>Breaking News: Honduras’ rival governments resolve dispute, Zelaya to serve out balance of presidential term

>Latin America’s Red Axis scores a victory with peaceful re-installation of compliant lackey. Details later.

>Latin America File: Correa scurries to Moscow; Colombia denies airspace access for fighter jet transfer from Venezuela to Ecuador

>On Wednesday Ecuador’s leftist president Rafael Correa arrived in Russia on a three-day working visit. This is the first time that a sitting Ecuadorean president has travelled to Moscow, during or after the Cold War. While huddling with counterpart Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Russia’s KGB-communist dictator, Correa signed a strategic partnership that addresses bilateral relations in politics, security, civilian nuclear power, environmental protection, education, science, culture, and tourism. “We would like to develop good neighbor, full-format relations with all Latin American countries,” Medvedev gushed to reporters after his meeting with Correa.

The two leaders also signed a contract by which Russia will supply the Ecuadorean army with two Mi-171E Hip helicopters. Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin revealed yesterday that Quito has requested a loan from Moscow, but he did not specify an amount.

President Correa and Nikolai Patrushev, current secretary of the Russian Security Council and former chief of the FSB/KGB, lately rubbed elbows in Bolivia, at the summit of Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA). There the Soviet strategists endeavored to secure bloc-wide recognition for the independence of Georgia’s two breakaway regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. At the time Patrushev delivered a message from Medvedev to Russia’s Latin American allies: “I consider my first meeting with the ALBA leaders held in Caracas last November very useful. I think it necessary to consolidate contacts with the forum.” Patrushev himself declared: “You cannot call South America a backyard of the USA.” Perhaps this sentiment was the one that on October 23 motivated the State Duma to pass a bill approving the deployment of Russian troops anywhere in the world, “to prevent aggression by other states and to protect Russian citizens on foreign soil.”

Since late last year the Kremlin has witnessed a parade of communist and center-left leaders from Latin America, including Raul Castro, Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, Evo Morales, and Cristina Kirchner.

Meanwhile, on October 27 El Universal reported that the transfer of the first three of six French-built Mirage 50 fighter jets from the Venezuelan Air Force to its Ecuadorean counterpart has been delayed due to a failure to secure permission to fly over an unnamed third country. Little knowledge of geography, however, is required to figure out that the unnamed third country is Colombia, which is situated between Venezuela and Ecuador. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s reception of US counter-narcotics troops has earned the wrath of Latin America’s Red Axis, especially Venezuela’s top commie thug Chavez. Since the March 2008 Andean Crisis Bogota has had no diplomatic relations with Quito and only on-again, off-again relations with Caracas, even though all three countries belong to the new Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). Ecuador currently chairs the rotating presidency of UNASUR.

To fly the Mirages to Ecuador, the Venezuelan Air Force has only three other options. One option is to transport the aircraft via Panama. Panama’s rightist president Ricardo Martinelli, however, openly opposes the Chavezista regime and would unlikely consent to such a request from the Venezuelan military. A second option is to transport the aircraft via Brazil and Peru. While Brazil’s center-left government would probably agree to facilitate such a transfer via its airspace, the response from Peru’s center-left government, a US ally, is uncertain.

A third option is to transport the Mirages via Nicaragua, although more fuel would be consumed to complete such a delivery across Central America. In this case, the Venezuelan Air Force would probably have to refuel in Managua and then approach Ecuador via the Pacific Ocean. Nicaragua’s Marxist dictator Daniel Ortega would be only too happy to open his country’s airspace to Venezuelan combat aircraft. In fact, in late September we reported that Ortega hurriedly approved the deployment of a skeleton crew of 30 Venezuelan troops, with warplanes and warships, in Nicaragua beginning November 1. In spite of official denials from Managua, we strongly suspect that the planned arrival of Venezuelan firepower in Central America is related to the tense situation between the rival governments of Honduran President Roberto Micheletti and his deposed adversary Manuel Zelaya.

As it turns out, on October 30 El Universal reported that the Ecuadorean Air Force’s latest acquisitions arrived via Panama.

Colombia is surrounded by external enemies, like the region’s Red Axis states, as well as endangered by enemies from within, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The world’s largest narco-communist guerrilla army, FARC represents a major threat to the stability of the Colombian government. Several days after the Chavezista regime gloated over the arrest of alleged Colombian spies on Venezuelan soil, Colombian border police prevented two indigenous women from smuggling 22 bars of military-grade pentolite into the country from Ecuador. Colombian authorities also arrested a man who allegedly paid the women to transport the explosives. Bogota contends that the Ecuadorean nationals were running the weapons to FARC.

>Latin America File: Chavez exports red revolution throughout hemisphere; tensions rise in Honduras as Micheletti’s nephew murdered, DM’s dad kidnapped

>In Panama City the Ministry of Government and Justice recently learned that the diplomatic corps from the Venezuelan embassy was traipsing about the country, delivering lectures promoting socialism. In response, the Ministry of Foreign Relations summoned the Venezuelan ambassador, Jorge Luis Doran, to explain his actions. Unapologetic, Doran declared: “We have a right to inform the Panamanian population about the positive results of the Chavez revolution.” Doran, however, did not appear eager to inform Panamanians about the negative results of the communist revolution in Venezuela, such as food shortages, water shortages, and regular electrical blackouts. Panamanian disciples of Chavismo have organized at least 50 groups in that country.

Pictured above: Water tanker in Caracas, on October 22, 2009.

Earlier this year the election to Panama’s presidency of US-educated businessman Ricardo Martinelli reversed a 10-year political slide to the left throughout Latin America. Martinelli’s predecessor, center-leftist Martin Torrijos, had banked on the election of his housing minister Balbina Herrera, who was allegedly receiving payoffs from Chavez. However, Panamanian voters wisely moved to the right, rejecting Torrijos’ croney. Martinelli is a firm opponent of Chavez. Several weeks ago his government brokered a deal with Washington to establish two counter-narcotics bases on the Pacific coast of Panama. The US military withdrew from Panama 10 years ago after ceding control of the canal zone to Panama City.

Elsewhere in Central America Chavez’s communist agents have set up “peace bases” in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, as well as Cuba, from which the Bolivarian regime in Caracas derives ideological inspiration even as its props up President Raul Castro’s decrepit red regime with petrodollars.

In Peru the government of mildly center-leftist President Alan Garcia, a US ally, is investigating monetary transfers between Caracas and Ollanta Humala, the leftist candidate defeated by Garcia in 2006. Peruvian disciples of Chavismo have set up “ALBA houses” in that country to agitate for socialist revolution. ALBA refers to the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, a bloc of nine socialist states in Central and South America and the Caribbean Basin.

Although no longer a genocidal force as during the 1980s, the Maoist guerrillas of the Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path still lurk in the jungle, knocking off soldiers and policemen when opportunity permits. Not so coincidentally, Tomas Borge, an aging KGB asset and Maoist who served as the first Sandinista regime’s interior minister, is presently serving as the second Sandinista regime’s ambassador to Peru. During the 1980s, according to Soviet strategy expert Joseph Douglass, Borge and General Humberto Ortega, former leader of the Sandinista Popular Army, were important cogs in Moscow’s red cocaine plot to subvert the USA, still unfolding today. Two decades later Humberto, Daniel’s younger brother, lives in the lap of luxury in a fancy Managua spread.

In South America Caracas maintains a covert, but well-documented relationship with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which consists of weapons and logistical support in the form of advance FARC patrols on Venezuelan soil. The Chavezista regime can also count on public relations support supplied by Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba, an informal spokesentity for the FARC. This week the Chavezista regime alleged that it had apprehended Colombian security agents who were planning to destabilize the Venezuelan government.

Gustavo Coronel, a former Venezuelan congressman who lost his seat in 1999, when the newly elected President Chavez dissolved that body, warns: “The hemisphere ignores the Chavez threat at its peril.” Human Events, linked above, notes that the Chavezista regime has designated Coronel as an “enemy” of the Bolivarian Revolution.

Meanwhile in strife-torn Honduras, assailants kidnapped wealthy businessman Alfredo Jalil, the father of Honduras’ acting defense minister, on Tuesday. This incident follows last Friday’s abduction and killing of the 25-year-old nephew of lawful President Roberto Micheletti, Enzo. Honduran authorities concede that Enzo’s death could be a “possible political attack.” Simultaneously, unknown assailants shot and killed Honduran army colonel Concepcion Jimenez outside his home. Deposed president Manuel Zelaya, a slavish Chavez ally, remains holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, to which he secretly returned on September 21. Negotiations between Honduras’ rival governments, brokered by the Organization for American States, are deadlocked.

In El Salvador the country’s first-ever leftist regime is deploying 1,760 army troops throughout the country to putatively combat the FARC-originated cocaine flow through Central America. Even though El Salvador has only 6.6 million people, as opposed to Mexico’s 111 million, the number of people killed in the Central American country’s drug war is comparable to the more highly publicized slaughter south of the US-Mexican border. Since January the body count in El Salvador has topped 3,430 corpses. President Mauricio Funes, the center-left frontman for the Marxist-controlled Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, is reportedly considering plans to deploy even more troops to support the National Civilian Police.

This past Sunday the FMLN regime in San Salvador also received the credentials of Cuba’s new ambassador Pedro Pablo Prada Quintero. San Salvador terminated diplomatic relations with Havana shortly after the Cuban Revolution in 1959. During the civil war that wracked El Salvador between 1980 and January 1992, the Soviet Union and Cuba supplied arms to the FMLN insurgents. Funes’ vice president, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, was formerly the FMLN’s battlefield commander. We expect El Salvador’s former guerrilla army to establish a communist dictatorship in that country via the battle-hardened Ceren, rather than the dapper Funes, a former correspondence for CNN’s Spanish-language service. Indeed, if Funes outlives his usefulness, he may join El Salvador’s rising body count as Sanchez Ceren seizes the presidency.

>Latin America File: Sandinista judges nullify presidential re-election ban for Ortega, open door for new communist dictatorship in Nicaragua

>– Nicaraguan Riot Police, Sandinista Thugs Break Up Peaceful March by Separatist Moskito Indians

– Former FSB/KGB Chief Attends ALBA Summit in Bolivia, Negotiates Bloc-Wide Recognition for Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Exchange for Kremlin Credits

On Monday night the constitutional commission of the Nicaraguan Supreme Court struck down a ban against presidential re-election and two-term limits. Not surprisingly, only cadres of President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) took part in the ruling, while the president of the Supreme Court, a member of the opposition Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC), refused to acknowledge the decision. “Ortega is completely disqualified from being a candidate,” Chief Justice Manuel Martinez declared, referring to the next presidential election in 2011. Monday’s ruling will also allow consecutive re-election of 109 mayors in 2012. Last November FSLN candidates fraudulently stole the majority of municipal governments, prompting Washington to terminate financial aid to Central America’s poorest country.

“What happened last night was an ambush,” spluttered Martinez, claiming that the constitutional commission’s Liberal members were not informed in time to take part. Deputy Chief Justice Rafael Solis, a Sandinista, gloated: “The ruling is an un-appealable judgment, it’s been ruled upon.”

Loyal Soviet ally Ortega, whose Marxist guerrillas overthrew the US-backed dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in 1979, began his second presidential term in January 2007. Ortega has been unable to obtain the 56 votes needed to allow a constitutional reform via Congress, hence the legal maneuvers of Nicaragua’s top Sandinista judges. “If we allow Ortega to get away with this, there is no going back,” warned Enrique Saenz, leader of the opposition Sandinista Renovation Movement, a haven for Sandinista “purists” who reject Ortega’s leadership.

Under a 2000 power-sharing deal with then President Arnoldo Aleman, the Sandinistas and the Liberals were apportioned seats on the Supreme Court to the exclusion of other parties. Aleman, who was convicted of corruption charges in 2002, was released from jail earlier this year, exposing the sordid collusion between the FSLN and the PLC.

Nicaragua’s neo-Sandinista regime is utilizing standard communist tactics to consolidate a new dictatorship. This consists of circumventing the people’s representatives, “in the name of the people,” of course, by manipulating the judicial system. The same process of subversion has taken place for at least 50 years in the USA via “judicial activism,” where repeated Supreme Court rulings have undermined the country’s Judeo-Christian ethos to the point that a possible Soviet mole now sits in the White House. You can be sure that the Soviet strategists are carefully monitoring events in Managua as they prepare to ship new military hardware to Ortega and renovate the Cold War-era military runway at Punta Huete, north of Lake Managua.

Ortega’s communist buddies in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia—Hugo Chavez, Rafael Correa, and Evo Morales—have successfully employed similar constitutional maneuvers to eliminate presidential term limits in order to consolidate their dictatorships. The Honduran coup of June 28, for example, represented a backlash against an attempt by Latin America’s Red Axis to install compliant lackey Manuel Zelaya as permanent president. Zelaya has been holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa since he snuck back into Honduras on September 21. In spite of international mediation, the standoff between the legitimate government of President Roberto Micheletti and the deposed Zelaya has yet to be resolved. Even though Micheletti has scheduled a presidential election for November, a ballot in which he will prudently not participate, most international bodies have condemned Honduras’ military-backed regime, the first such in the region since the Cold War.

Meanwhile, the neo-Sandinista regime is once again oppressing Nicaragua’s indigenous Miskito Indian population, which nominally seceded from the country last April with very little international fanfare. The Costa Rican media reports that on Monday 8,000 separatists marched peacefully through Bilwi, capital of the North Atlantic Autonomous Region. There they were attacked by riot police with tear gas and bullets, as well as by “drunken Sandinista thugs” hurling rocks. After the dust settled, according to unconfirmed reports, two indigenous men were dead, eight people injured, and an unknown number of people under arrest. During a Monday evening telephone interview with the Nica Times, Rev. Héctor Williams, leader of the self-declared Communitarian Nation of the Moskitia, stated that the situation in Bilwi is “very serious”: “This is not over yet, and I don’t know how this night is going to end, or what Bilwi will be like tomorrow. Their plan is to massacre, destroy and exterminate us, but the people are defending themselves with their fingernails and rocks.”

Guillermo Espinosa, the separatist government’s minister of defense, rumbled: “If they are going to mistreat us, we won’t allow it. We are going forward on independence.” Last Saturday Espinosa denounced an alleged attack by the Nicaraguan Navy on a 12-passenger panga (small boat) ferrying indigenous residents from Sandy Bay, a community north of Bilwi. Espinosa told The Nica Times that one indigenous man was killed and several others injured when the navy boat “intentionally” plowed into the panga on the “open ocean,” meaning the Caribbean Sea.

Elsewhere in Latin America the Soviet strategists are nursing the development of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), a political-economic-cultural alliance of nine socialist states under the regional leadership of Havana and Caracas. On October 16 and 17 ALBA’s government leaders and delegates convened in Cochabamba, Bolivia (pictured above) where they approved the creation of the sucre, a regional currency that will in 2010 replace the US dollar in commerce between member states. ALBA consists of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Honduras, Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua and Barbuda. Last year Zelaya guided Honduras into the region’s Red Axis, a move that alarmed the anti-communists in the country’s ruling Liberal Party and this past summer prompted them to constitutionally remove Chavez’s obsequious toady.

In a troubling related development the Armenian media reports that Nikolai Patrushev, current secretary of the Russian Security Council and former chief of the FSB/KGB, showed up on the ALBA summit sidelines. There he negotiated recognition for the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from all ALBA member states in exchange for Kremlin credits. The only countries that presently recognize the independence of the two breakaway Georgian regions are Russia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. In November 2008, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, while visiting reliable ally Chavez in Caracas, indicated that Moscow intends to join ALBA. If this comes to pass, the total strategic failure of US policy makers since the Reagan Era will be exposed.

>Latin America File: Regional politicians, security experts accuse Venezuela, Nicaragua, Brazil of launching arms race with Russia’s aid

>Former Guatemalan Defense Minister: Ortega’s Revived Alliance with Russia Contravenes Letter and Spirit of Central American Democratic Security Treaty

During a recent forum in Prague, politicians and security experts from Latin America warned that the leftist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Brazil have instigated a regional arms race. With reference to Hugo Chavez’s “Bolivarian Revolution,” former Bolivian president Jorge Quiroga accused Venezuela of moving ahead with “the most dangerous project of our history.” Educated in the USA, the conservative Quiroga briefly held office in 2001 and 2002. During Bolivia’s 2005 presidential election he lost to self-avowed communist Evo Morales.

Pictured above: Communist reincarnation: Remove the A, V and Z from “Chavez” and you get “Che.”

Colombian political analyst Javier Loaiza pointed out, by contrast, that the Colombian government is justified in building up its military to counter the narco-communist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Similarly, the Mexican government is justified in building up its military to counter the indigenous drug cartels that are working hand in glove with the FARC. However, Loaiza laments that “other countries with no major internal problems” have launched drives to acquire offensive weapons.

For his part, former Guatemalan Defense Minister General Francisco Bermudez expressed disappointment that the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Security Council has been silent “about the arms race in three or four countries, when it should be promoting confidence building measures.” Bermudez insists that the Central American Armed Forces Conference should also address the issue, since the new arms race “interferes directly with a twenty-year process to ensure peace and dis-tension in the region, thus avoiding conflicts.” Specifically citing Nicaragua’s neo-Sandinista regime as an offender, Bermudez explains:

The military cooperation requested by Nicaragua to Russia is contrary to the letter and spirit of the Democratic Security Framework Treaty, subscribed in 1995. The activities of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega generate mistrust when he is involved in the rearming of the Sandinista army, that is in flagrant opposition to the Central American Democratic Security treaty, of which we are all members and was specifically agreed to prevent conflicts.

The general concluded: “Latin America needs development investments, not an arms race.” That Bermudez refers to the Nicaraguan National Army as the “Sandinista army” is telling for students of the international communist conspiracy.

Overall, Latin American countries allocated US$47 billion to their defense budgets in 2008, as opposed to US$24 billion in 2003, reflecting a doubling of such expenditures within five years. Loaiza noted that since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva assumed the Brazilian presidency in January 2003, that country’s defense budget has increased by 50 per cent.

>Communist Bloc Military Updates: Medvedev promises “full-fledged, permanent and highly effective exercises”; subs test-launch missiles from Pacific

>Hillary Scores Big on Strategic Arms Reduction with Soviets: Kremlin Affirms Doctrine of Preemptive Nuclear Strikes

Under the 10-year rule of KGB-communist dictator Vladimir Putin, currently prime minister, Russia has witnessed an energy-based economic resurgence. This, in turn, has fueled a rapid remilitarization that includes revitalized long-range bomber patrols (since 2007), a limited re-projection of naval power on the high seas (since 2008), purchases of major military hardware from NATO countries (like a French amphibious assault ship in 2009), and frequent exercises with its allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Under the auspices of the SCO, Sino-Russian “Peace Mission” drills, unthinkable during the fake Sino-Soviet split of the Cold War era, have occurred on an almost annual basis since 2005.

This year the Russian military carried out major war games such as Caucasus 2009 (near Georgia), Ladoga 2009 (near Finland), and Zapad 2009 (near Poland and Lithuania), and is presently flexing its muscles in Kazakhstan for Cooperation 2009, which will inaugurate the CSTO’s new Collective Rapid Reaction Force. In September of last year all branches of the Russian military, in conjunction with civil defense authorities, carried out the Stability 2008 exercise across the country, witnessed in person by Venezuela’s red dictator Hugo Chavez. For the first time since the Cold War, air raid sirens howled over St. Petersburg and other Russian cities.

The neo-Soviet leadership is using the five-day skirmish with Georgia in August 2008 as a pretext for remilitarization. In July of this year Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, with specific reference to the Caucasus 2009 drill, stated: “For us the main lesson from those events is the need to hold full-fledged, permanent and highly effective exercises for all arms and branches of Russia’s armed forces.”

Pictured above: Medvedev, with Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko, inspect small arms at the Obuz-Lesnovsky firing range near Baranovichi, Belarus, on September 29. The Union State of Russia and Belarus was at that time wrapping up its combined military exercise, Zapad 2009.

On October 6 and 7, two Russian Delta III-class strategic submarines, the St. George the Triumphant and the Ryazan, test-launched ballistic missiles from unspecified locations in the Pacific Ocean, presumably from a submerged position. The RSM-50 (NATO designation SS-N-18 Stringray) missiles hit targets in northern Russia. Each submarine carries up to 16 such missiles, while each missile boasts a range of 8,000 kilometers and contains up to seven nuclear MIRV-able warheads.

Meanwhile, between October 9 and 14 the Russian Strategic Missile Forces (SMF) will conduct a series of drills near the town of Teikovo, located about 250 kilometers east of Moscow. At least six warplanes and helicopters, as well as 36 pilots will participate in the exercise, the nature of which was not disclosed to the Kremlin media. Teikovo is home to the 54th Strategic Missile Division, where the first two battalions were equipped with six road-mobile Topol-M (NATO designation SS-27 Stalin) intercontinental ballistic missile systems. Part of Russia’s nuclear triad, the Topol-M has a range of 7,000 kilometers. As of January 2009 the SMF operated 50 silo-based and six road-mobile Topol-M systems.

Incidentally, in August Medvedev appointed Lieutenant General Andrei Shvaichenko new SMF commander, replacing Shvaichenko’s superior, Colonel General Nikolai Solovtsov, who resigned at the mandatory age of 60 years. In the event of a superpower showdown, the Soviet chain of command will begin, in our opinion, with Gennady Zyuganov, de facto leader of Russia and chairman of the (secretly ruling) Communist Party of the Russian Federation/Soviet Union, and pass through Putin before reaching Shvaichenko.

Ostensibly in possession of the Kremlin’s “nuclear briefcase,” Medvedev is widely perceived even in the MSM as a compliant Putin lackey. In May 2008 Russian state television showed a military officer handing the nuclear briefcase to Medvedev and barking: “Comrade commander-in-chief! Allow me to give you control of the strategic forces of the country.” In spite of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent trip to Moscow to forge a new strategic arms reduction treaty with the Soviets, Nikolai Patrushev, former FSB/KGB chief and current secretary of the Russian Security Council, simultaneously released a report affirming Russia’s right to carry out preemptive nuclear strikes. Got civil defense? Probably not. (Note video at previous link with conspicuous hammer and sickle behind Hillary during Moscow speech.)

>USSR2 File: Belarus eases up on some elements of its Soviet-era command economy, retains price controls on "socially important" products

>Belarus’ communist dictatorship, reports Reuters, is easing up on some of its Soviet-era command economy controls, including retail price regulations. However—you knew “however” was coming—Minsk will retain controls on 50 “socially important” products, including milk, meat, salt, and sugar, as well as tariffs on goods and services. The Belarusian government normally sets price ceilings on products, limits profitability of processing firms, and imposes mark-ups for wholesalers and producers. The International Monetary Fund–which Belarus’ South American ally Hugo Chavez labels an agent of “neo-liberalism” and “US imperialism”–has granted the “former” Soviet republic a US$3.5 billion standby loan if Minsk fully liberalizes the country’s pricing structure.

Pictured above: On October 9 Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko attends the summit of the Commonwealth of “Independent” States, a sort of placeholder for the soon-to-be-restored Soviet Union, in Chisinau, Moldova.

In September consumer prices in Belarus rose by 0.3 percent, while real inflation increased by 9 to 11 percent. Unchecked inflation, coupled with widespread insurrection, could very well precipitate the demise of Comrade Lukashenko’s retro-Soviet regime. For the Soviet strategists, that will not do.

>USSR2 File: Medvedev travels to Chisinau, meets with Lupu on CIS summit sidelines; Kommersant speculates “ex”-red will become Moldova’s next president

>On October 13 the European media published a story that confirmed our version of events with respect to the formation of Moldova’s new crypto-communist government. Although the small country’s acting president Mihai Ghimpu and prime minister Vlad Filat are putatively non-communist, two parties in the governing coalition are led by “ex”-communists. Over the weekend Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a Soviet Komsomol graduate, conferred with Marian Lupu, a “former” communist who established his own opposition party, which is now part of the “ruling” pro-European alliance.

Meeting on the sidelines of a summit of the Commonwealth of “Independent” States (CIS) in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, Medvedev, reported Russian daily Kommersant, “discussed with Lupu as if he were the president of the Republic of Moldova.” The daily directly quoted Medvedev as saying: “I would like to discuss with you our bilateral relations, because being in Chisinau and not doing so would be wrong. Your country is putting in place a new leadership, and we are interested in developing friendly relations.” Moscow is therefore preparing a friendly gesture in the form of a US$500 million loan for Chisinau, apparently to persuade Moldovan parliamentarians to vote for “ex”-communist Lupu as national president on October 23. Kommersant speculated that Lupu will “probably be the next president” of Moldova since Medvedev conspicuously refused to meet with Moldova’s last president, open communist and former Soviet Interior Ministry general Vladimir Voronin.

On the CIS summit sidelines Medvedev (pictured above) also met with Armenia’s “ex”-communist president, Serge Sargsyan, to discuss bilateral trade relations and military cooperation, as well as Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev, to discuss the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-speaking enclave in Azerbaijan. In addition to rubbing elbows with the Russian president in Chisinau, Sargsyan was also scheduled to fly to Moscow the following day for additional consultations with the Kremlin leadership. For his part, Aliyev’s father was Azerbaijan’s long-time KGB-communist dictator Heydar, while Azerbaijan’s head of the presidential administration is the “former” ideologist of the Azerbaijan Communist Party.

>Red Dawn Alert: China, Venezuela, Brazil dredge, expand and modernize Cuban port facilities to accommodate larger commercial (and military?) vessels

>With financial assistance from Communist China and Venezuela, via Puertos del ALBA, an arm of the socialist Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, Cuba is dredging, expanding, and modernizing three ports in Havana, Cienfuegos, and Santiago de Cuba. With financial backing from Brazil’s semi-communist government, Cuba will also build the new Port of Mariel west of Havana. Pictured above: El Morro Lighthouse in Havana Bay.

The red dictatorship in Cuba is moving ahead with these projects to accommodate the larger ships that are expected to traverse the Caribbean Sea after the Panama Canal is enlarged. Hutchison-Whampoa, which is owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing, a close associate of the Butchers of the Beijing, already controls container port facilities at either end of the Panama Canal and at Freeport, in the Bahamas. Red Chinese government officials have visited the Freeport facility.

Doubtlessly, the ruling Communist Party of Cuba is anxious to upgrade its port facilities, which during the 1980s handled 12 million tons of cargo annually but now only 3 million, due in part to the global economic recession. However, thinking strategically, larger port facilities would not only accommodate larger commercial vessels, but also larger military vessels, such as the Russian warships that are once again scheduled to show up in Havana Bay this December.

In a related story, last December Russia and this year the United Arab Emirates pledged to build a canal across Nicaragua via Lake Nicaragua, a dream that has floated around Central America for well over a hundred years. Will Cuba, Nicaragua, and the Bahamas one day become a staging point for a Communist Bloc invasion of the USA? We can only speculate now but, in our opinion, this scenario is not beyond the realm of possibility. At the very least, the Communist Bloc is seeking to control the strategic waterways of the Caribbean Basin.

On October 8 Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez welcomed 240 Cuban doctors to his country, where they will disperse to 7,000 primary health care centers. Under that professional cover, these Cuban agents will no doubt spread the Gospel According to Marx among Venezuelans. The communist regime in Caracas has replaced the Soviet Union as Cuba’s chief financial benefactor.

>USSR2 File: Moldova’s fake makeover: Post-communist government controlled by (surprise!) “ex”-communists, parliament dominated by open Communist Party

>Following two turbulent elections in April and July, the ruling Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova once again secured a plurality of seats in the national parliament, but not enough to form another government. Instead, four parties committed to integrating Moldova, one of Europe’s most impoverished countries, into the European Union (EU) formed a coalition government. Together the Liberal Democratic Party, Liberal Party, Democratic Party, and Our Moldova Alliance commanded enough seats in parliament to elect the country’s acting president, Mihai Ghimpu of the Liberal Party. Vlad Filat of the Liberal Democratic Party was appointed prime minister (pictured above). Two-term president Vladimir Voronin, a communist who in an earlier political incarnation attained the rank of general in the Soviet Interior Ministry, was constitutionally compelled to step down from his office.

Last gasp for Moldova’s communists, who enjoyed an electoral resurgence for eight years beginning in 2001, right? Not so fast. Two important leaders in Moldova’s new ruling Alliance for European Integration are, lo and behold, “ex”-communists, Serafim Urechean of the Our Moldova Alliance and Marian Lupu of the Democratic Party. Moldova’s acting president, Ghimpu, moreover, co-founded the People’s Front of Moldova, which became the country’s new ruling party in 1991 when the Moldavian section of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union banned itself and changed its name.

In 2000 former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev described the EU as the “new European Soviet,” meaning that the European super-state is nothing more than a partial fulfillment of Vladimir Lenin’s dream of creating a “world proletarian republic” from regional building blocs of socialist states. Moscow’s clandestine role in supporting the formation of the EU, asserted Soviet defector Vladimir Bukovsky in a 2006 interview with the Brussels Journal, was carried out in tandem with Western Europe’s social democrats and socialists. The Soviet strategists love the EU because the EU is their collective baby. By contrast, they do not love NATO which, while boasting overlapping membership with the EU, is dominated by Moscow’s archnemesis, Washington.

Prime Minister Filat advocates EU membership for Moldova and the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers, present in Moldova’s Russian-speaking breakaway region Transnistria since 1992. Geographically, the former Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic is wedged between Romania and Ukraine. Significantly, Filat insists that Moldova will maintain close relations with Moscow and neither join NATO nor unify with NATO member Romania but, rather, remain neutral. “Moldova is a neutral country,” Filat announced on October 9, adding: “This is determined by its constitution. We want normal relations with NATO. Or at least those close to the level Russia has with the alliance.” Moldovan political analyst Sergei Nazaria commented on Filat’s remarks: “From my perspective, we do not face any threats today and nobody is planning to attack us. In the present geopolitical situation, it makes sense to maintain Moldova’s neutrality. The North Atlantic alliance is not quite a friendly organization for Russia. If we join NATO, we will be perceived as ‘not very good people’ . . . This will lead to a dramatic worsening of relations with Russia.”

As usual, the Soviets have all the bases covered. Thus, while Moldova’s open communists no longer occupy the roles of head of state and government, the country’s “ex”-communists are in fact faithfully carrying out Lenin’s plan for creating a “neutral, socialist Europe” under Moscow’s thumb, to quote from KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn’s first book New Lies for Old (1984).

>MISSILE DAY ALERT: Belarusian opposition: More than one week after Zapad 2009 “several thousand” Russian troops have yet to return home

>On September 30 the website of Democratic Belarus reported that the 6,000 Russian troops who participated in the Union State’s Zapad 2009 war game were beginning to board trains heading east. More than a week later another oppositionist website, Charter 97, presented a different story: “Several thousands of Russian soldiers and officers who took part in Zapad-2009 maneuvers in Belarus haven’t returned to Russia. The Belarusian Ministry of Defense informs that the Russian troops, in particular motor-rifle, tank, and artillery troops, remain in Belarus.” The Union State carried out Zapad 2009 between September 18 and 29 at various training sites in Belarus, southern Russia, and Kaliningrad, Russia’s Baltic exclave wedged between Poland and Lithuania.

The Belarusian Defense Ministry’s media relations officer, Colonel Vyachslau Ramenchyk, offered an explanation for this “minor” oversight: “The ceremony of parting with the Russian troops is as solemn as the welcoming one. Representatives of the local authorities give flowers to the soldiers, say thanks and words of friendship.” In other words, “Get real, comrade! Our Russian friends are not leaving anytime soon.”

Zmitser Bandarenka, coordinator of the oppositionist European Belarus, reminds those who have ears to hear that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko probably conceded to a permanent Russian military presence in his country in exchange for Kremlin energy deals: “Lukashenka and [Russian counterpart Dmitry] Medvedev agreed to hold such manoeuvres every other year. It means that permanent Russian military units and equipment will stay here, because people can’t shuttle endlessly from east to west. In fact, it means a creeping occupation. Lukashenka probably found himself in a difficult economic situation, so he made such concessions.” Lukashenko and Medvedev are pictured above.

If Russia does not withdraw its troops from Belarus within the next few weeks, we can safely assume that a “creeping occupation” is indeed taking place.

To quote Comrade Scooby: “Ruh-oh.”

Russia ended its Soviet-era occupation of Belarus in June 1997, when President Boris Yeltsin withdrew troops connected to the Kremlin’s Strategic Missile Forces. The last Union State military drill to occur on Belarusian soil was Union Shield 2006, after which some 1,800 Russian troops presumably returned home.

Meanwhile, Belarus’ Defense Minister Leonid Maltsau is attending another “post”-Soviet war game, Cooperation 2009, in Kazakhstan. There troops from Russia, Armenia, and three republics from “former” Soviet Central Asia are training under the auspices of the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s new Collective Rapid Reaction Force.

>Communist Bloc Military Updates: Medvedev stresses “defensive” nature of Zapad 2009; Ladoga 2009 simulates NATO invasion of Russia via Finland

>– Khamis al-Qaddafi, Brigade Commander in Libyan Army, Observes Zapad 2009; Son of Libyan Dictator Received Military Training in Moscow

– Russian Navy Carries Out Anti-Submarine Warfare, Live-Fire Exercises in Black Sea, Simulates Attack by “Hostile” (US?) Submarines

– 7,000 Soviet Troops from Russia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan Train as Part of New Collective Rapid Reaction Force

– Russian Army Denies Existence of “Black Eagle Super-Tank,” Acknowledges Introduction of New T-95 MBT in 2010

– South Korean Unification Ministry: North Korea Dumped References to Communism from Constitution in April, Enthroned Kim Jong-il as “Supreme Leader”

Between September 18 and 29 the Russian and Belarusian militaries, united under one command in the Union State, carried out the Zapad 2009 war game in both countries. The first Zapad (“West”) drill since 1999, the exercise involved 200 pieces of military equipment, 6,000 troops from the Russian Armed Forces, and 6,500 troops from the Belarusian Interior Ministry, Emergencies Ministry, and State Security Committee (KGB). Among other tasks the war game tested interoperability within the integrated Russian-Belarusian air defense system.

The last phase of Zapad 2009 took place in Russia’s Baltic exclave Kaliningrad (pictured above) and Belarus, where President Alexander Lukashenko hosted his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev. In the Kaliningrad Oblast Medvedev observed: “I would like to point out that the aim of our exercise is of a defensive nature. We are not threatening anyone. Despite problems of economic nature that emerged within the last year we are going to implement the whole scheduled program of military drills.” The Polish defense minister would probably disagree with Medvedev’s characterization of Zapad 2009 as a purely “defensive” exercise.

Incidentally, Belarusian opposition media outlet Charter 97 reveals that also in attendance at Zapad 2009 was Khamis al-Qaddafi, son of Libyan strongman Muammar. Khamis is commander of a “special reinforced brigade” in the Libyan army. A graduate of the military academy in Tripoli, he also received training at the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow and the Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Libya’s long-time dictator recently addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York City and later went on a shopping binge during the second summit of South America and Africa in Venezuela.

As reported in the MSM, Zapad 2009 simulated a NATO invasion of Belarus via Poland and the Baltic republics, all former communist states, while Ladoga 2009 apparently simulated a simultaneous NATO invasion of northwestern Russia via Finland, which is neutral. Between August 10 and September 29 more than 10,000 servicemen, 4,000 pieces of hardware, 50 airplanes and helicopters, and over 20 warships and submarines took part in Ladoga 2009, which is named after the large lake between Russia and Finland. The fictitious frontline was 1,500 kilometers long and 300 kilometers deep. Specific exercises included a parachute drop of more than 1,000 airborne troops near St. Petersburg. On the last day of the war game Russian Ground Forces commander General Vladimir Boldyrev praised the “high level of skills and interaction” of the troops.

Between October 6 and 8, along Russia’s southern periphery, the Kremlin navy carried out anti-submarine warfare and live-fire drills in the Black Sea. “The aim of the exercises is to practice anti-submarine search-and-destroy missions. The drills involve warships, aircraft and a submarine from the Black Sea Fleet,” a naval spokesentity explained, adding: “The Smetlivy destroyer and three ASW corvettes, assisted by two Be-12 Mail ASW aircraft will simulate an attack with torpedoes and depth charges on a hostile submarine near the Russian coast.” The Black Sea Fleet’s ASW contingent consists of two ASW cruisers, an ASW destroyer, and at least six ASW corvettes. The fleet has only one submarine in active service, a Kilo-class Alrosa vessel.

Further east along Russia’s southern periphery 7,000 troops from that country and four other “former” Soviet republics–Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan–trained as part of a new “post”-Soviet Collective Rapid Reaction Force (CRRF). Last Friday the armies of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) assembled at Kazakhstan’s Matybulak training grounds for two weeks of maneuvers. The purpose of the CRRF is to deploy a nimble fighting force equivalent to NATO’s. Among other duties the CRRF will combat insurgent uprisings in CSTO member states.

In June Medvedev and his (”ex”-communist) counterparts in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan finalized the creation of the CRRF. The other members of the CSTO—Belarus and Uzbekistan—declined to participate, although Lukashenko has indicated that Minsk will shortly join the new multinational force. US forces have used bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to support military operations against the (Soviet-backed) Taliban in Afghanistan.

As Russia and the “former” Soviet republics prepare for future confrontations with NATO in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the Kremlin is denying the existence of a new-generation main battle tank (MBT). The Russian media recently reported that a “super-tank,” dubbed Black Eagle, was lately developed by the Omsk Transmash design bureau. The Black Eagle is purportedly based on the T-80U MBT and features explosive reactive armor and a box-shaped turret. Alleged pictures of the Black Eagle were shown on the Internet.

“There was no such [Black Eagle] project…and those 20-year-old pictures show a mock-up of a futuristic tank which remained just a product of someone’s imagination,” protested Colonel Vladimir Voitov, director of research at the Main Directorate of the Armored Troops. Voitov added: “I am aware of a prototype of an experimental tank, but the turret of the vehicle did not have anything inside.”

Some Russian media outlets apparently agree with Voitov, insisting that the Black Eagle program was terminated due to the acceptance by the Russian Ground Forces of the T-90, built by the Uralvagonzavod plant, in the mid-1990s. They also report that the Russian army has in fact selected Uralvagonzavod to develop and manufacture a new-generation MBT to be designated T-95. In July 2008 Sergei Mayev, head of the Federal Service for Defense Contracts (Rosoboronzakaz), confirmed that the Russian army will start receiving MBTs superior to the T-90 after 2010. The T-95 will feature better firepower, maneuverability, electronics, and armor protection than the T-90, while its maximum speed will increase from 50 to 65 kilometers per hour.

North Korea’s “Dear Leader” Becomes Supreme Leader

Elsewhere in the Communist Bloc the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea officially dropped communism as its guiding principle in a new constitution promulgated in April. Instead, Kim Jong-il, chairman of the National Defense Commission, was formally declared “Supreme Leader” of the country. The Republic of Korea’s Unification Ministry only released this information to the world on September 28. The alteration made to North Korea’s constitution, the first since 1998, conforms to Kim Jong-il’s “military first” policy (songun). “Experts on the North’s state propaganda,” editorializes Reuters, “said the military first ideology has helped Kim dodge responsibility for the country’s sharp economic decline by arguing that heavy defense spending was needed to overcome threats posed by the United States.”

We suspect that the ruling Korean Workers’ Party’s reported abandonment of communism is a ruse, much like perestroika in the Soviet Union or the “socialist market economy” in the People’s Republic of China. In the last two cases, Western analysts have insisted that the Russians rejected communism in 1991, while the business-savvy Red Chinese have become communists in name only. In reality, North Korea’s communist dictatorship is probably faking its own “restructuring” in order to hasten peaceful unification with South Korea and receive badly needed financial aid and investment from Seoul and the West.

As an aside, it is very probable too that South Korea’s Unification Ministry has been infiltrated by communist agents in the employ of the North. In that light, this tardy “revelation” from Pyongyang is suspicious. Last year South Korean Defense Minister Lee Sang-hee, referring to fake North Korean defector Won Jong Hwa, warned: “This case shows that North Korea has never changed and is still stepping up its policy of trying to communize the South and spreading deep into our society.”

>Final Phase Backgrounder: Gorbachev praises Putin’s “achievements in power,” characterizes United Russia as "bad copy of CPSU"

>– Gorbachev’s 1987 Manifesto Clearly States Perestroika Means “More Socialism,” “Restructuring” to Be Guided by the Communist Party

– Kremlin’s New Draft Law Will End Cyberspace Anonymity in Russia, Block Internet Access during “Emergency Situations”

The ideological and organizational continuity between the old and new Soviet leadership was again demonstrated last weekend when the Soviet Union’s first and last president, Mikhail Gorbachev, praised Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s “achievements in power.” On September 20 BBC News released an interview with Gorbachev, who rebuked Putin for his recent suggestion of returning to the presidency in 2012. When asked earlier this month whether he would be running for the presidency in that year, Putin informed the Valdai Discussion Club that: “I could reach an agreement with President Dmitry Medvedev because we are of the same blood and of the same political outlook.” Without actually saying so, of course, Putin means that he and Medvedev are both on the Red Team, which is the only team in Russia.

However, Gorbachev, while “highly complimentary” over Putin’s restoration of stability to Russia, insisted that the country’s future must be “decided by the people”: “I believe that Prime Minister Putin’s raising of the subject of 2012 is premature. Moreover, in this conversation, everything came down to ‘We’ll sit down and reach an agreement.’ But if an agreement is to be reached with anyone, it is with the electorate, with the people. But the people were absent from this conversation. I do not think this is right.”

Gorbachev also criticized the ruling pro-Kremlin party, but admitted that “Russia needs more time” to develop democratic institutions: “I would call United Russia a bad copy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Of course, we need to proceed along the route of democratic change. The Americans, who built their democracy over 200 years, want us to build ours in 200 days.” In this case, Gorby could not be more candid and accurate: United Russia is indeed a “bad copy” of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The communists openly rule Russia through the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which pretends to be in opposition, and potemkin entities like United Russia, Just Russia, and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia.

Gorbachev, as noted above, credited Putin with restoring stability to Russia: “What has happened in recent years, particularly the first years of Putin’s leadership, has been successful. Despite all the shortcomings, of which there have been many. Putin inherited a very difficult country, under threat of break-up and destruction. He restored stability.” He concluded that freedom and democracy remain the “keys to future development”: “Questions of modernization – in the economy, in the social sphere, and in culture – cannot be decided without the involvement of the people, and without increasing civil liberties. And this cannot be done through pressure, commands, and administrative methods, but only through the further development of democracy. The people must be involved in this.”

Incidentally, this is not the first time that Gorbachev’s has played the role of Devil’s advocate for Putin. In 2001 he heaped praises on then President Putin, even as he branded former President Boris Yeltsin a “liar.”

Although Gorbachev criticizes the use of “pressure, commands, and administrative methods” to advance “democracy” in Putinist Russia, these are the very tools that he advocated in his 1987 manifesto Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World (New York: Harper & Row Publishers). There, in true Leninist fashion, he unambiguously states that perestroika means “more socialism” and that the CPSU must remain the vanguard of the people by guiding the process of “restructuring” in Russia, the “former” Soviet republics, and the entire world.

I would like to point out once again that we are conducting all our reforms in accordance with the socialist choice. We are looking within socialism, rather than outside it, for the answers to all the questions that arise. We assess our successes and errors alike by socialist standards. Those who hope that we shall move away from the socialist path will be greatly disappointed. Every part of our program of perestroika—and the program as whole, for that matter—is fully based on the principle of more socialism and more democracy [page 36].

True, the perestroika drive started on the Communist Party’s initiative, and the Party leads it. The Party is strong and bold enough to work out a new policy. It has proved capable of heading and launching the process of renewal of society [page 55].

In short, the restructuring effort started with the Party and its leadership [page 56].

Yes the Party leadership started it. The highest Party and state bodies elaborated and adopted the program. True, perestroika is not spontaneous, but a governed process [page 56].

The Soviet people are convinced that as a result of perestroika and democratization the country will become richer and stronger [page 58].

In November 2008 Gorbachev urged then President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama to implement perestroika in the USA. In so doing he obviously recognized a kindred spirit who was prepared to socialize America. Alleged Soviet mole Obama and his mentor are pictured above in Moscow, on July 7, 2009. The two men previously met in secret at the White House in March. Last June Gorbachev also urged the leaders of the world to implement “global perestroika,” which was nothing other than a plea for world communism.

Today the Soviet strategists are communizing the “former” Soviet Union through organizations like the Commonwealth of “Independent” States, Europe through the European Union, Eurasia through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Africa through the African Union, Latin America through the Union of South American Nations and the (overtly Marxist) Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, and the USA through the socialist administration of President Obama. For his part, Gorby pretends to be an independent critic of the Putinist regime, but in reality he is a consummate deceiver carrying out the Soviet leadership’s long-range plan for conquest by convergence.

Meanwhile, the bogus nature of freedom in “post”-communist Russia is evident in the Justice Ministry’s new draft law that will expand state control over the Internet. According to the government publication Rossiiskaya Gazeta, the proposed bill will require all private Internet providers in Russia to supply the Federal Security Service (FSB/KGB) with information on their clients. The new law will severely penalize hackers that disrupt state websites with seven-year jail sentences, as well as permit the Kremlin to block Internet access during investigations or emergency situations. The newspaper continued: “Another initiative will be questionably received by the public. Special services and law enforcement bodies will have the option to restrict the rights of Internet users during search and investigations. Simply put, when required, certain people will not have access to the Web.”