WW4 File: Chavez dispatches 15,000 troops to Colombian border, reportedly to counter anti-communist paramilitaries; Honduran peace deal collapses

Alleging that anti-communist paramilitaries from Colombia are invading Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez has dispatched 15,000 National Guards to six states bordering its neighbor. On Thursday Venezuelan Vice President and Defense Minister Ramon Carrizalez announced to reporters that the soldiers will be deployed to the southern states of Amazonas, Apure and Bolivar, and the southwestern states of Barinas, Tachira, and Zuila. This action was prompted by the detainment of five alleged Colombian paramilitaries during a clash with the Venezuelan police in Tachira on Thursday morning. Two detainees are suspected of killing two National Guards this past Monday. Also on Thursday, 100 Colombian citizens were detained in a checkpoint in Barina when they were traveling on passenger buses without identifications.

For comparison, during the March 2008 Andean Crisis, after Colombian security forces stormed a camp maintained by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in Ecuador, Chavez dispatched only 6,000 troops to its border with Colombia. For his part, Ecuador’s outraged president Rafael Correa deployed 3,200 troops along its respective border with the US ally. To this day Quito does not have diplomatic relations with Bogota. Pictured above: On November 5 Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe talks to the country's air force commander, General Jorge Ballesteros, during a ceremony celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Colombian Air Force.

Last week the Ecuadorean air force received a consignment of six French-built Mirage 50 fighter jets from Chavez. The supersonic combat aircraft were flown by Venezuelan pilots to Ecuador via Panama. This is an interesting development considering Panama’s center-right president Ricardo Martinelli openly opposes the Chavezista regime. We suspect that Martinelli was either not apprised of this use of Panamanian airspace to transfer military hardware for the Red Axis or he was apprised but considered it harmless.

The tense political situation between Venezuela and Colombia bears close monitoring as it appears that Caracas may be staging "paramilitary incursions" from Colombia as a pretext to reinforce its military near the border of its adversary, possibly with the intent of provoking a conflict. Commenting on the recent arrest of two Colombian "spies" in Venezuela, on Tuesday Chavez ranted: "When a hostile government increases its investigations, daring to violate international accords ... that indicates there are plans against Venezuela, and behind those Colombians is the hand of the CIA and the U.S."

Meanwhile, in Honduras the peace accord between the lawful government of President Roberto Micheletti and deposed rival Manuel Zelaya has collapsed only one week after its signing. Speaking from the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, Zelaya told Radio Globo: “The accord is dead. There is no sense in deceiving Hondurans.” The pact gave the two sides until midnight Thursday to install a government that would act until the November 29 presidential elections. Neither Zelaya nor Micheletti, both members of the ruling Liberal Party, are candidates in this election. Micheletti insisted that a unity government had been created, even though Zelaya had not submitted his own list of participants: “Everybody, with the exception of Mr. Zelaya, recommended Hondurans to lead the institutions of our country as part of the new government.”

On Wednesday evening, a grenade was thrown from a passing car at the offices of the Emisoras Unidas media group in Tegucigalpa. One person was slightly injured when the device exploded.

MISSILE DAY ALERT: New law permits Medvedev to deploy troops abroad for purpose of repelling military aggression against Russia’s allies

- GRU Chief Grants Rare Interview, Contends Georgia Preparing to Attack South Ossetia Again, New NATO Members in Eastern Europe, Ukraine Rearming Tbilisi

- Serbian Authorities Bend Over Backwards to Please Russian Overlords, Once Again Rename Belgrade Streets after Soviet Army Generals Who Liberated City in 1945

- Gorbachev Rebukes Europe for Its “Mistrust and Hostility” toward Russia, Even 20 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall

On October 23 the Russian State Duma passed a bill that permits the president to deploy troops abroad for the purpose of defending Russian nationals in other countries, combating sea piracy and ensuring the safety of commercial shipping and, most ominously, repelling or preventing military aggression against Russia’s allies. The latter, of course, theoretically encompasses the entire Communist Bloc.

Under previous “post”-communist legislation the Kremlin could dispatch troops to foreign soil solely to fight terrorism. According to the new law President Dmitry Medvedev can deploy the armed forces anywhere in the world, subject only to the approval of the Russian parliament’s rubberstamp upper house, the Federation Council. The speaker of this body is Sergei Mironov, leader of the pro-Putin Just Russia party. “Our citizens must be protected in any part of the world,” vowed Medvedev, “and they must feel protected by the state. Such decisions must be set in law.”

In passing this law, the Soviet strategists may be contemplating some sort of provocation between Poland and Belarus that draws Russia into the fray, thereby opening the door to the Soviet re-occupation of Eastern (and Western?) Europe. Poland’s communist fifth column, left over from the fake demise of the Polish United Workers’ Party in 1989, and the openly communist government of Belarus will no doubt gladly play their appointed roles when the Kremlin decides to spring its trap on NATO. The hostile intent behind September’s Russian-Belarusian war game Zapad 2009, which included a mock nuclear attack against Poland, clearly shows that strategic planning for that theater is underway.

On Thursday Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov feigned shock over his Polish counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski’s reported statement that the USA should deploy troops in Central Europe. Lavrov is quoted as saying: “If he did say this then I'm astounded because he and I discussed in tiny detail the problems that should be resolved in the context of European security and the objectives that Russia pursues with its initiative on a new treaty on European security, as well as with its position on the [US] antiballistic missile system.” When recently visiting Washington, Sikorski urged NATO to deploy troops in Central Europe since “Poland needs some strategic reassurance.”

In September the Obama White House scrapped the Bush-era missile defense program in favor of a “phased, adaptive approach” that will see the deployment of SM-3 tactical anti-ballistic missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic by 2015. Well, that gives the Soviets plenty of time to modernize their weapons and command structure and re-build Cold War-era alliances, before initiating the Fourth World War.

The Moscow Leninists may also be contemplating another war with Georgia, a prospect that even the MSM has considered several times since August 2008, when Soviet forces re-occupied Georgia by way of its two separatist regimes, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. On November 5, in an exceptionally rare interview for a chief of the Russian military’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), Alexander Shlyakhturov articulated the belief that Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili intends to unleash his army against South Ossetia again. Shlyakhturov told state-run Itar-Tass:

The situation with Georgia remains tense because the current Georgian authorities do not just refuse to recognize the sovereignty of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but are trying in every way to return these countries . . . to their jurisdiction.

You have to add to this the unpredictability of attempts by the Georgian leadership, headed by Saakashvili, which may give in to the temptation to use force to tame these obstinate republics as they did last year. We do not rule out such a development.

New NATO members in Eastern Europe are supplying small arms and munitions to Georgia, while Israel is providing aerial drones. Heavy artillery and anti-aircraft systems are being delivered to Georgia from Ukraine.

“GRU forces fought on the front line of last year’s war with Georgia,” the GRU chief admitted, concluding: “Georgia is reviving its military potential with the supplies of arms and military equipment from foreign countries.”

Shlyakhturov’s negative comment about Georgia’s purchase of Israeli-built aerial reconnaissance drones is ironic, or perhaps hypocritical, because earlier this year the Russian military also bought 12 of these aircraft from the Jewish state. Shlyakhturov became head of the GRU in April. The GRU headquarters is housed in a shnazzy new complex in Moscow, which then President Vladimir Putin toured in late 2006.

In addition to Belarus, the former Yugoslav republic of Serbia is another staunch ally of Russia. Serbia’s first deputy prime minister and interior minister is Ivica Dacic, head of the Socialist Party of Serbia, itself descended from the League of Communists of Serbia and led by red warmonger Slobodan Milosevic until his ouster in 2000. In other words, Dacic is a communist. Moreover, as interior minister he is in control of Serbia’s police forces. Dacic hides his true color by lurking behind Serbia’s social democratic president Boris Tadic and technocrat prime minister Mirko Cvetković. War criminal Milosevic died in 2006, while in custody at The Hague. His deluded supporters insist that he was murdered.

On October 20 Medvedev flew to Belgrade where he extended a US$1.5 billion loan to the recession-hit Serbian government. Medvedev is pictured above with host Tadic. About 60 countries worldwide, including the USA and most of the European Union, have recognized the independence of Serbia’s breakaway region Kosovo. Russia does not acknowledge the ethnic Albanian government in Pristina. Last year the Kremlin’s natural gas monopoly Gazprom bought out Serbia’s state-run petroleum company, NIS, and secured a route across that country for Moscow’s SouthStream pipeline. “Former” CPSU cadre Viktor Zubkov, father in law of Russia’s defense minister Anatoly Serdyukov, sits at the helm of Gazprom.

While visiting Serbia, Soviet Komsomol graduate Medvedev attended celebrations marking the 1945 liberation of Belgrade from Nazi occupation by Soviet troops and Yugoslavia’s communist partisans, under the command of Franz Josep Tito. On the eve of the visit, Russian diplomats “demanded” that Serbian authorities restore the names of streets formerly named after the Red Army generals who led the liberation. The street names were “de-communized” after the fall of Milosevic. In an attempt to please their Russian overlords, Serbian authorities promised to rename other streets after the Soviet war heroes. Note that this occurred in 2009, not 1969.

Since the Kremlin’s interventionist policy extends to the defense of its allies against third-party aggression anywhere in the world, we must include along with Belarus and Serbia Moscow’s Latin America allies, like Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Ecuador. If war breaks out in South America between Venezuela and Colombia, which will shortly host 800 US troops, will Russia send a message to the West by once again dispatching Tu-160 bombers to Venezuela’s El Libertador air base or once again docking its warships in Havana Bay? Instead of using their new rocket base in French Guiana to launch geosynchronous satellites, will the Russians lob ICBMs at the Continental USA from a totally unexpected direction, namely, over the Gulf of Mexico?

How far will the Soviet strategists go to assert the Communist Bloc’s supremacy over the Western Hemisphere? The ambitions of the KGB-communist cabal in the Kremlin are boundless. The fulfillment of these ambitions is apparently limited only by the time it takes to negotiate the purchase of NATO technology.

Meanwhile, on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mikhail Gorbachev, former Soviet dictator and roving propagandist for the Moscow Leninists, disingenuously warned against “creating barriers between nations.” Gorby, who is credited with the demise of Soviet communism, is in fact an advocate of Vladimir Lenin’s dream of a “world proletarian republic” under the guise of “global perestroika.” Frank speech from the Soviets, of course, would scare away the Western capitalists who have sunk their megabucks into Russia’s KGB-managed “economy.” Hence, Gorby speaks circumspectly.

“Mistrust and old stereotypes have been preserved. Russia is suspected of malicious, aggressive, imperial intentions,” Nobel laureate Gorbachev lamented in an article published on November 7 in the Kremlin’s Rossiiskaya Gazeta. In that statement, Gorbachev was no doubt taking a stab at diehard anti-communists, “Cold Warriors,” and other observers in the West, like those who frequent this blog, who figured out years ago that the “collapse” of the Soviet Union was a ruse. Gorbachev continued:

Those who want to build a new wall of mutual mistrust and hostility in Europe are doing a disservice to their countries and Europe as a whole. In Europe, unfortunately, there is no lack of politicians who would like to see an unequal model of relations with Russia - one of the teacher and the student, the prosecutor and the accused. Russia will not accept this model. It wants to be understood. We are for equal and mutually beneficial cooperation. What Russia do you need? A strong, entirely self-sufficient one, or a simple supplier of resources that knows its place?

EU/USSR2 Files: Polish border patrol helicopter crashes in Belarus, all crew killed; Warsaw, Minsk investigating Oct. 31 incident

In a recent post we reported that the Russian-Belarusian war game Zapad 2009, carried out in September in both countries, was actually a rehearsal for a nuclear attack on Poland, rather than, as billed by the Kremlin, a defensive drill to ward off a NATO invasion of the Union State. In the last few days, an interesting follow-up story, which may or may not be related to Moscow's neo-imperialist designs on Europe, has emerged.

A number of sources are reporting the downing of a Polish border patrol helicopter 200 yards into Belarusian territory on October 31. All three officers aboard the aircraft perished. Belarusian authorities permitted Polish Deputy Interior Minister Adam Rapacki and Jaroslaw Ksiodrzak, the Polish consul general in Brest, to inspect the crash site. The aircraft in question was a PZL Kania, built in Poland in 2006. This helicopter is a modified version of the Russian Mil Mi-2. The Polish and Belarusian governments are both investigating the cause of the crash.

Although the demise of the Polish border patrol could be entirely accidental, if additional suspicious events occur along the Polish-Belarusian border in the upcoming weeks, then this incident should come under closer scrutiny. If the Soviet strategists are indeed planning to re-invade Central Europe, then provocations, such as "gray terror" or "pink terror," could be used as a pretext for military actions. Such was the case with the Gleiwitz incident, one day prior to Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939. The Soviets invaded eastern Poland slightly more than two weeks after the Nazis.

Latin America File: Zelaya’s reinstatement under peace deal uncertain as Honduran legislators campaign, wait for Supreme Court’s non-binding ruling

- Chavez Argues ALBA States Must “Rapidly” Transform Alliance into Military Coalition; Summit Host Morales Urges Restraint, Bloc Must Continue Studying Issue

Last Friday Honduras’ rival governments, under the leadership of lawful President Roberto Micheletti and deposed president Manuel Zelaya, a slavish devotee of Venezuela’s communist dictator Hugo Chavez, reached a deal to resolve the crisis that began on June 28 with Zelaya’s exile at gunpoint. Although the agreement was brokered by the US government and the Organization of American States, the document’s wording is ambiguous, allowing Congress to decide whether Zelaya will complete his term until January 2010, but imposing no deadline for a congressional vote. Instead, Honduran legislators have “passed the buck” to the Supreme Court by asking for a non-binding decision on the subject of Zelaya’s reinstallation, a motion actually sanctioned by the peace deal. Under the accord, a national unity government must be set up by November 7 but there is no stipulation as to who will preside over that government.

Meanwhile, the Honduran Congress is in recess as legislators campaign for the election scheduled for November 29, a poll whose validity in the eyes of the international community is now up in the air. Pictured above on November 4, Zelaya is still holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, where he surreptitiously returned on September 21.

Both Micheletti and Zelaya are members of the ruling Liberal Party. However, rival National Party candidate Porfirio Lobo is the electorate’s preferred candidate. Lobo is apparently considering whether to support or oppose Zelaya’s reinstatement. Supporting Zelaya would certainly win foreign support for a Lobo presidency and release much-needed international financial aid, but many Honduran voters have turned against Zelaya due to his cozy relationship with Chavez.

Thus, it is also too early to declare that Latin America’s Red Axis, especially as it is embodied by the chief states of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA)—Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Ecuador—has scored a victory over the anti-communist Micheletti regime. Since the military-backed “coup” in Tegucigalpa we have speculated that the Red Axis would use the Honduran crisis as a pretext to transform ALBA into a military coalition, a concept first floated by Chavez in 2007 and this past summer by Bolivian President Evo Morales. The Venezuelan president actually pushed this idea again during the ALBA summit that took place in Bolivia on October 16 and 17, a summit attended by Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council and former chief of the Federal Security Service (FSB/KGB). On October 25 the website of the St. Kitts and Nevis People's Action Movement reported:

There was no agreement on the proposal of the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, of forming “a defensive military alliance.” He pitched the idea, he said, given the threats of the empire and he did after hearing a report on the crisis in Honduras. “Who can forbid sovereign countries from making a defensive military alliance and cross training soldiers and officers, and sharing equipment and logistics?” Chavez asked in the second and final session of the Summit of ALBA.

Morales, however, appears to have backed away from his earlier enthusiasm for the immediate formation of a regional “anti-imperialist” army. However, he urged ALBA member states to continue studying the issue. In view of the uncertain fate of its crony Zelaya, who dragged Honduras into ALBA in 2008, Latin America’s Red Axis could bring the subject of transforming the alliance into a military coalition to the front burner again at future summits.

In Nicaragua Red Axis agitator Daniel Ortega is countering domestic forces opposed to his attempt to consolidate another Sandinista dictatorship like the one US-backed Contras challenged in the 1980s. Last Thursday, cadres of the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front reacted violently to comments uttered by the US ambassador in Managua. Robert Callahan condemned the recent decision by the Sandinista-controlled Nicaraguan Supreme Court abolishing presidential term limits. “From our point of view, the Supreme Court act improperly and with unusual speed, in secret, with the participation of judges from only one political movement and without any public debate or discussion,” Callahan complained.

In response, FSLN thugs launched mortars at the embassy compound, broke security cameras, and spray-painted political slogans on the compound property. “Death to the yanquis! Death to the empire!” screamed one Sandinista Youth leader.

Two days later, police evacuated Callahan to safety at the Central American University in Managua, where protesters stalked and threw fireworks at the US ambassador. Callahan was present at the Jesuit-run institution to attend a multicultural event with other ambassadors.

Many domestic and international critics of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega viewed the underhanded court ruling as a ploy to install the “former” Marxist dictator in a perpetual presidency, like his leftist buddies Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, and Manuel Zelaya. On October 27 Nicaragua’s opposition parties, protesting the Supreme Court decision, shut down the country’s legislature be refusing to register, denying the ruling FSLN a quorum to open a plenary session. Constitutionalist Liberal Party deputy Ramon Gonzalez explained that the opposition intended to force assembly speaker Rene Nunez’s to accept a bill that nullifies the judicial decision.

The Costa Rican media recently exposed the subservient nature of Nicaragua’s Rivas family to the neo-Sandinista regime by publishing facts concerning the grown children of President Ortega and his politically powerful wife, First Lady Rosario Murillo. Maurie and Laureano Ortega Murillo, who are studying film and television at the Universidad Veritas, live in a Costa Rican residence owned by Roberto Rivas Reyes, head of the Nicaraguan Supreme Electoral Council. Rivas’ children, who are studying at the Universidad de Ciencias Medicas, also live in the same residence. Within hours of the Nicaraguan Supreme Court’s abolition of term limits on the presidency, Rivas announced that he would abide by the decision. Ortega appointed Roberto’s brother Harold as Nicaragua’s ambassador to Costa Rica shortly after re-assuming the presidency in January 2007. He also appointed a third Rivas brother to the directorship of a state company. Perhaps we should coin the term “red banana republic” to describe neo-Sandinista Nicaragua.

On October 28 Jacinto Suarez, a Nicaraguan deputy in the Central American Parliament (Parlacen), assumed the one-year presidency of the six-nation body. Since the neo-Sandinista regime, along with its comrades in the Sao Paulo Forum, is wholly committed to regional integration, Managua’s temporary control over Parlacen will serve the Red Axis well. Parlacen, which was founded in 1991, consists of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama and, oddly, the Dominican Republic. Ortega previously held the rotating presidency of the Central American Integration System, before ceding this office to Guatemalan counterpart, Alvaro Colom.

Finally, in another sign of reviving relations between Moscow and Managua, neglected during the 1990s and early 2000s, the Kremlin has donated 23 metric tons of medical supplies to Nicaragua. “Russia has been and will be cooperating with Nicaragua. Our assistance is not determined by any particular conditions and is based on principles of non-interference in the country’s domestic affairs,” the Russian ambassador in Managua, Igor Kondrashev, intoned. The “medicine” will be transported in two cargo containers. Of course, we can trust the Soviets to not slip a few missiles or nukes into those containers. Sure, comrade, whatever you say! Earlier this year Moscow donated 130 buses to Managua’s transit system. In July the two Communist Bloc allies established a visa-free regime and set up an oil consortium between Nicaragua’s Petronic and several Russian companies.

Latin America File: Tensions along Colombian-Venezuelan border highest since March 2008 as Bogota, Washington approve US troop deployment

Pictured here: A Venezuelan National Guard in the border city of San Antonio points a machine gun toward Colombia, which is accessible via the Simon Bolivar international bridge. The border was closed after two National Guards were killed on November 2.

Venezuela’s red tyrant Hugo Chavez appears to be provoking war with Colombia by alleging the infiltration of Colombian spies into his country. Of course, Chavez regularly demonizes the pro-Washington government in Bogota, hurling standard communist epithets like “fascist” at Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe. A succession of politically related murders, abductions, and high-profile arrests in the tense border region between the two countries suggest this possibility.

On November 2, reports AFP, two soldiers of Venezuela’s National Guard were shot to death near the 2,220-kilometre border with Colombia. Venezuelan state television related that unidentified assailants gunned down the soldiers at a roadside checkpoint in the western state of Tachira. The news agency notes that insurgents operating under the banner of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), anti-communist paramilitary groups, and drug traffickers skulk along the remote border.

Also on Monday, a lone gunman entered a restaurant in Los Teques, where he approached Gustavo Gonzalez, a member of the anti-Chavez opposition party Copei, fatally shot the politician in the head, and fled on a motorcycle driven by an accomplice. Los Teques is the capital of Miranda state, while Gonzalez was a deputy in the state legislature. Copei spokesman Alejandro Vivas admitted that the murder appeared to be a “hired killing,” but he did not offer a possible motive. The AP news agency, citing human rights groups, notes that kidnapping and murder are on the rise in Venezuela. This, of course, is only one indicator that Chavez’s socialist revolution has spectacularly failed to deliver “utopia.”

On November 3 the Latin American Herald Tribune reported that over the weekend Venezuelan authorities arrested eight Colombians, one of them identified as a “paramilitary chief,” and two Venezuelans in San Antonio del Tachira. The Colombians were allegedly distributing pamphlets that threatened local businessmen, forcing business owners to close their shops in fear. In an interview with state-run VTV television, Venezuelan Interior Minister Tarek El Aissami identified the presumed militia leader as Jorge Roa Bolaños. “However, once we strengthened the military and police presence, little by little calm was restored and daily activity resumed in San Antonio,” El Aissami assured Venezuelans.

In a related story, last Thursday Chavez and his croney El Aissami presented “irrefutable evidence” that Colombia had dispatched spies to Venezuela, Ecuador, and Cuba as part of an “ambitious” subversion operation financed by the US Central Intelligence Agency. El Aissami disclosed the contents of documents allegedly originating with Colombia’s Administrative Department of Security (DAS) and discovered since the apprehension of two suspected Colombian spies on Venezuelan soil. “This is serious information that proves the destabilizing actions promoted by the Colombian government against our country,” El-Aissami rumbled to Telesur, a multi-national agitprop platform for Latin America’s Red Axis. “The order was to corrupt and bribe local officials and make contact with leaders of the opposition.”

Felipe Munoz, director of the DAS, answered El Aissami’s allegations on Colombia’s W Radio by denying that the two Colombians charged with spying are employed by his organization. A statement published on the DAS website on October 27, moreover, insists that the DAS prohibits officials from operating in other countries. Munoz then demanded that Caracas release a known DAS official who was arrested in September in the city of Maracaibo, during a holiday as a guest of a Venezuelan immigration official.

In a second related story, this past Sunday Venezuela's Vice President Ramón Carrizález boasted that he has evidence that eight of the 11 “amateur soccer players” killed in Tachira state last week were Colombian paramilitaries training in Venezuela. The anti-communist irregulars were allegedly operating under the direction of the DAS.

Incidentally, the National Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services (DISIP), Venezuela’s espionage agency, has since Chavez’s ascent to power in 1999 come under the baleful influence of its Cuban counterpart, the Intelligence Directorate, formerly known as the DGI. It may be truly said that Communist Cuba is using the state security apparatus of its wealthier ally Venezuela to export red revolution throughout the Western Hemisphere. In turn, the Cuban intelligence structure remains under the firm control of the Russian Federation’s Federal Security Service (FSB/KGB).

On Monday Venezuela’s foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro complained that the new military pact between Bogota and Washington is “a shame for the history of our continent.” The 10-year deal, which was signed last Friday during a brief closed-door ceremony in Bogota, will facilitate the deployment of 800 US troops and 600 civilian contractors at seven military bases in Colombia. Maduro ranted: “The presence of US troops in Colombia poses a serious threat to stability in the region. There is no guarantee that the Colombian territory could not be used against other countries in the region. The deal was signed under a shroud of secrecy.” The US soldiers will be tasked with rendering “practical aid” to Colombia’s armed forces in the suppression of the drug trade and the country’s Marxist guerrillas. Incidentally, this past summer Maduro was seen escorting soon-to-be-reinstalled Honduran president Manuel Zelaya about Nicaragua.

In response to the new US-Colombian military pact, the Chavezista regime is reinforcing its military in Tachira state. A total of 515 border guards have been deployed there, explained Javier Rosales, deputy commander of the No.1 Regional Command of the National Guard. Chavez has also frozen diplomatic ties with Bogota again, as he did during last year’s Andean Crisis. In a third punitive measure, Venezuela, which is facing domestic food shortages, has curbed the import of such staples from Colombia, its second-biggest trading partner after the USA. Instead, Caracas has diversified commerce with Red Axis allies like Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, and Bolivia. This past August Colombian exports to Venezuela plunged 45.7 percent from a year earlier. For his part, Uribe accused Chavez of funding and supplying FARC with weapons.

If a hot war breaks out between the two countries, as it almost did in March 2008, then Ecuador will probably support Venezuela and FARC by opening up a southern front in Colombia with its small air force. The latter includes six Mirage 50 fighter jets newly acquired from Comrade Hugo, who lately purchased 24 Sukhoi Su-30 multi-role strike fighters from Russia. In terms of ground-based firepower Venezuela operates 84 French-built AMX-30 main battle tanks (MBTs), 36 AMX-13C.90 light tanks, and 78 British-built Scorpion light tanks. Chavez is also awaiting delivery of 92 Soviet-built T-72 MBTs. Venezuela’s army, therefore, has a growing edge over Colombia’s, which has no tank capacity whatsoever.

After 50 years of communist insurgency in Colombia, the Soviet strategists are no doubt anxious to topple this stubborn “domino.” A red regime in Bogota would transform the country into an impregnable narco-terrorist state and base for hemispheric Soviet subversion.

MISSILE DAY ALERT: Poles angered by media report: Zapad 2009 war game offensive in nature, simulated nuclear attack against Poland, amphibious landing

Russia has laid bare its real intentions with respect to Poland. Every Pole must get off the fence and be counted as a patriot or a traitor.
-- “Ted,” Polish patriot, speaking to Polskie Radio in response to recent Russian-Belarusian war game

- Estonian President Urges NATO to Counter Kremlin Saber Rattling by Holding "Large-Scale" Military Drill in Baltics, Latvia to Host War Game in Summer 2010

- French Warship to Visit St. Petersburg, Paris to Deliver 650-Foot Mistral-Class Helicopter Carrier/ Amphibious Assault Ship after Deal Conclusion

Pictured above: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (left) and Polish counterpart Donald Tusk take part in a joint press conference after their meeting in Gdansk on September 1, 2009.

In his 1999 book Origins of the Fourth World War, American geopolitical analyst Jeff Nyquist begins his narrative of a Communist Bloc-instigated nuclear war by writing: “There are news flashes . . .” Will 2009 witness news flashes similar to those of 1939? Seven decades after the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland, the Kremlin’s imperialistic designs on Europe are once again evident.

We extensively covered the Union State of Russia and Belarus’ Zapad (“West”) 2009 war game in September. The combined military drill took place in both countries, including Russia’s Baltic exclave Kaliningrad, and witnessed the deployment of 12,500 Russian soldiers and Belarusian KGB troops in the latter country, adjacent to former Warsaw Pact-turned-NATO member Poland. (In Belarus the KGB is still called by its old, dreaded name.) At the same time, thousands of Russian troops carried out another drill near Lake Ladoga, close to the Finnish border. Both war games, in which NATO forces hypothetically invaded Russia via Finland, the Baltic republics, and Poland, were originally billed as defensive in nature.

Belarusian nationalists protested against the deployment of 6,000 Russian soldiers on their soil, but the communist regime of President Alexander Lukashenko, a compliant lackey of the Soviet strategists, quickly smashed the street demonstrations. One week after Zapad 2009 finished, the Belarusian opposition media reported that many Russian troops had yet to decamp and head back to their homeland. Charter 97 contended that the Russians had no intention of leaving and that a creeping re-occupation of Belarus by the Russian Ground Forces had begun. Four weeks later we have been unable to confirm that all Russian troops have vacated Belarus.

This week Wprost, one of Poland’s leading news magazines, has obtained documents proving that Zapad 2009 was offensive, not defensive, in nature, a fact that we strongly suspected during our own coverage of the event. Among other simulations, the Russian Air Force practiced a nuclear attack against Polish targets, while Russian marines used the beaches of Kaliningrad to carry out a mock amphibious landing along Poland’s Baltic coast, which included securing a natural gas pipeline. The latter battle scenario is an obvious wink toward the still-in-development Soviet-German NordStream project. Russian soldiers and Belarusian KGB troops also simulated the suppression of an uprising by Belarus’s Polish minority.

Wprost’s revelations are historically significant because nearly three decades ago “Zapad 1981” also simulated a Soviet invasion of Poland, then under Moscow’s overt control. Martial law, implemented by the ruling Polish United Workers’ Party, was then in effect following the Gdansk shipyard strikes. In reporting this information from Wprost, moreover, Britain’s Telegraph, interestingly, referred to the Russian Armed Forces as the “Red Army.” In view of the “ex”-communists and “ex”-KGB/GRU types who still despotically rule in Moscow and Minsk and in view of the red star of Bolshevism that is still displayed by the Russian and Belarusian armies, can one honestly say that there’s much difference between Zapad 1981 and Zapad 2009?

Polish politicians and citizens were outraged by Wprost’s revelations. Conservative member of parliament Karol Karski has protested to the European Commission, while his colleague Marek Opiola pointed out: “It’s an attempt [by Russia] to put us in our place. Don’t forget all this happened on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland.” At the time the Zapad 2009 drill was unfolding, Poland’s Defense Minister Bogdan Klich warned: “It is a demonstration of strength. We are monitoring the exercises to see what has been planned.” Wladyslaw Stasiak, chief of President Lech Kaczynski’s office and former chief of Poland’s National Security Council, confided: “We didn’t like the appearance of the exercises and the name harkened back to the days of the Warsaw Pact.”

One man in the street, “Ted,” told Polskie Radio: “Russia has laid bare its real intentions with respect to Poland. Every Pole must get off the fence and be counted as a patriot or a traitor.” It seems, however, that Poles are divided on the matter of Russia’s intentions toward Poland because “conservative” Prime Minister Donald Tusk has pursued a policy of rapprochement with Moscow, including a little-reported meeting between Poland's top general and his Russian counterpart. This meeting of generals apparently took place on the sidelines of the Tusk-Putin conference in Gdansk. Although “Ted” is speaking for his countrymen in Poland, the Obama White House should also take heed and “get off the fence” by openly acknowledging the neo-Soviet threat breathing down NATO’s neck.

In response to Zapad 2009, Estonian President Hendrik Ilves suggested carrying out a NATO military exercise in the Baltic states. Latvia has agreed to host a "large-scale" war game in the summer of 2010.

NATO's policy toward Russia, though, is schizophrenic. As we have previously reported, Russia will shortly purchase a 650-Foot Mistral-class helicopter carrier/ amphibious assault ship from veteran NATO member France. The negotiations for the deal were hammered out between STX France and DCNS, France's civil and naval shipbuilders, and the Russian Defense Ministry. A similar ship will visit St. Petersburg in late November. UPI editorializes: "The deal will mark the most important transfer of military equipment to Russia by a NATO member." In light of the Soviets' mock amphibious assault against Poland during Zapad 2009, this deal is also a very troubling transfer of military technology.

Meanwhile, the Russian Navy’s strategic submarines continue to test their nuclear arsenal. On Sunday the Bryansk successfully fired a missile from the submerged position in the Barents Sea. The report from state-run Novosti did not indicate whether this missile was part of the Kremlin’s new Bulava series of SLBMs, which have a spotty record of success in their trial launches. The last Bulava launch took place in October 2008 and was a failure. The Bryansk carries 16 nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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