>Blogger’s Note: And so, while the world falls apart . . .

>We’re going on vacation. Back on April 6. Pray the commies don’t invade before then.

>Red Dawn Alert: Looming Soviet Bloc victory in Mexico as Clinton sits on military aid to crush drug cartels; Venezuela, Bolivia communize armed forces

>– Bolivarian Intelligence Service Arrests Oswaldo Alvarez, Chavez Opponent Accused President of Drug Trafficking and Links with “Armed, Outlaw Groups”

– DAS Busts Smuggling Ring Shipping Weapons from Central America to Colombia, Nicaragua’s Top General Denies SAMs Originated from His Inventories

– Guatemalan Vice President: Central American Country’s Generals Eager to Acquire Russian Weapons

We need equipment today and not in a few years.
— Patricia Espinosa, Mexican Foreign Secretary, March 23, 2010

The drug cartels are out of control in Mexico, blockading highways to thwart army operations, gunning down civilians, police, and soldiers alike, and in many cases viciously decapitating and dismembering their victims to terrify rivals and the population in general. As we have documented, Russian operatives in the form of “ex”-KGB types are furtively arming these gangs with automatic weapons and RPGs, even as the Kremlin sidles up to the Mexican government with incentives to sell helicopter gunships and other weapons to crush the narco-insurgency.

Mexico’s communist rebels, like the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and the Popular Revolutionary Army, are kicking back these days. There’s nothing for them to do. Instead, the drug cartels are efficiently destroying the country. Meanwhile, as Mexico burns, the Obama White House fiddles.

In the wake of this week’s official visit to Mexico City by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, it would appear that President Barack Hussein Obama is indeed giving the Soviets an open door to become Mexico’s “best friend” in combating this menace. Accompanying Clinton—a veteran leftist whose husband, the former president, is an alleged KGB asset—were Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair.

Disturbingly, reports the Washington Post, the White House is shifting its support away from military-style hardware and toward “investments designed to strengthen Mexican communities.” Clinton’s powerful delegation, therefore, had little to offer the besieged government of President Felipe Calderon except a promise to secure support from US lawmakers to continue the Merida Initiative, as well as sponsor community-based programs that dissuade young men from enlisting as foot soldiers in the cartels’ armies. Well, yeah, that’s not a bad idea, but Mexico’s regular forces are outgunned and lacking the technology and expertise needed to wage war against a ruthless (Moscow-backed) insurgency.

During their day-long meeting, Clinton and her Mexican counterpart, Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa, reviewed the progress of the Merida Initiative. The three-year, $US1.4 billion program is designed to help governments like Mexico’s combat drug trafficking by providing them with helicopters, night-vision goggles, crime data software, and training for federal police officers and judges. The Obama Admin expects to allocate $US310 million for Mexico in 2011.

However, Espinosa was not impressed by the White House’s package. While agreeing that a joint survey was needed to better understand the nature and extent of illicit drug consumption in the two countries, Espinosa protested: “We need equipment today and not in a few years.” Mexican officials have repeatedly complained about the slow arrival of US-built military equipment and US-delivered counter-insurgency training.

While in Mexico City, Clinton repeated statements that the “appetite” for drugs in the USA greatly contributes to drug trafficking and its “attendant violence” in Mexico: “We know demand for drugs drives much of this violence.” No kidding, Hillary. (Incidentally, Hillary’s hubby knows all about personal drug consumption. Little Rock was awash with cocaine when Bill was governor of Arkansas.) To that end, Clinton pledged to crack down on the southward flow of illegal weapons and drug cash, which will no doubt translate into more gun control and financial regulations in the USA. Decriminalizing drugs was not on the agenda.

For her part, Napolitano told reporters on the flight to Mexico City that the 50,000 troops that Calderon has sent into the streets is the wrong strategy. “It has to be complemented with civilian law enforcement and the whole traditional framework that surrounds that,” she pontificated, adding: “We can help with that.”

Sounds good, Janet, but in reality the US government should give the Mexican Army whatever it needs to crush the cartels and pronto too. US national security depends on the stability of the Mexican state and the exclusion from government of Mexico’s hard left, dominated by the communist-infiltrated Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). The next general election in Mexico will take place in 2012. Overweening PRD leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who bombed out in the 2006 election, still fancies himself the “Legitimate President of Mexico.” “Bolivarian cells” linked to the Chavezista regime are active in Mexico.

So, while the US and Mexican governments hire polling firms to ask their respective publics why they consume narcotics and join drug gangs, the Juarez, Sinaloa, and Gulf Cartels, and Los Zetas and Los Negros paramilitaries will continue to shoot up and chop up anyone who infringes on their multi-billion-dollar-a-year enterprise. Time to lock and load, folks. Everything’s moving south these days, except the drugs themselves.

Latin America’s Expanding “Anti-Imperialist” Army

That the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba are heavily indoctrinated with Marxism should go without saying. Less appreciated is the fact that the red regimes in Venezuela and Bolivia are also inculcating their armed forces with communist dogma.

On March 23 Bolivia’s self-avowed Marxist-Leninist president Evo Morales inaugurated the use of the military’s new slogan, “Fatherland or death, we shall overcome!”, popularized by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, who not-so-coincidentally met his demise in Bolivia in 1966. The Bolivian army’s new communist slogan has angered some retired generals because it is perceived as part of Morales’ effort to transform the military into guarantors of his socialist revolution. The Bolivian army began using the chant “Patria o muerte, venceremos!” during an annual ceremony known as “Day of the Sea,” which is observed to remember the 1879-84 war against Chile, when Bolivia lost its Pacific coastline. Historically, Bolivia’s military has been associated with right-wing repression.

In 2007 communist dictator Hugo Chavez enacted a similar requirement for Venezuela’s armed forces, selecting “Homeland, Socialism, or Death” as its official salute. At the time retired General Alberto Muller Rojas, a close adviser to Chavez, told Venezuelan media he had already heard the salute in various military installations. Chavez purged the military of opponents after a brief counter-coup ousted him in 2002. Since then he has used Venezuela’s oil revenue to not only beef up the military’s firepower with Russian and Red Chinese warplanes and arms, but also to raise salaries in the ranks.

Some of the military dissidents whom Chavez has thrown in prison include former army chief Raul Isaias Baduel, former admiral Carlos Millan, and onetime general Wilfredo Barroso, who was arrested along with Millan on charges of conspiring to oust the president.

“Chavez does not have the support he thinks he has in the armed forces,” Baduel declared in a jail cell interview last year. Twenty years ago he was a cadre in the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200, Comrade Hugo’s secret cell of leftist officers who tried to seize power twice in 1992. Ten years later Baduel led the paratrooper operation that returned Chavez to power. In 2007, after retiring as defense minister, Baduel broke with Chavez, publicly criticizing the president’s intention to rewrite the constitution and transform Venezuela into a socialist state. “I won’t leave this prison,” Baduel vowed last year, “until Chavez leaves the presidency of Venezuela.”

In March 2009 Chavez replaced the chiefs of the army, air force, and Bolivarian Militia, a Cuban-inspired reserve force organized to repel a US invasion, one of Comrade Hugo’s favourite bête noires. During the same wave of dismissals, Chavez also sacked his latest defense minister, General Gustavo Rangel Briceño, and ordered his henchmen to detain Otto Gebauer, a now-retired captain who apprehended Chavez during the counter-coup. Indeed, the authority of as many as 800 military officers was stripped away in 2008 after doubts surfaced over their loyalty to Chavez and his Cuban-backed “Bolivarian Revolution.”

Of course, the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela also persecutes civilian dissidents. This past Monday Chavez’s cronies in the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (formerly DISIP) arrested opposition figure Oswaldo Alvarez, who had publicly accused the Chavezista regime of trafficking in drugs and hiding links with armed, outlaw groups (like no doubt Colombia’s Marxist rebels).

Although the neo-Sandinista regime in Nicaragua has yet to re-politicize the armed forces, the latest commander of the Nicaraguan National Army, General Julio Aviles, is a former Sandinista guerrilla and, thus, an ally of President Daniel Ortega. In fact, the Sandinista Popular Army was not officially de-communized until 1995.

In a related story, on March 24 General Aviles was forced to deny reports that an “international arms trafficking gang” recently busted by Colombian authorities was stealing weapons from the Nicaraguan military and smuggling them into Colombia. Nicaragua’s top general huffed: “You can be assured that the inventories of the Nicaraguan army are secured and safe. The materiel that is spoken of is not of Nicaraguan origin. The information says that the arms are made in other countries, and are not of our own materiel.”

According to Colombia’s intelligence agency, DAS, the smuggling ring transported weapons procured in Central America via the Colombian island of Sand Andres, where they were ferried to the mainland by plane and speedboats. Contraband weapons included “rockets, rifles, and machine guns.” Presumably, “rockets” refer to surface-to-air missiles (SAMs).

It is known, of course, that Nicaragua is still in possession of 1,000 Soviet-built SAM-7 missiles, acquired by the first Sandinista regime in its war against the US-backed Contras. This arsenal remains a point of contention between Washington—which fears that the old man-portable rocket launchers could fall into the hands of terrorists, like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—and Managua—which insists upon retaining at least 400 of the weapons for its own defense. It is also known, too, that veteran communist Ortega sympathizes with the aims of the FARC, which seeks to install a Marxist dictatorship in Bogota. If an international criminal syndicate is smuggling SAMs from Central America to shady customers fronting for FARC, then Nicaraguan armouries may very well be the point of origin for these shipments.

Finally, Guatemala’s center-left government is not communist but President Alvaro Colom is very obviously moving his country into Moscow’s orbit, especially in the wake of his visit this week to the Russian capital. In Colom’s delegation was Vice President Rafael Espada, who told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev his country is interested in acquiring Russian arms in exchange for coffee and sugar exports. Like Mexico, although not on quite the same scale, Guatemala is plagued with drug violence. “Guatemala is interested in acquiring planes, armored vehicles and other arms to struggle against organized crime in the country. We could pay for the arms with coffee and sugar,” Espada suggested.

Guatemalan officials already discussed the issue with Russian diplomats last week, Espada revealed. Guatemala’s Chief of Staff, General Juan Jose Ruis, and five other high-ranking officials of the country’s defense ministry took part in the talks, which were apparently held in Guatemala City. Espada related that Russia provided a catalogue of its weapons systems, which would be of interest to Guatemala’s armed forces and the national police. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited Guatemala in February.

>Latin America File: US Southern Command chief: Venezuela’s “socialist” regime “destabilizing force," backs FARC; Guatemala president heads for Moscow

>– FMLN Regime in San Salvador Opens Embassy in Havana as It Projects Moderate Image in USA, Sends President Funes to Meet Obama

– President Lobo Invites Deposed Predecessor Back to Homeland as Honduran Left Agitates for Lobo’s Removal, Zelaya’s Reinstatement

– Colombia’s Center-Right Parties Win March 14 Congressional Vote, Uribe’s Anointed Successor Faces Off Against Former M-19 Guerrilla in May 30 Presidential Poll

There appears to be a new willingness in Washington DC to acknowledge that Communist Venezuela is a “destabilizing force” in the Western Hemisphere. Last Thursday, in testimony to the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, General Douglas Fraser, chief of the US Armed Force’s Southern Command, admitted:

They [the Venezuelan government] continue to have a very anti-US stance and look to try and restrict US activity wherever they have the opportunity to do that. They are continuing to engage with the region and continuing to pursue their socialism agenda. They remain a destabilizing force in the region.

Venezuela continues to provide the FARC a safe haven and financial logistical support.

Fraser’s strangely frank comments came barely a week after the good general told a US Senate hearing that “The Pentagon has no evidence of a government-to-terrorist connection between President Hugo Chavez’s government and Colombian FARC rebels.” The good general’s sudden candor also suggests that—gasp!—communism may not be dead after all, in spite of its KGB-orchestrated funeral on Christmas Day 1991. For Internet surfers who may be too young to remember, on that day Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev announced the demise of CCCP V1.0. (V2.0 waits in the wings. See quote at top of this blog.)

Venezuela’s ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, protested that Fraser’s about-face was politically motivated: “The Obama administration is continuing the aggressive policy against Venezuela of the Bush administration. They cannot accept a government with a different ideological perspective in this hemisphere.” Venezuela is among the USA’s top five oil suppliers and its second-leading trading partner in Latin America, after Mexico. However, in spite of the ideological differences between Washington and Caracas—that is, soft communist versus outright communist—Alvarez soothed: “Venezuela has no interest in reducing the oil trade.”

Comrade Alvarez is correct. Venezuelan oil will be used as a bargaining chip later, after President Barack Hussein Obama bans offshore drilling in the USA, after Russian companies begin drilling for oil in Cuban waters, and after Obama imposes full-blown socialism on America, beginning with mandatory private health care. In a March 18 editorial titled “Obama Surrenders Gulf Oil to Moscow,” the Washington Times worried: “Russia is projecting power in the Western Hemisphere while the United States retreats. The world will not tolerate a superpower that acts like a sidekick much longer.”

Russian companies also intend to exploit offshore oil reserves in Venezuelan waters. The two Communist Bloc allies are in reality playing energy politics with the intent of hobbling the infrastructure of the world’s remaining superpower. Additional confirmation of this conspiracy includes a March 17 comment from Chavez’s energy minister, Rafael Ramirez, who is also head of Venezuela’s state-run oil monopoly. The PDVSA boss stated that in spite of recent shutdowns due to power outages in the Netherlands Antilles and the US military presence in the Dutch-owned islands, Venezuela has no intention of abandoning its lease on the Isla oil refinery in Curacao.

Meanwhile, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom has made his first pilgrimage to Moscow. In February he hosted Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, who signed an agreement with Guatemalan counterpart Haroldo Rodas to combat the illicit drug trade. In 2007 then President Vladimir Putin visited Guatemala, at which time he met Colom’s predecessor, Oscar Berger, and inaugurated Russia’s first embassy in Guatemala City. Colom is Guatemala’s first center-left president since the communist-backed Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was overthrown by the military in 1954 and then spent some time in exile in Communist Cuba, before living out the remainder of his years in Mexico.

Colom, who has yet to lock his country into the Havana/Caracas-led Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), is already linked to Chavez by way of subsidized Petrocaribe oil. He also follows a parade of center-left and communist leaders from Latin America who have travelled to Moscow over the last 18 months, including Cuba’s Raul Castro, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner, and Guyana’s Bharrat Jagdeo. Chavez himself materializes in Moscow on a nearly yearly basis.

Arriving in Russia on Sunday, Colom met counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, with whom he approved bilateral packages promoting cooperation in the military-technical field, oil and gas exploration, telecommunications, transportation, and tourism. According to the Ukrainian media, Russia is expecting a quid pro quo for all of the attention it is lavishing on this small Central American country: Guatemala must recognize the independence of breakaway regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Examining the raft of new Russian-Guatemalan agreements, it appears that this new alliance may very well lead to Guatemala purchasing Russian arms and hosting Russian “experts” to counter the endemic drug violence in Central America. The Soviet strategists are already cautiously cultivating similar linkages with the beleaguered Mexican government.

Commenting on their meeting, Medvedev enthused: “Russia sees Latin America as an emerging global force and plans all-round ties with countries in it.” The Russian president also thanked Colom for his role in promoting visa-free travel for Russians to Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. For his part, Colom gushed: “It would be a mistake if Guatemala and other Latin American countries refrain or abandon relations with a serious partner like Russia.”

The Marxist leadership of El Salvador’s ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) has yet to scurry to Moscow. It also appears anxious not to alarm US policymakers over El Salvador’s new-found relationship with Cuba. On the one hand, the real “power behind the throne” in San Salvador is Vice President Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a doctrinaire Leninist who led the FMLN guerrillas into battle 20 years ago and cheered when Osama bin Laden’s disciples dive-bombed three airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Last year, in preparation for opening El Salvador’s first-ever embassy in Havana, Sanchez flew to Havana to confer with his Cold War-era mentors.

Several weeks ago, though, Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes, who represents the FMLN’s moderate “face,” travelled to Washington, where he had a friendly tete-a-tete with Obama. During the March 9 meeting the two presidents focused much of their discussion on the international drug trade that has left a path of death and destruction between South America and the US-Mexican border. “We want to be supportive, not only in addressing the symptoms that we see in terms of crime, but also the root causes, and I know that’s something the president [Funes] cares deeply about as well,” Obama remarked.

Prior to the Obama-Funes meet-and-greet, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged that Washington has dropped the ball when it comes to the War on Drugs in Central America. Under the Merida Initiative, the US government allocated $1.6 billion to combat the drug trade in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, but most of the funds wound up in Mexico. Throwing more US taxpayer money at red banana republics like El Salvador will probably yield little tangible result until the Obama White House owns up to the fact that the Russian Mafia (FSB/SVR/KGB) is arming the Mexican drug cartels and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which produce 90 percent of the cocaine flowing into the USA.

As a sop to Washington, San Salvador has sent out mixed messages concerning future membership in ALBA, and offered to recognize Porfirio Lobo as the legitimate president of Honduras. Chavez recently appointed Manuel Zelaya as head of Petrocaribe’s Political Council, a move that clearly exposes the deposed Honduran president as a puppet of Venezuela’s red dictator. For his part, Lobo, a wealthy rancher who graduated from Moscow’s Patrice Lumumba University during the Cold War, is offering Zelaya, another wealthy rancher, the opportunity to return to his homeland without fear of prosecution.

Lobo’s decision is not wise because the Honduran Left continues to agitate for his own demise. “Our objectives these days are ambitious. We will have to work seriously and strenuously,” declared Carlos Reyes, union leader and member of the National People’s Resistance Front leadership. On March 16 1,000 leftists converged in La Esperanza for the second meeting for “Honduran Re-Foundation,” with the intent of “putting an end to the current dominating [regime] that plunders, exploits and oppresses the country.” Reyes accused the US ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, of “interfering openly in the country’s internal affairs and carrying out maneuvers to divide the resistance.”

Openly campaigning in Honduras, Zelaya would serve as a lightning rod for both domestic and foreign subversive forces. The latter could include Cuban, Venezuelan, and Nicaraguan agents.

Meanwhile, the number of recently murdered journalists in Honduras reached three after gunmen fired AK-47 automatic rifles at Nahun Palacios, director of a TV news channel in the city of Tocoa. The killers fled the scene, leaving another man with Palacios seriously wounded. Last week two gunmen killed journalist David Meza in similar circumstances in La Ceiba, a town near Tocoa. Meza was a reporter for Radio El Patio and correspondent in his hometown for Radio America and TV Channels 7 and 10 in Tegucigalpa. On March 1 Joseph Ochoa of Channel 51 was murdered.

While it is possible that clandestine forces on the Honduran Right are once again plying their bloody trade, it is also possible that the Honduran Left, working with organized crime, is carrying out these provocations to force an over-reaction from Lobo’s government.

Finally, in what may be interpreted as a positive development for South America, in a March 14 election the four center-right parties that have backed Colombian President Alvaro Uribe over the past eight years won a handy majority in the country’s bicameral national legislature. These include the chief Uribist formation, the National Unity Social Party, as well as the Conservative, Cambio Radical, and National Integration parties. A presidential election is slated for May 30, but after two terms as president Uribe cannot run again. Uribe’s anointed successor is former defense minister Juan Manuel Santos, whose policies are viewed as a threat to its own longevity by the Chavezista regime in Venezuela. Throughout his presidency Uribe retained a 60 percent public approval rating. Santos is pictured above.

Santos’ main contenders are independent candidate Sergio Fajardo and Alternative Democratic Pole candidate Gustavo Petro Urrego. Leftist Urrego is currently a Colombian Senator but at an earlier stage in his career was an insurgent in the 19th of April (M-19) guerrilla movement.

>USA File: America moves toward socialized health care: House of Reps passes landmark reform bill, Republicans spurn mandatory coverage

>In Canada, where your resident blogger lives, the provincial governments administer the federal government’s socialized health care program. While the bill passed on Sunday by the US House of Representatives imposes mandatory health coverage on all Americans, no agency created by the US government will administer a centralized program–at least not yet. No doubt that will be the next stage in President Barack Hussein Obama and the Democratic Party’s attempt to transform the USA into a socialist utopia. Obama is expected to sign the legislation on Monday.

Key healthcare reform bill passed in the USA
OnMedica Staff
Monday, 22 March 2010

The US House of Representatives has voted to pass a key healthcare reform bill.

The change, tenaciously pushed forward by Presiddent Barack Obama, was passed by just 219 votes to 212, following hours of debate. It received no Republican backing.

The bill is a landmark move in the US. Under the new legislation health insurance will be extended to nearly all Americans, new taxes will be imposed on wealthier citizens and some restrictive insurance practices – such as refusing to cover pre-existing conditions – will be outlawed.

The reforms will increase insurance coverage through tax credits for the middle class and an expansion of Medicaid for the poor.

When the vote count reached the minimum needed to pass the bill, Democrats cheered and chanted: “Yes, we can!”.

Speaking after the result, Mr Obama said: “We proved that we are still people capable of doing big things.

“This legislation will not fix everything that ails our healthcare system, but it moves us decisively in the right direction.”

However, Republicans, say the measures are unaffordable and represent a government takeover of the health industry.

President Obama is expected to sign the legislation as early as tomorrow, but the Senate will be able to make changes to the measures in a separate bill.

On July 9, 2009, while visiting Moscow, Obama met with Gennady Zyuganov, Chairman of the (secretly ruling) Communist Party of the Russian Federation. In response to that meeting, Zyuganov enthused: “I said that I had thoroughly studied the U.S. president’s anti-crisis program, that I liked it, as well as that it is socially oriented and primarily aimed at supporting poor people and enhancing the state’s role. I said all this to President Obama.” When everything in society becomes mandatory, such as the mass fluoridation of public water supplies, then the fate of freedom is uncertain.

>EU/USSR2 Files: Putin rebukes Lukashenko for not recognizing Abkhazia, S. Ossetia; Belarusian KGB turns Polish ABW officer, passes docs to Russian FSB

>In a rare display of displeasure with the Belarusian leadership, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is visiting Belarus to chair the Council of Ministers of the Union State of Russia and Belarus, rebuked Alexander Lukashenko for dragging his feet on recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries. Apart from the Russian Federation, only Venezuela, Nicaragua, and diminutive Nauru in the South Pacific Ocean have extended diplomatic recognition to Georgia’s breakaway regions, both of which are occupied by the Russian army.

“Russia expected Belarus to support us in this issue quickly, energetically, and spectacularly. Indeed, this is not happening,” Putin grumbled to reporters at a press conference held in Brest, Belarus. He added: “However, whether to recognize these two regions or not is Minsk’s sovereign right.” Putin suggested that President Lukashenko was overly concerned about European Union sensitivities ahead of normalizing Minsk-Brussels relations. He added: “We have always favored an improvement of Belarus’ ties with Western countries. A positive effect has already been produced.”

With the hope of goading the recalcitrant Belarusians, Putin pledged to provide the country with cheap gas and oil that could save Minsk more than US$4 billion in 2010. Putin also urged Belarus to quickly adopt a joint currency with Russia.

Comrade Alex, however, was nowhere to be found in Belarus. Instead, he is touring Latin America, prompting some political analysts to speculate that Lukashenko fled Minsk before his Moscow master arrived to chew him out. The Belarusian government press service retorted by calling the media speculation “groundless.” Instead of Lukashenko, therefore, Belarusian Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky (pictured above) bore the brunt of Putin’s drubbing.

Lukashenko is presently rubbing elbows with Hugo Chavez, where he once again offered to modernize Comrade Hugo’s air defense system by offloading some radar units and antiaircraft missile batteries. In a quid pro quo, the Venezuela’s red tyrant offered to sell 80,000 barrels of oil per day to Belarus, presumably at a preferential price. Lukashenko is expected to meet his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on March 22 in Rio de Janeiro.

Chavez plans to visit Belarus again in October, at which time he will most likely swing through Moscow for an annual briefing session with his KGB handler Putin. Lukashenko is also making plans to return to Venezuela in 2011. “Venezuela is our home, our land. And Belarus should become a familiar land for Venezuelans,” gushed the Belarusian president while in Caracas.

Although Putin feigns optimism for Belarus’ rapprochement with the EU, this is unlikely in the wake of at least two spy imbroglios that have developed between Belarus and former Warsaw Pact member Poland. As we previously reported, in March 2009 the Polish Internal Security Agency (ABW) arrested an alleged GRU agent, a putative businessman who had been legally resident in Poland for 10 years and boasted a strong command of the Polish language.

The Russian embassy in Warsaw disavowed all knowledge of the Russian national, whose apartment contained electronic signalling equipment. The office of Polish President Lech Kaczyński admitted that this was the first time a Russian spy had been detected in Poland since 1989, the year in which the Polish United Workers’ Party abandoned its public monopoly of power.

A second spy flap centers on the person of Belarusian “Mata Hari” Olga Solomenik, an alleged agent of the Belarusian KGB, which still operates under its old dreaded name. Solomenik joined the pro-government faction of the Union of Belarusian Poles and then traveled to Bialystok, Poland to recruit employees of the ABW. In Bialystok Solomenik “turned” ABW officer “Robert R” into handing over classified documents, which she forwarded to her KGB handlers in Minsk, which in turned were forwarded to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB/KGB). In February 2008 “Robert R” was arrested and currently faces espionage charges under Polish law.

“We have evidence that the Belarusian KGB used the pro-Lukashenko Union of Poles in Belarus to gather information in Poland, which was later forwarded to Russia’s secret service,” a former ABW officer was quoted by the Gazeta Wyborcza as saying. The anonymous source continues:

There’s a reason why nobody is talking about this. ABW cares about having good relations with the Belarusian KGB. Officially, we do not have good relations with Belarus, but cooperation with the KGB is necessary for [Poland] to monitor border traffic, as required by the EU. Brussels’ priority is to fight against illegal immigrants and contraband entering from the East.

Belarusian “Mata Hari” Solomenik is still at large. The Union of Belarusian Poles split into two factions in 2005. It is believed that Tadeusz Kruczkowski, the head of the pro-Lukashenko group, is also a Belarusian KGB agent. The fact that the communist regime in Minsk is using the pro-government faction to infiltrate the KGB into Poland may explain why it is cracking down so hard on the anti-government faction.

Elsewhere in the “post”-Soviet space, Moldova’s communists, who openly ruled the former Soviet republic between 2001 and 2009, are conniving to manipulate their plurality in parliament into a workable government. On Thursday they began a boycott of parliament in an ongoing bid to force the resignation of acting President Mihai Ghimpu and his pro-European Union coalition. The inability of the new legislature to elect a new president has aggravated the Moldovan economy, the poorest in Europe. Ghimpu’s ruling coalition plans to hold a referendum to amend election rules and make nominating a new president easier, but the communists denounced this plan as a “usurpation of power.”

The communist-scripted drama in Chisinau seems disingenuous since, according to Soviet defector Vladimir Bukovsky, the EU was from the beginning a Soviet project, while “ex”-communists lead some of the parties in the ruling coalition. It may be, though, that pure power politics is competing with the Soviet strategic deception in Moldova.

>MISSILE DAY ALERT: UN-CSTO military cooperation protocol provides “legal” framework for deploying Soviet “peacekeeping/anti-drug” troops as needed

>In a highly significant development which will no doubt be ignored by the MSM until it is too late, that is, until Soviet “peacekeeping/counter-narcotics” troops are patrolling the streets of your city, the United Nations and Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) have signed a military cooperation protocol. The signatories were UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and CSTO General Secretary Nikolai Bordyuzha, a career Chekist (pictured above).

Citing the need for international cooperation in combating the illicit narcotics trade, especially in Afghanistan, Ban declared on March 18 that “The declaration is an important step for the UN to consolidate cooperation with regional organizations.” Afghanistan is part of the opium-growing “Golden Crescent” in southwest Asia.

The CSTO is a military pact that embraces the “former” Soviet republics of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. It has held observer status at the UN since 2004. The UN signed a similar cooperation protocol with the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 2008. Russia’s official national security strategy describes the CSTO as “a key mechanism for countering regional military challenges and threats.”

From the point of view of the Soviet long-range strategy for global domination, the prospect of the CSTO usurping NATO’s role in suppressing the Taliban insurgency is certainly intriguing. The Russian and Chechen mafias (FSB/SVR/KGB) are already running weapons to the former Islamic rulers of Afghanistan, while the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces (GRU) has been accused of transporting Afghan heroin to Western Europe via its own military bases.

In response to the UN-CSTO agreement, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov intoned: “Drug trafficking has emerged as a threat to both regional and international peace and security.” The Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, elaborated: “The declaration has both practical and political significance for the CSTO, completing the creation of a political and legal framework between the two organizations.” The Russian media was quick to praise the new UN-CSTO alliance. “Russia,” relates state-run Novosti, “has repeatedly called for the CSTO’s peacekeeping potential to be used more widely.” For its part, Russian business daily Kommersant opined that “UN-CSTO cooperation might cover such areas as conflict prevention and resolution, terrorism, international crime and arms trafficking.”

Since the Kremlin now considers drug trafficking as a “threat to both regional and international peace and security,” will we also witness the deployment of UN-CSTO troops in the war-wracked US-Mexican border region? Last November business leaders in Ciudad Juarez demanded that the UN dispatch its “peacekeepers” to suppress the drug cartels.

In addition to taking to task the “former” communist regimes in Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria for hosting or offering to host US anti-missile batteries, Moscow finds other excuses to portray the USA/NATO as aggressor. This week the Kremlin condemned a minor NATO air force drill over the Baltic states. The exercise, which is the fifth over the three former Soviet republics, involved just seven combat aircraft, including two French fighters and three Polish and two Lithuanian planes.

In a statement, NATO’s Germany-based Air Command explained that the one-day drill over Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia demonstrated the alliance’s “commitment to their collective security.” The Baltic trio joined NATO and the European Union in 2004. With a combined population of just 6.8 million people and a regular military of 23,000, the Baltic republics are wary of their former communist overlord’s renewed assertiveness. The pending sale of four French-built/designed Mistral amphibious attack ships to the Russian Navy has especially spooked the Balts.

Lithuania’s Defence Minister Rasa Jukneviciene dismissed Russia’s annoyance by reminding the Russians that last September they and their Belarusian allies carried out the provocative Zapad-2009 drill. This exercise, the largest in the region in 25 years, took place in Belarus and Kaliningrad, and involved more than 12,000 troops, over 200 tanks, 470 other armoured vehicles, and 100 aircraft.

Last week during a visit to Poland, another former Communist Bloc state that joined NATO in 1999, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen complained that during Zapad 2009 Moscow sent the “wrong kind of signal by conducting military exercises that rehearse the invasion of a smaller NATO member.” The last, of course, was a reference to Poland itself. Rasmussen, like much of NATO’s leadership, though, has taken leave of his senses. Although he wrung his hands over Zapad 2009, he supports France’s Mistral sale to Russia. Something’s wrong with this picture.

>Latin America File: Mexico’s drug war spreads to Monterrey as gunmen commandeer trucks, buses, blockade highways to hamper counter-insurgency ops

>– Three US Citizens in Ciudad Juarez, Including Consular Worker, Gunned Down on March 14; State of Chihuahua Officials Suspect Los Aztecas Drug Gang

– US Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of Defense Gates Head for Mexico City on Tuesday

Pictured above: Police stand next to a trailer truck that was stolen and then used as a barricade by gunmen in San Nicolas, a city on the outskirts of Monterrey, Mexico, on March 19, 2010.

Mexico’s drug war has several epicenters. Ciudad Juarez is the most well known, at least in the northern part of the country. However, the country’s narco-insurgency is spreading to Monterrey, another northern city.

On Friday, reports Reuters, quoting Mayor Fernando Larrazabal, armed men blocked highways with trucks and buses in Monterrey in an apparent attempt to hinder Mexican Army operations near the US border. Gunmen pulled truck and bus drivers out of their vehicles and then used the vehicles to blockade four-lane highways, slashing tires to make it harder to tow them away. Similar roadblocks were set up on Thursday.

“The blockades that we are seeing … could be actions by people linked to organized crime to block avenues and delay federal, state or municipal forces in some operations,” Larrazabal told the Milenio TV network.

On Thursday groups of mainly young men brandishing pistols and sticks began blocking roads, parking trailers and SUVs across highways, smashing windows and torching some vehicles. Police stated that no one was hurt in the incidents. Only two arrests were made because the gunmen fled after setting up the roadblocks.

“The guys arrested look like gang members,” observed Luis Carlos Trevino, police chief of Nuevo Leon state, of which Monterrey is the capital. Trevino related that over a 24-hour period there had been 31 road blockades in and around Monterrey, a manufacturing city inland from the border but close to Texas.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates are slated to arrive in Mexico City on Tuesday to discuss the escalating drug violence with President Felipe Calderon. On March 14 three US citizens, including one US consular employee, were gunned down only minutes apart at two locations in Ciudad Juarez. State of Chihuahua officials suspect Los Azetecas drug gang carried out the assassinations.

We have reported that the Russian Mafia, consisting of “ex”-KGB types, is arming Mexico’s drug cartels, accelerating the country’s descent into the status of “failed state,” and that the Kremlin is disengenuously offering to help the Mexican government to suppress the insurgency. If the Soviet strategists are interested in positioning Communist Bloc troops in the US-Mexican border region, under the guise of a United Nations peacekeeping operation, then Mexico’s drug war offers a superb opportunity. Murdering US consular workers and their family members only contributes to the image of Calderon as a weak, ineffective leader, possibly providing an opening for the Mexican Left to assert itself.

>Buncha Commies Corner: 43 Massachusetts towns dumping Red Chinese sodium fluoride in water supplies, 1 community suspends use of chemical

>For many decades the “radical right” was the target of mockery by communists and their fellow travellers for alleging that the reds were planning to poison the West’s water supplies with fluoride prior to a revolutionary takeover. In recent years, many scientists, dentists, and medical professionals have actually reversed their support for the fluoridation of public water sources, which is widely practiced, supposedly to prevent tooth decay. Hence, the following news item suggests that the idea of a “red conspiracy” behind the “fluoride scare” is not so kooky after all.

Pictured above: General Jack Ripper, a character from Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove, frets about commie plots to fluoridate US water supplies and eliminate the population’s will to resist communism.

Chinese Fluoride In Mass. Water Raises Concern
Team 5 Investigates After Amesbury Pulls Sodium Fluoride From Water Supply
POSTED: 6:12 pm EST March 11, 2010 UPDATED: 10:00 am EDT March 16, 2010

AMESBURY, Mass. — Fluoride is added to the water most of us drink because the government believes it’s a safe and inexpensive way to prevent tooth decay.

However, Team 5 Investigates found the Amesbury Water Department pulled fluoride from its system amid concerns about its supply from China.

Department of Public Works Director Rob Desmarais said after he mixes the white powder with water, 40 percent of it will not dissolve.

“I don’t know what it is,” Desmarais said. “It’s not soluble, and it doesn’t appear to be sodium fluoride. So we are not quite sure what it is.”

Desmarais said the residue clogs his machines and makes it difficult to get a consistent level of fluoride in the town’s water.

Since April the fluoride pumps in Amesbury have been turned off and they will stay that way until Desmarais can find out what’s in the fluoride that’s imported from China.

Both state and federal health officials told Team 5 Investigates that Chinese fluoride is safe.

The Department of Public Health said it believes that more than 650,000 customers in 44 Massachusetts communities are getting the flouride in question and only Amesbury has temporarily stopped using it.

However, they were unable to say with certainty which of the other 43 communities are actually using the sodium fluoride from China in its water.

The fluoride from China is not used in communities getting water from the MWRA.

The New York company that supplies the fluoride said it is certified by the National Sanitation Foundation which assures the quality of the product. But the NSF said the company has never been on its certification list.

Approximately 1,000 water systems in the United States use the additive to adjust the fluoride in their water supply, according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Testing continues to determine the precise composition of the residue.

“They should test it to make sure…it is safe for us to drink,” said Paul Stewart who lives in Newburyport. He said he has a right to know exactly what’s in his water.

“On the same day that I read the story about fluoride coming from China, I also read about stories about melamine that was being contaminated in milk products coming from China,” Stewart said. “And then we had another story about more lead in kids toys from China.”

Since 2007, most of the sodium fluoride has been imported from China because it’s the least expensive on the market.

“I don’t think that when it comes to something that I ingest every day that the lowest bidder is good enough,” Stewart said.

In 2005 The Epoch Times published a secret speech by Chi Haotian, Red China’s Minster of Defense and vice-chairman of the country’s Central Military Commission. Chi’s rant exposed Beijing’s intention of using biological warfare against America and casts a sinister shadow on the story of communist fluoride in Massachusetts drinking water.

>Latin America File: Chavez takes delivery of light attack jets from PRC, appoints deposed Honduran president Zelaya to head Petrocaribe council

>– Belarus’ Communist Dictator Lukashenko Begins Two-Day Visit to Venezuela

– Colombia’s Intelligence Agency Unearths Secret Nexus between FARC and Shining Path

– Portuguese Police Arrest Suspected ETA Guerrilla as He Endeavored to Board Flight from Lisbon to Caracas

On March 13 Venezuela’s communist dictator Hugo Chavez took delivery of the first four of 18 K-8W military planes from the People’s Republic of China. Although utilized as trainers, the Hongdu JL-8 light attack jets are armed with machine guns, air-to-ground missiles, bombs, and rockets. The PRC designed the K-8W/JL-8 in collaboration with Pakistan. The first prototype flew in 1990. Gloating over this procurement from Red China, which augments still more weapons purchases from Russia, Chavez declared:

March 13 is a historic day for the Bolivarian anti-imperialist air force. This armament increases our military capacity for defending the sovereignty of this sacred land and of this revolution. Venezuela will be a force for good, for justice, for equality, for freedom, a socialist power, and for that we have to be well equipped. The war-fighting equipment will guard the country’s riches of water, oil, energy, gas, geographic location and its role as the cradle of the first great revolution of the 21st century.

Venezuela’s “anti-imperialist” air force already contains US-built F-16s, obtained prior to Chavez’s ascent to power in 1998, and 24 Sukhoi Su-30 fighters and 50 helicopters, obtained from Russia since then. While posing no threat to the USA, these aerial acquisitions by Caracas will presumably add to Venezuela’s ability to defend itself from a Colombian counter-attack. Chavez vows to purchase a total of 40 K-8Ws.

Venezuela’s strategic partnership with the Not-So-Former Soviet Union is evident in the state visits that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko will make to Caracas this year. Unreconstructed communist Lukashenko begins a two-day trip to Venezuela today, while KGB-communist dictator Putin will visit the South American country later this month. These days Lukashenko, “Europe’s last dictator,” is busy persecuting ethnic Poles. For his part, Chavez makes yearly pilgrimages to Moscow and has also visited Minsk, the Belarusian capital. Pictured above: Chavez and Lukashenko at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, on March 15.

The political fallout from last year’s constitutional coup in Honduras continues to blow about Latin America. On March 9 Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro announced that President Hugo Chavez’s compliant lackey, deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, has been appointed to the post of head of Petrocaribe’s Political Council. Petrocaribe is a Caracas-led energy consortium that funnels cheap Venezuelan oil to client states throughout the Caribbean Basin. According to Maduro, the Political Council is designed for “the defense of the independence and democracy in the PetroCaribe continent.”

Maduro announced Zelaya’s appointment at a session of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela in Caracas. Zelaya, who was present with Maduro during the formal announcement, is living in exile in the Dominican Republic. After Zelaya was deposed in June 2009, Venezuela halted the delivery of oil to Honduras, and then suspended the country’s membership in Petrocaribe when the interim government failed to re-instate him. Honduras has since withdrawn from the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, another Caracas-led initiative for exporting communism throughout Latin America. Jamaica and the Dominican Republic are two of the largest recipients of subsidized Venezuelan oil, while Cuba receives around 100,000 barrels per day under a more complex arrangement with Caracas.

The animosity of Nicaragua’s neo-Sandinista regime toward Honduras’ post-coup government is evident in its refusal to admit former interim president Roberto Micheletti into the country to meet with representatives of the opposition Constitutionalist Liberal Party. Micheletti organized the November 2009 presidential poll that led to the election of National Party candidate Porfirio Lobo. This past January, moreover, when former Sandinista guerrilla Julio Aviles became the Nicaraguan National Army’s top commander, taking over from fellow Sandinista Omar Halleslevens, the Nicaraguan military departed from historic protocol by declining to invite a military delegation from Honduras.

Several weeks ago, Chavez also inaugurated another element of his world revolutionary program, Radio del Sur (Radio of the South). Boasting a network or more than 100 radio stations in the Americas, Radio del Sur will broadcast in communist/socialist-controlled countries in Latin America like Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Uruguay; communist/socialist-controlled countries in Africa like Algeria, Angola, and Libya; former communist state Benin; communist/socialist-controlled countries in Asia like China and Vietnam; and Soviet ally Iran.

Sixty percent of the programming, explains the Cuban media, will be produced in Caracas, while the rest will be shows prepared by associated radio stations in Latin America and the Caribbean. Doubtless, Radio del Sur will “forget” to air pro-freedom, anti-communist views. The televised platform for Latin America’s Red Axis is Telesur, the board of directors of which contains renegade former Sandinistas like Ernesto Cardenal and Hollywood actor Danny Glover.

Radio del Sur will also broadcast red propaganda to listeners in Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and the USA. According to Chavez, the US and Colombian governments most threaten his Bolivarian Revolution. On March 9, for example, the Venezuelan Congress’ Foreign Policy Commission ratified Foreign Minister Maduro’s statement that the country will not “repair ties” with Colombia while President Alvaro Uribe is in power.

Undaunted by the Chavezista regime’s belligerent behaviour, the Colombian government has not hesitated to expose Chavez’s subversive influence in various insurgent groups throughout the region. The Venezuelan government’s logistical and weapons support for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has been copiously documented here. Chavez’s political alliance with FARC and Spain’s Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna via the Bolivarian Continental Movement has also been documented here. Incidentally, on March 12 Portuguese authorities arrested a suspected ETA operative who was carrying a Mexican passport as he endeavoured to board a flight from Lisbon to Caracas.

The Colombian intelligence agency has also unearthed a relationship between FARC and Shining Path. According to the DAS the Colombian rebels are instructing their Peruvian counterparts in the fine art of exploiting the South American cocaine trade to finance their insurgency, which soldiers on in much-diminished capacity since the capture of leader Abimael Guzman in 1992. According to Bogota’s El Tiempo, emails found on the hard drive of slain FARC commander “Raul Reyes” reveal the FARC’s intention to “strengthen” the training, political work, and armed fight of the Peruvian Maoists, who slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians in the 1980s. In April 2009 Peru’s pro-Washington government announced that it will build six anti-terrorist bases to add to those that already exist in Putumayo, on the border with Colombia.

>USSR2 File: Yanukovich yokes with communists in slavish, pro-Moscow government; appoints Russian-born PM with little facility in Ukrainian language

>On March 11 Ukraine’s new president Viktor Yanukovich strengthened his grip on power by signing a new law that circumvents the constitution, allowing him to form a governing coalition on the basis of individual legislators, rather than party factions. By picking up individual parliamentary deputies, Yanukovich’s Party of Regions created an alliance that includes the Communist Party of Ukraine, Lytvyn Bloc, and defectors from the camp of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko and the Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense Bloc, which backed ex-president Viktor Yushchenko.

In 2005 the Party of Regions signed a collaboration protocol with United Russia, the crypto-Stalinist entity that fronts for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

Peter Vanhecke, CEO for Renaissance Capital, which has clients in Ukraine, Belarus and Central and Eastern Europe, reflected on the pros and cons of Yanukovich’s new pro-Russian government:

Politically, there are some questions about the method used to establish this coalition, but I think that the market and European observers are willing to turn a blind eye for the sake of stability. Sentiment for Ukraine was extremely negative in 2009. Any sign of stability turns the market positive for investors, as they rediscover Ukraine’s upside potential. The assumption is that with a new president and loyal government, there will be more stability in Ukraine, and in relations with its big neighbours, Russia and Europe.

Yanukovich, a “former” cadre of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, also appointed slavish ally and Soviet-era technocrat Mykola Azarov as prime minister. The 62-year-old Russian-born Azarov was chief of Ukraine’s tax agency between 1996 and 2002, during which time the country’s president was “ex”-CPSU cadre Leonid Kuchma, Yanukovich’s mentor. Azarov was briefly acting prime minister during the presidential election crisis surrounding the “Orange Revolution” of 2004-2005, and finance minister during Yanukovich’s premiership between 2006 and 2007. Azarov succeeded his own mentor as head of the Party of Regions on March 3. Azarov holds an earned doctorate in geology and mineralogy from Moscow State University. In 1984, at the age of 37, he moved to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Azarov has a poor command of the Ukrainian language, a deficiency that Yanukovich’s detractors have exploited.

Opposition groups branded Yanukovich’s machinations a “constitutional coup” and declared that they would challenge his government in Ukraine’s constitutional court. However, Kiev’s small stock market rallied in recent days at the prospect of political stability, gaining about 8 per cent. On Wednesday Azarov pledged to stabilize Ukraine’s economy and renew cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, which scuttled a US$16.4 billion bail-out package last year.

Incidentally, it does not appear that any cadres of the Communist Party of Ukraine hold portfolios in Azarov’s cabinet. This could change in the future as the Soviet strategists become bolder.

Only 10 days after his inauguration, Yanukovich dutifully presented himself in Moscow on March 5, where he met Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev (pictured above). There the Ukrainian president no doubt assured his masters that Kiev will not be joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as advocated by Yushchenko. “I see my objective in making a sharp turn in relations between Russia and Ukraine, in the right direction,” rumbled Yanukovich, who campaigned on a Russia-friendly platform. Although he denies that Ukraine will also join the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, Yanukovich is in fact falling over himself to bring Ukraine back into the Soviet orbit. Kiev will roll out the red carpet (pun intended) for Medvedev’s state visit to Kiev before mid-year.

Barely three days after the run-off vote that finally secured Yanukovich’s victory, forfeited in 2004 by the Ukrainian Supreme Court, the Moscow Leninists could barely contain their glee. Komsomolskaya Pravda, a Russian government daily, quoted General Alexander Zelin, commander of the Russian Air Force, as saying that Russia intends to conduct military exercises not only with Ukraine, but also with Belarus, Armenia, Uzbekistan, and other former Soviet Bloc states. Komsomolskaya Pravda admitted that since the “pro-Russian” Yanukovich clinched the presidential elections in Ukraine, “joint military exercises are likely to happen more often.” The tabloid gushed: “The vast air space will fit both [nations] again.”

On Saturday Yanukovich promised that Ukraine will join the Unified Economic Space of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, but only on the conditions set by the World Trade Organization, which Ukraine joined in 2008. “We have fallen far behind in this process [the creation of the economic space],” Yanukovich explained in an interview with Russia’s Vesti TV channel. In December 2009 Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan agreed to create a single economic space by January 1, 2012. The customs union of the three “former” Soviet republics began on January 1, 2010. Like the Union State of Russia and Belarus, the Unified Economic Space of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan is another building block for the planned restoration of the Soviet Union.

>Communist Bloc Military Updates: Medvedev visits Paris, Sarkozy sells out NATO, gives formal consent to Russian Navy’s Mistral acquisition

> – Russian Defense Ministry Denies Mass Media Reports that Ground Forces Seeking to Purchase 1,000 Italian-Built APCs

– Former Soviet Cosmonaut, Communist Duma Deputy Urges Kremlin to Steal Western Military Secrets

– EU Foreign Minister Drops Opposition to Euro-Army HQ in Brussels, Baroness Ashton Activist in Campaign for Nuclear Disarmanent (CND) in 1980s

– CND Founder, Former Labour Party Leader Michael Foot on KGB Payroll, Exposed as Agent “Boot” by KGB Defector Oleg Gordievsky; Foot Died March 3

The French Ministry of Surrender is busy these days waving the white flag. On March 3 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev wrapped up a two-day official visit to France with a state dinner in the Elysee Palace hosted by President Nicolas Sarkozy. One of the main events on the “menu” was the opening of a “Holy Russia” exhibition in the Louvre Museum, an event that officially inaugurated the Russia-France Cross Cultural Year.

Together Medvedev and Sarkozy praised the burgeoning Moscow-Paris Axis, which includes France’s participation in the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline project under the Baltic Sea, and bilateral cooperation in space, energy, high technology, and medicine. Next month the Russian Federal Space Agency is scheduled to launch its first rockets from French Guiana. We have already speculated that the Soviets could theoretically lob ICBMs at the Continental USA from this platform in South America.

Meanwhile, Medvedev continued to push his concept of “European security,” a Soviet plot to completely undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization by combining its mandate and forces with those of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which embraces a number of Not-So-Former Soviet republics. Medvedev also held talks with French Prime Minister Francois Fillon and the heads of the two houses of the French parliament.

Since NATO’s inception after the Second World War, France has asserted an independent role in that organization. Nothing has substantially changed in the 21st century. Even as Sarkozy cautiously brings his country back under NATO’s military command, he concurrently supports the creation of an integrated European army devoid of any US influence. The Soviet strategists have taken advantage of France’s prideful streak to drive a deep wedge into the North Atlantic Alliance. Following the Russian invasion of Georgia in August 2008 Sarkozy placed his imprimatur on the deeply flawed truce that led to Russia’s occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, even as Moscow and Belgrade growled over Kosovo’s NATO-backed secession from Serbia. In truth, French pride has become treasonous, endangering the rest of NATO.

Central to bilateral relations between Moscow and Paris is the French government’s formal consent to sell a Mistral amphibious assault ship to Russia, as well as coordinate the production of three more such vessels under license in Russian shipyards. Negotiations began last summer and if the deal is clinched this month then the contract may exceed 1.2 billion euros. The 200-meter-long Mistral can transport 900 naval infantry troops, or 40 tanks, 15 heavy or 35 light helicopters, landing barges, and speed boats. The ship can not only support amphibious operations, but also independently engage in warfare. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have articulated their fears that Russia will use the French-built helicopter carriers to re-invade their countries.

Konstantin Makiyenko, deputy director of the Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow, admits that Russia’s looming acquisition and construction of four Mistrals will greatly enhance the Russian Navy’s war-fighting capacity: “Perhaps, it’s really worth beginning by purchasing large aircraft carriers such as Mistral and then pump out funds for escort ships our Navy badly needs today.”

Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council and former chief of the Federal Security Service (FSB/KGB), acknowledged that the Kremlin is looking into both options: build at home or buy abroad. This week he told reporters: “We can really build a similar ship in our country but this will take time, and we can really buy it abroad, but this requires money. It is too premature to say which view will prevail.”

In a recent meeting with US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Sarkozy, a putative rightist, dismissed White House concerns about the danger of selling the Mistral helicopter carriers to Russia. “We can’t expect Russia to behave as a partner if we don’t treat it as a partner,” protested Sarkozy lamely.

For his part, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen is nonchalant toward NATO member France’s cozy alliance with “former” enemy Russia and, indeed, chastises Russia’s immediate neighbours, all of which are “former” Soviet republics, for looking askance at the Mistral deal.

Although the patriotism of many Russians is wounded by the acquisition of foreign military equipment in the face of a flagging defense industry, the Soviet strategists clearly view Russian military strength in an opportunistic light. In an interview published by Paris Match, ahead of his visit to the French capital, Medvedev stated: “Even though Russia is one of the world’s major suppliers of all kinds of military hardware, from the Kalashnikov assault rifle to the S-300 missile defense batteries, it wants to learn from other countries’ experience to keep its defense industry in a competitive environment.” Paris Match quoted Russia’s top general Nikolai Makarov as affirming that his country will move ahead with the Mistral purchase.

In response to angry queries from State Duma deputies affiliated with the open communist party, Sergei Ivanov, one of several deputy prime ministers, recently acknowledged that Russia is seeking to purchase military hardware abroad. State-run Voice of Russia admitted that “The purchases are needed to upgrade Russia’s defense industry, which is lagging behind the West, particularly in ship-building. In crisis-hit 2009 the government channelled more than 100 billion rubles to defense enterprises. Communists fear that purchasing military hardware abroad may produce a negative impact on the country’s defense capacity.” An official spokesentity for the Defense Ministry Alexei Kuznetsov, however, has denied mass media reports that the Russian Ground Forces intend to buy 1,000 Italian-built Iveco armored personnel carriers.

As noted above, representatives of the (secretly ruling) Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) are feigning disapproval of the Kremlin’s intent to purchase the French helicopter carriers. On March 10 former Soviet cosmonaut and CPRF deputy Svetlana Savitskaya complained:

A few days ago Russia almost signed an agreement with France to purchase the Mistral. Following the conflict in South Ossetia in August 2008, Russia bought reconnaissance drones from Israel, and today it is ready to purchase the Mistral from France. It looks like that some members of the [Russian] government are lobbying for this deal. A slow process of purchases of military hardware abroad has started, which will negatively impact Russia’s defense potential.

Her patriotism and “internationalism” offended, Savitskaya ironically urged Russia’s putative rulers to utilize the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces (GRU) to pinch Western military secrets: “Have we forgotten how to make military hardware? And if we do not know certain secrets that other countries know, what is our military-technological intelligence service for? Cabinet Ministers! Give it this task!”

The demise of NATO following a feigned implosion of the Soviet Bloc was clearly predicted in KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn’s first book New Lies for Old (1984). Truly, it can be concluded that the North Atlantic Alliance does not perceive the neo-Soviet threat and cannot be trusted to adequately defend Europe and North America from future Russian aggression.

>Blast from the Past File: Grenada once again under Cuban influence, PM Thomas’ finance minister former technocrat in Bishop’s Marxist regime

>At Once Upon a Time in the West we not only monitor Communist Bloc developments in Latin America and the Caribbean Basin in general, but watch with special interest the second Sandinista regime in Managua and Grenada’s new pro-Cuban government. In the latter case, Prime Minister Tillman Thomas, who is center-left in political orientation, has subverted any good accomplished by the US invasion of his island in 1983.

At the time Cuban engineers and workers were helping the Marxist dictatorship of “Comrade” Maurice Bishop extend the island’s runway at St. George’s to 10,000 feet. This would effectively accommodate Soviet strategic bombers, a fact that rightly alarmed US President Ronald Reagan and the Pentagon. After securing the political and military support of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States and under the pretext of rescuing US medical students attending St. George’s University, the White House dispatched land and naval forces to oust the communist regime and its 700 Cuban “guests.”

Following Operation Urgent Fury, the Soviet media raged against “US imperialism” and the first Sandinista regime in Managua feared that it too would be ousted in a US invasion, a spectre that haunts the rhetoric of President Daniel Ortega to this day.

Last May Thomas renamed Grenada’s Point Salines International Airport after deceased dictator Bishop and pledged closer relations with Cuba. On March 2 Thomas, making good on his vow, wrapped up a two-day state visit to Cuba, where he met with Cuban President Raul Castro, attended a dinner in his honor, inspected an agricultural cooperative and a meat processing plant, and toured Spanish-built forts in Havana. In the picture above the Grenadian PM, second from left, meets Cuban dignitaries. Castro is first on the left.

“We are still able to work together to our mutual benefit, whether its health, education or in the international community in areas such as climate change,” Thomas gushed to his host Castro. He added: “Grenada and Cuba have a long history of collaborating on major issues, such as Cuba’s assistance in the construction of Grenada’s largest economic project, the Maurice Bishop International Airport.” Meanwhile Grenadian government ministers drafted new agreements with their Cuban counterparts on the Grenada-Cuba Joint Commission.

As Grenada again snuggles up to Cuba, Thomas has also welcomed Red Chinese and Venezuelan participation in the construction of low-income housing for Grenadians. On March 1 16 workers from the People’s Republic of China arrived in Grenada to erect dwellings using materials already shipped to the island in 23 containers. The first set of houses will be built at Mt. Gay in St. George’s and Soubise in St. Andrew, and will be completed within 18 months. The sod-turning ceremony for the construction took place last November in St. Andrew and was attended by Grenadian and Chinese officials.

In September 2009 Venezuela made good on a promise given in 2004, after Hurricane Ivan roared through the Eastern Caribbean, by handing over more than 100 homes to Grenadians. At the time, Thomas enthused: “On behalf of the people of Grenada, I express our profound gratitude and thanks to the government and people of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela for their donation and continued support particularly in the area of housing. This project is a tangible manifestation of the strong relationship that exists between our two countries.” The houses, which were built by the Venezuelan military, were completed in 2006, before Thomas became prime minister, but remained vacant due to the different electrical standards between Grenada and Venezuela.

There should be no surprise that Grenada’s PM is aligning his country with Cuba, Venezuela, and Red China. At least one high-ranking cadre from the New Jewel Movement can be found in Thomas’ cabinet, Nazim Burke, Minister of Finance and Economic Development. During the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG), which came to power in an armed 1979 coup, Burke was a senior technocrat and, after the collapse of the PRG, briefly finance minister. In terms of managing Grenada’s finances, Burke, pictured above, had this to say in a March 9 interview with Caribbean Net News:

In a time like this, you really have to be fairly certain about what you do. We do not have the space to make very serious mistakes. Our debt situation is not good. I don’t think it is uncommon for a minister for finance to be cautious.

The element of caution is inextricably connected with the prerequisite of prudence. Prudence necessarily involves a measure of caution. We cannot be reckless in the assignment because the resources that we have do not allow us the space to make up if we did something that was terribly wrong.

Burke is cautiously considering the possibility of accepting a US$100 million loan from the PRC to build a hotel in South St. George’s:

Government would not seek to borrow an additional $100 million if there is really no pressing need to do so. Remember at the end of the day, you have to service the loan. If we can get a very concessional loan from China and we can put that to productive use to increase the room stock, to create jobs and to expand the tourism and hospitality sector, then it would be in Grenada’s interest to do so.

More than 18 years after the Cold War ended, reconceptualized cadres of “defunct” communist regimes amass personal fortunes or seek foreign investments for their impoverished countries. Is it possible, however, that the Communist Bloc is still eyeballing Grenada’s airport as a possible staging point for attacking the Continental USA? We can’t say for sure, but the scenario of strategic encirclement of the USA deserves continued scrutiny. The Communist Party of China, hiding behind front company Hutchison-Whampoa, controls port facilities at either end of the Panama Canal and at Freeport in the Bahamas.

In 2008 the Kremlin media floated several trial balloons concerning the basing or refuelling of Russia’s strategic bombers in Cuba, Venezuela, and Algeria. Promises to renovate the Soviet-built, never-used runway at Punta Huete in Nicaragua and Nauru International Airport in the South Pacific also deserve scrutiny. If Russian strategic aviation had access to Nicaragua and/or Nauru, Tu-95s or Tu-160s could theoretically launch cruise missiles against the US West Coast from southeast of Hawaii, presumably beyond the normal patrol zones of NATO-NORAD. Just a thought, but will someone in the Pentagon entertain the same thought?

>Latin America File: Putin to visit Venezuela ahead of Russian, Communist Bloc military participation in independence day march-past

>The Soviet strategists are quickly and boldly re-consolidating Cold War-era alliances in Latin America, especially with Cuba and Nicaragua, and building new ones, such as with Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Mexico. To that end, Russia’s KGB-communist dictator, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, will visit Caracas some time this month.

In a televised cabinet meeting this Wednesday, red dictator Hugo Chavez, who established a strategic partnership with Putin in 2001, announced that his KGB handler will visit Venezuela. “I touched upon this issue in Montevideo with Russia’s special envoy… They confirmed to me that Putin’s visit will be held.” Putin spokesentity Dmitry Peskov acknowledged that his boss received an invitation from Chavez, adding: “The final date will be made public in line with the relevant procedure.” The two leaders are pictured above in a previous meeting at the Kremlin, apparently in 2006.

For his part, Chavez makes annual pilgrimages to Moscow, where he has not only rubbed elbows with Putin, but also Communist Party boss Gennady Zyuganov, who refers to “Comrade” Chavez as a “reliable friend.” Over the last 10 years Chavez has purchased more than US$4 billion in armament, including fighter jets, military helicopters, thousands of tactical missiles, diesel-powered submarines, and automatic rifles. Russian engineers are presently at two sites in Venezuela overseeing the construction of plants that will manufacture under license Kalashnikov rifles and their clips. The Venezuelan military is presently awaiting the arrival of 92 T-72 main battle tanks from Russia which, Chavez’s admission, are destined for the Colombian border. This item could be high on the agenda when Putin and Chavez next meet.

Chavez is training his firepower on neighbour Colombia, a nation that will shortly host 800 US counter-narcotics troops for the purpose of suppressing the country’s Marxist guerrillas. In many posts we have established the fact that the Chavezista regime is actively harboring the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on Venezuelan soil, while the Russian Mafia, a front for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the Russian Armed Forces, is using Ecuador as a base to sell weapons to FARC.

In his prior capacity as president of the Russian Federation, Putin made official visits to Latin America but, apparently, never Venezuela. He travelled to Cuba in 2000, Brazil in 2004, and Guatemala in 2007. Current president Dmitry Medvedev, however, materialized in Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, and Cuba in November 2008. The Soviet Komsomol graduate is slated to repeat this itinerary in 2010.

In 2008 and 2009 Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, a GRU agent who served as the Soviet Union’s liaison with Latin America’s guerrilla armies during the Cold War, made several trips to Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. In 2008 Nikolai Patrushev, former head of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB/KGB) and current secretary of the Russian Security Council, showed up in Venezuela, Argentina and Ecuador to expand and/or establish political-military linkages with those countries.

Finally, last month Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov completed a four-nation tour of the region, including Cuba, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Mexico. At this time he announced that Moscow and Managua will hold joint military exercises, a development that 25 years ago could have touched off World War 3 but which now troubles no one in the White House. Larvov also indicated that Russia will sell military helicopters and weapons to Mexico to help President Felipe Calderon suppress the out-of-control drug cartels. Like FARC, Mexico’s drug lords rely on the Russian Mafia for weapons support.

Several days ago, in a related story, we reported that Communist Bloc troops from Russia, Belarus, Vietnam, and the People’s Republic of China will participate in Venezuela’s 200th Independence Day bash in April. In light of these and other developments, Moscow’s message to the Obama White House is clear: We will no longer cower before US “unipolarity,” which is just a fancy communist codeword for “imperialism.”

>Latin America File: Russia hails formation of Latin American-Caribbean super-bloc at Cancun summit; Chavez predicts new organization will replace OAS

>– Don’t Come for Tea, Argentina: Chavez Defends the Falklands from British “Colonialism,” Puts Down Queen Elizabeth II

– Reds Have Fun in the Sun: Raul Castro Breaks Up Shouting Match between Hugo Chavez and Alvaro Uribe

– Spanish Judge: Venezuelan Government Conspired with FARC and ETA to Bump Off Uribe, Chavezista Official Chief FARC-ETA Liaison

On February 26 Russia hailed the creation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CLACS), the fruition of a super-summit in Cancun that on February 22 and 23 brought together members of the Rio Group–which includes Cuba–the Union of South American Nations, and the Caribbean Community. The Russian Foreign Ministry gushed in a communiqué:

The new structure, added to other regional and multilateral mechanisms, will contribute to increased cooperation among the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. The decision reflects Latin America’s growing aspirations for closer political cooperation and coordination to give its countries a bigger role in world affairs. The new organization can be an important factor for the formation of a multipolar [anti-USA] world order. Russia is ready to undertake cooperation and political dialogue with it to strengthen the equilibrium of international relations.

After nearly 20 years of paying very little attention to Latin America, Moscow is anxious to drive a wedge between the USA and the largely leftist regimes to its south, even as it re-establishes Cold War-era political-military-economic linkages with Cuba and Nicaragua, and new “communists on the bloc” like Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia.

In November 2008 the Soviet strategists dispatched figurehead president Dmitry Medvedev to Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, and Cuba. While visiting Caracas, Medvedev suggested that Russia is looking into the possibility of joining the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), which would certain expand Soviet influence in “America’s backyard.” Moscow is already propping up ALBA states through its participation in a joint Russian-Venezuelan bank. Medvedev will make a repeat visit to the Western Hemisphere this year. Then President Vladimir Putin, now prime minister, also visited Cuba in 2000.

Over the last two years, a parade of pan-handling leftist leaders from the region has made its way to Moscow. These supplicants include Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, who makes at least one pilgrimage to Russia each year; Cuba’s Raul Castro, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner. Moscow will roll out the red carpet (pun intended) for Guatemala’s Alvaro Colom this month.

Everyone was invited to the Cancun super-summit except the USA, Canada, Honduras, and the United Kingdom. The nations of the Western Hemisphere elected not to invite delegates from Washington and Ottawa because together these two capitals are perceived as embodying “US/North American imperialism.” The leftist regimes that dominate the region apparently concluded that because the USA and Canada already exert influence via the Organization of American States (OAS) their participation in CLACS is unwanted.

Honduras’ duly elected president Porfirio Lobo was not invited because only some countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have extended recognition to the new government there.

Lastly, no one from Britain was invited because all of the attendees at the summit agreed that London should relinquish its claims of sovereignty over the Falklands Islands and the adjacent archipelagos of South Georgia and South Sandwich. In fact, Venezuela’s big-mouth communist dictator Hugo Chavez, who has choice words for just about anyone he doesn’t like, had some choice words for Queen Elizabeth II:

Look, England, how long are you going to be in Las Malvinas? Queen of England, I’m talking to you. The time for empires is over, haven’t you noticed? Return the Malvinas to the Argentine people. The English are still threatening Argentina. Things have changed. We are no longer in 1982. If conflict breaks out, be sure Argentina will not be alone like it was back then. Why do the English speak of democracy but still have a Queen?

The British monarch, who is also head of state for a number of countries in the Western Hemisphere, has reigned since 1952.

In 2007 Chavez threatened to attack the Royal Navy if Argentina and Britain once again come to blows over the latter’s South Atlantic Overseas Territory, otherwise known as the Islas Malvinas. For its part Argentina recently imposed a somewhat ineffective blockade in the sea lanes between South America and the Falklands. At stake in the region are offshore oil reserves that British company Desire Petroleum tapped into with its Ocean Guardian drilling rig on February 22.

Not surprisingly, during a private luncheon in Cancun for the visiting national leaders a shouting match erupted between Chavez and his arch-nemesis Alvaro Uribe, Colombia’s president. In an exclusive interview with CNN en Español’s Carmen Aristegui, Chavez offered his version of the headline-grabbing incident:

What I did was respond. [Uribe] could not stand my reasoning and exploded. He said harsh things, I said harsh things, and then Raul Castro came and [summit host Felipe] Calderon [Mexico’s president] came and we sat down and talked, and continued. He [Uribe] accused me of enforcing an economic embargo on many Colombian goods, which is not true.

I think that if the table hadn’t been there as an obstacle, and our friends weren’t sitting right there, that President Uribe physically would’ve attacked me. If this unfortunate incident served as catharsis for Uribe, and he can sleep well tonight because he told me what he wanted to tell me, then may he sleep peacefully. I am willing to speak with him, just like we have talked about a million times.

Major newspapers in Colombia, Argentina, and Spain reported that Uribe told Chavez to “be a man,” while the Venezuelan leader told his Colombian counterpart to “go to hell.” Chavez confirmed the details of the exchange to CNN’s Aristegui. In the same interview, Chavez denied that the new Latin American-Caribbean super-bloc would compete with the Washington-led OAS. “I think that it will be in addition to the OAS, and that the OAS will disappear in the future,” Chavez opined hopefully. Chavez and Uribe are pictured above.

Following Chavez’s dust-up with Uribe, a Spanish judge accused Venezuelan officials of plotting with rebel groups to assassinate the Colombian president. On March 1 Spanish National Court Judge Eloy Velasco charged that Caracas has been acting as an intermediary between Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), the Basque separatist group, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Spanish officials ordered that 12 alleged guerrillas of ETA and FARC stand trial for conspiracy to commit murder and conduct terrorist acts. “There is evidence … showing the cooperation of the Venezuelan government in the illegal collaboration between FARC and ETA,” according to the indictment.

According to Judge Velasco’s 26-page report, as many as six ETA members traveled to Venezuela to train FARC members how to incorporate C4 explosives in cell phone bombs. In at least one instance, the Venezuelan military may have been present for demolitions training. The report also alleges that ETA members may have traveled through Venezuela en route to FARC training camps in Colombia. A Venezuelan agriculture ministry official, identified as Arturo Cubillas Fontan, is believed to be the ETA’s “ringleader” in Latin America and the liaison with FARC. Cubillas Fontan serves as security chief for a Venezuelan government agency called the National Land Institute, which coordinates Chavez’s land redistribution program. The Chavezista regime denies everything. Of course.

So, will Caracas make the US State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism? Last October Florida Representative Connie Mack, ranking Republican in the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, introduced a bill calling on the White House to add Venezuela to the list because of its support for Iran, Hezbollah, and FARC. “United States law clearly states that a state sponsor of terrorism is one that repeatedly provides support to acts of international terrorism,” Mack contended at the time, adding: “Hugo Chavez has done so and is a clear threat to our hemisphere.”

On Tuesday Ray Walser of the Heritage Foundation insisted that the Spanish report reinforced the case for President Barack Hussein Obama to place Venezuela outside the pale of “civilized nations.” This past January, in a detailed report on the subject, Walser called Obama’s view that Venezuela is not a threat to US national security “dangerous.” In view of the Russian, Belarusian, Chinese, and Vietnamese troops that will visit Venezuela next month for an independence day march-past, we concur.

>Red Dawn Alert: Communist troops from Russia, Belarus, Red China, Vietnam to participate in Venezuelan Independence Day march-past

>Your resident blogger missed this eye-popping new items several weeks ago. However, it is no less timely now. On February 12 state-run Voice of Russia reported that “Army units from Russia, Belarus, Vietnam and China will participate in the April Independence Day military parade in Venezuela marking the country’s 200th independence anniversary, President Hugo Chavez announced Thursday.”

While this march-past by troops from the Not-So-Former Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and Communist Vietnam may not be large enough to constitute an invasion force against the USA, the presence of Communist Bloc soldiers in South America accomplishes at least three things: 1) it shows how confident the Soviet strategists are of victory over the USA, especially under the socialist presidency of alleged Soviet mole Barack Hussein Obama, 2) it desensitizes US leaders and citizenry to the presence of communist troops in the Western Hemisphere, and 3) it reveals how confident Chavez is with respect to his own grip on power in Venezuela.

>Buncha Commies Corner: Your resident blogger on his feet again as reds prepare to re-invade USA

>Your resident blogger got bit by a nasty flu bug. In recovery phase. Hope to resume posts this week.

Pictured here: Personal trainer turned actor Michael Knight, starring as Colonel Ivanoff in the re-make of the iconic anti-communist movie Red Dawn, takes a coffee break in the streets of post-invasion Detroit. This time, the Russian invaders receive a lot of help from Red China’s People’s Liberation Army, which was oddly at war with the Soviets in the original film. BTW, those are PLA propaganda banners hanging from the streetlights.

Nearly five years of Sino-Russian military exercises, which were unheard of during the Cold War’s fake Sino-Soviet split, and a renewed Russian presence in Latin America lend credence to this cinematic scenario. Incidentally, the re-tooled version of John Milius’ film will hit the screens several months after Russia and the PRC carry out Peace Mission 2010 in Kazakhstan.

Is reality catching up with fiction?