exercise will “rehearse interoperability” within the Russian-Belarusian integrated air defense system, which the two “former” Soviets states formed last February. S-300s are considered one of the world’s most effective all-altitude air defense systems, comparable to the US MiM-104 Patriot system. Minsk intends to purchase the more advanced S-400 system from Moscow in 2010.

In a related story, on August 27, while visiting the Russian president’s Black Sea get-away in Sochi, Lukashenko finally agreed to take up the rotating presidency of the CSTO and sign the long-delayed agreement on the formation of the Collective Rapid Response Forces.

Last month South Ossetia’s internationally unrecognized president Eduard Kokoity indicated that his secessionist regime is seeking membership in the Union State, a move that will legitimize Moscow’s control over this portion of Georgian territory. However, Minsk will need to formally recognize Tskhinvali’s independence if this is to take place. Thus far, only Russia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela—three close communist allies—have recognized the independence of Georgia’s two breakaway regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Soviet Komsomol graduate Kokoity has intimated that Belarus will in fact shortly recognize his country as a sovereign entity.

Since last year’s five-day Caucasian War the Kremlin has illegally deployed more troops to the two separatist regimes, well in excess of its original peacekeeping contingents. On Tuesday Russia signed an agreement with Abkhazia and South Ossetia to maintain military bases in those occupied regions for the next 49 years, with an option to renew every five years. Under these arrangements at least 1,700 Russian soldiers can be stationed in each region, while the Russian board guards deployed there report to the Federal Security Service (FSB/KGB) in Moscow.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, an alleged KGB agent whom we suspect is being secretly manipulated by the Kremlin to advance the Soviet deception strategy, is allied with the USA and seeks membership in NATO.

In Latin America Moscow has reactivated political-military-economic linkages with Communist Cuba and neo-Sandinista Nicaragua, as well as oil-rich, cash-flush Red Venezuela. Bombastic commie thug Hugo Chavez recently wrapped up his annual weapons shopping spree in Moscow, where he purchased 92 T-72 tanks, Smerch missiles with a range of 90 kilometers, and an S-300 Antey-2500 anti-aircraft defense system, including radar and missiles with a range of 400 kilometers. The total purchase price of the deal is a sizable US$2.2 billion and will include, according to Prime Minister Putin, a “peaceful” civilian nuclear power program for Caracas.

Comrade Hugo disavows any intention of building a nuclear bomb, although his Islamo-Nazi pals in Tehran have no such scruples. “We’re not going to make an atomic bomb, so don’t bother us like with Iran,” Chavez growled. “Venezuela doesn’t want to produce an atomic bomb,” Comrade Vladimir soothed. Following his stopover in Moscow, Chavez continued to make house calls with other USA-hating dictatorships in Belarus, Iran, Syria, Turkmenistan, Libya, and Algeria.

The Chavezista regime is Russia’s most reliable client in the Western Hemisphere, a growing threat to regional stability in South America, and a clear and present danger to the national security of insurgency-wracked, pro-Washington neighbor Colombia, three facts that are (finally) beginning to worry US policymakers. Between 2005 and 2007, for example, Moscow presented Caracas with a weapons bill for about US$4.4 billion.

“We have concerns in general about Venezuela’s stated desire to increase its arms build-up, which we think poses a serious challenge to stability in the Western Hemisphere,” US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly acknowledged on September 14. He continued: “What they are looking to purchase and what they are purchasing outpaces all other countries in South America. And, of course, we’re concerned about an arms race in the region.” Reuters notes that “Chavez, a fierce critic of US foreign policy, says the [White House’s] Colombian bases plan could be used to launch an [US-led] attack on Venezuela and increase the risk of war in South America.”

In an important development that will probably receive little or no coverage and analysis in the MSM, Russia’s top general Makarov took a break from overseeing the Zapad 2009 war game to pay a friendly visit to Havana. There the good general met with counterpart Alvaro Lopez Miera and other top brass of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba. According to Russia’s ambassador in Havana, Mikhail Kamynin, General Makarov is slated to inspect a “number of military installations” on the island, which is only 90 miles south of the Florida Keys.

Cuba’s red dictatorship disavows any desire of resuming military cooperation with the Kremlin after the abrupt closure of the Russian electronic listening post in Lourdes in October 2001, barely weeks after the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington DC. For decades the Soviets used Lourdes to monitor military and civilian communications throughout North America, a fact that may have offered the (Soviet-backed) disciples of Osama bin Laden additional logistical support when they hijacked four airliners on September 11, 2001.

However, Russian-Cuban military ties have in fact been improving since 2008, following visits to Havana by Russian Security Council chief and former FSB/KGB boss Nikolai Patrushev, Russian Deputy Prime Minister and former GRU agent Igor Sechin, and General-Lieutenant Alexander Maslov, commander of Russia’s Air Defense Forces. Last December the Admiral Chabanenko destroyer also weighed anchor in Havana Bay, a post-Cold War “first” that entailed closed door meetings between Cuban dictator Raul Castro and the deputy commander of the Russian Navy’s most powerful branch, the Northern Fleet. Kremlin and Western media reports also reveal that Russian strategic bomber crews evaluated potential refueling sites in Cuba last year and that at least one Russian attack submarine spotted off the US East Coast this past August made a port of call in Cuba too.

In the iconic Cold War-era film Red Dawn high school students, with a little help from a downed US Air Force pilot (played by Powers Boothe), organize a guerrilla force in the mountains of Colorado to repel a Soviet-Cuban invasion. Your resident blogger was 16 years old when this movie made its theatrical debut. More than a generation later a re-make, this time featuring a joint Sino-Russian invasion, is due to hit the screens in 2010. Yesterday original Red Dawn actor Patrick Swayze, who led the fictitious Wolverines against the occupying communist troops, succumbed to pancreatic cancer. Coincidence? Of course, but truth, they say, is stranger than fiction. See above.

>Latin America File: Chavez’s annual arms spree in Moscow; Gen. Ortega warns of civil war in Nicaragua; Managua hands MS-13 crime boss to Interpol

>Latin America’s second-most notorious commie thug after Raul Castro, namely one Hugo Chavez, is up to his old tricks while visiting his KGB handler in Moscow, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Chavez has clinched a deal to purchase 100 T-72 and T-90 main battle tanks, worth US$500 million, three diesel-powered Kilo-class submarines, armored vehicles, helicopters, and missiles. Chavez and Putin are pictured here at the latter’s Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, on September 10, 2009.

Chavez also conferred with Putin’s lapdog, President Dmitry Medvedev. “We will supply Venezuela the weapons that Venezuela asks for. In accordance with all international law, of course,” gushed Medvedev. Pressed by reporters about the tank purchase, the Soviet Komsomol graduate explained: “Why not tanks? Without question, we have good tanks. If our friends want our tanks, we will deliver them.” I’m sure Chavez concluded the deal with his Soviet masters with a comradely bear hug and effusive “Tanks alot!”

Incidentally, this is Comrade Hugo’s eighth, or ninth, or tenth trip to the Kremlin. We’ve lost count. Suffice to say that in 2007 Gennady Zyuganov, Chairman of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and, in our humble opinion, real ruler of Russia, referred to “Comrade” Chavez as a “reliable friend.” In short, Comrade Hugo has everything he needs to invade Miami or, more likely, Colombia and aid the Marxist guerrillas there in overthrowing President Alvaro Uribe’s government and dislodging the growing US military presence there.

In gratitude for this enormous weapons deal, Chavez joined Nicaraguan counterpart Daniel Ortega in formally recognizing, after Russia itself, the independence of Georgia’s two breakaway, Soviet-occupied regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Medvedev praised Chavez’s support: “We think that it is a sovereign affair of states whether to recognize their independence.” This week diplomats from Abkhazia arrived in Managua to establish relations with Nicaragua. From there they will fly to Caracas, where they will repeat the same procedure with Venezuela’s communist government.

South America’s red tyrant wrapped up his pilgrimage to the world’s red mecca by delivering a two-hour-and-thirty-minute anti-USA tirade at Moscow’s terrorist-training school, People’s Friendship University. This nefarious institution was until 1992 known as Patrice Lumumba University, named after the Congolese communist whose political descendants are today busy raping, with the help of billions of dollars from Red China, the natural resources of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Patrice Lumumba alumni include Palestine’s terrorist president Mahmoud Abbas.

Meanwhile, in Central America General Humberto Ortega–Daniel’s younger brother and former chief of the Sandinista Popular Army and its “de-communized” successor, the Nicaraguan National Army (NNA)—has broken 10 years of media silence by commenting on the political turmoil in his country. Referring obliquely to the opposition generated by the second Sandinista regime’s policy of reactivating ties with Moscow, cozying up to the fellow communist regimes in Havana and Caracas, hosting deposed Honduran President Manual Zelaya, and official persecution of independent media, Gen. Ortega complained:

The most important product of the revolutionary process in the 20th century, which was very difficult and bloody, is peace and democracy. And we can’t put that at risk now. Political polarization and social disintegration in Nicaragua is dangerous because it could put in real danger the historical achievements of the revolution. We all need to prevent Nicaragua from returning to war. That would be to betray the blood of all the Nicaraguans who fought.

In the 1980s Gen. Ortega, along with Interior Minister Tomas Borge, now Nicaragua’s aged ambassador to Peru, was a key player in the Soviet Bloc’s narco-subversion plot against the USA. “Former” KGB agents, the Mexican drug cartels, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), the Chavezista regime, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and a host of sordid characters continue to prosecute this decades-old covert war against America. Raul Castro and Daniel Ortega have no doubt quietly reprised their drug-running roles from the Cold War era, notwithstanding some high-profile “catches” that appear to lend credibility to their new-found anti-drug credentials.

For example, on September 4 Nicaraguan police handed over Saul Antonio Turcios Angel, a Salvadoran citizen who is suspected to be MS-13’s boss, to Interpol under “tight security measures” at Sandino International Airport. Turcios Angel, 29, who is described by Interpol as “highly dangerous,” was arrested last week in the northwestern town of Chichigalpa. A pawn in the drama scripted by the Moscow Leninists, perhaps drug lord Angel will conveniently meet his demise behind bars. Not so coincidentally, the central government in Managua has turned a blind eye toward the anarchy which is Bluefields, Nicaragua’s main Caribbean port and a vital waystation along Latin America’s red cocaine trail. Last November a Russian destroyer for the first time in nearly 20 years weighed anchor at Bluefields to deliver a “humanitarian” cargo to the NNA, now under the command of Sandinista General Omar Halleslevens.

Nicaraguan Vice President Jaime Morales’ refusal to back Comrade Dan’s bid to amend the constitution to allow re-election in 2012 is definitely contributing to the political turmoil in that country. Morales belongs to no party but was a negotiator for the US-backed Contra rebels during their battle to dislodge the first Sandinista regime in the 1980s. In 2006 he joined Ortega on a common ticket to form a reconciliation government. Ironically, Ortega governs from Morales’ former home, which he confiscated during his first term as president and transformed into the headquarters of the Sandinista National Liberation Front.

Finally, El Universal reports that Bolivia’s communist government is allocating US$100 million in financial aid from Venezuela to upgrade a military barrack near the Brazilian border. Bolivian President Evo Morales siphons petrodollars from Comrade Hugo’s bank account via “Bolivia Changes, Evo Accomplishes,” a program presumably implemented under the auspices of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas. A senior official in La Paz admitted that the military barrack is near a major cross-border cocaine route. In view of the Latin American Red Axis’ documented role in the Soviet Bloc’s narco-subversion plot one wonders whether the Bolivian military will be hindering or facilitating the red cocaine epidemic.

>Breaking News: Obama to chair UN Security Council, address nuclear disarmament; first time for any US president

>The Soviets have maneuvered their Manchurian Candidate, Barack Hussein Obama, into the White House and now the United Nations Security Council.

>Communist Bloc Military Updates: Russia kicks off strategic missile, ground drills: Zapad 2009 to involve 12,500 servicemen in Belarus, Kaliningrad

>Back by popular demand, we have decided to resume occasional postings. This follows a recent announcement of an indefinite leave of absence from blogging.

The Russian and Belarusian militaries, united under the auspices of the Union State of Russia and Belarus, are carrying out concurrent drills in Belarus and Kaliningrad, as well as near Saint Petersburg and Lake Ladoga, which borders Finland. Ladoga 2009 began on August 10 and will wrap up on September 28, while Zapad (“West”) 2009 runs from September 8 to 29. The Russian Strategic Missile Forces will also conduct a command-and-staff drill from September 8 to 11.

Ladoga 2009 involves all units of the Leningrad Military District, several detachments of the Siberian Military District, interior troops, border guards, and the Baltic and Northern Fleets. The exercise entails the “strategic deployment” of the armed forces in Russia’s northwest and placing military units on “high alert.” “In accordance with the combat training plan of the Russian Armed Forces, the Ladoga-2009 strategic exercises are going ahead under the command of the Russian Ground Forces commander, Gen. Vladimir Boldyrev,” Colonel Igor Konashenkov explained.

The Finnish media editorializes: “Many military experts in Russia, Sweden, and Finland consider the safeguarding of the planned Nord Stream gas pipeline that would run along the bottom of the Baltic Sea as one of the aims of the Ladoga-2009 drill in particular. According to one Finnish military expert, once completed the Nord Stream pipeline will be of such importance to Russia that rehearsing its protection is worth the effort, even well in advance.” With a target completion date of 2012, some observers in Scandinavia and the Baltic states characterize Nord Stream (map above) as the new Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. “The Swedes are clearly nervous about the pipeline issue, as they reduced their defense preparedness in the Baltic Sea after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now it seems the Russians are coming back, and that makes them uneasy,” suggests Docent Alpo Juntunen of the Finnish National Defense University.

During Zapad 2009 the Russian military will commit 5,000 to 6,000 units of the Moscow Military District, as well as personnel from the Ground Forces, Air Force, Air Defense Forces, Airborne Troops, and Baltic Fleet task forces. For its part Belarus will commit operational command units, as well as 7,000 to 8,000 troops of the Interior Ministry, Emergencies Ministry, and State Security Committee. As the astute reader will note, in Belarus the KGB still proudly operates under that name. The first Zapad exercise took place in 1981, when Soviet communism operated openly, and again in 1999, when “ex”-communist Boris Yeltsin was president of the Russian Federation.

According to General Nikolai Makarov, Chief of the Russian General Staff, more than 60,000 troops will have taken part in Zapad 2009, Ladoga 2009, and Caucasus 2009. The last took place between June 29 and July 10 in the North Caucasus Military District, near the “former” Soviet republic of Georgia, a NATO aspirant with two breakaway regions under Soviet re-occupation.

Concurrent with the Zapad and Ladoga drills, Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces (SMF) will carry out scenarios involving conventional and nuclear warfare. “A total of over 2,000 servicemen and 150 theater- and tactical-level command-and-control centers will take part in the drills,” a spokesentity for the SMF disclosed. By 2016 the Kremlin plans to modernize its command-and-control systems to improve their ability to overcome missile defenses and increase the survivability of delivery vehicles, that is, against the still-growing US National Missile Defense system. According to open sources, reports Novosti, the SMF maintains 538 ICBMs on combat duty, including 306 SS-25 Topol (NATO designation Sickle) and 56 SS-27 Topol-M missiles. Silo-based ICBMs constitute 45 percent of Russia’s total ballistic missile arsenal and carry about 85 percent of the SMF’s nuclear warheads.

The fact that in 2009 the Russians are holding military exercises next to Poland, which comprises NATO’s eastern “wall,” as well as next to neutral state Finland is significant from the point of view of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s still-unfolding plan for global domination. In his second book, The Perestroika Deception (1995, 1998), KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn explains that the subordination of Berlin to Moscow, in particular, is a key objective in the Soviet takeover of Europe. Under the faux rightist chancellorship of Helmut Kohl (1982-1998), who oversaw the integration of East German communists into the reunited Germany, the social democratic chancellorship of Gerhard Schroder (1998-2005), who is a close personal friend of KGB-communist dictator Vladimir Putin and member of Nord Stream’s shareholders’ committee, and most recently the faux rightist chancellorship of Angela Merkel (2005-present), who was raised in East Germany and whose foreign minister is a pro-Moscow social democrat, Germany has indeed become subservient to Russia.

It is not an exaggeration, therefore, to describe the new Moscow-Berlin Axis as a second “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact” that has effectively outflanked the USA’s shaky alliance with “post”-communist Poland and the Czech Republic. Germany’s socialist dictator Adolf Hitler broke the first pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941. Nearly 70 years later will the neo-Soviet leadership be guilty of breaking its new “non-aggression pact” with Berlin? Is that the long-range significance of Zapad 2009 and Ladoga 2009? Time, of course, will tell.