>Blogger’s Note: Red World map updated for 2010, Communist Bloc narco-routes indicated

>Please note our new Red World 2010 map in this blog’s right column. Communist Bloc narco-routes are indicated. We are assuming that Chile’s rightist presidential candidate will win the run-off election in January. That country is colored accordingly.

>WW4 File: Colombian DM says “Risk of foreign aggression,” activates 6 air battalions, builds new army base near Venezuelan border

>– Chavez and Putin Hold Christmas Eve Telephone Conversation, Discuss Arrival in Venezuela of “Machinery and Equipment from Russia” (90-Plus T-72 Main Battle Tanks to Be Hurled at Colombia?)

– Chavez Justifies His Own Aggression: 1) Accuses USA of Sending Unmanned Spy Plane over Venezuelan Military Base, 2) “Exposes” US-Colombian Plot to Set Up and Attack a Fake FARC Camp on Venezuelan Soil, 3) Denounces Netherlands for Hosting US Counter-Narcotics Personnel in Leeward Antilles, 4) Declares “Obama Illusion Has Finished”

Let’s face reality, folks, since the Obama White House refuses to acknowledge the obvious: armed for bear by the Soviet Bear, Venezuela’s communist dictator Hugo Chavez has flipped his lid and is swaggering into an armed confrontation with US ally Colombia. Meanwhile, as South America teeters on the verge of the region’s worst-ever war, the North American shopping mall regime staggers along in a decades-old strategic sleepwalk.

On December 20, in an interview with El Tiempo, Colombia’s Defense Minister Gabriel Silva warned that there was a “growing risk” of a foreign state taking military action against Colombia, an obvious reference to neighboring Venezuela. “In Colombia we have concentrated on the internal threat,” explained Silva, adding:

But the risk is growing because what has been clearly and directly presented, is an eventual action against Colombia from outside. Colombia was not used to thinking about this eventuality in its foreign policy and defence strategy. Unfortunately now we have to put this variable on the map. There is a risk of a foreign aggression.

The previous day Silva announced that the Colombian military will build a new base on the Guajira peninsula, near the border city of Nazaret. The facility will accommodate 1,000 troops. “It is a strategic point from a defence point of view,” Silva admitted. Meanwhile, as we reported in November, General Oscar Gonzalez, commander of the Colombian Army, has acknowledged that six air battalions have been activated, including two on the border with Venezuela. At the time Chavez deployed 15,000 National Guard troops along the Colombian border, ostensibly to disrupt the flow of cocaine into Venezuela, but in reality to no doubt facilitate that traffic in collusion with his ideological comrades in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

For his part, Chavez fulminated during his weekly rant-in, Alo Presidente: “We are not preparing any aggression against Colombia or against anybody,” he protested in response to Silva’s admonition, but added this warning: “Believe me, bourgeois of Colombia, if you hurt Venezuela you’ll regret it. We are not unarmed. We do not have our arms crossed.” On December 20 drug lord Chavez condemned the Netherlands for allowing US counter-narcotics personnel access to airbases in self-governing Aruba and Curacao, Dutch-owned islands near Venezuela’s Caribbean coast. He also accused Washington of sending unmanned aerial drones from Colombia to spy on a Venezuelan military base and threatened to shoot down the aircraft. Silva laughed off Chavez’s accusation, suggesting that “perhaps Venezuelan soldiers saw Santa’s sleigh instead.”

So now in Chavez’s feverish imagination three countries are arrayed against Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution: USA, Colombia, and the Netherlands.

Meanwhile, Chavez continues to receive his orders from Moscow. On Christmas Eve he held a telephone conversation with his KGB handler, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. “Putin and Chavez discussed various issues of bilateral trade and economic relations, including several aspects of Russian-Venezuelan interaction in the energy sphere, as well as in the sphere of supplies of machinery and equipment from Russia,” the Kremlin press service intoned blandly. Itar-Tass also reported: “Putin and Chavez coordinated a schedule for bilateral contacts in early 2010 and exchanged congratulations on the coming Christmas and New Year.” We rather suspect that the “machinery and equipment” that Chavez is expecting from Russia contains a shipment of 90-odd T-72 main battle tanks that the Venezuelan military intends to hurl against Colombia.

Buoyed by his conversation with Russia’s KGB-communist dictator, on Monday Chavez hurled yet another provocation at Colombia and the USA, this time accusing the two allies of plotting to set up and attack a fake FARC camp on Venezuelan territory. “We have evidence that the Colombian government, instructed and supported, or rather directed by the United States, is preparing a ‘false positive,’” the Venezuelan president ranted during a televised speech to troops based in the western border state of Zulia. Chavez then denied Colombian counter-accusations that have portrayed him as “being in cahoots” with the FARC guerrillas:

It’s feasible the neighbouring country could build a makeshift camp in a remote location, then plant corpses and guns to make it look like a rebel camp had been discovered. The verbal war against Venezuela began weeks ago, saying that we have I don’t know how many guerrilla chiefs hidden here … that in Venezuela there are rebel camps protected by the Venezuelan government, which is absolutely false.

They are preparing the terrain to attack Venezuelan territory, simulating an encampment.

Chavez, pictured above, addressed troops at Fort Mara where, he insisted, a group of soldiers reportedly spotted the unmanned spy plane mentioned above. Soldiers who stood facing Chavez displayed some of the weapons that Caracas has recently bought from Moscow, including shoulder-fired Igla-S surface-to-air missiles and Dragunov sniper rifles. Referring to the thousands of Igla-S weapons that Venezuela has purchased, Chavez quipped: “They’re defensive weapons. This is like the boxer’s jab.” He also reassured Venezuelan troops that the military will soon receive the Russian-built T-72 main battle tanks, the subject of which Chavez probably raised in his conversation with Putin last week.

In a related story, according to Bogota’s DAS intelligence agency, Colombian authorities have arrested a sixth Venezuelan soldier who illegally crossed the border within the last three months. This time a uniformed sergeant of the Venezuelan National Guard was arrested at a hotel in the Arauca department. The soldier was delivered to Venezuelan authorities at the border. Make link to Colombia Reports

Finally, in spite of their comradely first encounter at the Organization of American States summit in April, Chavez has apparently concluded that US President Barack Hussein Obama can no longer be trusted to reverse his country’s “imperialist legacy.” “Let’s not kid ourselves: the Obama illusion has finished, and the shameless interventionism of the American administration shows that,” wrote Chavez in a New Year’s message that quoted Karl Marx and was carried by the state media. “Obama failed to curb imperialist policies in Afghanistan and Iraq, and tolerates the coup leader in Honduras,” he complained, alluding to his puppet Manuel Zelaya, holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa since September.

Lamenting the outcome of the Copenhagen Climate Summit, Venezuela’s red tyrant continued: “Those leaving us on the verge of an unimaginable ‘ecocide,’ those who caused climate change, should be forced to accept their responsibilities.” Referring to the 2010 National Assembly vote, which political analysts expect the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela to win, albeit it with a reduced majority, Chavez admitted: “The elections are crucial to the continuation and deepening socialism of the Bolivarian Revolution.”

Chavez’s dismissal of and disdain for the Obama Administration could be a signal that Latin America’s Red Axis, with quiet backing from the Soviet strategists, is ready to move against anti-communist hold-out Colombia.

>USSR2 File: Chairman Zyuganov criticizes Putin, praises Medvedev’s economic modernization, urges president to implement Communist Party program

>– Putin Downplays Stalin’s Crimes in Strongest-Ever Public Endorsement of Predecessor, Yabloko Leader Scoffs at Medvedev’s Pretended Criticism of Genocidal Soviet Dictator

When the need to deceive Russia’s citizen-slaves or confuse Western analysts arises, the Moscow Leninists either praise one another or pretend to detest one another. For example, former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev has often praised Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy of standing up against NATO but denounced Putin’s parliamentary support group, United Russia, for failing to represent “the people.” For his part, Gennady Zyuganov, chairman of the (secretly ruling) Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), consistently lambastes the “party of power,” while holding congenial meetings with “ex”-communist Putin several times yearly.

The disingenuous behavior of Russia’s Red Team was once again demonstrated earlier this month when Zyuganov praised President Dmitry Medvedev’s “Go Russia!” economic modernization program, which closely mirrors in name and content the CPRF’s “Go Russia, Toward Socialism!” program. “President Medvedev speaks about modernization, while Prime Minister Putin endorses conservatism,” Zyuganov was quoted by the independent, Finnish-owned Moscow Times as saying. “The program of innovations offered by the president in the state-of-the-nation address has not been supported by the United Russia party and government,” he continued. The CPRF advocates abolishing the country’s 13 percent flat income tax, boosting state support for agriculture, nationalizing raw material industries, and granting tax holidays to medium-sized businesses.

“President Medvedev said state corporations work ineffectively, but the prime minister provides cover for this ineffectiveness,” Zyuganov complained. He then urged the State Council, a policymaking group chaired by Medvedev and representing federal government officials, regional governors, and lawmakers, to review the Communist Party’s program at its next session in January 2010.

While Zyuganov has become increasingly critical of Putin during the global economic crisis, he has moderated his tone toward Medvedev. “I am not saying the Communists will make Medvedev their leader, but they will take each other’s interests into account in the next State Duma elections,” opined Alexei Mukhin, an analyst with the Center for Political Information. Mukhin pointed out: “The Communist Party is the only major political group left for Medvedev because the others are controlled by Putin and his retinue.” On December 9 Zyuganov denied that Sergei Mironov, speaker of the Federation Council, the Russian parliament’s upper house, once again proposed a merger between the CPRF and Mironov’s socialist Just Russia party, which is also represented in the State Duma.

Russia’s Red Team, however, does not hesitate to close ranks around the Soviet communists’ sacred cow: former dictator Joseph Stalin. On December 21 CPRF Vice Chairman Ivan Melnikov posted the following plea for tolerance toward the genocidal legacy of “Uncle Joe” on the party website: “We would very much like for any discussion of the mistakes of the Stalin epoch to be silenced today, so that people could reflect on Stalin’s personality as a creator, a thinker and a patriot.” Comrade Ivan’s blithe comments about Stalin should cause any true Russian democrat to cringe, especially in view of the fact that Melnikov teaches at Moscow State University and heads up the State Duma’s education committee. The latter, in case you didn’t catch on, means an open communist (surprise, surprise) controls Russia’s education system.

Meanwhile, hundreds of communists laid flowers at Stalin’s grave in Moscow’s Red Square as 3,000 people attended an evening concert in his honor. Chairman Zyuganov is pictured above on this occasion. In his home town of Gori, in the not-so-former Soviet republic of Georgia, a few hundred admirers including his grandson marched to a towering statue of the dictator in the main square. NPR chronicles Stalin’s atrocious career:

Stalin—born as Josef Dzhugashvili on Dec. 21, 1879—was among the leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution, and maneuvered to discredit his rivals and consolidate control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union after the 1924 death of its first leader, Vladimir Lenin. Stalin ruled with an iron fist until his own death in 1953, having unleashed brutal purges which killed millions of people. Millions more died in a famine triggered by his brutal collectivization of agriculture and confiscation of grain to fund the frenetic industrialization drive.

His legacy of repression and persecution, however, only became fully known in Russia after the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, lifted the taboo against criticizing Stalin as part of the 1980s perestroika campaign of political and economic reforms that precipitated the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse.

On the 130th anniversary of his birth, Soviet communists could not contain their worshipful praise of Stalin. Yevgeny Teterev, a member of the CPRF Komsomol, also lay flowers at Stalin’s grave and gushed: “In Stalin’s name, our grandfathers and grandmothers went into battle, they died with his name on their lips. They built our country’s industry, so for them Stalin means a lot. What does he mean for me? First of all he is a great personality of global dimensions.” According to a survey released on December 18 by state-run polling agency VTsIOM, most Russians—54 percent—have a high opinion of Stalin’s leadership qualities, while only 23 percent rate his personal character traits as “below average.” The young Yevgeny would no doubt fall into the 54 percent polled by VTsIOM.

As president of the Russian Federation (2000-2008), Putin made many efforts to incrementally rehabilitate Stalin’s image, praising his drive to industrialize the Soviet Union and his victory over the Nazis. “In my view, you cannot make one gross assessment,” Putin cautioned during his annual live radio and TV call-in show on December 3. He added: “Any historical events need to be analyzed in their entirety.” No so coincidentally, Putin’s paternal grandfather, Spiridon Ivanovich (1879–1965), was employed at Vladimir Lenin’s dacha at Gorki as a cook. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Spiridon continued to work for Lenin’s widow. Putin’s grandfather would later cook for Joseph Stalin when the Soviet leader visited one of his dachas in the Moscow region.

Soviet Komsomol graduate Medvedev has taken a “more critical” stand against Stalinism. “It is impossible to imagine the scale of the terror inflicted on the people of our country,” Medvedev admitted in his video blog on October 30, the day commemorating the victims of Stalinist repression. The Russian president continued: “I am convinced that no national development, no success, no ambitions can be achieved at the price of human suffering and death.”

The leader of the opposition Yabloko party, Sergei Mitrokhin, was not impressed by Medvedev’s pretended sympathy for Stalin’s myriad victims. “This statement had appeal on the day of remembrance, but he has never followed with any actions or a united program of de-Stalinization in the government,” observed Mitrokhin.

Meanwhile, Russian voters have ratified their approval of Stalin worship by signaling their support for Stalin’s high priest, Putin himself, as front runner in the March 2012 presidential election. According to a poll by the Yury Levada Analytical Center, 27 percent of respondents would vote for the former president if an election took place immediately. In the same poll, Medvedev garnered 18 per cent, while Zyuganov, Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) leader and political nutjob Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and Kemerovo governor Aman Tuleyev trailed in the single digits. The current constitution forbids a person from serving as president for three consecutive terms, so both Putin and Medvedev are eligible to run in 2012.

If Zyuganov decides that it’s safe for open communists like himself to re-enter the Kremlin without alarming 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW and 10 Downing Street, then a (bloody) coup will probably be necessary to purge the counter-revolutionaries in United Russia. However, as long as Putin or Medvedev advance the Soviet strategic deception for communism’s global domination, they will remain Russia’s titular rulers.

>Africa File: 2009 sees flurry of visits to Cuba by African communists as Cold War-era allies reaffirm ties; SACP organizes continental leftist network

> All communists to the front to build a Communist Africa! Forward to Communism!
– African Left Network Forum, founding congress, Johannesburg, August 2008

– Cuban, Angolan, and South African Generals Hold Council in Luanda; Anti-Communist Hold-Out State Botswana Rebroadcasts VOA Programs, Angers Zimbabwe

– Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda to Federate as One State by 2013, Common Market Kicks Off Next Year

– New African Leftist Network Takes Aim at US Military’s Africa Command as Evidence of “US Imperialism”

Pictured above: Cuba’s communist dictator Raul Castro welcomes Tanzania’s communist dictator Jakaya Kikwete to Havana on December 1, 2009.

The African section of the Communist Bloc is alive and well, 18 years after the bogus collapse of Soviet communism. This year a parade of African communist leaders arrived in Havana to reaffirm Cold War-era linkages established during numerous Soviet-sponsored “wars of national liberation,” and to establish new ones with Communist Cuba. In 2009 the “Dark Continent” is in reality the “Dark Red Continent.”

In the waning days of the Franco regime, Spain made a secret arrangement to hand over its Western Sahara colony to Morocco and Mauritania. However, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro (Polisario Front) had other ideas and, instead, proclaimed the independence of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). After forcing Mauritania to renounce its claim to the southern third of Western Sahara in 1979, the Polisario Front has since battled the Moroccan army in an effort to claim the entire region for the unrecognized SADR. Although the Polisario Front supposedly renounced Marxism after the Cold War, the guerrilla army’s involvement in the new African Left Network Forum, discussed below, proves otherwise.

Algeria’s long-ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) government, which has never enjoyed peaceful relations with the Kingdom of Morocco, has openly supported the Polisario Front for decades. The FLN regime in Algiers shares kinship with the socialist dictatorships in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, all of which overthrew European-installed monarchies during the 1950s and 1960s.

In early July SADR “President” and Polisario Front General-Secretary Mohamed Abdelaziz flew to Havana where he met Cuban President Raul Castro to discuss bilateral and global issues. For his part, according to a Cuban government communiqué, “Abdelaziz reiterated that his people will always stand with Cuba in its just struggle against the [US] bloc and for the release of the Five Heroes [Cuban DGI agents convicted and imprisoned in the USA], as well as thanking [Cuba] for the ongoing solidarity of the island.” Castro responded by calling the Western Saharans a “heroic people who are fighting in very difficult conditions for their right to self-determination.” Afterwards the SADR “president” travelled to Vienna where he held peace negotiations with the Moroccan government.

In September the Cuban dictatorship entertained Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika; Zambian President Rupiah Bwezani Banda, who is an “ex”-cadre of the formerly ruling United National Independence Party, founded by socialist Kenneth Kaunda; and Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure, who is supported by the ruling Alliance for Democracy and Progress, which includes the communist-infiltrated Alliance for Democracy in Mali.

On October 12 Carlos Gomez, prime minister of Guinea-Bissau, arrived at Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport, where he was welcomed by Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Marcos Rodriguez Costa. “I bring special greetings to our brother Commander Fidel Castro, to President Raul Castro and to the people of Cuba,” chimed the head of government of this former Portuguese colony. Gomez observed: “Cuba and Guinea Bissau fought together for the liberation of our nation.” He then thanked Cuba’s “traditional assistance” to his country in the fields of health and education. Currently, Cuban health personnel contribute to the health care of the people of Guinea-Bissau and teach in the country’s School of Medicine. Cuba and Guinea-Bissau, which has been ruled by the African Party for the Independence of Guinea since independence, established diplomatic relations on October 1, 1973. Gomez last visited Cuba in 2005.

Like Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia today, and like Cuba and Nicaragua during the 1980s, Guinea-Bissau has become a red narco-state, providing the Communist Bloc with a crucial transshipment hub for FARC cocaine en route to Europe.

In early October Mozambican Foreign Minister Oldemiro Julio Marques flew to Havana, where he met with Cuban counterpart in the framework of the 17th session of the Cuba-Mozambique Intergovernmental Joint Commission. “The support we have received has been invaluable,” gushed Mozambique’s foreign minister, who visited the Caribbean island at the invitation of his Cuban counterpart. Marques added: “Mozambique is growing, it is growing stronger thanks to its leaders and teams of professionals, a good part of which were formed thanks to Cuban cooperation. Our visit is an expression of friendship and acknowledgment, to underline that we are together.” Marques also lauded Cuba for its role in the reactivation of the communist-dominated Non-Aligned Movement. Currently, there are 216 Cuban professionals working in Mozambique, while the 61 young Mozambicans studying in Cuba will soon join the 3,790 that have already graduated from Cuban schools.

Like Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique was a former Portuguese colony that achieved independence in 1975 through the guerrilla warfare waged by the Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO).

The first week of December witnessed another flurry of Afro-communist activity in Cuba. Among other visitors, Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni completed a four-day official visit to Cuba, where he met counterpart Raul Castro. Tullow Oil Plc and Heritage Oil Plc have discovered an estimated 700 million commercially viable barrels of crude oil in Uganda’s Lake Albert Rift Basin. Uganda’s National Resistance Movement government plans to send oil workers to Cuba for training.

Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, who represents the long-ruling Revolutionary State Party, also completed a three-day official visit to Cuba in early December. After meeting Cuban counterpart Castro, Kikwete described Tanzanian-Cuban relations as “excellent” and explained that the two countries will “reinforce” existing linkages. He also praised Havana and Dar es Saalem’s cooperation in education, health, and sports. Kikwete is a key player in the formation of the East African Federation, which will unite Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, and Rwanda into one state by 2013. The East African Community’s common market will be inaugurated next year.

South Africa, which fell to communism six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, also reaffirmed its ideological solidarity with Cuba by strengthening existing relations and further expanding cooperation between the two countries. On December 2 South Africa’s International Relations and Cooperation Minister Maite Nkoana Mashabane concluded her official visit to Havana. There she co-chaired the sixth session of the South Africa-Cuba Joint Bilateral Commission with counterpart Marcelino Medina Gonzalez. “Minister Nkoana Mashabane further called for the need to elevate the relations to a higher level through providing more life and impetus to the South Africa-Cuba Relations,” a joint statement declared. The meeting reviewed progress in trade and investment, mining, communications, health, environment, arts and culture, and transportation.

Nkoana Mashabane also visited the Jose Marti Memorial for a wreath-laying ceremony in memory of the fallen “gallant heroes and heroines” of the Cuban Revolution and “other internationalists who died in pursuit of freedom.” SA President Jacob Zuma, reports AllAfrica.com above, is expected to visit Cuba in early 2010 following an invitation from President Castro.

Finally, a delegate from the Communist Party of Cuba’s Politburo attended the sixth congress of the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which waged a 27-year war against anti-communist rebels that ended in 2002. The Cuban delegation met long-ruling Angolan President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos. Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba Army Corp General Cintra Frias conveyed to Dos Santos messages from retired Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and his younger brother and current president Raul. The delegation from Havana also honored Brigadier General Raul Diaz Argüelles, who died in combat on December 11, 1975, in Quibala, in the Angolan province of Kuanza Sur.

Angola is yet another former Portuguese African colony that first surrendered to communism in 1975. Following independence this country witnessed major military battles between, in the one camp, Angola’s Marxist government, with on-the-ground support from Soviet and Cuban troops, as well as the guerrilla fighters of the South-West African People’s Organization, and, in the other camp, UNITA, with battlefield support from the apartheid-era South African Defense Forces.

Significantly, on this occasion three high-ranking military officers from Cuba, Angola, and South Africa met in Luanda to discuss military coordination. The Cuban party was represented by General Cintra Fria, the Angolan party by General Francisco Furtado, and the South African party by Godfrey Ngwenya. General Fria also attended the MPLA congress. What was on the generals’ agenda? We can only speculate at this time. However, we could postulate that the demise of anti-communist hold-out state Botswana, which recently angered Zimbabwe’s Marxist regime for rebroadcasting Voice of America programs, was under consideration.

Several organizations uniting Africa’s ruling and non-ruling socialist parties, such as the African Socialist International, have existed for some time. In August 2008 Africa’s leftists, with support from revolutionary comrades from other continents, met in Johannesburg, where they organized a new entity called the African Left Network Forum (ALNEF). The following parties sent delegates: Botswana National Front (Botswana has never had a socialist government), Communist Part of Egypt (elements of which were absorbed into the ruling National Democratic Party’s predecessor), Social Democratic Party (Kenya), Democratic Progressive Party (Malawi has never had a socialist government), United Democratic Forces-Inkingi (Rwanda), Communist Party of Sudan (which briefly seized power in a 1971 coup), Communist Party of Lesotho, People’s United Democratic Movement (Swaziland), Kabale Socialist Club (Uganda), and Polisario Front (see above).

The co-ruling African National Congress and South African Communist Party hosted this commie bash. The non-ruling Left Party of Sweden, the non-ruling Communist Party of Greece (KKE), which has waged a low-level insurgency via probable fronts like Revolutionary Struggle since the Second World War, and the co-ruling Communist Party of Brazil also sent delegates.

During the first ALNEF congress, delegates reaffirmed “the need for unity of the left and progressive forces to work together, share experiences, provide progressive solidarity with one another and with each other to combat the capitalist system.” The communist congress noted that “The USA imperialism is gaining ground on the continent with the establishment of the [US Armed Forces’] Africa Command to continue its imperial vagaries of plundering African resources in particular the oil and other mineral resources.” ALNEF then issued the following resolutions:

a) The immediate development of an African Left Network Information Centre through a debating forum and an Internet site to be hosted by the South African Communist Party. The SACP is further encouraged to establish this centre at its immediate convenience to harness the work of the left movement on the African continent.

b) To develop a database of all progressive and left organisations, workers movement and trade unions, political parties with contacts details and country specific.

c) Importance of the initiations of a left network involving all left and the progressive forces whose main objective is to establish a viable communist presence, organisation and leadership across the African continent and consolidate the vanguard left movement.

d) Conference called for a periodic annual conference of the left network to share ideas and increase the working class ideology of Marxism–Leninism.

e) Create a forum to facilitate the possibility to take joint positions on the main problems affecting the continent.

f) Agreed to establish a secretariat to coordinate the work of the Africa Left Network Forum to ably facilitate and organise the annual meetings. These meetings can rotate across the length and breadth of the African continent to countries that can be able to host such a conference as well as to coordinate the general work of the network.

g) Conference agreed that the South African Communist Party be duly mandated to coordinate the work of the Africa Left Network Forum (ALNEF)

h) Anchor the left network forum within the mass popular struggles of the people and people to people relations and solidarity.

Around the world communists are jittery about US military might. ALNEF’s opposition to the US Armed Forces’ Africa Command resembles Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s jitters about the US Navy’s revitalized Fourth Fleet, which once again patrols the Caribbean Sea.

ALNEF closed its meeting with this ominous warning to the “African bourgeoisie”: “Like our communist predecessors said in the Communist Manifesto ‘A specter is haunting Europe, the specter of communism.’ Indeed, the African bourgeoisie is warned the specter of communism is haunting Africa and all communist are called to the frontline to sharpen class contradiction and advance the continent to communism. Africa is ready for such a momentous struggle which requires decisive and radical left political leadership and organisation.” After the ALNEF communists expressed their support for the “revolutionary tide in Latin America” (Hugo Chavez and his red buddies) and the “social revolutionary success” in Cuba, the delegates declared: “All communists to the front to build a Communist Africa! Forward to Communism!”

I’m so glad communism’s “dead.” Aren’t you?

>Communist Bloc Military Exercises: Archives October 1962-December 2010

>

2010

European Union to Partly Fund International Highway from Lithuania to Bulgaria, Project Completion in 2020 (10-22-10)

NATO Fighter Jets Intercept Russian Tactical Bombers in Midst of Alliance’s Sabre Strike 2010 Drill in Latvia (10-18-10)

Russian Railways to Extend Broad-Gauge Tracks to Vienna, Austria via Kosice, Slovakia by 2013-2015 (9-30-10)

Russia to Increase Defense Spending 60% by 2013, Top Priority Given to Submarines, Ballistic Missiles, Helicopter Assault Ships, Fighter Jets (7-30-10)

Russia, China, Shanghai Cooperation Organization to Hold Peace Mission 2010 Drill in Kazakhstan in September (7-21-10)

Kremlin Prepares for Nuclear Attack, Builds 5,000 Bomb Shelters in Moscow by 2012 (7-12-10)

Russian Navy Deploys Two Cruisers to Indian Ocean, Repels Simulated Enemy Airstrike (5-7-10)

Russia-Dominated CSTO Deploys 1,000 Troops in Tajikistan, Holds Rapid Reaction Exercise (4-26-10)

Chavez Admits Cubans Training Venezuelan Army, but Dismisses “Cubanization” Charge (4-25-10)

Romanian Global News: Russian Military Used “Electromagnetic Weapon” to Down Polish President’s Plane (4-10-10)

Canadian Foreign Minister Dismisses Russia’s Planned Paratrooper Drop in Arctic as “Propaganda Stunt” (4-6-10)

Kremlin Angered by NATO Air Force Drill over Baltic Republics, Lithuanian DM Dismisses Criticism (3-17-10)

Russian Navy to Unveil New Graney-Class Ballistic Submarine Severodvinsk on May 7, Deploy by Year’s End (3-16-10)

Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces Hold “Large-Scale” Command-and-Staff Drill, 11 Such Exercises Held in 2009 (3-10-10)

Former Soviet Cosmonaut, Communist Duma Deputy Urges Kremlin to Steal Western Military Secrets (3-10-10)

Russian Submarine in Barents Sea Successfully Launches New Sineva SLBM (3-4-10)

Russia to Help Cold War Ally Angola with Defense, Border Control; FSB/KGB General Attends Signing Ceremony in Luanda (3-1-10)

Russian Foreign Minister Visits Managua, Announces Joint Military Drills with Nicaragua (2-15-10)

Communist Troops from Russia, Belarus, Red China, Vietnam to Join Venezuelan Independence Day March-Past (2-12-10)

Russia Lauds Yanukovich Election Victory, Promptly Announces Joint Air Force Exercise with Ukraine for Autumn 2010 (2-10-10)

Russia’s 5th-Generation Stealth Fighter Takes to the Skies in Successful Maiden Flight (1-29-10)

Russia Intimidates Baltic, Black Sea Neighbors with Potential Acquisition of French-Built Amphibious Attack Ships (1-10-10)

Poland Arrests GRU Agent in 2009, First Such Case since 1989, Russian Embassy in Warsaw Feigns Ignorance (1-6-10)

2009

Senior Military Officers from Cuba, Angola, and South Africa Meet in Luanda, Discuss Cooperation between Communist Allies (12-11-09)

Nicaraguan, Venezuelan Militaries to Hold Joint Drill in Central America in May-June 2010 (12-03-09)

Russian Paratroopers and Pacific Fleet to Join Vostok 2010 Exercise in Siberia, Far East (12-01-09)

Cuba to Carry Out Bastion 2009 Military Drills between November 26 and 28, Exercise Postponed after 2008 Hurricanes (11-17-09)

Russia’s Civil Defense Czar Flies to Venezuela, Meets Chavez, Promises to Set Up Emergency Situations Center (11-14-09)

Russia’s Emergency Situations Minister Visits Cuba, Meets Castro, Promises to Set Up Training Center (11-13-09)

Russia’s Civil Defense Czar Arrives in Managua, Meets Country’s Top General, Signs Memorandum of Cooperation (11-11-09)

Polish Media: Russian-Belarusian War Game Simulated Nuclear Attack, Amphibious Landings against Poland (11-01-09)

Serbia to Greatly Expand Cepotina Military Base near Kosovo by End of 2009 (10-28-09)

Russia’s Emergency Situations Minister Meets Serbia’s Communist Police Chief, Pledges to Set Up Training Center in Nis (10-21-09)

Ortega Issues “Urgent Request” for National Assembly to Approve Deployment of Venezuelan Troops, Warships, and Warplanes in Nicaragua (09-23-09)

Russian Fighter-Bombers, Ground-Attack Aircraft Arrive at Belarusian Airbase for Zapad 2009 Maneuver (09-16-09)

Moscow, Minsk Deploy 12,500 Troops for Zapad 2009 Drill in Belarus and Kaliningrad (9-08-09)

Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces Hold Nuclear War Game, Exercise Involves 150 Command and Control Centers (9-07-09)

Leningrad Military District, Northern and Baltic Fleets Start Ladoga 2009 Drill, Simulate “High Alert” in Northwest Russia (8-19-09)

Russia’s Siberian Military District, Mongolia Hold Joint War Game Darkhan-2 in Latter Country (8-18-09)

Canadian Prime Minister to Attend Baffin Island Military Exercise as Ottawa Counters Moscow’s Moves in Arctic (8-17-09)

Canada Dispatches Surveillance Aircraft to Track Russian Subs off Atlantic Coast (8-11-09)

Russian Attack Submarines Spotted off US East Coast in Early August; Pentagon: Patrols “Unusual” but “Not Provocative” (8-05-09)

Moscow Signs Deal to Open 2nd Military Base in Kyrgyzstan, Russian Battalion to Protect “Kyrgyz Sovereignty” (8-01-09)

Castro Announces Bastion 2009 Military Drill to Occur at Year’s End, Indefinite Postponement of Communist Party Congress (7-31-09)

Russian Paratroopers to Hold North Pole Exercise in April 2010; Airborne Forces Commander Denies Saber Rattling (7-29-09)

Russian Paratroopers to Receive New Weapons, Equipment in 2009, Fully Professional Force by 2011 (7-29-09)

Russia, Iran Hold First-Ever Joint Military Exercise, Two-Day Caspian Sea Drill Based on 1921 Friendship Agreement (7-29-09)

Sino-Soviet “Anti-Terrorist” Exercise Follows Recent Muslim Riots in Xinjiang; Moscow, Beijing Plan 25 Joint Drills for 2009 (7-15-09)

Russian Troops Prepare for Peace Mission 2009, Fourth “Anti-Terror” Drill with People’s Liberation Army (6-30-09)

Russian Military Ramps Up for Provocative Maneuvers Zapad 2009, Ladoga 2009, Kavkaz 2009 (Spanish; 05-19-09)

Is the Kremlin Preparing for Preemptive Strike against West under Cover of Russian Survivalist Story? (05-11-09)

State Duma Deputy Proposes Joint Russian-Cuban-Venezuelan Military Exercise in Caribbean (05-06-09)

Kazakhstan to Host SCO’s “Peace Mission 2010” War Game, “Peace Mission 2009” Slated for Northeast China (04-29-09)

Russia, China Lead Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s “Norak Antiterror 2009” War Game in Tajikistan (04-20-09)

Third Sino-Soviet “Peace Mission” War Game to Take Place in Northeast China this Summer (03-18-09)

Russia, Belarus to Stage Large-Scale “Zapad 2009” War Game in Latter Country this Fall (03-10-09)

Residents of Northwestern Russian City Awakened by “False” Air Raid Alarm, Emergency Announcements (02-13-09)

Missile Cruiser Moskva, Flagship of Black Sea Fleet, Simulates Attack Drills in Mediterranean (01-26-09)

Admiral Kuznetsov Aircraft Carrier Leads Task Force to Russian Naval Base in Tartus, Syria; Potential Home for Black Sea Fleet after 2017 (01-12-09)

Russian Northern Fleet Completes Maneuver with NATO Member Turkey in Mediterranean Sea (Presumably under Partnership for Peace Program) (01-12-09)

Russia’s Peter the Great Missile Cruiser Makes Historic Port of Call at Cape Town en Route from Caribbean Sea to Indian Ocean (01-12-09)

Russian Nuclear-Powered Missile Cruiser to Lead Six Warships into Joint Exercise with Indian Navy (01-11-09)

Russian Carrier-Based Warplanes to Utilize Greek Airspace, Athens Flight Information Region to Carry out Exercise (01-02-09)

2008

Military Hotline Links Strategic Partners Russia and China for First Time (12-29-08)

Russian Pacific Fleet nears Indian Ocean for Drills with Strategic Partner India in January (12-23-08)

Russian Warship Leaves Havana after Historic Visit, Ports of Call in Venezuela, Panama and Nicaragua; Castro Confers with Northern Fleet’s Deputy Commander (12-23-08)

Russian Destroyer Arrives at Bluefields, Offloads Generators and Computers for Nicaraguan Army and Police (12-12-08)

Russia and China to Hold Third “Peace Mission” War Game in 2009 (12-10-08)

China and India Hold Second Joint War Game “Hand-in-Hand 2008” in Southern Indian Town of Belgaum (12-06-08)

Russia’s Sole Aircraft Carrier Admiral Kuznetsov Leads Task Force on Atlantic, Mediterranean Tour of Duty (12-05-08)

Russia, Venezuela Conclude First-Ever Joint Naval Exercise; Kremlin Invites Venezuelan Navy to Visit Russia, Join Second Drill in North Sea (12-04-08)

Russia, Venezuela to Hold Joint Air Force Drill in 2009 (10-31-08)

Russia, Belarus Carry Out Massive “Stability 2008” Drill between Sept. 22 and Oct. 21; Strategic Bombers Test Fire Cruise Missiles First Time since 1984 (10-06-08)

St. Petersburg Tests Air Raid Sirens under Simulated Military Attack, Russia’s First Full Civilian Drill since WW2 (09-29-08)

During 8th Trip to Russia, Chavez Observes Part of “Stability 2008,” Kremlin’s Largest War Game since Soviet Era (09-26-08)

Strategic Bombers Leave Venezuela, Return to Russia after Patrolling North Atlantic, Arctic Oceans (09-18-08)

Cuban President Castro, Citing Hurricane Damage, Postpones “Bastion 2008” Military Exercise until Next Year (09-14-08)

Chavez Observes Venezuelan Armed Forces Repelling Mock US Invasion (Three Days After Russian Bomber Arrival) (09-13-08)

Two Tu-160 Supersonic Bombers Arrive in Venezuela for Week-Long Exercise over Caribbean Sea, First Such Deployment since Cold War (09-10-08)

Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces Carry Out Drill in Island’s Eastern Region, “Moncada 2008” Prelude to Wider “Bastion 2008” Maneuvers (06-07-08)

2004-2007

Cuba Concludes Five-Day Military Exercise in Western and Central Regions, “Moncada 2007” Simulates US Invasion of Island (11-24-07)

Russia and Belarus Hold “Union Shield 2006,” War Game First-Ever Combined Defense of Union State (06-26-06)

100,000 Soldiers, 400,000 Reservists Participate in Cuba’s “Bastion 2004” Maneuver, Largest Civilian Mobilization since 1986 (12-13-04)

Historic Soviet Bloc Drills

Seven Million Cubans Take Part in “Bastion 1986” Drill, Prepare to Defend Island against Air Attack (12-09-86)

Soviet Armed Forces Carry Out “Zapad 81,” East Bloc’s Largest-Ever Exercise Includes Amphibious Landings in Poland (09-81)

Warsaw Pact’s Southern Army Group Headquarters Holds Staff Exercise, “Nukes” Vienna and Munich, Soviet Bloc Armor Thrusts into West Germany (06-65)

Warsaw Pact Forces Carry Out “Baltic Order” Exercise in Poland and East Germany, Additional Drill in Romania during Cuban Missile Crisis (10-62)

>Latin America File: Mexico, Cuba patch up relations; Havana, Caracas sign US$3 billion deal at bloc summit, ALBA already using new “virtual” currency

>– Honduras’ Lawful Government Shuns Havana Summit, Zelaya’s Foreign Minister Attends, Raul Castro Laments Zelaya’s Absence

– Ortega Minion in Havana: Nicaragua Has Entered the “Second Phase of the Sandinista Revolution”

– Chilean Voters Move Right in First Round of Presidential Election as Communist Party Boss, Two Comrades Grab Congress Seats, First Time since 1973 Coup

Pictured above: Sebastian Pinera, a conservative billionaire, led Chile’s presidential vote by a wide margin on Sunday, making him the favorite to win a run-off and oust the center-left bloc that has ruled for the two decades since the Pinochet dictatorship.

Last Friday, with the arrival of Mexico’s foreign minister Patricia Espinoza in Havana, Mexico and Cuba moved ahead in their attempt to improve relations that degenerated over international disputes about containing the H1N1 influenza. Espinoza met with her Cuban counterpart Bruno Rodriguez, as well as Cuban President and veteran KGB asset Raul Castro. In April Cuba’s communist dictatorship suspended direct flights from Mexico, irritating President Felipe Calderón. Mexico is the only country in Latin America that restored diplomatic, political and economic ties with Cuba immediately after the 1959 revolution, prompting Espinoza to affirm, “We ought to make sure that our government relations correspond with that history.” Calderón’s predecessor, Vicente Fox, clashed openly with the elder Castro, criticizing his human rights record. “Another topic discussed,” Espinoza explained in a news conference, “was the migratory memorandum of understanding signed by the two countries in October 2008.”

Coincidentally, Mexico and Cuba patched up bilateral relations on the eve of the 8th Extraordinary Summit of the communist-led Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), a political-economic-cultural pact that includes Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. El Salvador’s new Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front government has expressed its intention of joining ALBA, even as Honduras’s conservative president-elect Porfirio Lobo must weigh the option of reversing deposed leader Manuel Zelaya’s decision to place Honduras within the orbit of the Havana-Caracas Axis.

It is also the stated intention of the communist governments in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia to transform ALBA into an “anti-imperialist” (anti-USA) military pact, which may be one reason that the first two countries are planning a joint military exercise in Central America in May and June of 2010. All of the ALBA states have been (Cuba, Nicaragua), are presently (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador), or will be recipients again (Cuba, Nicaragua) of Russian armaments and other military equipment.

Nicaragua’s past/present Marxist dictator Daniel Ortega also put in an appearance at the ALBA meet-and-greet. Among the “experts” fussing about the summit was Nelson Artola, president of Nicaragua’s new Social Emergency Fund. Last Friday Artola described ALBA as “the alternative to the hell of wild capitalism and neoliberalism.” He also referred to the Councils of Citizens’ Power, over which Ortega’s wife Rosario Murillo presides, as “the expression of organized population in our full democracy on this second phase of the Sandinista Revolution.” If we understand Ortega’s minion correctly, the 16-year gap between the first and second Sandinista regimes was a mere hiccough in the communist takeover of Nicaragua.

This past Saturday, the Castro Bros.’ primary South American protégé, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, showed up in Havana to sign cooperation protocols worth US$3 billion. This is Comrade Hugo’s second visit to Cuba in as many weeks. In recent years Venezuela has annually exported 98,000 barrels of crude oil per day to Cuba with favorable terms of financing. Venezuela’s energy minister and communist boss of the state-owned oil company, Rafael Ramirez, explained that Chavez would actually sign 285 accords for US$3.19 billion related to education, sport, fishing, energy, and technology. Trade between Cuba and Venezuela amounted to US$5.28 billion in 2008, compared with US$945 million in 2003.

Cuba, which depends heavily on imports of fuel and food, pays part of its Venezuelan oil bill with the services of 40,000 doctors and other professionals. Cuban professionals are well instructed in Marxism, a worldview that they eagerly share as they ply their trades in Venezuela. “The integration and unity among all ALBA member countries is an important step prior to the full liberation of our peoples,” trumpeted Chavez, linking regional integration with the successful exporting of his Soviet/Cuban-backed Bolivarian Revolution throughout Latin America.

Summit host Raul Castro saluted Bolivia’s self-avowed Marxist-Leninist president Evo Morales, in attendance at the Havana conclave, for winning another term; extended regrets at the absence of ALBA’s former puppet in Honduras, Zelaya, who is still holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa until his safe exile is negotiated; and blasted the new US-Colombian pact that will permit the deployment of 800 US counter-narcotics troops in the South American country as an “act of aggression.” “The deployment of [US] military bases in the region is… an act of aggression against Latin America and the Caribbean,” President Castro ranted, adding: “The U.S. was seeking to suppress by all means the territory that they always considered their backyard.”

Like his commie chums Chavez and Ortega, Castro fears that Washington is conspiring to overthrow his red regime. In his opening address at the ALBA summit, Castro rumbled: “The reactivation of the [US Navy’s] 4th Fleet, with announced operative-strategic maneuver capacities even within the interior waters of the countries of the region, demonstrates that there will be no limits in order to achieve its plans, apart from the imposition of the resistance that we are capable of offering.” Last month the Communist Party of Cuba’s paranoia prompted the execution of the Bastion 2009 military exercise, which simulated a mock US invasion.

Finally, the ALBA leaders announced that the bloc of socialist states will kick off their new virtual currency in January. No “sucres” will be printed or coined, but the electronic denomination will be used to manage debts between governments while reducing reliance on the US dollar and on the USA in general. Cuba has already signed an agreement to pay for a shipment of Venezuelan rice in sucres, according to Cuba’s deputy foreign minister Rogelio Sierra.

Incidentally, Patricia Rodas, Zelaya’s deposed foreign minister, attended the ALBA summit, but the government of acting Honduran president Roberto Micheletti will probably not adhere to any agreements made. “We send our warmest greeting to the Honduran people via Patricia Rodas, their legitimate representative as secretary of state, and present here,” Castro said pointedly in his opening address.

Although Zelaya was a no-show in Havana, according to Xinhua, he plans to meet his democratically elected successor Lobo in the Dominican Republic sometime this week. Regional peacemaker Leonel Fernandez, the Dominican president, is offering to mediate talks between Zelaya and Lobo, a cattle rancher who, oddly, attended Moscow’s terrorist-indoctrination center, Patrice Lumumba University, during the Cold War. Fernandez has also offered to mediate the dispute between Venezuela and Colombia over the US bases deal.

The Honduran Congress blocked Zelaya’s demand that he serve out the balance of his term, which expires on January 27, 2010. Although Mexico has negotiated his departure from Honduras, Zelaya denies that he intends to seek permanent asylum there.

While the Red Axis conspires in Havana, Chilean voters are moving right in the wake of Sunday’s general election, which saw airline owner Sebastian Pinera obtain 44 percent of the vote in the presidential poll, while the center-left Concertacion candidate Eduardo Frei, President Michelle Bachelet’s anointed successor, acquire only 23 percent. “Pinera made people think he can more effectively deal with the problems of the future,” reflected Harald Beyer, an economist with the Center for Public Studies in Chile’s capital Santiago. Beyer added: “He also made people wonder whether Chile can afford a welfare state when it isn’t rich.”

The Concertacion has ruled Chile since General Augusto Pinocet’s ouster in 1990 and presided over the country’s “turbocharged” economy during the last decade. However, the global crisis has knocked down Chile’s economy a peg or two, exposing the country’s “inadequacies in innovation, education, industrial diversification, and productivity.” Pinera, who made Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people, promised voters that he would rectify these problems. Chilean voters appear to be following a “reversal trend” in Latin America that entails a rejection of the leftist politics that revived in earnest 10 years ago with the election of Chavez in Venezuela. Earlier in 2009 this new trend saw a rightward shift in the electorate of Panama and Honduras.

In spite of the poor showing of the Chilean center-left’s presidential candidate, Victor Figueroa-Clark writes that the “real news” of this election is that for the first time since the anti-communist coup in 1973, the Communist Party of Chile (PCC) has achieved parliamentary representation. The communists managed to “parachute” three deputies into the lower house of the Chilean Congress, including PCC boss Guillermo Tellier. Another new communist deputy is Jorge Arrate, the PCC’s presidential candidate, former Socialist Party of Chile cadre, and government minister during the 1990s. Like red presidents Chavez, Ortega, Correa, and Morales, Chile’s communists advocate constitutional reform to entrench their planned proletarian revolution, one preferably decided by the calling of a constituent assembly.

>End Times File: Iranian-Syrian defense pact sets stage for Bible prophecy, including destruction of Damascus, Russian-Iranian-Arab invasion of Israel

>– Pan-Arab Daily: Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Huthi Militias and Hezbollah Secretly Meet in Yemen to “Escalate Military Situation” along Saudi-Yemeni Border

Many months have passed since we posted in our End Times File category. However, a prophetically significant development took place in the Middle East this past Friday: the Islamo-Nazi regime in Tehran and the fascist-communist regime in Damascus signed a military defense agreement that requires the two states to “react together against regional threats from the Zionist regime [Israel]”. “It is only natural for Syria, which faces the inhumane carnivorous Israel to remain prepared for any eventuality” rumbled Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi during the signing ceremony in the Syrian capital. Vahidi’s visit to Syria follows by one week a visit from his colleague Saeed Jalili, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

The Syrian-Iranian pact calls for joint military exercises to improve interoperability between the two armed forces. Of course the only way Syria and Iran can physically combine their armies is to circumvent US-occupied Iraq via NATO member Turkey which, in another Biblically prophetic development, has since the Cold War allied itself with Russia and Iran. Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to defy the United Nations’ demand that his government halt its Russian-backed nuclear enrichment program. “Earlier this week,” reports the Jerusalem Post, “US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton questioned whether Iran had indeed any intention of coming clean on its nuclear program.”

According to the end-times scenario introduced in the Old Testament and fleshed out in the New Testament, the rapture of the church is imminent in view of Israel’s restoration to its homeland according to the exact date prophesied in Holy Scripture–May 15, 1948. Following the instantaneous physical resurrection of millions of deceased Christians, the transformation of living Christians, and the translation of both groups to heaven (1 Thessalonians 4;13-18), the Antichrist (1 John 2:18) will broker then break a brief peace covenant (Daniel 9:27, Isaiah 28:18, Psalm 55:20) between Israel and its neighbors, inaugurating the tribulation period, the last seven years of history prior to Jesus Christ’s millennial kingdom. When the world awakens to a false peace in the Middle East, two more significant events will occur.

First, according to Isaiah 17:1-3, Damascus, the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city will be destroyed, presumably by an Israeli nuclear warhead. Some Bible prophecy enthusiasts have asserted that the destruction of Damascus might occur before the rapture, offering Christians an excellent tool for evangelism. However, Ezekiel 38:8 suggests that the Antichrist’s covenant will be in place before the destruction of Damascus and, hence, after the rapture: “After many days thou shalt be visited; in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them.”

Second, presumably in retaliation, Russia (Magog), which has revitalized its Soviet-era naval bases in Syria, will lead a coalition of nations in attacking Israel, which armed the former Soviet republic of Georgia prior to Russia’s August 2008 invasion. Although there is some disagreement over the modern equivalents of the nations listed in Ezekiel 38, we believe this military alliance will also include Turkey (Togarmah), Iran (Persia), Libya (by name), Ethiopia (Sudan), and others. Interestingly, Turkey, although a NATO member, has since the Islamist government in Ankara came to power in 2003, allied itself with former Cold War enemy Russia and Israel’s main enemies, Syria and Iran, both long-time Soviet client states. God will supernaturally destroy the invading armies on the “mountains of Israel” (39:1-7).

Meanwhile, this Saturday Ali Mohamed al-Anisi, chairman of Yemen’s national security agency and head of the presidential office, claims he has proof of Iran’s covert support for the Huthi rebellion in the northern part of his country. “There are indeed signs, proof of Iranian interference, but we say we can’t elaborate on what these indications and their details are to the media,” he insisted on the sidelines of a security conference in Bahrain. He continued: “The last boat, an Iranian boat, to arrive at the port of Medi, near Malahidh region, which is also close to Saada–there are signs it came from Eritrea.” Anisi added: “Al Qaeda have a link to the Houthis.” The day before, however, a US official stated that Washington has “no independent information” that Iran is supporting Yemen’s Shia rebels.

In another report, published by the Lebanese media and citing Asharq al-Awsat, “high-ranking officials from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were said to have secretly met with Huthi rebels and Hizbullah in Yemen to coordinate joint military operations against Saudi positions along the border.” It may be to this information that Yemen’s national security chief alludes in the previous paragraph. The pan-Arab daily continues:

Arab and Egyptian sources uncovered that a number of intelligence services in the region have learned of the three-way meeting which also aimed at developing a plan to escalate the military situation along the Saudi-Yemeni border. It said the high-level meeting which took place in November was the most prominent evidence of “direct Iranian involvement” in the support of Huthi rebels financially, militarily and logistically.

On Sunday Saudi troops, backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, launched an attack to retake a border village held by the Huthis. A Saudi military official explained that the operation targeted al-Jabiri some 600 miles southwest of Riyadh, near the Yemeni border. That day the Huthis alleged in a statement that Saudi aircraft bombed areas under rebel control inside Yemen, killing 70 people and injuring 100.

In addition to the Huthi rebellion, Yemen’s weak central government is also struggling to contain threats from Al Qaeda militants, pirates in the Gulf of Aden, and an increasingly powerful Marxist-inspired secessionist movement in the country’s southern region, formerly the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen.

>WW4 File: Venezuela acquires “1,000s” of Russian SRBMs to attack Colombia; Bogota’s top general denounces Chavez terror fest, ETA, Red Brigades attend

>– Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, New Red Brigades Send Reps to Chavez Terrorist Conclave, Bolivarian Continental Coordination/Movement

– Honduras’ Top Anti-Drug Cop Assassinated, Security Detail Absent; Second Retired Military Officer Gunned Down on Same Day

– Mexico Negotiates Zelaya’s Departure from Honduras, Deposed President Denies Statement from Chief of Staff that He Plans to Attend ALBA Summit in Havana

Pictured above: President Hugo Chavez drives Argentine counterpart Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (left) and her defense minister, Nilda Garre (back seat), in a military vehicle, as they visit a shipyard, in Buenos Aires, on December 9. Argentina’s Peronist president is a reliable center-left ally of Venezuela’s communist dictator. Chavez and Kirchner signed 14 cooperation accords during his visit to Argentina.

War is coming to South America and possibly Central America in the near future. For months we have assembled evidence that Latin America’s Red Axis is preparing for a military conflict with anti-communist hold-out Colombia and errant Red Axis member Honduras. The MSM now acknowledges that there is a potential for an armed clash between Venezuela and Colombia. What is not acknowledged is the possibility that the Red Axis is preparing to attack Honduras too.

This past Monday Chavez announced that his army is taking delivery of thousands of Russian-made missiles and rocket launchers, to be used against Colombian and US troops in the event of a hot war. “Thousands of missiles are arriving,” he boasted, adding: “They are preparing a war against us. Preparing is one of the best ways to neutralize it. Russian tanks, including T-72s, will be arriving to strengthen our armored divisions.”

The former paratrooper did not specify what type of missiles, but admitted Venezuela’s arsenal includes Russian-built Igla-1S surface-to-air missiles and rocket-propelled grenades. Since 2005 Venezuela has bought more than US$4 billion worth of Russian arms, including 24 Sukhoi fighter jets, more than 100 military helicopters, and 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles. In September Moscow opened a US$2.2 billion line of credit for Venezuela to purchase even more weapons. In the central state of Aragua, as we reported some days ago, Russian engineers are presently overseeing the construction of plants that will manufacture still more Kalashnikovs and their cartridges.

Venezuela, like Cuba, has well and truly become a Soviet satellite in the Western Hemisphere. In 2007, during one of Chavez’s annual arms shopping sprees in Moscow, Gennady Zyuganov, Chairman of the (secretly ruling) Communist Party of the Russian Federation, addressed the Venezuelan president as “comrade” and referred to him as a “reliable friend.” No kidding.

Both Bogota and Washington deny having any plans to attack Venezuela. This is probably true since US President Barack Hussein Obama’s socialist administration gives no evidence of viewing with alarm the publicly articulated geopolitical aspirations of the region’s Moscow-backed Red Axis. Chavez claims an agreement between the two capitals allowing the US military to deploy 800 troops across seven Colombian military bases poses a threat to his country. The Colombian government insists that the deal is intended only to suppress the narco-terrorist operations of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the smaller National Liberation Army. However, if Venezuela goes on the offensive, then the USA will be obligated to come to Colombia’s aid since the FARC is already carrying out joint operations with Venezuela’s military.

Meanwhile, even as he prepares to plunge South America into war, Chavez has been busy hosting several communist-terrorist conclaves in Caracas. Last month the International Encounter of Left Parties converged in the Western Hemisphere’s new “Red Mecca.” There Chavez and his revolutionary comrades from elsewhere in the region and also around the world, including El Salvador’s “ex”-guerrilla vice president Salvador Sanchez Ceren, called for the formation of a “Fifth International,” to be launched next year.

This Tuesday, with little international fanfare, Chavez once again embraced the world’s overtly terrorist organizations at the second summit of the highly subversive Bolivarian Continental Coordination (CCB), the primary founder of which was the FARC in 2004. In addition to representing his own United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Chavez rubbed elbows with guerrilla fighters from the FARC; Euskadi Ta Akatasuna (ETA), Spain’s Basque insurgent army; the New Red Brigades/Communist Combatant Party, Italy’s Marxist insurgent army; and other armed groups seeking violent revolution in Latin America and on other continents. Incidentally, your resident blogger’s master’s thesis, published in 1995, dealt with the subject of ETA terrorism and Basque nationalism.

Present, too, at the CCB shindig were representatives from the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), which holds seats in the country’s National Assembly and openly backs the ruling PSUV; and the Communist Party of El Salvador, which was one of the five groups that merged 30 years ago into the now-ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). Yul Jabour, a PCV cadre, declared: “Our movement agrees with the ideals of any insurgent movement.” Other delegates came from as far away as Turkey and Australia. During the meeting the 950 delegates from 26 countries elected to change the organization’s name to Bolivarian Continental Movement (CBM).

According to World Net Daily founder Joseph Farah, the FARC is the primary founder and funder of the CCB. In a July 7, 2005 email sent from slain FARC commander Raul Reyes to other insurgent leaders, Reyes complains that the guerrilla army was “not receiving enough credit for its leadership in the CCB, while recognizing that such participation could not be public.” The first CCB summit took place in late February 2008 in Quito, Ecuador. At the time CCB delegates made numerous visits to the FARC camp in Ecuador where Reyes was based. This collusion between Latin America’s intellectual left and the FARC provoked the Colombian government to bomb the camp, killing Reyes and others and leading to the week-long Andean Crisis.

Although the “vast majority of the armed left and right,” writes Farah, integrated into Latin America’s political systems after the Cold War, and although “the necessity of armed revolution has passed,” Chavez evidently desires to “re-start the bloodshed” as a “measure of his megalomania and authoritarianism.”

Alarmed by Chavez’s open consorting with Marxist terrorists, Colombian Armed Forces commander General Freddy Padilla demanded that international delegates at the CCB/CBM summit “not to act as accomplices of the FARC.” In an open letter, Padilla denounced the content of a communique sent to the summit by the FARC’s top commander “Alfonso Cano,” who stressed the “urgent duty to form an international network to resist the increase of U.S. influence in the region.”

In this communiqué Cano contends that the new US-Colombian pact “seeks to destabilize the processes of democratization and independence taking place in Latin America.” General Padilla responded by writing: “No civilized society in the world accepts the support or recognition of organizations that claim to be a spokesman for the needy while using violent and dehumanizing methods to try to achieve their goals. The articles of regulation of war must be respected so that the glory of Colombia is not defiled by blood.”

For its part, explains Colombia Reports, the CCB/CBM claims “Colombia is a paramilitary state” and vowed to “defend the Venezuelan revolution against imperialist threats.” On Wednesday Colombia’s Foreign Ministry requested the government of Venezuela to confirm or deny whether it “recognizes, approves or tolerates movements or parties that support terrorism and condone organized crime.”

According to Berta Joubert-Ceci, Chavez hosted the founding congress that gave birth to the CCB in November 2003, the first Bolivarian Congress of the Peoples, held, of course, in Caracas. The groups represented on the Congress’s Provisional Secretariat included Venezuela’s Bolivarian Circles, Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement, the Communist Party of Cuba (then and still ruling), Ecuador’s Indigenous Pachakutik Movement, Bolivia’s Movement toward Socialism (since ruling), Argentina’s Piquetero Movement, and El Salvador’s FMLN (since ruling). Joubert-Ceci relates the CCB’s unabashedly communist orientation:

The Continental Bolivarian Coordination is an attempt by the Latin American left to re-establish republics on the basis of true democracy and the sharing of wealth. This Coordinadora directly calls for rebellion against U.S. imperialism.

Venezuela and Cuba are key in providing venues and political space for many of these meetings. In fact, it is written in the new Venezuelan Bolivarian Constitution that “the Republic will promote and favor Latin American and Caribbean integration, to advance toward the creation of a Community of Nations, defending the economic, social, political and environmental interests of the region.”

In February 2008 the Peruvian government–which is pro-Washington and, like Colombia, a primary target for subversion by the Soviet/ Cuban/Venezuelan-backed “Bolivarian Revolution”–detained seven members of the Peru chapter of the CCB after they returned from the organization’s first summit in neighboring Ecuador. According to Peru’s attorney general, the CCB cadres planned to carry out terrorist operations against the Latin American-European Union and Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summits, held in Lima in May and November of that year.

The Communist Bloc is pursuing a multi-pronged strategy in its quest to conquer the Western Hemisphere and destroy the USA, the main barrier to its unchallenged supremacy in the world. Among other objectives, the world communist movement is seeking to:

1) install Moscow-backed communist and leftist regimes throughout the region, especially in countries with pro-Washington governments, like Mexico, Honduras, Panama, Colombia, and Peru,

2) corrupt politicians and foment narco-communist insurgencies to destabilize and overthrow the “bourgeois” governments in these countries,

3) flood the USA with illegal recreational drugs to a) destroy the civilian population’s will to resist communism, let alone its ability to perceive the threat, b) divert the federal government’s security and intelligence apparatus, law enforcement and other resources away from countering domestic and foreign communist influences toward the “War on Drugs,” and c) fill the bank accounts of Latin America’s ruling and non-ruling communist parties to fund the exporting of communist revolution.

In its wake, the Soviet-sponsored drug trade is leaving a wake of death and destruction that only expands as it moves northward to the US-Mexican border. Occasional high-profile drug busts absolve the red regimes of any complicity in the drug trade. Most of South America’s cocaine originate in the FARC-controlled zones of Colombia, the Shining Path-controlled zones of Peru, and in communist-controlled Bolivia, while communist-controlled Ecuador has become an important transportation corridor. It would appear that Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa and Bolivian President Evo Morales have purposely evicted US counter-narcotics forces from their countries to both protect the Red Axis’ multi-billion-dollar racket and facilitate the pre-revolutionary subversion of the USA.

The day-to-day role of Communist Cuba, Sandinista Nicaragua, and Manuel Noriega’s Panama in the transportation of Colombian cocaine into the USA was well documented by terrorism experts like Joseph Douglass in 1990’s still very relevant Red Cocaine. With the rise of Chavez to power in Venezuela nine years later the Castro Bros. and Ortega handed the baton to South America’s top commie thug.

Meanwhile, between 1993 and 1995 the Colombia National Police, with help from the US Army’s Delta Force, successfully wiped out the Medellin and Cali drug cartels, creating a power vacuum that the Mexican drug lords filled by the early 2000s with some assistance from “ex”-KGB agents. Incidentally, in early 2006 then Russian President Vladimir Putin reminded the world that: “There is no such thing as a former KGB man.”

The Mexican drug lords have also transformed Panama into a base of operations, while Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) controls the street-level drug distribution in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and the USA. Occasionally, drug operatives with a bit more ingenuity and daring will build makeshift submarines and transport their “stuff” north along Central America’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts.

As we reported shortly after the Honduran “coup,” the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya deprived Chavez of another “catch” for the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), but also an important ally in the drug trade. Following the Honduran general election Zelaya appears to have given up hope of re-entering politics. He is stilled holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, waiting for the Mexican government to negotiate his physical egress from the country. Mexico City has offered to provide Zelaya and his family with an aircraft to leave Honduras for destinations unknown. “I’m absolutely not seeking asylum in any country in the world,” he said, adding: “It is up to acting President Roberto Micheletti to guarantee my transport to the airport.”

Interviewed earlier by Venezuela’s Telesur television channel, Zelaya related that he intended to visit several countries whose governments have supported him. This would no doubt include Venezuela and Nicaragua. Zelaya, however, would not confirm comments made to Telesur by his chief of staff, Enrique Flores Lanza, to the effect that he was planning to travel with his family to Mexico and then Cuba to attend the next ALBA summit. There Zelaya will no doubt confer with his “handlers,” Chavez and Raul Castro.

The Venezuelan dictator, as one might expect, is already in his other homeland, rubbing elbows with his Cuban counterpart as they set the agenda for the ALBA delegates who will meet this weekend. In addition to Russia, Chavez likes to make frequent visits to Cuba. Barely two weeks ago, only hours before the communist state kicked off its Bastion 2009 military drill, he made an unannounced trip to Havana.

Although it is likely that Honduras’ next president, conservative cattle rancher Porfirio Lobo, will probably pull his country out of ALBA, the Red Axis’ drug apparatus has yet to be evicted from the country. Drug planes continue to fly into Honduras from Colombia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, using covert airstrips or, as needed, remote stretches of highway.

High-ranking government officials involved in counter-narcotics operations are also high-visibility targets. On Tuesday, for example, General Julian Gonzalez, chief of the Office for Combatting Drug Trafficking, was gunned down in his SUV by two people on a motorcycle. Although the general was usually accompanied by bodyguards, on this occasion Gonzalez had just driven his daughter to school in the northern district of Tegucigalpa. The fact that Gonzalez’s assassins struck when he was without his regular security detail, indicates a certain amount of intelligence collection and planning preceded the “hit.”

Not so coincidentally, on the same day retired army Colonel Osiris O’Connor and his driver were gunned down in El Eden, a district in Honduras’ Caribbean province of Cortes. Osiris was related to Colonel Erin O’Connor, who is in charge of internal security for the Honduran legislature. Erin is related to interim President Micheletti, although Osiris was not directly so.

Pictured here: On September 12, 2009 Nicaraguan soldiers march through Managua in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Sandinista Popular Army.

The Red Axis’ drug apparatus has yet to be evicted from Nicaragua too. On December 9 two naval personnel and one drug smuggler were killed during a clash in Caribe Norte province. The killings occurred near the coastal community of Walpa Siksa. General Omar Halleslevens described the incident: “We are in the zone. People are already under arrest. There is even one person who was captured with a kilo of cocaine and a quantity of dollars.”

If the neo-Sandinista regime is once again involved in this illicit network, along with its ideological comrades in the Chavezista regime, then it would appear that only a small cabal is involved. Major General Julio Aviles, who is taking over fellow Sandinista Halleslevens’ post next February, fought against the Somoza regime, afterwards received military training in Cuba in order to suppress the Contras, and later became chief of military intelligence and counter-intelligence. It is more probable that the 52-year-old Aviles is aware of or involved in such a criminal-political enterprise on behalf of Comandante Ortega. However, we can only speculate at this time until hard data becomes available. During the 1980s Sandinista Interior Minister Tomas Borge, now Nicaragua’s ambassador to Peru, was accused of helping the Medellin Cartel set up cocaine labs in this Central American country.

Finally, BigGovernment.com is raising questions about President Barack Hussein Obama’s nominee for ambassador to communist El Salvador, Mari Del Carmen Aponte. In 1998 President Bill Clinton, whose wife Hillary, of course, is now Obama’s secretary of state, nominated Aponte to be ambassador to the Dominican Republic. At the time Aponte was forced to withdraw her name from consideration over allegations of ties to Cuba’s General Intelligence Directorate (DGI), presently known simply as the Intelligence Directorate (DI).

On January 25, 1999 the Washington Times reported: “Miss Aponte’s withdrawal from consideration for the Dominican Republic post came after she was questioned by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about her contacts with Cuban government employees or agents. She told the panel that her experience with Mr. Tamayo and Cuban agents had sensitized her to future contacts that might involve Cuban influence.”

On February 22 of the same year, Insight on the News reported: “According to a confidential intelligence memo delivered to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms of North Carolina, first published by Insight several months ago, Aponte allegedly cohabited with an agent of the Cuban intelligence service, known as DGI. The man, who was not named in the memo, later was identified in follow-up press reports as Roberto Tamayo.” Aponte was later cleared by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In spite of this, the Clinton Administration declined to nominate Aponte to any other federal appointments.

In view of the cozy relationship between Communist Cuba and El Salvador’s new FMLN regime, the appointment of the pro-Cuban Aponte as US ambassador to San Salvador may not be the brightest idea. However, the Hispanic National Bar Association thinks otherwise: “The Hispanic National Bar Association (HNBA) commends President Barack H. Obama for the nomination of Mari Carmen Aponte as United States Ambassador to the Republic of El Salvador.” The HBNA gushes: “Ms. Aponte has been an active member of the HNBA for the past thirty years and was the first Latina to serve as National President of the Association (1983-1984).”

Speaking of Cuban agents, on Tuesday US District Judge Joan Lenard slightly reduced the prison terms of two convicted “Cuban Five” spies. In 1998 Ramon Labanino and Fernando Gonzalez were arrested along with three other Cuban agents. Prosecutors asserted that Labanino and Gonzalez formed the so-called “Wasp Network” sent to the USA to infiltrate exile groups opposed to Cuba’s communist regime and penetrate military facilities.

>Latin America File: Sanchez confirms El Salvador’s integration into ALBA; Bolivia’s self-avowed Marxist-Leninist president re-elected

>– Venezuelan Science and Technology Minister Resigns over Brother’s Banking Scandal, Jesse and Arne Chacon Participated in Chavez’s Failed 1992 Coups

– Colombia Requests Arrest of Venezuelan Politician, Figueroa Main Middleman between FARC Guerrillas and Arms Dealers

– Mexico’s Narco-Insurgency: Pretext for United Nations Troop Insertion South of US-Mexican Border?

As we suspected, El Salvador’s Vice President Salvador Sanchez Ceren, the former battlefield commander for the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), has confirmed that his country will be formally absorbed into the region’s Red Axis. “Our country’s integration into the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas [ALBA] will be a natural event, something that, for now, the government of [President] Mauricio Funes is analyzing,” Sanchez explained to the Cuban News Agency before he left Cuba on December 7.

“Ruthless murderer” and “doctrinaire Leninist” Sanchez expressed satisfaction with his meeting with Cuban dictator Raul Castro, Cuban counterpart Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, and other Cuban government officials (pictured above). The Salvadoran VP, whose guerrilla army enjoyed the backing of the Soviet Union, Cuba, and the first Sandinista regime in Nicaragua during the 1980s, assured Cuba’s state media outlet that “These contacts lay the foundations of a process of greater cooperation between Cuba and El Salvador.” Thus, even as Hondurans struggle to withdraw their country from the communist-dominated ALBA, the FMLN is handing El Salvador to the Havana-Caracas Axis on a silver platter.

On Sunday, one week after former urban guerrilla Jose Mujica won the Uruguayan presidency, Bolivia’s self-avowed Marxist-Leninist president, Evo Morales, was re-elected by a sizable majority of 63 percent. Morales’ rightist rival, a former state governor by the name of Manfred Reyes Villa, scraped up 27 percent. “It’s been a hard battle against lies, against political persecution,” Reyes Villa explained, speaking from Santa Cruz, one of several eastern states that declared its autonomy from La Paz in December 2007. He added: “We’re going to keep fighting for democracy, for the country and for everyone counting on us.”

Upon learning of his victory, speaking from the presidential palace in La Paz, Morales pledged to extend his socialist revolution: “The people, with their participation, showed once again that it’s possible to change Bolivia. We have the responsibility to deepen and accelerate this process of change.” Election observers sent from the Organization of American States (OAS) and the European Union confirmed that Morales’ victory was valid. Morales’ Movement toward Socialism party scored its first-ever majority in both houses of the Bolivian Congress. This numerical supremacy will allow him to make key appointments without consulting the opposition.

The first Bolivian president to win consecutive re-election since 1964, Morales announced he will use his second five-year term to expand state control over the country’s natural resources and redistribute revenue from state enterprises to the poor. He also plans to rewrite about 100 laws, including mining and energy codes. Earlier this year Morales reworked Bolivia’s constitution to permit his re-election, much as his comrades Hugo Chavez and Rafael Correa have done, and which his other comrade Daniel Ortega is endeavoring to do, in spite of some recent political roadblocks.

Meanwhile, Chavez’s Science and Technology Minister Jesse Chacon has resigned in the wake of his brother Arne’s arrest on Saturday, following the closure of the bank Arne headed. “I’m really sorry he’s the brother of a minister, but we are demonstrating that there are no untouchables here,” explained Chavez, briefly humbling himself during a talk show dedicated to the risks of corruption. Eight bankers are now in custody. Pedro Torres, a banker from the same group, fled to Miami. According to Chavez, the government had seized businesses belonging to Torres and Arne, including insurance and food firms.

Over the last week the Chavezista regime has nationalized and/or closed a total of seven banks with alleged ownership or funding “irregularities. These occasions have offered Venezuela’s communist dictator an opportunity to rail against the country’s “oligarchs.” Last Friday he declared: “The local bourgeoisie are trying to create panic. We are intervening with wisdom.”

The resignation of Jesse Chacon and the arrest of his banker brother Arne should interest students of Chavez’s political career. Like the Venezuelan president, Jesse is a retired military officer, while his brother Arne was a soldier. Both Jesse and Arne, moreover, took part in the two coups that failed to bring Chavez to power in 1992. Hugo and Jesse were jailed for their sedition. Presumably, both Chacon brothers belonged to Chavez’s subversive ring of leftist military men, the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200, which later morphed into the Fifth Republic Movement and then merged into the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in 2007. Chavez insists that he barely knows Arne. “What I have said is that he who slips up, loses. Banker, I don’t care if you are the biggest,” Chavez growled.

The spat between the narco-communist regime in Caracas and the pro-Washington government in Bogota continued to fester this past week. The two main unresolved issues include the impending deployment of US counter-narcotics troops in Colombia, and Chavez’s documented support for Colombia’s Marxist narco-insurgents in the porous border region between the two countries. Last Friday Colombia accused Venezuelan troops of blowing up a third makeshift footbridge and holding a Colombian soldier who crossed the border. Venezuela’s military contended that the bridge in Tachira State had been used by criminals, but refused to comment on the charges about a detained soldier.

Last month Venezuelan troops dynamited two makeshift footbridges across the frontier because they were allegedly used by drug smugglers, which in any case are being aided by Chavez’s cronies in the Venezuelan security and intelligence establishment, DISIP. Colombia denounced the destruction of the first two bridges before the United Nations and OAS. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe also accused Chavez of imposing an illegal trade blockade similar to the US embargo on Cuba. Until recently Venezuela relied heavily on Colombian food products, but Chavez has established new commercial arrangements with Brazil and Argentina, his allies in the region’s Red Axis. As a result, in October Colombian imports to its neighbor plunged 70 percent.

The semi-covert linkage between Chavez’s PSUV and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) emerged once again this week when a Colombian judge requested the arrest of a member of Venezuela’s delegation to the Latin American Parliament. PSUV cadre Amilcar Figueroa Salazar is alleged to have ties with the FARC. According to Colombian intelligence, Figuerora, who goes by the pseudonym “Tino,” is one of the guerrillas’ main allies in Venezuela and chief mediator between the guerrillas and arms traders.

Colombian authorities contend that emails in computers belonging to slain FARC commander Raul Reyes prove the Venezuelan lawmaker’s personal relationship with the guerrillas. They intend to try Figuerora on terrorism charges. The Venezuelan politician already had been arrested in Panama, but was released after the Chavezista regime applied pressure on the Panamanian government.

Finally, Mexico’s sometimes horrific narco-insurgency continues to rage in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas. Over the weekend at least 15 people were killed. In one home, the AFP news agency reports, Mexican police found a 17-year-old boy riddled with over 60 bullet wounds, while in another residence two brothers, aged 15 and 19 years, were killed as part of a quadruple homicide.

Embattled President Felipe Calderon announced late last month that 50,000 soldiers would remain on assignment in Chihuahua and other northern border states to suppress drug-related violence. Since Calderon took office in December 2006 Mexico’s narco-insurgency has taken the lives of more than 16,000 people. Some 8,500 troops are presently patrolling the streets of Ciudad Juarez in cooperation with local law enforcement agencies.

Last month business leaders in Mexico’s deadliest city implored Calderon to request the deployment of United Nations troops. If 50,000 Mexican troops cannot contain the country’s out-of-control drug cartels, then how many blue-helmeted UN soldiers will be summoned to do the same job? Thinking strategically, Mexico’s narco-insurgency offers the Moscow Leninists an ideal opportunity, under the cover of a UN police action, to position communist troops just south of the US-Mexican border. I’m sure America’s socialist president Barack Hussein Obama, who is “preoccupied” with the introduction of world government via the global warming “threat,” would have no serious objections. Got CD anyone? Probably not.

>Buncha Commies Corner: Restored statue of Worker and Collective Farm Woman unveiled in Moscow, ceremony attended by 1000s with fireworks

> On December 4 the AP news agency reported:

A gigantic sculpture that is one of the most admired examples of Soviet socialist realism is back on view in Moscow after six years of restoration. The stainless-steel sculpture, called “Worker and Collective Farm Woman,” was unveiled Friday in a nighttime ceremony with fireworks attended by thousands.

The 24.5-meter (80-foot) sculpture depicts the two figures striding forward purposefully, their raised arms holding a hammer and sickle to replicate the Communist symbol. The worker’s sash and the woman’s skirt float behind them, as if they were moving at high speed.

In Russia there’s a little too much nostalgia for the old Soviet days. Anti-communists should really start worrying when the hammer and sickle floats above the Kremlin again.

>Latin America File: Salvadoran VP, “ex”-guerrilla chief visits Havana; “ruthless murderer” cheered 911 attacks; pleads for “21st-century socialism"

>– Predictions in 1989 Heritage Foundation Report Outlining Dangers of FMLN Victory in Salvadoran Civil War Confirmed (in Spades)

– Chavez Hosts, Sanchez Attends Communist International Encounter of Left Parties in Caracas; Venezuelan Dictator Calls for “Fifth International”

Salvadorans joke that Sanchez Ceren is only nine millimeters away from the presidency [with reference to 9-mm bullet].
— US academic J. Michael Waller, March 23, 2009

At the request of Cuba’s communist dictatorship, Salvador Sanchez Ceren arrived in Havana today. Sanchez is El Salvador’s vice president and former commander of the Soviet/Cuban/Nicaraguan-backed guerrilla army-turned-political party Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). In what was the first high-level Salvadoran delegation to visit Cuba in 48 years, Vice President Sanchez met with his Cuban counterpart, Jose Ramon Machado Ventura (pictured above, seated right). No doubt Sanchez and his Cold War-era backers in the Communist Party of Cuba will discuss El Salvador’s integration into the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA). A similar arrangement, of course, provoked the current turmoil in neighboring Honduras.

Cuba and El Salvador reestablished relations on June 1 when the FMLN’s “moderate-left” frontman Mauricio Funes was inaugurated as president. In October the two countries exchanged ambassadors. So, although the Cold War supposedly ended 18 years ago, the communists finally conquered El Salvador earlier this year. Instead of using guns, like it did during the 1980s, the FMLN patiently waited for the country’s electorate to grow weary of the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance’s (ARENA) headlock on the presidency.

During a recent visit to Venezuela, where he attended the International Encounter of Left Parties between November 19 and 21, Sanchez declared: “It is necessary to support the socialism of the 21st century in the face of the U.S. threat.” The International Journal of Socialist Renewal also reported El Salvador’s VP as saying: “We cannot continue simply debating … we need to clearly define what it is that we want, and the alternative project for Latin America is socialism.”

Venezuela’s communist dictator Hugo Chavez hosted the meeting, which brought together delegates from 55 leftist parties in 33 countries. Latin American delegates came from Cuba, the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front, Brazil’s ruling Workers’ Party, Bolivia’s ruling Movement Toward Socialism, and Ecuador’s ruling Proud and Sovereign Fatherland Alliance. European delegates came from Germany’s Left Party (which descends from East German’s ruling Socialist Unity Party), Portugal’s Left Bloc, and France’s Left Party.

During this communist conclave, Chavez demanded: “The time has come for us to organise the Fifth International.” Afterwards, Chavez repeated his call in a speech to the congress of the PSUV: “I am asking you to include in its agenda for debate, the proposal to convene political parties and currents to create the Fifth Socialist International as a new organisation that fits the time and the challenge in which we live, and that can become an instrument of unification and coordination of the struggle of peoples to save this planet.” A majority of the delegates resolved to found the “Fifth Socialist International as a space for socialist-oriented parties, movements and currents in which we can harmonise a common strategy for the struggle against imperialism, the overthrow of capitalism by socialism.” They also determined that the new “Fifth International” would be launched in April 2010.

Sanchez and Chavez will no doubt make sure that El Salvador is subservient to the plans of this new Fifth International of communists. After the FMLN clinched last March’s election, Venezuela’s red tyrant Hugo Chavez sent his comradely greetings to Funes, taking a stab too at ARENA’s (justifiable) attempt to portray Funes as a Chavez puppet:

This victory strengthens the historic wave [of leftist regimes] that, in this first decade of the 21st century, has arisen in all of Latin America and the Caribbean, and opens its doors to other sibling peoples in the challenges they will face.

Today the Salvadoran people did not waver; they stepped forward and displayed their clarity and courage, defeating a campaign of lies, trash and manipulations unleashed against the Bolivarian Republic and against progressive [leftist] and dignified leaders of Latin America and the Caribbean. These disgraceful campaigns fomented by the international right wing in our continent were destroyed today by the consciousness of the majority of the Salvadoran people.

President Hugo Chavez congratulates President-elect Mauricio Funes, reminding him that the unity of our peoples is the only path to overcome the crisis unleashed from the heart of capitalism in the North [USA]. In this crucial moment, the children of Bolivar offer our hands in solidarity to President Mauricio Funes, so that together we may advance in the strengthening of this new era we are living through, together overcoming under-development and poverty.

Today we Venezuelans are happy, and in this hour of happiness we recognize the leader of peace, Shafik Handal [deceased leader of Communist Party of El Salvador], and the many men and women who gave their lives [during the FMLN insurgency] for the rebirth of the Salvadoran people.

Sanchez began his insurgent career in the 1970s, when he joined the Popular Liberation Forces (FPL) “Farabundo Marti,” one of the five guerrilla armies that merged into the FMLN. The other groups were the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FARN) under the leadership of Eduardo Sancho Castaneda; People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP) under Joaquin Villalobos Hueso; Armed Forces of Liberation/Communist Party of El Salvador (FAL/PCES) under Palestinian-Salvadoran Handal (who died in 2006); and Revolutionary Party of Central American Workers (PRTC) under Francisco Jovel.

In May 1980 El Salvador’s insurgent leaders met in Havana where, in exchange for Cuban aid, they organized a central political-military command called the Unified Revolutionary Directorate (DRU). The 15-member DRU included three representatives each from the FPL, FARN, ERP, FAL/PCES, and later that year the PRTC. Even before the FMLN’s formation, relates one history of El Salvador, the PCES had become a tool for Soviet Bloc subversion in Central America: “While serving in the reformist government that came to power in a civil-military coup in October 1979, the PCES continued to prepare for guerrilla activities by sending its recruits to training camps in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Cuba, and Nicaragua.” In 1984 Sanchez became the FMLN’s commanding general, holding that position until the cessation of El Salvador’s civil war in January 1992.

Writing for The Washington Times in November 2008, John R. Thomson, citing a website maintained by two ex-FMLN guerrillas, describes the horrid methods used by the communist insurgents to murder their own if suspected of collaborating with the government. “One of the favorite interrogation techniques was to bludgeon presumed enemy [government] spies with wooden clubs,” relates Geovani Galeas, who fought for the ERP until it merged into the FMLN. Comrade Galeas continues: “They first assaulted their arms and legs, brutally breaking them in futile attempts to get them to talk—futile because they had nothing to confess. Eventually, they realized there was nothing forthcoming and they turned their clubs on the victims’ skulls, beating them until they succumbed.”

Thomson then writes:

These were not ordinary murders; they were committed by guerrillas against other guerrillas on the order of the commanding general in the San Vicente region, known in the FMLN as El Frente Para Central (Auxiliary Central Front). What’s more, virtually all the murders were based on unproven hearsay allegations that the victims were Salvadoran military agents trying to undermine the terrorist cause.

Salvadoran military did in fact infiltrate undercover agents into the FMLN, but Geovani Galeas contends all those murdered were eliminated without benefit of a trial and with virtually no substantial evidence.

The commanding general who approved every assassination, with the alias “Leonel Gonzalez,” was none other than Salvador Sanchez Ceren, vice presidential candidate of the FMLN in the country’s March [2009] presidential elections. Sanchez Ceren has long been a top FMLN leader and is considered one of the most orthodox hard leftists in the organization, together with party secretary-general Melando Gonzalez, whose terrorist moniker was “Milton.”

US academic J. Michael Waller was invited by ARENA to monitor the Salvadoran election campaign earlier this year. In a post-election analysis Waller rightly observes that Funes is a figurehead for the ardent communists who run the FMLN:

The FMLN won by only 60,000 votes, and it pulled fewer votes this month than ARENA did in the last presidential election. Its president-elect, Mauricio Funes, is “moderate” by FMLN standards and is only a figurehead. Real power rests with vice president-elect Salvador Sanchez Ceren, one of the five FMLN commanders during the war who is known as a ruthless murderer and remains a doctrinaire Leninist.”

Sanchez Ceren is unrepentant about those killings and the killings of thousands of his own countryman, including more than a thousand of his own people in the FMLN itself. He cheered the September 11, 2001 Al Qaeda attacks on the United States and remains an open supporter of terrorism around the world. El Salvador is a longtime ally but risks becoming a different country under an avowed supporter of terrorism. Salvadorans joke that Sanchez Ceren is only nine millimeters away from the presidency.

During the 1980s the Soviet Union, Cuba, and the first Sandinista regime in Nicaragua propped up the FMLN insurgency. After Chavez took over Venezuela in 1999, the Communist Bloc handed over the task of subverting El Salvador to the new red regime in Caracas. Waller concludes: “Victory for the FMLN is not a victory for democracy. It’s a victory for Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez who invested in the FMLN while Washington neglected the region.”

Indeed, Jorge Castaneda, Mexico’s foreign minister between 2000 and 2003, writes: “As recently as a year ago, anyone who visited FMLN headquarters in San Salvador to interview, for example, Ceren, its secretary general, would be struck by the overwhelming presence of Chavez: red shirts, red berets, pictures of the Venezuelan caudillo, quotations from his teachings and musings.” Chavez, Castenada continues, “helped the FMLN by giving free or cheap oil to its mayors in many parts of the country.” The Mexican politician also notes that “the Cuban presence remains strong” in the Central American country: “Ramiro Abreu, who ‘ran’ El Salvador for Cuba’s Department of the America’s in the 1980s and 1990s, remains active, but now more as a businessman and a senior statesmen that as a Cuban operative. But Cuba’s influence on the old FMLN leadership remains intact.” Formerly a communist, Castaneda’s comments are worth noting.

“Ruthless murderer” and “doctrinaire Leninist” Sanchez Ceren: This is the man who is El Salvador’s vice president and who has just touched down in Communist Cuba to confer with his superiors. What sort of bloodshed awaits the Salvadoran people now that the Red Axis has conquered their country? Exactly 20 years ago, in a report issued on December 5, 1989, the Heritage Foundation warned of the dangers of an FMLN victory as a result of the violent insurgency then taking place.

Kim R. Holmes begins his report by writing: “The victory of the Marxist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front in the Salvadoran civil war would endanger the United States and Central American security and set back for years the cause of democracy in the region. Yet some in Congress do not see what is at risk in El Salvador.” In 2009 the Democratic-controlled US government still does not see or care about “what is at risk in El Salvador” or anywhere else in Latin America. Apart from the international drug trade (which is promoted by the Soviet strategists), the Obama White House has yet to acknowledge the geopolitical aspirations of the Western Hemisphere’s Red Axis.

Holmes continues: “Like their patrons in Havana and Managua, the FMLN preaches a ‘revolution without borders,’ promising to spread revolutionary violence to all countries in the region. A victory for the FMLN would produce yet another state in Central America dedicated to exporting terrorism; joining Cuba, Nicaragua, and Panama in that deadly enterprise.” The FMLN, as demonstrated by Sanchez’s recent remarks in Caracas, still holds to the vision of communizing El Salvador, albeit now employing Chavez’s terminology, such as “21st century socialism” and “Bolivarianism.” Incidentally, when this Heritage Foundation report was published, Panama’s narco-dictator Manuel Noriega, who was covertly allied with Cuba via the drug trade, was only several weeks away from being deposed by the US military.

Holmes then relates how in the 1980s the Soviets used Cuba and Nicaragua as middlemen to supply the FMLN insurgency: “But most harmful to US and Central American security would be the expansion of Soviet, Cuban, and Nicaraguan military power to El Salvador. As [Vice President] George [H.W.] Bush told Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the FMLN is armed and financed by Cuba and Nicaragua. This became indisputable last month when a Cessna twin-engine aircraft originating from Managua crashed in El Salvador. It was carrying to the rebels a cache of Soviet-made SA-7 surface-to-air missiles.” Nicaragua’s past/present Marxist dictator Daniel Ortega is still in possession of more than 1,000 of these weapons.

Holmes explains: “This arms shipment is part of a larger effort by the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Nicaragua to destabilize Central America.” He adds: “Despite assurances from the Soviet Foreign Ministry on September 25 [1989] that Moscow had “since 1988 ceased arms supplies” to Central America, at least three Soviet torpedo boats and four Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships entered Nicaragua via Cuba in September. The Pentagon reports that East Bloc countries delivered over $400 million worth of arms to Nicaragua during the first nine months of this year [1989].”

Prophetically, he foresees the formation of a “Central American Warsaw Pact”:

Just when the Warsaw Pact seems to be crumbling in Europe, a victory for the FMLN would create a “Warsaw Pact of the West” in Central America, consisting of Cuba, Nicaragua, Panama [under Noriega], and a FMLN-dominated El Salvador. These countries could use the arms supplied by Moscow not only to attack Americans and such US interests in the region as the Panama Canal, but to threaten the democratically elected governments of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and possibly even Mexico.

This “Warsaw Pact of the West” did not come to pass at the time since the Sandinistas were democratically kicked out of Nicaragua’s executive office in 1990 and the Soviet Union dismantled itself in 1991. However, in light of the joint Nicaragua-Venezuela military exercise scheduled to occur in the former country in the spring of 2010, an incipient military alliance like Holmes’ “Central American Warsaw Pact” is slowly burgeoning before our eyes. ALBA, of course, either unites or aspires to unite the countries listed by Holmes in the previous quote.

Finally, Holmes refers to additional destabilizing influences in Latin America, such as the eruption of a civil war in Mexico, an unchecked northward refugee surge across the US border, and the government-sponsored flow of narcotics through countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Keeping in mind that high-profile drug busts in these countries are probably designed to divert attention away from the Communist Bloc’s complicity in the “red cocaine” epidemic, Holmes writes:

The further destabilization of Central America could be very expensive for the US. Should El Salvador fall, hundreds of millions of dollars: more in US military aid would be needed to prop up Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras. Were a civil war to erupt in Mexico as the result of outside interference, as many as 10 million Mexicans could pour across the US border seeking refuge. Just as bad, an FMLN victory in El Salvador could push more illegal drugs into the US. Havana and Managua provide drug traffickers with weapons and military protection; so would an FMLN regime in El Salvador.

As of 2009, in the fallout from Mexico’s narco-insurgency, all three predictions have come true. Incidentally, unrepentant Marxist terrorist Sanchez is also El Salvador’s education minister, a promotion that must no doubt thrill Salvadoran parents who didn’t vote FMLN.

>MISSILE DAY ALERT: Obama, Clinton sacrifice national security for sake of “peace,” photo ops: US inspectors to vacate Russia’s sole ICBM plant

>On December 1 The Washington Times reported that the USA “is about to lose a key arms-control tool from the closing days of the cold War — the right to station American observers in Russia to count the long-range missiles leaving its assembly line.” On December 5 the 15-year-old Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) will expire, obligating US inspectors at the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant, about 600 miles east of Moscow—the site where all Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are built—to vacate premises.

“U.S. and Russian officials signed on Oct. 20 a series of documents, which establish the procedures to be followed for the completion of U.S. monitoring activities at the Russian ICBM production facility at Votkinsk,” a US State Department official confirmed.

Votkinsk’s reciprocal site was the former Hercules Aerospace missile production facility in Magna, Utah, which Russian inspectors left in 2000, when the last “Made in the USA” ICBMs rolled off the assembly line. Russia, however, continues to produce dozens of missiles each year since the monitoring started 15 years ago. START banned only certain types of missiles, but the commander of Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces, General Nikolai Solovtsov, was recently quoted as admitting that the assembly and deployment of next-generation RS-24 missiles would start once the treaty expires.

Pictured above: The US and Russian presidents meet on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Singapore on November 15.

Washington and Moscow first agreed to “continuous monitoring” under the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed by President Ronald Reagan and then Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. America’s last great president died in 2004, but his adversary-turned-buddy Gorby still tours the lecture circuit, pounding the podium for “global perestroika” (world communism). In 2007 Vladimir Putin, then president of Russia, threatened to unilaterally withdraw from the INF. Although Moscow has yet to carry through with this threat, the Kremlin did in fact withdraw from the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty later that year, a prospect that should disturb true patriots in “former” communist states like Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania.

The failure of the two nuclear superpowers to renegotiate START on the basis of mutual trust before the treaty’s expiry has led to recriminations between the Obama White House and Republican legislators. “For the first time in 15 years, an extensive set of verification, notification, elimination and other confidence-building measures will expire on Saturday,” Senator Jon Kyl, a Republican from Arizona, said on the Senate floor in late November.

“When Votkinsk [inspections] goes away, Russia could deploy hundreds of missiles,” lamented one senior Republican Senate aide, who added: “Russia is a big country with many satellites passing overhead, so it will not be easy to count missiles based on test flights. We are worried about what Russia will do, that we are not going to know.” Another Republican aide complained that “The whole point of arms control was to allow the United States to learn more about Russia’s force strength than it could by just estimating it. We were radically bad about estimating, but we became better at understanding our adversary after START and other treaties. You can’t count mobile missiles from space.” Indeed. This is especially troubling news because the USA has never possessed land-mobile ICBMs.

During Obama’s July visit to Moscow—where Soviet Komsomol graduate Dmitry Medvedev feted “my new comrade Barack”—both countries agreed to draft a new arms-control treaty that would replace START. Obama and his Russian counterpart resolved to slash the number of strategic nuclear warheads on each side to between 1,500 and 1,675 within seven years. However, the “O Team” dropped the ball.

Congressional Republicans explained that Obama’s negotiating team was annoyed that it “got stuck” with a deal made by the Bush administration to close the monitoring facility at Votkinsk. This was not acceptable, either to the Soviets or, apparently, to President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Paula A. DeSutter, assistant secretary of state for verification, compliance, and implementation for President George W. Bush, explained:

The Obama team accepted the START approach to limit both warheads and missiles, so it made sense for them to keep Votkinsk [that is, to either shut down or continue monitoring the facility]. There was nothing in our [President Bush’s November 2008] proposal that precluded the Obama administration from adding Votkinsk or any other verification measure, had they decided to take that approach.

Not surprisingly, the O Team decided not to press the Soviets into either shutting down or continuing inspections at Votkinsk. “The nature of our relationship has changed, and we have a pretty good idea about where Russia’s missile program is headed,” The Washington Times quoted one US official as saying. The newspaper, however, was oblivious to the fact that the interviewee was merely regurgitating one of the chief lies of the Soviet deception strategy, namely, that Washington and Moscow are best of friends now.

Even as the Moscow Leninists prepare for war against the West, they hold out the promise of peaceful East-West convergence via a truly ambitious international security arrangement that will embrace the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Commonwealth of Independent States, and the Collective Security Treaty Organization. In June 2008 President Medvedev first floated the idea of a legally binding security pact uniting all countries between “Vancouver to Vladivostok” that will “finally do away with the legacy of the Cold War.” Medvedev, however, is simply lifting lines from the script of former Soviet dictator Gorbachev, who in 1989 proposed the idea of a “common European home,” stretching—you guessed it—from “Vancouver to Vladivostok.” The OSCE began to digest the Soviet proposal during an unofficial ministerial meeting in Greece in June.

The communist analysts at state-run Xinhua list at least four reasons for Medvedev’s proposed security pact for “all states of the Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian space.” These include NATO’s eastward expansion (itself a response to the Kremlin’s strategic withdrawal from “former’ Warsaw Pact states), NATO’s failure to ratify the revised CFE Treaty (which Moscow has unilaterally abandoned, as noted above), the involvement of Russia in European defense (with the systemic breaches of security that have already been exposed), and Russia’s ambition to strengthen its position on the world stage (in opposition to a US-led unipolar world). Russia’s NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin has submitted a draft treaty to NATO leaders. “According to sources close to the issue,” continues Xinhua, “NATO objects to discussing the treaty within the NATO-Russia Council, insisting it be discussed by OSCE.”

Will anyone in the West, though, stop to ask which “rogue state” necessitates the creation of this colossal Euro-Atlantic/Eurasian security pact? If all the countries of any significance in the Northern Hemisphere are included in this military alliance, then who is the “enemy”? Islam? Not likely. The CIS/CSTO embraces the nominally Muslim Central Asian republics. Hmm, how about Vanuatu?

>Red Dawn Alert: Russian engineers building arms plants in Venezuela; Nicaragua, Venezuela to hold 2-month joint military drill, ALBA rejects Lobo win

>For at least two years it has been known that, in addition to shipping 100,000 AK-103 automatic rifles to Venezuela, Russia intends to build plants in that country to manufacture even more of these weapons and their cartridges. The Kremlin’s ambassador in Caracas, Vladimir Zaemskiy, told a news conference on November 30 that Russian engineers and Venezuelan construction firms are presently building AK-103 plants which, when operational, will employ more than 1,500 workers. Zaemskiy offered no completion date for the plants under construction in the central state of Aragua.

Zaemskiy added that “big contracts” were being finalized to deliver 53 “Mil” helicopters to the Venezuelan armed forces, to be used for “humanitarian missions,” of course. Between 2006 and 2008 Moscow delivered a total of 59 military helicopters to Venezuela. Russia is also providing “a complete range” of spare military parts to Venezuela, Zaemskiy confided, as well as “transferring technology and building technical maintenance centers.”

Pictured above: In Caracas Venezuelan National Guard stand outside of Banco Canarias headquarters, one of several banks closed by the Chavezista regime.

Since it is also known that Venezuela’s communist dictator Hugo Chavez is supplying the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) with surface-to-air missiles (and probably other weapons), terrorism experts are worried that some of these Russian-designed, Venezuelan-produced small arms will wind up in the hands of Colombia’s Marxist guerrillas. Incidentally, in exchange for this covert weapons channel, the Chavezista regime is also taking a “cut” from the FARC’s lucrative trade in cocaine.

“Details about Moscow’s military shipments and projects,” frets Reuters at the first link above, “have been scarce since socialist President Hugo Chavez’s government began signing military agreements with Russia back in 2001.” That year Chavez and the “ex”-communists and KGB-types who rule Russia also established a strategic partnership to oppose “unipolar US supremacy” throughout the world. Since then Venezuela, like Cuba and Nicaragua, has become an undeniable Soviet satellite in the Western Hemisphere.

Venezuela’s contract to mass-produce Russian-designed light weapons is merely the tip of the iceberg with respect to the region’s new arms race. In recent years Chavez has purchased more than US$4 billion in weapons from Russia, including 24 Sukhoi fighter jets, now in service with the Venezuelan Air Force. When Chavez returned from his ninth trip to Moscow in September of this year, he disclosed that Russia had agreed to lend his country US$2.2 billion to purchase 92 T-72 main battle tanks and an S-300 air defense system that can shoot down fighter jets and cruise missiles.

Two years ago Russia agreed to sell the same S-300 system to Iran, a close ally of Venezuela as revealed again by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent visit to Caracas. However, the Kremlin postponed delivering the missile interceptors to Tehran amid US and Israeli fears they will be used to defend Iran’s nuclear installations.

After Brazil, which boasts Latin America’s largest armed forces, Venezuela has moved into second place in terms of firepower and military technology. “As a result of this cooperation, Venezuela’s defense capacity has increased considerably, as well as its level of technological independence,” concluded Zaemskiy. Thus we see that Chavez, who along with Raul Castro, co-leads the region’s Red Axis, is not only “armed for bear,” he is being armed by the Bear itself, that is, the “Soviet Bear.”

Indeed, it appears that Chavez, using any pretext, such as the new Washington-Bogota military pact, is preparing to over-run anti-communist “hold-outs” like Colombia with his Soviet/Cuban-backed “Bolivarian Revolution.” Lately, the latter includes the closure and nationalization of Venezuela’s private banks. “If I need to take over all the Venezuelan banks, I’ll do it,” Chavez ranted on state television yesterday.

In a related story that will probably witness the exacerbation of tensions still further between Bogota and Caracas, last Saturday 412 Colombians were expelled from Venezuela and allegedly mistreated after the illegal gold mine where they were working was closed down. Diego Molano, director of Colombia’s agency for displaced persons, related that the group was forced to board helicopters along the Venezuela-Colombia border. “They have been expelled without the appropriate processes, without information, without telling us so that we could prepare a humane reception for these people,” elaborated Colombian Defense Minister Gabriel Silva.

In what could be perceived as a penal response, Colombian Minister of Mines and Energy Hernán Martínez announced on Thursday the temporary suspension of power supplies to Venezuela and the restriction of electricity sales to Ecuador, reportedly “to shore up reserves amid a strong summer season.” With diplomatic aplomb, Martínez denied that the decision was related to “the political situation with Venezuela.” He assured the AFP news agency that there would be a “prompt restoration of energy supply,” and insisted that “Venezuelan officials know that it is not a retaliation. We would not do it under any circumstances.”

Into this fray strides the president of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernandez, who has offered to mediate the dispute between Colombia and Venezuela. On Wednesday the office of the Dominican Republic’s center-left president revealed that Fernandez accepted a request made by Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe at a private meeting held during the 19th Ibero-American Summit, which concluded on Tuesday in Estoril, Portugal. Fernandez later announced his decision in France, where he is on an official visit: “The Dominican Republic, due to its geographical position and its friendship with its neighbors, has been a mediator in regional conflicts on other occasions.” Whether Chavez really wants to peacefully resolve his ideological “beef” with Uribe is questionable in light of the above arms procurements from Russia.

Pictured here: Ortega waves to cadres of the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front on November 21, the 1st anniversary of the FLSN’s “sweeping victory” in the 2008 municipal elections. The sign behind him reads “Socialist Solidarity.”

Communist Troop Movements in Central America

On a number of occasions, beginning even before the Honduran crisis, we have considered the possibility that Moscow is quietly assembling a “Red Dawn-style” military coalition in Latin America. We have examined many factors, including: 1) Russia’s first-ever, “post”-Cold War, week-long deployment of two Tu-160 strategic bombers to Venezuela in September 2008; 2) Russia’s first-ever joint naval drill with Venezuela in November 2008; 3) subsequent ports of call by the Russian Navy in Nicaragua, Cuba, and Balboa on Panama’s Pacific coast, the last necessitating a rare Soviet/Russian transiting of the Panama Canal; 4) the arrival last month of Russia’s civil defense “czar” in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela with promises to set up an emergency situations center in each country; 5) Cuba’s three-day Bastion 2009 “strategic maneuver,” which wrapped up this past Saturday; and 6) another port of call by the Russian Navy in Cuba, slated for some time in December.

We have also awaited news of combined maneuvers among the ALBA states themselves, since Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and Bolivian counterpart Evo Morales have joined Chavez in urging the formation of an “anti-imperialist” army in Latin America. Well, just in time for the release of the Red Dawn re-make next year, troops from Venezuela and Nicaragua will hold their first-ever, two-month joint military drill in Central America next spring. In late September we blogged about a story from the Costa Rican media in which Ortega hurriedly approved the introduction of Venezuelan soldiers in his country beginning on November 1. The purpose of the foreign troop deployment in Nicaragua was not clear and, moreover, the MSM in North America did not touch the story with a ten-foot pole.

At the time even Liberal opposition leaders in Nicaragua’s National Assembly denied that the arrangement was related to the Honduran crisis. On several occasions Honduras’ interim president Roberto Micheletti has alleged that Venezuela and Nicaragua are preparing to reinstall deposed president Manuel Zelaya, a subservient pawn of Chavez, at the head of an invasion force. These are no idle accusations. Within 24 hours of Zelaya’s ouster on June 28, Chavez did in fact threaten to throw his military against Honduras on the pretext of protecting Venezuelan diplomats in the Central American country.

In spite of National Party candidate Porfirio Lobo’s election to the presidency on November 29, the Honduran crisis is still not fully resolved. The USA, Colombia, Panama, and Peru have promised to recognize President-Elect Lobo, who will take office on January 27, but the communist-led ALBA, which captured Honduras in 2008, refuses to do so. Incidentally, the fact that Lobo, a wealthy cattle rancher by occupation, is a Soviet-era graduate of Moscow’s terrorist-indoctrination center, Patrice Lumumba University, adds a twist to this story that may be addressed in another post if more information becomes available.

For his part, Zelaya remains defiant from his base of operations in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. Between his ouster, which was backed by his own Liberal Party, and his secretive return to Honduras on September 21, Zelaya enjoyed Ortega’s hospitality in Managua. On December 2 a majority of the Honduran Congress blocked Zelaya from serving out the final month of his term, upholding the body’s initial decision to support his removal, a decision that was condemned by the United Nations and the Organization of American States. The Honduran Congress’ latest anti-Zelaya resolution will only act as a final slap in the face to the region’s Red Axis.

All of these developments bring us full circle to a story in the December 3 edition of Caracas’ El Universal, which reports on next spring’s combined Nicaraguan-Venezuelan military drill:

The armies of Nicaragua and Venezuela will conduct military exercises aimed at training their air and naval forces, reported on Thursday official sources in Managua. The military exercises will take place in Nicaragua from May 1 to June 30, with the presence of about 30 Venezuelan soldiers and an unspecified number of ships and planes of the Venezuelan Air Force, DPA reported.

The participation of Venezuelan troops was authorized on Wednesday by the Nicaraguan parliament as required under the Constitution, said Sandinista deputy René Núñez, who is the speaker of the Chamber. Nicaragua and Venezuela strengthened their diplomatic and trade relations in 2007, after the return of Daniel Ortega to the government and the accession of the Central American country to the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA).

In spite of the reportedly low number of Venezuelan soldiers who will participate in this eight-week exercise, the fact there will be an “unspecified number of ships and planes of the Venezuelan Air Force” should cause the Honduran government some concern. At Once Upon a Time in the West we can only make predictions based on open-source information. However, it may be that under the guise of a joint drill that the armed forces of Nicaragua and Venezuela will incrementally pre-position their forces for launching an attack against the stubbornly anti-communist Hondurans. Surely it is not a coincidence that Russia is re-arming Nicaragua’s Soviet-era military even as it transforms Venezuela’s into a formidable regional force.

In a noteworthy development that could be related to the Nicaragua-Venezuela war game, President Ortega has appointed a new army chief. Like the outgoing chief of staff, General Omar Halleslevens, incoming commander of the Nicaraguan National Army, Major General Julio Aviles, is presumably a Sandinista. Aviles, whose promotion was announced at an event of the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front, will assume his new position on February 21, 2010. Born in 1965, Aviles was only 14 years old when the Nicaraguan Revolution swept away the Somoza dynasty. He holds a degree in business administration, but that fact shouldn’t fool students of the 21st-century Red Spread in Latin America. The relatively young Aviles was formerly chief of military intelligence and counter-intelligence. He has also represented the Nicaraguan military in France and, significantly, Cuba, Ortega’s oldest regional ally.

Meanwhile, Russia is expanding its official representation in Nicaragua by opening a trade mission in Managua by direct order of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Nicaragua is a major exporter of coffee, nuts, and tobacco to Russia, and beginning in 2010 will supply 12,000 metric tons of beef and pork products to the Eurasian country. Russia’s main exports to Nicaragua are machinery, equipment, and chemicals. Moscow’s new trade mission in Nicaragua—in addition to regular embassy staff—could conceivably offer expanded cover for Soviet subversion in Central America, as well as a hub to coordinate the political-military activities of the region’s Red Axis. Ortega’s unwavering commitment to his Soviet masters is clear from his first “post”-Cold War trip to Moscow in December 2008, as well as a missive published 26 years before that exposes the Sandinistas’ solidarity with the Soviets:

To the Central Committee of the CPSU, To the Supreme Soviet of the USSR

Comrades,

On behalf of the FSLN membership and the heroic people of Nicaragua the National Leadership of the Sandinista National Liberation Front and the Council of the National Reconstruction Government salute you, the glorious Soviet people, the Government and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on the 60th anniversary of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The great unity of the Soviet people, sealed on December 30, 1922, was an accomplishment without precedent in human history. The establishment of a state of workers and peasants enabled them to attain their most cherished and urgent social, political and economic goals.

Marking the 60th anniversary of the USSR we are fully aware of the colossal material and spiritual advances made by the Soviet people and of their great contribution to the struggle to preserve world peace, which checks the hegemonic moves of the more reactionary and militarist imperialist quarters [meaning the USA]. Equally great and effective has been the solidarity of the Soviet people with our people, the people of [Augusto] Sandino.

Paying homage to the people, the Communist Party and the Government of the Soviet Union, we want the friendship and solidarity existing between our peoples, governments and parties to develop and grow still stronger.

Patria libre o morir! [Free fatherland or death!]

DANIEL ORTEGA SAAVEDRA
Coordinator of the Council of the National Reconstruction Government
Member of the FSLN National Leadership

BAYARDO ARCE CASTANO
Coordinator of the Political Commission of the FSLN National Leadership

(60th Anniversary of the USSR: Greetings from Abroad; Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1983; pages 344-345)

Before the Nicaraguan-Venezuelan war game begins, don’t be surprised if other ALBA states like, say, Cuba, Bolivia or Ecuador, announce their participation.

Incidentally, Bolivia’s self-avowed Marxist-Leninist president Evo Morales is expected to be re-elected during that country’s December 6 poll. Even though Ecuador’s socialist president Rafael Correa was re-elected back in April, his popularity rating has slipped since then, encouraging this Chavez “mini me” to clamp down on press freedom. Reuters reports that on Tuesday Correa affirmed his support for a bill that will establish a government-controlled “watchdog” panel with powers to penalize journalists who break rules to be outlined in the tabled legislation.

This past weekend Correa, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), flew to Brussels to urge the European Union (EU) to reject the results of the Honduran election. Both Unasur and the EU may rightly be described as Leninist building blocks for world government.

>Red Terror File: Umarov’s “Caucasian Mujahadeen” claims Nevsky Express bombing; Putin attributes 2nd train bombing in Dagestan to "terrorism"

>While Russian investigators claim to have found new leads in their search for the “terrorists” who killed at least 26 people traveling on the Nevsky Express between Moscow and St. Petersburg, the “Caucasian Mujahadeen,” under the orders of its leader, Doku Umarov, have claimed responsibility for the November 27 bombing. Intriguingly, the Kremlin’s top banker, Boris Yevstratikov, was killed in the blast and derailment.

On Monday Prime Minister Vladimir Putin linked the Nevsky Express bombing with an explosion that occurred that day on a railway line in the internal Russian republic of Dagestan. The Tyumen-Baku line connects southern Russia with the “former” Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. Russia’s KGB-communist dictator called the Dagestan bombing a “second terror attempt.” No one aboard the second train was hurt and the locomotive sustained only superficial damage from the blast. After Monday’s attack, the Kremlin-run rail monopoly, Russian Railways, stated: “Traffic on the railway is closed. Employees of Russian Railways, law enforcement bodies, the FSB [Federal Security Service] and emergency services are working at the scene.’”

In a statement posted at the pro-Chechen website Kavkazcenter.com, Russia’s most-wanted rebel Umarov declared: “Today, we carry out sabotage operations on electricity transmission lines, oil-and-gas-wires. Many of the operations are under preparation status. We intend to conduct such diversions in future, which are the just acts of vengeance… These diversions will continue for as long as the [Russian] occupants [occupiers] in the Caucasus will not stop its policy of killing ordinary Muslims purely on religious grounds.” BBC News affirms that “Kavkazcenter.com has carried statements before by North Caucasus groups claiming responsibility for attacks on Russia that have turned out to be correct.”

Chechnya’s rebel president Umarov succeeded Abdul-Khalim Saydullayev in June 2006 after the latter was killed in a police operation. Saydullayev, in turn, succeeded Aslan Maskhadov, who was killed by Russian forces in March 2005. In October 2007 the 45-year-old Umarov was proclaimed emir of the “Caucasus Emirate,” an aspiring Islamic state spanning several internal Russian republics in the North Caucasus. Umarov also served as Chechnya’s security minister during its short-lived independence between 1996 and 1999.

Umarov reportedly commands 1,000 fighters and had led several “high-profile” raids. He is believed to have played a “key role” in organizing an attack in Ingushetia in June 2004, in which several dozen people, including the acting Ingush interior minister were killed. The FSB/KGB accused Umarov of leading the September 2004 school siege in Beslan, North Ossetia, which resulted in more than 300 deaths, including many children. In January 2005 and again in June 2009 Kremlin officialdom pronounced Umarov “dead” after the warlord’s guerrillas clashed with Russian troops.

Incidentally, notes BBC News, the Kremlin’s allegation against Umarov regarding the Beslan tragedy have never been substantiated. This, we might add, is probably because the Soviet strategists perpetrated the act to promote the myth that Russia, like the USA, is a victim of Islamic terrorism. Thus, when one day, in the not-too-distant future, Muslim terrorists (Spetsnaz) detonate a “suitcase nuke” in a US city Moscow will have “plausible deniability.”

>Latin America File: Honduras’ "conservative" president-elect graduate of Patrice Lumumba U., Uruguayans vote for "ex"-Marxist guerrilla "Pepe" Mujica

>With the election of National Party candidate Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo to the Honduran presidency yesterday, the voters of that country have not only (hopefully) ended the five-month political crisis in Tegucigalpa, but also demonstrated their rejection of Manuel Zelaya’s Red Axis-backed attempt to install a leftist dictatorship in that country. Like Panama’s president, Ricardo Martinelli, wealthy cattle rancher Lobo is a US-educated businessman, and thus can be expected to steer Honduras back into the fold of Washington’s few allies in the Western Hemisphere, which also include Mexico, Colombia, and Peru.

There is one anomaly in the career of “conservative” politician Lobo. In addition to obtaining a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Miami, he is also a Soviet-era graduate of Patrice Lumumba University, Moscow’s terrorist-indoctrination center (which is still in operation as People’s Friendship University).

Pictured above: President-Elect Lobo talks to reporters in his house in Tegucigalpa, on November 30.

Lobo’s main opponent, Elvin Santos conceded defeat. Santos was backed by the Liberal Party of Honduras. On June 28 the leadership of the Liberal Party deposed colleague Zelaya, another rancher, but one who after his election in 2005 lurched to the political left, embracing Venezuela’s red dictator Hugo Chavez and attaching Honduras to the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) in August 2008.

Sunday’s general election also witnessed the election of three vice presidents, 128 Congressional deputies, and 298 mayors. The center-left regimes in Argentina and Brazil, whose embassy in Tegucigalpa continues to shelter Zelaya, and the communist regime in Venezuela have sworn that they will not recognize the election results. “It was a very dangerous signal that ousted President Manuel Zelaya was not allowed to return to his country,” growled Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of South America’s largest country. This past Friday the Union of South American Nations, minus Colombia which refused to send its government ministers to a Unasur summit in Quito, resolved as a bloc to boycott the Honduran election. Afterwards, summit host Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa jetted to Brussels where he endeavored to sway European Union leaders against recognition.

Surprisingly, the Obama White House made an about-face and stated that the USA will recognize the new Honduran president, if the voting is “transparent and fair.” Panama and Costa Rica have also pledged to recognize the winner. Costa Rican President Oscar Arias was heavily involved in resolving the dispute between the post-“coup” government of President Roberto Micheletti and the exiled government of Zelaya. Former Congress speaker Micheletti, who stepped down for a week during the election campaign, addressed local radio on Monday, saying: “Yesterday’s ballot was proof Honduran democracy has corrected its path. Each vote confirms we’re a nation that deserves the respect of all on the international stage.”

The Ibero-American summit meeting in Portugal this week is expected to denounce the Honduran election. This international forum includes Spain, Portugal, Andorra, and 19 Latin American states, including mutual antagonists Colombia and Venezuela. Ibero-American Deputy General Secretary Maria Elisa Berenguer declared her support for Red Axis lackey Zelaya: “We will defend the constitutional order in Honduras.” Although Colombian President Alvaro Colom arrived in Estoril to attend the summit, his nemesis Chavez was conspicuously absent. Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and Cuba’s Raul Castro were also AWOL at the Portuguese seaside resort. Colombia will probably part company with its Ibero-American colleagues in joining the USA in recognizing Lobo as Honduras’ next president. The United Nations and Organization of American States condemned Zelaya’s ouster shortly after it occurred.

For his part, speaking to Telesur the night before the election, Zelaya denounced Sunday’s election as a “fraud” and pledged to fight until “toppling the dictatorship.” Telesur is a regional television network backed by a consortium of leftist regimes, including Cuba and Venezuela. On December 2 the Honduran Congress will decide whether to allow Zelaya to finish his term before Lobo takes over on January 27. Heather Berkman, a political risk analyst at the Eurasia Group in New York, speculated that “Zelaya may turn his focus now to seeking some form of amnesty from charges of treason and violating a Supreme Court order.” In a post-election analysis, Michael Shifter, vice president of the Washington-based think tank Inter-American Dialogue, reflected: “Lobo is going to need a lot of support. No matter how committed and talented he is as a president-elect, he’s going to need the support of sectors in Honduras and of the international community.”

On Saturday Liberal Party candidate Santos vowed to withdraw Honduras from ALBA if he won the presidential poll. At a Saturday press conference in the national capital he stated: “I do not agree that Honduras would continue to be part of that regional group until they know the real benefits it has brought to the country, because it has brought us an enormous problem that currently has divided our people.” According to the Social, External Debt and Development Forum of Honduras, 74 percent of the aid sent to Honduras in 2008 came from Venezuela, the main promoter of ALBA. It is likely that after his installation in January Lobo will terminate Honduras’ involvement in the Havana-Caracas-led bloc of socialist states.

In a related story, Nicaragua and El Salvador closed their customs posts along the borders with Honduras to avoid any possible incidents linked to the Sunday elections. Nicaragua shut down its El Espino, Guasaule, and Las Manos posts on Saturday evening, Honduran police spokesman Orlin Cerrato told media, while El Salvador did the same at noon. Interim President Micheletti responded to the news by blaming Chavez for trying to “apply boycotts to Hondurans right to be free.” Managua and San Salvador promised to open the customs posts again on Monday.

Yesterday, while Hondurans rejected an attempt by the region’s Red Axis to subvert their country, thousands of miles to the south Uruguayans ratified the Communist Bloc’s four-year-old grip on their country. Fifty percent of voting Uruguayans chose Broad Front candidate Senator Jose Mujica as the country’s next president. Mujica, a former member of the urban guerrilla army known as the Tupamaros National Liberation Movement, spent 12 years in solitary confinement during military rule in the 1970s and early 1980s. He twice escaped from prison. Ironically, Mujica’s nickname “Pepe” is the same as Lobo’s. It is expected that the 74-year-old Mujica, now perceived (rightly or wrongly) as a “moderate” leftist, will continue the economic policies of his predecessor, President Tabare Vasquez, Uruguay’s first socialist president.

Mujica and Vazquez are pictured above.

In 2005 the Broad Front, which includes the Communist Party of Uruguay, ended a 150-year power lock in Montevideo by the National and Colorado parties. Mujica founded the Movement of Popular Participation, one of the members in the ruling coalition. Since taking office, Vazquez cut the national unemployment rate to 7.3 percent from 12.3 percent, supported record foreign, including Red Chinese, investment, increased social spending, and boosted wages. Vasquez was constitutionally barred from running for another term. Incidentally, this barrier has not prevented other Red Axis leaders, such as Chavez, Ortega, Correa, and Morales, from each subverting his own country’s constitution to consolidate a communist dictatorship.

The grandfatherly but self-avowed “hot-headed” Mujica is known for his insulting comments about other South American leaders, including Chavez, whom he calls “authoritarian.” We rather suspect that such remarks are disingenuous since many other center-left politicians in the region, like Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo (“The Red Bishop”), distanced themselves from Venezuela’s red tyrant prior to their election, but then appeared in smiling photo ops with Chavez after they were safely elected.

Elsewhere in Latin America the following ex-guerrillas either hold posts as political executives or aspire to such posts, or were closely associated with others who were guerrillas:

1. Cuban President Raul Castro (2008-present) is the de facto leader of the ruling Communist Party of Cuba (CPC). He is a former member of the Soviet-backed 26th of July Movement, which in 1961 merged with the Popular Socialist Party and Revolutionary Directorate March 13th to form the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations. In 1965 the latter became the CPC.

2. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega (1979-1990, 2007-present) is the leader of the twice-ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). After seizing power in 1979 the FSLN established the Sandinista Popular Army as Nicaragua’s revolutionary armed forces. In 1995 the EPS was rebranded as the Nicaraguan National Army.

3. Salvadoran Vice President Salvador Sanchez Ceren (2009-present) is the former battlefield commander of the Soviet/Cuban-backed Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), a guerrilla army that turned into a political party in 1992.

4. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (1999-present) founded the subversive Cuban-backed Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200) in 1982, which staged two failed coups d’etat against President Carlos Andres Perez in 1992. The MBR-200 later became a political party called the Fifth Republic Movement, which in 2007 merged into the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

5. Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera (2006-present) is currently a member of President Evo Morales’ ruling Movement toward Socialism, but he is a former ideologist of the Cuban-backed Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army, which was organized by infamous revolutionary Che Guevara in the 1960s.

6. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet (2006-present) is a long-time member of the Socialist Party of Chile, the party of Soviet/Cuban-backed predecessor Salvador Allende. Between 1985 and 1987 Bachelet had a romantic relationship with Alex Vojkovic Trier, spokesman for the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front, the armed wing of the Communist Party of Chile.

7. Brazilian politician Dilma Rousseff, President Lula’s chief of staff and chairwoman of Petrobras’ board of directors, aspires to the presidency of that country in 2010. Although currently a member of the ruling Workers’ Party and previously the Democratic Labor Party, Rousseff began her political career in the urban guerrilla organizations known as the National Liberation Command and VAR Palmares.

Iranian Dictator Conducts Whirlwind Tour of Brazil, Bolivia, and Venezuela, “Comrade” Mahmoud Joins Chavez in Denouncing “Imperialism”

Into this subversive network of resuscitated Latin American communism steps the Islamo-Nazi dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who on November 26 completed a three-nation tour of the Western Hemisphere that included Brazil, Bolivia, and Venezuela. In Brazil Ahmadinejad secured Lula’s support for Iran’s controversial nuclear program, while in Bolivia he signed two memoranda of understanding with Morales. In Caracas Iran’s wanna-be Mahdi linked arms with Chavez and, sounding like a true communist, denounced “imperialism”: “Today the people of Venezuela and Iran, friends and brothers in the trench warfare against imperialism, are resisting. They will stand together until the end.” In Spanish Ahmadinejad shouted: “Viva Venezuela! Viva Chavez!”

Sizing up the meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Chavez referred to his unannounced trip to Havana early last week, several days before Cuba’s Bastion 2009 military drill. There he met for seven hours with ailing former president Fidel Castro. Chavez related Fidel’s greeting to “Comrade” Mahmoud: “Fidel told me: ‘Tell Ahmadinejad that reaching Venezuela is like reaching Cuba, because it’s the same homeland. So I’m also welcoming you to Cuba, brother.’” Venezuela’s opposition protested Ahmadinejad’s arrival. “Venezuela’s democrats repudiate the visit of the undesirable Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Venezuela,” Table of Unity opposition group declared, adding: “Ahmadinejad’s alliance with Chavez is dangerous.” A statement from Venezuela’s Jewish community stated: “Ahmadinejad is an ominous character who could produce greater misery for mankind.”

By the way, Comrade Fidel’s comment about Cuba and Venezuela being the “same homeland” is not too far from the truth. In 2007 Chavez and the Castro Bros. batted about the idea of uniting the two communist states into one federation. This Leninist vision may yet come to pass.