Communist Bloc Military Updates: Putin boasts about Russia's missile technology

In a recent news conference, Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin warned the USA, in effect, "Russia's ready to rumble." Be assured that Russia's new missiles are not intended to eradicate cave-dwelling terrorists on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. No, those missiles are intended to eradicate White House-dwelling "terrorists" who are "responsible" for supporting Chechen separatists, using nongovernmental organizations to advance the "colored" revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, and using NGOs to implement regime changes in Belarus. These have been the bold statements of representatives of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Soviet security apparatus' nom de jour.

The FSB's personnel, tactics, and objectives are perfectly harmonious with those of the pre-1992 KGB. Such is the conclusion of Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova, whose expose of the FSB is published in the February 6, 2006 issue of Newsweek: "A Chill in the Moscow Air: Taking a cue from their boss, the Russian secret service is acting more and more like the old KGB."

Observe that in this news conference Comrade Czar Putin coyly refuses to connect Russia's latest missile technology to the USA's National Missile Defense program which at this time, in any case, is not capable of repelling a full-scale missile attack from Russia.

Putin boasts of the guided tour of Russia's space control center given to French President Jacques Chirac. Notwithstanding his recent threat to use France's nuclear weapons against rogue states, Chirac is nothing more than Putin's poodle. (See previous blog about Russia's new space base in French Guiana.)

Putin also shows his contempt for the independence-minded Georgians, who accused the FSB of sabotaging gas pipelines for the sake of advancing Kremlin energy imperialism.

The Palestinian Authority's new Hamas government gets Putin's green light. "Post-communist" Russia's support for Palestinian terrorists is perfectly consistent with the Soviet Union's pro-Palestinian policy.

In truth, the most effective ballistic missile defense is a preemptive strike against enemy assets, but that will never happen because, contrary to the Left's characterization of the Bush Administration as a warmongering oil-hungry elite, the White House does not yet have the resolve to confront the Kremlin deceivers, nor the ability to protect civilians from a Soviet missile attack.

Anyone still think the Cold War is over?

Putin Touts Russia's Missile Capabilities
January 31, 2006
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Associated Press Writer
MOSCOW

President Vladimir Putin boasted Tuesday that Russia has missiles capable of penetrating any missile defense system, Russian news reports said.

"Russia ... has tested missile systems that no one in the world has," the ITAR-Tass, Interfax and RIA Novosti news agencies quoted him as saying at a news conference. "These missile systems don't represent a response to a missile defense system, but they are immune to that. They are hypersonic and capable of changing their flight path."

Putin said the new missiles were capable of carrying nuclear warheads. He wouldn't say whether the Russian military already had commissioned any such missiles.

He said he had shown the working principles of the missile systems to French President Jacques Chirac during a visit to a Russian military facility.

"He knows what I'm talking about," news agencies quoted Putin as telling reporters after state-run news channels had cut their live broadcast of the news conference.

In April 2004, Chirac became the first Western leader to visit Russia's top-secret Titov space control center, which is also involved in launches of its intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Putin said that the new missiles were capable of changing both the altitude and the direction of their flight, making it impossible for an enemy to intercept them.

"A missile defense system is designed to counter missiles moving along a ballistic trajectory," Putin was quoted as saying.

Putin and other Russian officials have boasted of the new missiles in similar comments in recent years, but they haven't identified them or given any further details other than about their ability to change their flight path on approach to a target.

Most analysts viewed the earlier announcements about "hypersonic" missile systems as Moscow's response to U.S. missile defense plans.

Military analysts have said that the military had experimented with a maneuvering warhead during a missile launch several years ago, but voiced doubt about Russia's ability to deploy such weapons anytime soon.
Analysts said the new warheads, designed to zigzag on their approach to targets, could be fitted to new land-based Topol-M missiles and the prospective Bulava missiles, now under development.

On other topics at the news conference, Putin:

_ Urged the militant Palestinian group Hamas to engage in peaceful dialogue, and said Russia's position on the Middle East differed from that of the United States and Europe.

Hamas should "refrain from extremist declarations, acknowledge Israel's right to exist and put its contacts with the international community in order," Putin said. He said "Russia has never declared Hamas a terrorist organization, but it doesn't mean we support and accept everything Hamas has done and all the statements it has made."

_ Lashed out at the government of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili for its criticism of Moscow over last week's gas pipeline explosion, which resulted in a weeklong cutoff of Russian gas from the Caucasus Mountains nation.

While repair teams were working to fix the pipeline in freezing temperatures, "we only saw them spitting at us," Putin said. "Georgian citizens must know that such a policy toward Russia won't help to improve conditions of ordinary people."

_ Praised his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, for taking Russia on the democratic path amid the turmoil that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"During the time when Yeltsin led Russia, Russian citizens got the most important thing: freedom," Putin said during a wide-ranging annual news conference. "This is a great historic accomplishment of Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin."

Many Russians hold Yeltsin, who turns 75 on Wednesday, responsible for the post-Soviet economic meltdown that led to a dramatic plunge in living standards. Putin owes his rise to power to Yeltsin, who picked him as his prime minister and then named him acting president.

Link: Breitbart

USA File: Defense Department holds second nuke terrorism drill at Fort Monroe; simulates 10-megaton blast in Charleston, South Carolina

The nuclear terrorism drill described below begins today, January 31, and continues to February 2. Anyone who supports the security of North America from such attacks should have no objections to such drills.

It is to be expected, however, that leftists and faux rightists will view such drills as "dry runs" by the Western capitalist elite to conduct their own nuclear terrorism on American soil. Rather than accept some restrictions on their civil liberties to protect the continent from foreign terrorism, the overheated imaginations of conspiracymongers will boil over with ominous warnings about an impending "fascist" police state in the USA.

For that reason, the "New World Order conspiracy" running dogs also identify the 911 attacks as an "inside job," perpetrated by the White House. A myriad of Internet sites that tout themselves as "patriotic" will promote such treasonous rubbish that readily assists the hostile foreign states profiled in this blog. One of the worst, but slickest, offenders is Prison Planet, which predictably imparted an NWO spin to the current Joint Task Force-Civil Support exercise: "Another nuke exercise -- your next 9/11?"

In doing so, Prison Planet and related sites are merely lifting an anti-American page from the delusional European Left, which gave birth to "911: The Big Lie?", and the rantings of KGB politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who made the same assertions after September 11, 2001, related in "Russian Politician: Terror Attacks In New York And Washington Plotted In The USA." Both articles cited previously were published by Pravda. Western leftists and faux rightists should be immensely pleased that that mouthpiece of Leninist disinformation holds the same opinion of the USA.

I would like to think that the Bush Administration has seen through the Kremlin's bluff and recognizes the seriousness of the perestroika deception, but I don't want to be too hopeful. The White House has issued a number of warnings about Al Qaeda's plans for nuclear terrorism. This response is better than nothing. Will citizens of the shopping mall regime take heed, though, and initiate their own private preparations for such a disaster?

Another nuke exercise in Charleston
Defense Dept. to hold second anti-terror drill
Monday, January 23, 2006

The Defense Department has scheduled a second major, three-day exercise to combat nuclear terrorism in the Charleston, S.C., area, according to Inside Defense.

The goal is not prevention, but coping with the catastrophic results of a terrorist nuclear attack on a major U.S. port city.

The three-day drill by the military's Joint Task Force-Civil Support, headquartered at Ft. Monroe, Va., involves managing the effects of a 10-megaton nuclear blast.

A similar exercise was held last summer. Like that one, the Jan. 31 to Feb. 2 drill is centered around a hypothetical blast that affects nearly half a million people across a 900-square mile section of South Carolina. The scenario assumes 10,000 fatalities and more than 30,000 injuries.

Officials from the Department of Homeland Security, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency and senior Coast Guard brass will be on hand.

Though the target of the attack is Charleston, no part of the exercise will actually take place there. Maj. Gen. Bruce Davis, the task force's commander, will oversee the exercise from Fort Monroe.

Last summer, the similar exercise, "Sudden Respond '05," was led by Virginia's Fort Monroe-based Joint Task Force-Civil Support. It, too, was designed to simulate a nuclear terrorist attack that the highest U.S. officials, including President Bush, have said is the No. 1 threat facing the nation.

Organizers say the nuclear drills should not frighten civilians but instead encourage them to learn how to protect themselves if such an attack – which some officials have referred to as inevitable – should occur.

The drill, reports Inside Defense, is strikingly similar to a scenario detailed by Graham Allison, former Pentagon assistant secretary for plans and policy and current Harvard professor, in his book, "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe."

A month after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Allison wrote, the Central Intelligence Agency presented Bush with a report that al-Qaida had smuggled a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb into New York City. The president, according to the book, dispatched Nuclear Emergency Support Teams of scientists and engineers to New York to search for the weapon, which was never found.

Allison described the devastation that a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb would visit on Manhattan, were it detonated in the middle of historic Times Square: some 1 million people would die almost immediately.

"The resulting fireball and blast wave would destroy instantaneously the theater district, the New York Times building, Grand Central Terminal, and every other structure within a third of a mile to the point of detonation," he wrote. "The ensuring firestorm would engulf Rockefeller Center, Carnegie Hall, the Empire State Building, and Madison Square Garden, leaving a landscape resembling the World Trade Center site.

From the United Nations headquarters on the East River and the Lincoln Tunnel under the Hudson River, to the Metropolitan Museum in the eighties and the Flatiron Building in the twenties, structures would remind one of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Office Building following the Oklahoma City Bombing."

As WND has reported, for more than 10 years, Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida has planned to use nuclear weapons in a terrorist attack on the U.S. The plan is dubbed "American Hiroshima." In fact, as first reported in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, captured al-Qaida operatives and documents suggest the weapons have already been smuggled into the country.

Link: WorldNetDaily

Grey Terror File: Al Qaeda No. 2, Al-Zawahiri, condemns Bush in second video referencing January 2006 air strike

FSB asset still alive and kicking. Where's Al Qaeda's next target in the Continental USA? State of the Union address, Washington, DC, January 31? Super Bowl, Detroit, February 5?

"But your leaders, who are keen to accumulate wealth," admonishes the good Egyptian doctor, "insist on throwing you in battles and killing your souls in Iraq and Afghanistan and - God willing - on your own land." Note boldface words. Intriguing comment from an Islamic terrorist, but not surprising from one who has also been radicalized by Marxism.

Indeed, much of the benighted West seems to have missed the obvious symbolism of the 911 skyjackers divebombing the World Trade Center. If the members of Atta's boxcutter-wielding gang were merely Islamists, then why not divebomb the Crusaders' religious landmarks in Manhattan, such as a cathedral or a synagogue? Nay, the WTC was the preeminent landmark of international capitalism in the USA. Hence, the Bolshevik rationale for toppling the Twin Towers. September 11 was an appropriate date: Cheka founder Felix Dzerzhinsky was born on that day in 1877.

Al-Zawahiri's last comment, also below, appears to be a sentiment that Cindy Sheehan, the subject of the previous blog, has taken to heart.

Zawahiri says he escaped US raid
30 January 2006 6:50 PM GMT

Aljazeera has aired a new video in which al-Qaida's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri calls George Bush a butcher and threatens a new attack in the US.

Monday's video was his first appearance since a US air strike that targeted him on 13 January in Pakistan.

Al-Zawahiri said he had survived the raid which he said killed "innocents".

The air strike hit a building in the eastern Pakistan village of Damadola, reportedly killing four al-Qaida leaders. Thirteen villagers were also killed in the strike, angering many Pakistanis.

The video appeared to be recorded this month, as it mentioned a call for a truce issued by Bin Laden in an audio tape Aljazeera said was recorded in January.

"US airplanes ... launched a raid on a village in near Peshawar after Eid al-Adha in which 18 Muslim men, women and children were killed in what they call the war against terror," al-Zawahiri said.

"They said this was intended to kill myself and four brothers but now the whole world has discovered their lies ...".

Egyptian-born Al-Zawahri and Saudi-born Bin Laden are believed to be hiding in a mountainous area on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Pakistani intelligence sources said four top al-Qaida fighters were believed to have been killed in the 13 January raid which US officials say was aimed at the al-Qaida number two.

White robes

Al-Zawahiri, shown wearing white robes and a white turban, said the US had ignored an offer from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden for a truce.

"Butcher of Washington, you are not only defeated and a liar, but also a failure. You are a curse on your own nation," he said, referring to Bush. "Bush, do you know where I am? I am among the Muslim masses," he said.

"My second message is to the American people, who are drowning in illusions. I tell you that Bush and his gang are shedding your blood and wasting your money in frustrated adventures," he said, speaking in a forceful and angry voice. Al-Zawahiri added: "The lion of Islam, Shaikh Osama bin Laden, may God protect him, offered you a decent exit from your dilemma. But your leaders, who are keen to accumulate wealth, insist on throwing you in battles and killing your souls in Iraq and Afghanistan and - God willing - on your own land." The video came in the wake of a 19 January audiotape by bin Laden in which he warned that al-Qaida is preparing attacks in the US but he offered a truce "with fair conditions" to build Iraq and Afghanistan.

The tape was the first message from Bin Laden in over a year.

Al-Zawahiri continued: "The American planes raided in compliance with Musharraf the traitor and his security apparatus, the slave of the Crusaders and the Jews."

Extent of savagery

"In seeking to kill my humble self and four of my brothers, the whole world has discovered the extent of America's lies and failures and the extent of its savagery in fighting Islam and Muslims," al-Zawahiri said. Aljazeera said it was airing excerpts of the video, and it showed two short parts. It was not immediately know how long the entire tape was.

The al-Qaida number two vented fury at Bush and the US leadership, saying: "Your leaders responded to the initiative of sheik Osama, may God protect him, by saying they don't negotiate with terrorists and that they are winning the war on terror. I tell them: You liars, greedy war mongers, who is pulling out from Iraq and Afghanistan? Us or you? Whose soldiers are committing suicide because of despair? Us or you?"

"You, American mother, if the Pentagon calls to tell you that your son is coming home in a coffin, then remember George Bush. And you, British wife, if the Defence Department calls you to say that your husband is returning crippled and burnt, remember Tony Blair."

Link: Aljazeera.Net

Useful Idiots Bin: Cindy Sheehan at the Sixth World Social Forum in Caracas

The Useful Idiots Bin is a new news category at Once Upon A Time in the West. "Useful idiot" is a term attributed, rightly or wrongly, to Vladimir Lenin and used to describe non-communists who unwittingly or wittingly advance the red agenda. This is often done when non-communists promote world peace, on communist terms. While the origin of the term cannot be nailed down to Vlad, "useful idiot" is a useful term.

Comrade Hugo Chavez, the dictator of Venezuela, recently transformed the anti-war activist Cindy "Peace Mom" Sheehan into one of Lenin's useful idiots by referring to her as "Ms. Hope" in a January 29 televised address at the Sixth World Social Forum. Chavez referred to Bush as "Mr. Danger." The WSF, hosted this year in Caracas, is the communist "answer" to the World Economic Forum.

Cindy's rant at Caracas included the following pleasant sentiments: “George Bush is illegitimate and should be evicted. Let’s not talk about impeachment, he was never elected. After he is impeached he should be tried for war crimes. Prefering to use the word “Matriot," rather than “Patriot," Cindy declared: "We need a matriarchal society that is more nurturing and fostering of life.” Sure, Cindy, but we've been living in a matriarchal society since at least the 1970s. Look at the human wreckage and bloodshed that washes from clinic shore to clinic shore . . .

Link: IndyBay.org

Updated January 31, 2006.

Apparently reinvigorated by her junket to the new Latin American Red mecca, Caracas, and Comrade Chavez's commendation, Cindy protested at the US Capitol Building before President George Bush arrived to deliver his State of the Union Address. The "Peace Mom" was arrested and removed from the premises. Thanks Hugo.

Link: Breitbart

Latin America File: USSR2 builds space base in French Guiana; Soyuz to launch first Brazilian astronaut

Checkmate. Cuban Missile Crisis Redux. The Soyuz launch site (picture of model at left) at the Guiana Space Center, originally built by the French Space Agency, is to be completed in 2008, according to the RussianSpaceWeb.com article below. However, according to the first Moscow News article, also below, "commercial" space launches will begin in 2006.

Very clever. Should US warheads reduce the space center at Plesetsk to radioactive dust, the Soviets will have a potential strategic military asset on French territory in the Western Hemisphere.

Meanwhile, the communist government of Brazil must be swelling with red pride as one of its countrymen will be propelled into space in March 2006.

Guiana Space Center

Laws of orbital mechanics push rocket designers to seek prospective launch sites as close to the Equator as possible. The space vehicle launched due East anywhere on the Equator can use Earth rotation to its full advantage, maximizing the payload and minimizing the cost. Such unique requirement made a jungle-covered South American coast of French Guiana an ideal choice for future European space hub.

An exotic ocean-side coastline, near a sleepy town of Kourou, located just five degrees north of the Equator, would provide a starting point for a safe flight corridor over the Atlantic Ocean and give the rocket extra 460 meters per second in velocity from the natural Earth rotation. Ironically, before the coming of the spaceport, the area was mostly known in France for a notorious penal colony located on the nearby Devil's Island.

The decision to build the launch site in Kourou was made by France in 1964 and the initial construction at a cost of 25 million Francs was completed in 1968. Kourou provided France with the alternative to the Hammaguir rocket test base in Algeria, evacuated by June 30, 1967, in the aftermath of the Algerian war for independence.

Location

The original rocket launching facilities in French Guiana were built by French Space Agency, CNES, along a stretch of coastal land some 60 kilometers wide from the town of Kourou to the town of Sinnamari. Without climate controlled facilities, launch campaigns could be conducted only during a five-month-long dry season, while frequent floods threatened launch pads, located just five meters above the sea level.

The main launch corridor to reach near-Equatorial orbit stretched some 4,000 kilometers in Eastern direction. It was also possible to reach highly inclined polar orbit, along a corridor heading 3,000 kilometers in northern direction toward the Islands of Bermuda. Total azimuth of possible launches from Kourou reached 120 degrees.

The original flight control network included ground stations on the Montagne de Peres islands off the coast of French Guiana, as well as in Cayenne, some 60 kilometers southeast from Kourou and in Fortaleze, Brazil. Two main stations on the islands were equipped with 12-meter parabolic antennas, others with smaller antennas.

Rocket stages can be transported to the site by sea (booster stages) and by air (upper stages and payloads).

Launch history

First sounding rocket launches commenced in April 1968, followed by the Diamant launch vehicle in 1970. On March 10, 1970, the Diamant-B rocket successfully delivered the DIAL satellite into orbit, the first spacecraft launched from Kourou. Until May 21, 1973, total five Diamant-B rockets were launched from Kourou, three of them successfully. It was followed by the Diamant BP4 rocket.

From 1976, the European Space Agency, ESA, partially funded the construction and the maintenance of the site. Around the time, the annual budget of the spaceport reached around 300 million Francs, one third of which was funded by France and the rest by the European Space Agency.

The very first attempt to launch the Europa-2 rocket from Kourou in November 1971 ended in failure, after which the program was shot down. The ELA-1 launch complex was later refurbished for the Ariane program, which was officially under development from July 1973.

The first Ariane-1 rocket was launched from French Guiana on Dec. 24, 1979, eventually making Kourou the capital of the world's commercial space activities. The Ariane-2 and -3 rockets were introduced in 1984 and a long-lasting Ariane-4 version completed its maiden flight on June 15, 1988. It remained in operation until the middle of the first decade of the 21st century.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the spaceport in Kourou occupied 850 square kilometers of land and directly employed 1,100 members of the personnel. The town and surrounding area was also booming, attracting a considerable influx of immigrants. The spaceport even became a destination for the Concorde supersonic passenger jet, which carried government officials, engineers and journalists attending major launches.

Soyuz in Kourou

Early on, the French government made an official decision to make the site available to any country willing to deploy its space launcher systems there. At the time, few could predict that Russian rockets would become first "foreign guests" in Kourou.

After several years of consideration, Europe committed to fund the construction of a launch pad for the Soyuz-2 family of rockets in Kourou. On November 7, 2003, Russian and French governments formally agreed to bring Soyuz to Kourou.

With the signing of a formal agreement between Arianespace and Russian Space Agency on April 11, 2005, the countdown for the construction of the launch pad officially started on April 26, 2005. According to the contract, the Moscow-based KBOM design bureau had to be ready for the "all out" tests of the launch pad with the Soyuz-2 (Soyuz-ST) rocket within 35 months from the beginning of the construction. The tests were expected to last for two months, culminating with the actual launch of the first mission sometime in 2008, or 37 months after the beginning of the construction. The excavation for the pad was expected to start at the end of the monsoon season of 2005. As many as 50 Soyuz launches were expected from Kourou over a 15-year period.

Technical description

The launch complex for the Soyuz rockets in Kourou featured considerable differences from its original launch pads in Baikonur and Plesetsk. Since the potential commercial payloads only allowed vertical integration with the rocket, the launch complex designers have decided to install payload module onto the rocket after it is rolled out and erected into vertical position on the launch pad. To provide a climate controlled environment for the integration of the payload with the launch vehicle, a movable service tower was introduced. The design of the tower would enable its further extension in the future, including accommodations for the crew access into the manned spacecraft.

In designing the complex, the developers also left the option for future addition of the liquid hydrogen fuel storage, which would enable launches of the rockets powered by cryogenic engines.

The upgrade for the manned missions would be also possible, however it would require taking the launch pad out of service for a certain period of time.

Soyuz-ST payload capabilities from Kourou:
Geo-transfer orbit, GTO: up to 2,720 kilograms
Geostationary orbit, GSO: up to 1,360 kilograms
Sun-synchronous orbit, SSO: up to 4,350 kilograms

Link: RussianSpaceWeb.com

Russia Launches New Generation Space Rocket
Created: 09.11.2004 11:12 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 11:12 MSK
MosNews

Russia launched a new generation booster rocket Monday after two postponements, paving the way for new space programs and even commercial space launches.

The Soyuz-2 rocket blasted off from the Plesetsk launch pad in northern Russia carrying a mock-up of an unspecified “space apparatus,” the Interfax news agency reported.

Originally scheduled for Oct. 29, the launch was put off twice in order to correct software flaws and perform tests.

The booster is a modernized, high-powered version of the Soyuz rocket, equipped with an updated digital control system, and requiring fewer people to oversee its launch, Interfax reports.

In addition to using the Soyuz-2 for its own manned and unmanned space program, Russia plans to use the booster for commercial space launches from the Kourou launch pad in French Guiana, starting in 2006, under a deal reached with the European Space Agency.

Link: Moscow News

Russian Experts Pleased With Brazilian Progress Ahead of First Space Flight
Created: 30.01.2006 11:34 MSK (GMT +3)
MosNews

Russian experts have largely praised the progress of Brazil’s space program after checking preparations for the maiden voyage of the South American country’s first astronaut.

“Our task was to inspect the equipment and make sure it is safe to use on board the International Space Station (ISS),” Sergei Rybkin, a department head at the Russian Space Agency was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying.

During the visit to Brazil, a team of experts from the Russian agency and the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation, Russia’s leading space-industry company, were satisfied with the testing facilities, though it proposed several design changes in the equipment that would be used for work in space.

“We made several technical suggestions, and the Brazilians have to follow them accordingly,” Rybkin said. “These are small design changes related to automatic shutdown procedures, the absence of sharp edges on the body of various devices and the need to maintain external temperatures on the surface of the equipment at +40 Celsius (about 104 Fahrenheit) or below.”

The second round of equipment testing will be conducted at the National Space Research Institute in Brazil in mid-February and after that the equipment will be delivered to Moscow for final approval.

The Russian and Brazilian presidents signed a contract in October 2005 to send Brazil’s first astronaut to the ISS on board a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in March 2006.

During the $20-million mission, Lt. Col. Marcus Pontes, who passed through NASA training in 2000, will conduct nine scientific experiments in the sphere of nano- and bio-technology and plant behavior in micro-gravitational conditions.

According to experts, Pontes, who will travel to the ISS on March 30 to spend 10 days on board the station, will have enough time to practice using the equipment during the final stages of his preparation for the space mission in Moscow.

Link: Moscow News

Final Phase Backgrounder: CPRF leader Zyuganov's curious insight into Putin's succession formula

Updated: January 30, 2006.

Why should Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, past leader of the Union of Communist Parties-Communist Party of the Soviet Union (UCP-CPSU), and prime mover in the reorganized CPSU care how Vladimir Putin selects a successor? What special insight does this key player in the Soviet strategic deception have into the inner workings of the Kremlin and the Putin Administration?

The answer, of course, has just been stated and can also be derived from KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn's invaluable revelation of Moscow's long-range plan, now in its 45th year. "The problem of succession in the leadership of the Soviet Union and other communist countries," Golitsyn explains, "is of great importance, since on it depends the solution of many other practical problems" (New Lies for Old, 196). In the next passage, Golitsyn, applying his remarkable analytical methodology, predicts the rise of KGB director Yuri Andropov's "liberal" protege, Mikhail Gorbachev: "Brezhnev's successor may well appear to be a kind of Soviet Dubcek. The succession will be important only in a presentational sense. The reality of collective leadership and the leaders' common commitment to the long-range policy will continue unaffected" (338).

The smooth transfer of power between Leonid Brezhnev and Andropov, Golitsyn contends furthermore, demonstrates that the "succession problem" at the top of the Soviet hierarchy is resolved:

The expeditiousness of the appointment of Andropov as Brezhnev's successor confirmed one of the main theses of this book; namely, that the succession problem in the Soviet leadership has been resolved. The practical consideration of the long-term strategies has become the major stabilizing factor in this solution. The promotion of the former KGB chief, who was responsible for the preparation of the false liberalization strategy in the USSR, indicates that this factor was decisive in his selection and further points to the imminent advent of such "liberalization" in the near future.

The rise of Andropov fits into a familiar pattern whereby the former security chief becomes the party leader in order to secure the important shift in the realization of the strategy (347-348).

Golitsyn's observation also applies to the smooth transfer of power between Andropov and Gorbachev, which occurred shortly after the KGB defector's first book was published in 1984.

Likewise, a third smooth transfer of power occurred in 1990 when Boris Yeltsin assumed the presidency of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, which morphed as if by the magician's sleight of hand, into the Russian Federation two years later. In 1990 Yeltsin also dramatically and publicly resigned from the CPSU, which means only that, according to the Golitsynian thesis, something "presentational" was transpiring in the Soviet Union for the sake of Western consumers. In truth, the collective leadership was functioning perfectly.

Gangster capitalism and oligarchical capitalism devoured Russia throughout the 1990s. Capitalism was futher tarnished in the eyes of Soviet citizens. The stage is set for USSR2: The Sequel.

Fast forward to the eve of the new century. Apartments are bombed in Russian cities. Moscow blames Chechen terrorists. No credible suspects are ever produced. The "ex"-communist Yeltsin appoints former FSB director Putin to steer the Soviet state on December 31, 1999.

Well, at least Putin's no longer a Communist, right? The pro-Putin party in the Duma is United Russia. Surely Comrade Czar Putin's off the hook? The president of United Russia, however, is Colonel-General Sergei Kuzhugetovich Shoigu, who was a faceless functionary in the Abakan branch of the old CPSU and then the Komsomol. In other words, the leader of Putin's cheering squad is another one of these "ex"-communists who dominate Russian "politics."

Putin's lateral shift from the FSB to the prime ministership and then the presidency of the Russian Federation, of course, parallels Andropov's translation from the KGB to the presidency of the Soviet Union. Indeed, Putin is known as "Little Andropov," a nickname he earned in part by restoring Andropov's memorial plaque to the KGB director's residence in Kutuzovsky Prospekt.

Putin: The career KGB spy who replied to Larry King's query "What happened to the Kursk?" with the glib one-liner: "It sank."

Putin: The spy who never came in from the cold and who is busy chasing British agents in 2006 and making light of it in the media.

Andropov redux. Voila! Golitsyn vindicated.

Yes, Gennady, I expect everything's under control. The collective leadership is working well with input, no doubt, from roving international statesman Mike ("I'll Always Be a Communist") Gorbachev. So, who's next? You? Oleg? We're waiting with bated breath.

Russian president prepares successor - Communist leader
14/11/2005

MOSCOW, November 14 (RIA Novosti) - The current government reshuffle is the "first step toward testing the formula of succession and a successor" to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the leader of the Communist party (KPRF) said Monday.

"This is a new testing stage," Gennady Zyuganov said. "The successor has to be tested out in an executive position."

According to Zyuganov, "the new [succession] formula will be developed in the next 3-4 months."

"The new appointments prove that a decision has been made to strengthen the government with people who are close to the president by spirit and character, with those who worked with him in tandem recently," the KPRF leader said. "But only in several months will we be able to make more serious conclusions."

Zyuganov's comments came in response to Putin's series of new high-profile government appointments earlier Monday. Dmitry Medvedev moved from the Kremlin administration to become first deputy prime minister, and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov was appointed deputy prime minister while retaining his current post.

Link: RIA Novosti

Asia File: Russian military aircraft violates Japanese airspace

Russia and Japan are still technically at war. No peace treaty was signed following the Second World War and the Russian-occupied Kuril Islands are still hotly disputed between the two countries. Japan is one of the few allies that the West has in East Asia. The Russian aircraft that violated Japanese airspace was the Antonov 72, pictured above. While airspace violations are probably a common and accidental occurence worldwide, a violation committed by a Russian aircraft anywhere should be treated with suspicion. Since the Putin Coup of 1999, Russian bombers have resumed probing runs of North American airspace.

Russia says border control plane intruded into Japanese airspace
TOKYO, Jan. 26, 2006
KYODO

Russia told Japan on Thursday an airplane that violated Japanese airspace off Hokkaido Wednesday night belonged to the Sakhalin border security force, the Japanese Defense Agency's Vice Minister Takemasa Moriya said. The Sakhalin border control authority told the Japanese Consulate General in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on Thursday that the plane was an Antonov-72, Moriya said.

Link: Kyodo

New Japanese BMD Radar Tracks Mysterious Test of Russian Missile
Created: 17.11.2005 11:07 MSK (GMT +3),
Updated: 14:48 MSK, 9 hours 17 minutes ago
MosNews

A new Japanese ballistic missile defense radar successfully tracked a Russian strategic missile test this weekend, UPI quoted local officials as saying. Russia did not announce any missile launches, however.

A prototype FPS-XX radar, designed and built by the Japanese Defense Agency’s Technical Research & Development Institute, monitored the test firing of a ballistic missile launched from a Russian nuclear-powered submarine in the Sea of Okhotsk 1,000 miles to the northeast. The radar then tracked the missile’s flight for thousands of miles across northern Russia to the Barents Sea in the Arctic Ocean, the Defense Agency said.

However, Russia’s last missile launch from the Okhotsk area was on Sept. 30. The RSM-50 missile was launched from the St. George the Victorious submari and hit a target on the island of Kanin in the White Sea. No other launches have been announced, although the information is not secret.

Japan says that radars — able, according to a report, to track secret missile operations — will be deployed at four sites across the country after 2008. Together with the X-band radar — the U.S. forces’ mobile early warning radar system — and other equipment, the FPS-XX radar system is a major part of Japan’s rapidly expanding defense system.

Russia and Japan have not yet signed a peace treaty ending hostilities from World War II.

Link: Moscow News

Russia, Japan Should Set Aside Dispute Over Islands — Koizumi
Created: 17.11.2005 15:24 MSK (GMT +3),
Updated: 15:24 MSK, 8 hours 43 minutes ago
MosNews

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi urged Russia Thursday to set aside the discussion of a long-running territorial dispute between the two countries for the time being.

“We should think twice whether it is worth focusing on this issue at present,” Koizumi told a news conference in Tokyo.

“The sides will hardly reach an agreement on this complex issue, which has existed for 60 years,” he was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Nov. 20-22 visit to Tokyo.

He said that the territorial dispute, which involves four islands off Russia’s far-eastern coast, was a complex problem and both sides had different approaches toward its resolution.

“It will take time and further discussions [to resolve it],” the Japanese leader said. On Nov. 13, Koizumi told Russian television that both countries could develop relations despite the territorial disagreement.

Relations between the two countries have been strained in recent years due to the dispute over the Kuril Islands. Japan claims sovereignty over four islands that became part of the Soviet Union after World War II. The issue remains unresolved and has prevented the signing of a peace treaty to end the state of war between the two countries formally.

Link: Moscow News

Middle East File: Iraqi air force general: Saddam transferred WMDs to Syria

The International Left is permanently deaf and blind on this crucial issue. But that's OK. It serves the plans of Russia, Iran, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority well. I recall very distinctly Ariel Sharon's December 2002 comments in which he contended that the Iraqis had transferred their WMDs to Syria. No one appeared to be listening and even the Bush Administration continues to huff and puff over the validity of such reports. I don't know why. They could have used such testimony to generate a lot more support for the liberation of Iraq.

See previous blogs on this subject, as well as Saddam's terrorist training camps.

Iraq's WMD Secreted in Syria, Sada Says
BY IRA STOLL - Staff Reporter of the Sun
January 26, 2006

The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein's air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.

The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, "Saddam's Secrets," released this week.

He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.

"There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands," Mr. Sada said.

"I am confident they were taken over."

Mr. Sada's comments come just more than a month after Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam "transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria."

Democrats have made the absence of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq a theme in their criticism of the Bush administration's decision to go to war in 2003. And President Bush himself has conceded much of the point; in a televised prime-time address to Americans last month, he said, "It is true that many nations believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong."

Said Mr. Bush, "We did not find those weapons."

The discovery of the weapons in Syria could alter the American political debate on the Iraq war. And even the accusations that they are there could step up international pressure on the government in Damascus. That government, led by Bashar Assad, is already facing a U.N. investigation over its alleged role in the assassination of a former prime minister of Lebanon. The Bush administration has criticized Syria for its support of terrorism and its failure to cooperate with the U.N. investigation.

The State Department recently granted visas for self-proclaimed opponents of Mr. Assad to attend a "Syrian National Council" meeting in Washington scheduled for this weekend, even though the attendees include communists, Baathists, and members of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood group to the exclusion of other, more mainstream groups.

Mr. Sada, 65, told the Sun that the pilots of the two airliners that transported the weapons of mass destruction to Syria from Iraq approached him in the middle of 2004, after Saddam was captured by American troops.

"I know them very well. They are very good friends of mine. We trust each other. We are friends as pilots," Mr. Sada said of the two pilots. He declined to disclose their names, saying they are concerned for their safety. But he said they are now employed by other airlines outside Iraq.

The pilots told Mr. Sada that two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to cargo planes by removing the seats, Mr. Sada said. Then Special Republican Guard brigades loaded materials onto the planes, he said, including "yellow barrels with skull and crossbones on each barrel." The pilots said there was also a ground convoy of trucks.

The flights - 56 in total, Mr. Sada said - attracted little notice because they were thought to be civilian flights providing relief from Iraq to Syria, which had suffered a flood after a dam collapse in June of 2002."

Saddam realized, this time, the Americans are coming," Mr. Sada said. "They handed over the weapons of mass destruction to the Syrians."

Mr. Sada said that the Iraqi official responsible for transferring the weapons was a cousin of Saddam Hussein named Ali Hussein al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali." The Syrian official responsible for receiving them was a cousin of Bashar Assad who is known variously as General Abu Ali, Abu Himma, or Zulhimawe.

Short of discovering the weapons in Syria, those seeking to validate Mr. Sada's claim independently will face difficulty. His book contains a foreword by a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, David Eberly, who was a prisoner of war in Iraq during the first Gulf War and who vouches for Mr. Sada, who once held him captive, as "an honest and honorable man."

In his visit to the Sun yesterday, Mr. Sada was accompanied by Terry Law, the president of a Tulsa, Oklahoma based Christian humanitarian organization called World Compassion. Mr. Law said he has known Mr. Sada since 2002, lived in his house in Iraq and had Mr. Sada as a guest in his home in America. "Do I believe this man? Yes," Mr. Law said. "It's been solid down the line and everything checked out."

Said Mr. Law, "This is not a publicity hound. This is a man who wants peace putting his family on the line."

Mr. Sada acknowledged that the disclosures about transfers of weapons of mass destruction are "a very delicate issue."

He said he was afraid for his family. "I am sure the terrorists will not like it. The Saddamists will not like it," he said.

He thanked the American troops. "They liberated the country and the nation. It is a liberation force. They did a great job," he said. "We have been freed."He said he had not shared his story until now with any American officials. "I kept everything secret in my heart," he said. But he is scheduled to meet next week in Washington with Senators Sessions and Inhofe, Republicans of, respectively, Alabama and Oklahoma. Both are members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The book also says that on the eve of the first Gulf War, Saddam was planning to use his air force to launch a chemical weapons attack on Israel.

When, during an interview with the Sun in April 2004, Vice President Cheney was asked whether he thought that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had been moved to Syria, Mr. Cheney replied only that he had seen such reports.

An article in the Fall 2005 Middle East Quarterly reports that in an appearance on Israel's Channel 2 on December 23, 2002, Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, stated, "Chemical and biological weapons which Saddam is endeavoring to conceal have been moved from Iraq to Syria." The allegation was denied by the Syrian government at the time as "completely untrue," and it attracted scant American press attention, coming as it did on the eve of the Christmas holiday.

The Syrian ruling party and Saddam Hussein had in common the ideology of Baathism, a mixture of Nazism and Marxism.Syria is one of only eight countries that has not signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, a treaty that obligates nations not to stockpile or use chemical weapons.

Syria's chemical warfare program, apart from any weapons that may have been received from Iraq, has long been the source of concern to America, Israel, and Lebanon. In March 2004, the director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, saying, "Damascus has an active CW development and testing program that relies on foreign suppliers for key controlled chemicals suitable for producing CW."

The CIA's Iraq Survey Group acknowledged in its September 30, 2004, "Comprehensive Report," "we cannot express a firm view on the possibility that WMD elements were relocated out of Iraq prior to the war. Reports of such actions exist, but we have not yet been able to investigate this possibility thoroughly."

Mr. Sada is an unusual figure for an Iraqi general as he is a Christian and was not a member of the Baath Party. He now directs the Iraq operations of the Christian humanitarian organization, World Compassion.

Link: New York Sun

USSR2 File: Council of Europe condemns communist regimes; leaders of reorganized CPSU protest

This resolution will no doubt disappoint, but not deter, the reorganized CPSU, under the leadership of Oleg Shenin and Gennady Zyuganov. Vladimir Zhirinovsky's comments, related below, can be ignored since his "Liberal Democratic Party" is a KGB-concocted false opposition party and he is little more than a pseudo-fascist stalking horse for the Communists.

The existence of the reorganized CPSU, or continuing CPSU, depending on how you study the party's post-1991 history, is little known in the West. However, its existence can be substantiated from the websites of Western communists, as well as the official CPSU party website, which should be proof enough!

Former Soviet Union Among Communist Regimes Condemned by PACE
Created: 26.01.2006 16:17 MSK (GMT +3),
Updated: 16:17 MSK, 6 hours 45 minutes ago
MosNews

The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) has passed a resolution condemning all totalitarian communist regimes, including the government of the former USSR, Interfax reported.

The document censors violations such as executions, deaths in concentration camps, torture, slave labor, and starvation committed by communist regimes in the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, North Korea.

“Whereas another totalitarian regime of the 20th century, namely Nazism, has been investigated, internationally condemned and the perpetrators have been brought to trial, similar crimes committed in the name of communism have neither been investigated nor received any international condemnation,” wrote Swedish representative Goran Lindblad in a report issued in mid-December by the Parliament’s Political Affairs Committee that served as a catalyst for Wednesday’s debate.

According to the Epoch Times, the Assembly called on all communist or post-communist parties among Council of Europe member states “to reassess the history of communism and their own past …and condemn them without any ambiguity” if they have not done so previously.

“Totalitarian communist regimes are still active in some countries of the world and crimes continue to be committed,” the resolution said. “The Assembly strongly condemns all those violations of human rights.”

The head of the Russian delegation, MP Konstantin Kosachev said he was against the resolution, as it, in his view, puts Communist governments on the same level with Nazi Germany. He also said Goran Lindblad could not answer the question as to whether all the communist regimes were totalitarian.

But Russian Ultra-Nationalist MP Vladimir Zhirinovsky, with his usual enthusiasm, supported the PACE resolution and even demanded Russian communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, who held protest marches in Strasbourg during PACE meeting, to go on trial in the Hague for his political views.

Link: Moscow News

Middle East File: Moscow-backed terrorist org Hamas to form Palestinian Authority government

The terrorist-sponsoring regime of the USSR2 must be thrilled. What a wonderful opportunity to expand Leninist terror throughout Israel and the Middle East. Check out second article.

Hamas election win redraws Mideast political map
26 Jan 2006 16:39:16 GMT

GAZA, Jan 26 (Reuters) - The Islamic militant group Hamas swept to victory over the long-dominant Fatah party on Thursday in Palestinian parliamentary polls, a political earthquake that could bury any hope for reviving peace talks with Israel soon.

The shock outcome, acknowledged by Fatah ahead of official results, does not automatically unseat President Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate elected last year after Yasser Arafat's death. But he has said he might resign if unable to pursue a peace policy.

U.S. President George W. Bush appealed to Abbas to stay in office, but took aim at Hamas, vowing Washington would not deal with an armed Palestinian group advocating Israel's destruction.

"Today we woke up and the sky was a different colour. We have entered a new era," Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said after Hamas announced it had won more than 70 seats in the 132-member parliament in Wednesday's election.

Amid heightened tensions, Fatah supporters clashed with triumphant Hamas activists who briefly hoisted a green Hamas flag at the entrance to the Palestinian parliament in Ramallah.

Official results were due around 7 p.m. (1700 GMT).

With peace negotiations stalled since 2000 and Israel and Hamas bitter enemies, Israeli interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could opt for more unilateral moves, following last year's Gaza pullout, to shape borders on land Palestinians want for a state.

Olmert, who took over from Ariel Sharon after the 77-year-old leader's Jan. 4 stroke, suggested as much in a speech this week in which he repeated peace talks could not resume unless the Palestinian Authority disarmed militants.

In its first official comment on the poll result, Israel urged the European Union to take a firm stance against the establishment of a Palestinian "terrorist government".

"After the takeover by Hamas of the Palestinian Authority, it is incumbent on the European Union to speak out clearly and unequivocally that there will be no European understanding of a process that would mean the establishment of a terrorist government," Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said.

Leaders of the EU, the biggest donor to the aid-dependent Palestinian Authority, said earlier Hamas must renounce violence and recognise Israel or risk international isolation.

SIGNAL OF DISCONTENT

In Washington, Bush said Hamas's victory was a sign Palestinians were unhappy with the status quo and showed democracy at work, which was positive for the Middle East.

But he made clear he was sticking to Washington's view of Hamas as a terrorist group. It has carried out nearly 60 suicide bombings in Israel since a Palestinian uprising began in 2000.

"I don't see how you can be a partner in peace if you advocate the destruction of a country as part of your platform," Bush told a White House news conference. "You can't be a partner in peace if ... your party has got an armed wing."

The United States is the main sponsor of a long-stalled "road map" peace plan that charts mutual steps towards the creation of a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel.

Commentators in the Arab world predicted pragmatism would eventually prevail, with Hamas softening a position that now calls for the Jewish state's destruction and Israel forging contacts with a new Palestinian powerhouse on its doorstep.

Hamas has largely respected a truce for nearly a year.

Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie of Fatah and his cabinet quit in the face of the Hamas victory. In the streets of Gaza, Hamas activists embraced, fired guns in the air and handed out sweets.

Under Palestinian law, the biggest party in the 132-member parliament can veto the president's choice of a prime minister, effectively enabling Hamas to shape the next cabinet.

A senior Fatah official said it appeared Hamas was propelled to victory by public frustration over the mainstream faction's failure to achieve Palestinian statehood and anger over years of corruption in its institutions and in the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas's politburo chief Khaled Meshaal telephoned Abbas to affirm "a commitment to partnership with all the Palestinian forces, including the brothers in the Fatah movement".

But Jibril Rajoub, a senior Fatah official, rejected any coalition with Hamas, a group that Abbas had said he hoped to bring into the political mainstream and persuade to disarm.

Shooting briefly erupted during the melee outside parliament in Ramallah. Four Fatah supporters were injured by stones and broken glass before Palestinian security forces intervened.

In the wider Middle East, the Hamas victory was seen as strengthening the hand of those who favour democracy even at the risk of removing authoritarian Arab governments which themselves face Islamist opposition movements sympathetic to Hamas.

Despite weeks of armed chaos, voting in the first parliamentary election since 1996 was orderly, with about 900 foreign observers led by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter looking on. Turnout was 78 percent of the 1.3 million voters.

(Additional reporting by Wafa Amr and Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah, Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Jeffrey Heller and Matt Spetalnick in Jerusalem, Saul Hudson in Washington, Mark Trevelyan in Davos and Jonathan Wright in Cairo)

Link: Reuters

20.10.2005
Russia as a Bridgehead of HAMAS
AIA Staff

On October 18 the Kremlin's press service published a message from President Vladimir Putin to Israeli and Palestinian colleagues. In both documents he expresses the need for them to accept the aspirations of Russia for active participation in the further settlement of the Middle-Eastern conflict. Putin reminds them of his April initiative to convene a conference in Moscow devoted to this problem.

In a conversation with the AIA Israeli section expert, a high-ranking representative of the Israeli Staff on The Struggle Against Terrorism (LUTAR) accused the Kremlin of a policy of double standards. As he said, on the one hand Putin calls for settlement of the conflict and emphasizes "inadmissibility of terrorist actions " in his message to the President of Israel, but on the other hand Russia permits members and activists of radical Middle-Eastern organizations, such as Hezbollah, HAMAS, the Palestinian groups of "Islamic Jihad" to continue operating freely inits territory. LUTAR's expert noted that these organizations conduct struggle not only against Israel, but also against the official Palestinian leadership to which Moscow traditionally renders public support.

As solid proof of his words, AIA's informer tells about the October report of the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies (C.S.S.) which functions out of the Heritage Center Of Israeli Secret Services (MALAM). This report is devoted to the Internet infrastructure of HAMAS. The report proves that most of the major websites of this organization function via Russian Internet servers, and use Russian Internet companies. Moreover, MALAM discovered that a representative of HAMAS supervising the Internet issue operates out of Russia…

Link: Axis Information and Analysis

USSR2 File: Union of Russia and Belarus moving forward to restored Soviet Union

UPDATED: January 27, 2006.

The Union of Russia and Belarus, tentatively established in 1996, is but one component in a resuscitated USSR or, as we call it here, USSR2. As with the dismantling of the old Soviet Union in 1991, the Communists have delegated the task of building USSR2 to the FSB, which is the nom de jour of the Soviet security apparatus. Since the Russian President Vladimir Putin is not openly allied with the Communists, he can openly complete this project without generating too much suspicion in the West. Putin has revealed his sympathies for the appalling Soviet experiment in many ways, but his April 2005 comments are insightful:

"First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory. The epidemic of collapse has spilled over to Russia itself."

Had the West shown any concern over Comrade Czar Putin's lament, there should have been a surge in sales of do-it-yourself bunker kits. Alas not.

Notwithstanding the Communists' precautions, the fact that Comrade Czar Putin, whose slide into authoritarianism is now acknowledged by some Western leaders, would ally himself with the unreformed Communist dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, who is officially persona non grata in the European Union (Mike Gorbachev's "New European Soviet"), should raise a few eyebrows among even the most benighted denizens of the shopping mall regime. But it probably will not . . .

The resurrection of the Soviet Union is the stated goal of the reorganized Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), which rose from the dead, with little notice in the West, at a congress of the Union of Communist Parties-Communist Party of the Soviet Union (UCP-CPSU) in 2004. The website of the reorganized CPSU can be found here. (Yes, everyone has a website these days and, no, it's not a bad dream.) Dr. Evil, to the left, is none other than Oleg Shenin, who has held executive positions in the UCP-CPSU and is now chairman of the reorganized CPSU. Gennadi Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the largest communist party in "post-communist" Russia, has also held executive positions in the UCP-CPSU.

The UCP-CPSU was founded in 1993 as an umbrella organization to coordinate the political activities of the separate communist parties that emerged from the old CPSU in 1991. During that period, several communist factions claimed the name "CPSU," but the new CPSU spawned in 2004 by Shenin and Zyuganov looks like the real deal.

The existence of the new CPSU is most intriguing since the Soviet Union was supposedly dismantled on Christmas Day, 1991. Are Russian Communists engaged in wishful thinking or has the Soviet Union continued to exist in some phantom-like way for the last 15 years, lurking behind the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Union of Russia and Belarus? Were the essential building blocks for a revived Soviet Union left in place while the democratic countries rejoiced, just as they had in 1943, when the Comintern dismantled itself? Inquiring minds want to know.

The same observation can be made with respect to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the website of which can be visited here. Czechoslovakia allegedly split into two sovereign components, the Czech and Slovak Republics on January 1, 1993. Are Czech and Slovak Communists also engaged in wishful thinking or has old Czechoslovakia continued to exist in some phantom-like way for the last 13 years?

Will the answer be too painful for Westerners to confront? I fear so.

A little historical review always sheds light on current events. Hence, it is worth noting that at the CPSU's 28th Party Congress, in 1990, General Secretary Mike ("I'll Always Be a Communist") Gorbachev ordered his comrades to dissolve the CPSU into "new" parties, communist and "non-communist," in order to advance Moscow's long-range deception strategy against the West. It worked . . . and here we are in 2006.

The smug Eurocrats and Natocrats remain convinced that they have trumped the Evil Empire and expanded their organizations up to the borders of the Russian Federation. Nay, that is not the case. Rather, the USSR2 has infiltrated the EU and NATO with her Eastern European Trojan Horse satellite countries.

Thus, demilitarized and demoralized, with the last MX missile scrapped and little civil defense, unless you live in Switzerland, a few North Americans hope against hope that the Bush Administration's National Missile Defense will protect the continent from the odd North Korean nuke.

Meanwhile, will the next joint Sino-Russian military exercise, scheduled for 2006, morph into a real assault on the West? Is it too late? Well, you can always pray . . .

But you say, "That's not fair."

Ha ha. Got CD?

President Putin Says Russia and Belarus Need More Integration
Created: 24.01.2006 20:42 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 20:42 MSK, 3 hours 7 minutes ago
MosNews

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia and Belarus needed further integration.

“Citizens of our countries are waiting for consistent progress in Russian-Belarusian integration and practical solutions, consolidating its foundation and improving living standards in both countries,” Putin was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying at a session of the Supreme Council of the Russia-Belarus Union. “We should carry out serious and diligent work to justify their expectations.”

His Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko said: “This is a special year for Russian-Belarusian integration,” adding that ten years ago the two countries had made the right decision in forming the union.

He also said equal rights of Russians and Belarusians were a focus of the Supreme Council’s work.

Some agreements are ready to be signed, including: “agreements on social guarantees, freedom of movement, choice of residence and medical services,” Putin said.

Russian-Belarusian foreign political cooperation and a unified external border are among other priorities of the two countries, the Russian president said. “The existing programs in this sphere have proved their effectiveness.”

Putin said the two countries would also sign a document on the Union’s property “establishing a precise order of using and managing the joint property of our nations,” and would approve the Union’s budget.

“Its adoption will help to launch a range of the Union’s programs for cooperation,” Putin said.

Vladimir Putin is holding talks with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko in St. Petersburg will be followed by a session of the Supreme State Council of the Russia-Belarus Union State.

The idea of the state initially emerged in 1997 to foster political and economic integration, in particular by standardizing taxes and tariffs, but has largely remained on paper. Belarus was to adopt the Russian ruble as a single currency for the state in 2005, but the move has been postponed.

Link: Moscow News

Russia, Belarus Approve Joint 2006 Budget
Created: 20.01.2006 17:33 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 17:33 MSK
MosNews

The parliamentary assembly of the Union of Russia and Belarus have approved the budget of the Union State for 2006.

The assembly finished its session on Friday. The budget was set at 3.1 billion Russian rubles, ITAR-TASS news agency reported. Russia will deposit 1.76 billion rubles, Belarus 948 million rubles. The rest will come through Belarus’ debt redemption for the budgets of 2000-2003.

82 percent of the budget is allocated for 40 joint programs and projects. The two states have established a reserve fund of 3 million rubles that will be used if the union state’s Cabinet deems it is necessary.

Link: Moscow News

Communism with Canadian Characteristics: Conservative Party to form minority government

As predicted, Canada's new prime minister: Stephen Harper's "Da Man."

The outgoing PM, Paul Martin, is not only a millionaire shipping magnate, as the article below notes, but has close and unsavory ties with the Communist regime in Beijing. Martin, Jean Chretien, and their Liberal cohorts turned a blind eye to the RCMP's Sidewinder Report in 1997, which exposed the gigantic Chinese espionage ring in Canada, which remains fully functional to this day.

In the meanwhile, Canada remains a deeply divided society: regionally, culturally, and clearly politically: Conservatives: 124 seats; Liberals: 103 seats; Bloc Quebecois: 51 seats; New Democrats (Socialist International): 29 seats; Independent: 1 seat. I cannot foresee the new Conservative minority government working with any of the opposition parties, but anything's possible these days. Another election will probably be called within the next two years, unless some event can galvanize a majority of Canadians into a common cause. The only thing that comes to mind is a major terrorist attack on Canadian soil or the next world war, which is THE major topic under consideration in this blog.

Conservatives return to power
Norma Greenaway
CanWest News Service
Monday, January 23, 2006

UNDATED - Stephen Harper's Conservatives appeared headed on Monday towards winning a minority government, ending 12-years of Liberal rule and possibly delivering the death knell to Paul Martin's leadership.

The two-year-old Conservatives chalked up impressive gains in popular vote and seats across the country, scoring its first breakthrough in Quebec where Tory Lawrence Cannon was elected in the Pontiac riding.

"We're feeling pretty positive," declared re-elected Tory MP Peter MacKay, the party's deputy leader. "This is a party that is obviously on the move. We have more seats now than we have (had) in the past 12 years."

As the polls closed on the West Coast, CTV and the Global Network declared a Tory minority.

The Conservatives were leading or elected in 105 seats, compared with 89 for the Liberals, and 23 for the NDP, 49 for the BQ, one Green and one independent.

Early results showed the Tories getting good news in Atlantic Canada, picking off a seat in Newfoundland and Labrador, and also New Brunswick, where Andy Savoy, the popular chairman of the Liberal caucus lost his seat.

In Newfoundland, the Tories captured the Avalon seat held by the ailing John Efford, the Liberal cabinet minister who opted not to run this time. Still, the Liberals managed to hang on to four of the province's seven seats. They also kept all four seats in Prince Edward Island.

The NDP hung on to their three seats in the region - two in Nova Scotia, including the Halifax seat held by Alexa McDonough, and one in New Brunswick.

On the cabinet front, the Liberals re-elected New Brunswicker Andy Scott, minister of Indian and Northern Affairs; and Nova Scotian Scott Brison, a Tory turncoat who became minister of public works.

Former Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney said Harper has earned the victory by uniting the right.

"It reminds me of how difficult it is as a Conservative leader to bring this party to victory in a country like Canada. And so it's a tremendous tribute to Stephen Harper for what he was able to do in bringing about tonight's victory... Some of the decisions he made some time ago - first of all to reach out with Peter MacKay and unify the party, then to move the party to the centre, then to devise a campaign strategy, finally to execute it flawlessly - these are marks of leadership. Stephen Harper demonstrated that leadership, I thought, to a great degree."

Harper, a Toronto-born economist and former Reform MP who has pulled the Conservative party towards the political middle, promised to clean up government and to end the "culture of entitlement" that he says has marked successive Liberal governments.

Weighed down by the sponsorship scandal, Martin warned Canadian "values" would be at risk if Harper, who the Liberals portrayed as an ally and carbon-copy of the right-wing conservative ideologues in the U.S., got a chance to govern the country. The Liberal leader said a Tory government would hurt parents seeking quality child care and kill a $5-billion deal to combat aboriginal poverty.

NDP Leader Jack Layton, aiming to win the balance of power in the next Parliament, was bent from the outset of the election campaign on preventing his party's supporters from stampeding to the Liberals, as they did in the last election, to thwart a Conservative victory.

Polls leading up to vote suggested no party stood to get the 155 seats needed to score a majority in the House of Commons, and that another minority government was the most likely scenario.

Martin, a millionaire shipping magnate turned politician, and Harper are fighting for their political lives. A defeat for either one could spell the end of their leadership of their respective parties.

The battle for votes was a long, and oft-bitter exercise, with the 67-year-old Martin insisting to the end his ruling Grits were poised for a "remarkable comeback." Martin pleaded with "progressive" voters to rally around the Liberal banner to block the Conservatives.

Harper's aggressive policy-a-day campaign drew to a cautious close. The Alberta transplant, sniffing newfound acceptance in Ontario and Quebec, spent the bulk of the last week stumping for votes in ridings the party hoped to steal from the Liberals in Ontario and the Bloc Quebecois and the Liberals in Quebec. Though he steered clear of declaring premature victory, Harper, 46, sounded more and more like a prime-minister-in-waiting than the front-runner.

He has promised to pursue five main priorities, starting with a federal accountability act aimed at curbing the influence of big money and lobbyists in Ottawa, and widespread tax relief for families and business. He also vowed to provide direct annual payments of $1,200 to parents for each child under the age of six; to crack down on crime; and to provide guaranteed wait times to allow patients to travel to other jurisdictions, including the United States, to get medical treatment.

The vote ended a gruelling eight-week campaign loaded with promises, polls and punditry. Along the way, there were memorable photo opportunities, not always good, such as the wheel falling off Martin's wagon in Regina, and missteps, such as internal party confusion over Harper's early promise to create an independent federal prosecutor.

The viewing public was also subjected to biting and negative ads from all the major parties.

To no one's surprise, Ontario and British Columbia were major battlegrounds as the three major parties battled for supremacy in key ridings. The newly flush Green party was a factor in only a handful of B.C. ridings, threatening to pull critical votes away from Liberal and NDP candidates.

To almost everyone's surprise, however, the Conservatives rose to become a potential force in Quebec. Anger over the sponsorship scandal in ‘la belle province' proved to be the gift that kept on giving - not only to the Bloc Quebecois - but also the Tories, the only place confirmed federalist voters had to plant their vote if they could not bring themselves to vote Liberal.

The improved Conservative fortunes forced Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe to shift gears late in the campaign to target Harper as an Albertan whose interests are at odds with Quebecers approach to the environment, child care and other programs.

From the outset, the Conservative strategy was clear.

Use the opening weeks of the campaign to insulate Harper from accusations the Conservatives harboured a "hidden agenda" by rolling out a steady stream of policy announcements on everything from same-sex marriage to the eye-catching promise to cut the GST from seven per cent to five per cent in the first mandate of a Tory government.

The Boxing Day murder of a Toronto teenager, gunned down while she was shopping on Yonge Street, played into Harper's tough law-and-order platform.

The Liberals, operating on the assumption few voters would tune in over the Christmas holiday season, waited until the New Year to kick into serious campaign mode. By then, Martin was hobbled by revelations the RCMP was conducting a "criminal investigation" into whether there was a leak of Finance Minister Ralph Goodale's decision not to change the tax treatment of income trusts.

In the final weeks, Martin's policy platform took a backseat to his campaign to paint Harper as a dangerous leader who would threaten a woman's right to choose, plunge the federal treasury back into deficit, and turn his back on Liberal commitments to build a national child care program and comply with the Kyoto climate change accord.

Layton's final tactic involved pleading with Canadians to "lend" the NDP their vote, just this once, to prevent what he called that "smoking hulk" of a Liberal Party from hanging on to power.

Ottawa Citizen/ with files from Glenn Johnson (CanWest News Service)

Link: Canada.com

Red Terror File: Blowing up Georgia, the FSB's energy imperialism, and the communist dialectic

Georgia on my mind. No, not that Georgia. The other Georgia. Russia, Venezuela, and Nigeria are also on my mind. Big oil producers. Unfriendly, anti-Western governments. Marxist insurgents. Pipeline attacks. Mysterious rash of oil refinery explosions in the USA throughout 2003 and 2004 . . . black gold blackmail. Is Georgia on General Patrushev's mind too? Patrushev (left) assumed Comrade Czar Putin's role as FSB director.

The pipeline sabotage in the first report below occurred on January 22, 2006 in North Ossetia, scene of the September 2004 Beslan school massacre. According to ex-FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko and Chechen separatists, this tragedy was a Kremlin provocation. Other unusual circumstances surrounding the school massacre, such as the stashing of weapons in the school during summer renovations and the detaining and drugging of independent journalists traveling to Beslan to cover the event, heavily imply official complicity.

The FSB is also active in South Ossetia, where Georgian officials predicted covert operations only a few days ago, as the second article, published on January 18, 2006, notes.

Russia Accused of Sabotaging Georgia
Civil Georgia / 2006-01-22 17:37:12

Tbilisi has blamed Moscow for masterminding “series of sabotage acts” against Georgia after high-voltage power line and two vital gas pipelines exploded in Russia’s North Caucasus early on January 22. President Saakashvili said that Georgia is now experiencing the worst sabotage carried out by the Russian Federation and described the latter as “an unprincipled blackmailer.”

Two blasts with 20-minute of interval hit main and reserve gas pipelines in Russia’s North Ossetia cutting off gas supply to Georgia and Armenia. In the Russia’s Republic of Karachaevo-Cherkessia, between the villages of Karachaevsk and Uchketin high-voltage power line delivering electricity from Russia into Georgia was also blown up.

The Russian General Prosecutor’s Office has initiated criminal case for “deliberate damage of property” over expositions of gas pipelines. Russian officials said explosives equivalent to 700-800 grams of TNT went off. Reportedly it will take at four days to restore main gas pipeline.

Consumers rushed to the gas stations in Tbilisi and spent hours in queues to fill gas stockpile immediately after the officials announced that gas supply was expected to stop by the evening on Sunday.

President Saakashvili made a televised addressed by the noon and called on the Russia to “immediately restore gas supply.”

He said that explosion of two gas pipelines was a “heavy sabotage” against Georgia “carried out by the Russian Federation.”

He said that Russian officials’ response and explanations to the current situation are “absolutely unsatisfactory and contradictory.”

Saakashvili said that Georgia has always been a victim of Russia’s pressure. “We have to deal with an unprincipled blackmailer, I can not call it [Russia] otherwise,” Saakashvili said.

“Threats like these were heard from the Russian politicians: you will be left without heat, without electricity… And this happened when there is the coldest winter in Georgia,” Saakashvili added.

He said that against the background of persisting blackmail Russia has demanded from Georgia to sell its trunk gas pipeline. “We are ready to consider any kind of commercial proposal, but we will not do anything in case of blackmail,” Saakashvili said. “Those in the Kremlin should understand that they will fail to achieve something with blackmail,” he added.

Saakashvili also said that he has ordered to halt courses in the schools and high education centers before restoration of gas supply.

Shortly after the President’s televised addressed, Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili convened a news conference and blamed Russia for masterminding sabotage against Georgia.

“It is a fact that this is one of the unique cases when one country carries out sabotage against anther with such a covert way. You know that last year was marked with several terrorist acts in Georgia but all of them have been investigated and it seems that [certain forces] can not dare any more to mastermind terrorist acts on the Georgian territory,” Merabishvili said.

Deputy Foreign Minister Valery Chechelashvili said at a news conference that Georgian diplomatic missions have been instructed to inform leadership of respective countries about the developments.

He also said that Georgia expects that Azerbaijan will start gas supply to Georgia based on bilateral agreement between Tbilisi and Baku.

But he also warned that gas pipeline from Azerbaijan might not operate with full capacity, because of its “technical conditions.”

“This pipe has not been in operation for a long time already and some technical flaw might occur. So it is very difficult to say what amount and when exactly gas will be supplied, although we are receiving hopeful information in this regard,” Chechelashvili added.

Officials also say that it will take at least two days to fill this pipeline with Azeri gas.

The Russian energy giant Gazprom’s representative to Georgia Davit Morchiladze said at a news conference on January 22 that Gazprom is ready to provide Georgia with gas via Azerbaijan. He said that Gazprom will increase gas supply to Azerbaijan so that the latter could provide gas to Georgia.

Morchiladze said that Georgia was receiving about 7 million cubic meters of gas per day. In case of gas delivery via Azerbaijan, Gazprom will be able to provide Georgia with 4-5 million cubic meters of gas per day.

Link: Civil Georgia

Georgian Minister fears the Russian FSB's activity in South Ossetia
18.01.2006 09:14 (GMT)

Georgian parliamentary leaders say they are sticking to their demand of the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers from South Ossetia next month if evidence shows they have failed to improve their performance. Immediately when the spring parliamentary session opens on February 7, the legislative body will hold hearings on the performance of the Russian troops. Key testimony will come from Minister of Defense Irakli Okruashvili - who had already said he is against the peacekeeping force - and Minister of Foreign Affairs Gela Bezhuashvili. On October 11, 2005, Parliament adopted a decree that if the verdict from the hearings is negative, starting February, 15 Georgian will demand the withdrawal of the Russian peacekeeping forces from the South Ossetian Conflict zone, Messenger.ge reported. State Minister for Conflict Resolution Goga Khaindrava, who has expressed caution over such a strong resolution, on Monday called for a portion of the hearing to be closed so he can present documents concerning the possible dangers resulting from the enforcement of the resolution. "The Russian FSB reigns in the Tskhinvali region and allegedly, we should be ready for very serious excesses and provocations," he warned, adding "First of all the people who like making loud public statements should take this fact into account."

Link: Axis Information and Analysis

Russia has no intention of letting Georgia or any other former Soviet republic slip from its orbit. This certainly also applies to Ukraine, which experienced the Kremlin's energy imperialism on New Year's Day, when state-owned Gazprom shut the taps on pipelines heading into Ukraine and Western Europe. Alexander Medvedev, the director of Gazprom, is an old buddy of Comrade Czar Putin. No doubt, the chain of Kremlin energy imperialism finds its nexus there. Medvedev has been a close associate of Putin since working with the current Russian president in the office of Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor of St. Petersburg, in the early 1990s. He was later promoted to deputy head of the Putin Cabinet administration, then deputy to Kremlin chief of staff Alexander Voloshin. Medvedev took over Voloshin's role in 2003. He is currently a Management Committee Member at Gazprom and Gazexport’s Director General.

By the way, in a 1994 Associated Press report Sobchak contended that the KGB created "new" Russia's political parties. (See this site's very first blog.) Sobchak died in 2000, apparently by natural causes, but you can never be too sure in "post-communist" Russia.

In truth, a combination of sinister forces is prompting the drying up and redirecting of oil supplies worldwide. In Venezuela, Chavez's communist regime has seized all private oil fields and in Nigeria insurgents are blowing up pipelines and forcing those evil capitalists like Shell to evacuate oil rig employees. Nigerian insurgents like the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force are motivated by Marxism. The Niger Delta Manifesto, published in 2003, clearly testifies to the communist dialectic of advance and retreat, peace and war, in which history inexorably tends, in the communist's delusional imagination, toward that Shangri-la known as the workers' paradise. Note the reference to Saint "Comrade" Mandela. Note also the praise heaped on China, which still marches to the dialectical two step. Gorby's alleged treachery, described below, is merely an internal squabble among Marxists and it may be that this manifesto drafter was purposely kept out of the loop.

Africa's freedom from colonial and racist rule was part of this universal harvest of socialism. The African chapter of the global drama came to a kind of end in 1994 when Comrade Nelson Mandela became the first elected president of post-apartheid South Africa. Nigeria's flag independence in 1960 was a dividend of this socialist renaissance. The course of change as Vladimir Lenin of the Soviet Union warned many years ago, moves in leaps and zigzags. Reverses have been recorded; the former Soviet Union has fallen to the treachery of Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika. All of the Eastern European nations in the socialist orbit have succumbed to dollar pressures and "fleecing" enterprise. Tanzania, Ghana, Guinea Conakry and Guinea-Bissau have also fallen into the snares of Structural Adjustment Poison (SAP). For the Nigerian Left, it has been no longer at ease as the invitation to this conference acutely recalls. Yet China which hosts one-fifth of the world's population marches on with a dialectical compass. In the last ten years of post-Soviet Union tragedy, China's economy has been the fastest growing in the world. And we the Nigerian survivors of the turbulent zigzag are gathered here to celebrate and rev our imagination to go forward and multiply in compliance with the summons of the Manifesto.

See the Niger Delta Manifesto here.

Communism with Canadian Characteristics: Communism in Canada to receive mild slap on wrist on January 23

Since the West's military strength and "former" communists occupy much of our time here at Once Upon a Time in the West, I might point out two things regarding Monday's election in my homeland of Canada:

1) Unlike all other party leaders in Canada, Stephen Harper (left), leader of the Conservatives, actually cares about the security of Canada and is not averse to the ballistic missile defense of North America, and

2) Gilles Duceppe, the leader of the Bloc Quebecois, is another one of these "former" communists. I kid you not. Of course, Gilles describes it as "youthful folly." Was Gorby's prosecution of the war in Afghanistan "youth folly"? I guess so.

Of course, to one extent or another, all of the major political parties in Canada are a shade of red, even the Conservatives, an amalgamation of the right-populist Canadian Alliance, based in Western Canada, and the old Progressive Conservative Party. Note the word "progressive," which is standard Marxist jargon.

Opponents of social conservativism, such as our beloved soon-to-be-consigned-to-the-dustbin-of-history prime minister, as the article notes below, are spitting nails right now in Canada. "God forbid that any social conservatives should sit in the Canadian Parliament," they pontificate. "We like our sin. Leave us alone, you nasty ol' Bible thumpers. Why don't you move to the USA?" OK. Happily.

In truth, the culture wars that have wracked Western Civilization over the last 40 years are not unrelated to the Soviet strategic deception. Hence, the subtitle of our blog.

I advance voted, so I'm just kicking back here to watch the Conservatives form the next government, minority or otherwise. It ain't perfect, but it's the best we're gonna get for now.

Harper predicts victory
Don Martin, Allan Woods and Norma Greenaway
CanWest News Service
Saturday, January 21, 2006

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. -- The eight-week campaign to select Canada's next federal government entered its frenetic final weekend with one pollster saying Conservative Leader Stephen Harper is certain to win at least a minority Monday, while Prime Minister Paul Martin's Liberals pulled out all the stops in a cross-country bid to hold on to power.

"I think my efforts are paying off and that we actually are going to be able not just to elect a government, but to elect a government that looks a lot more like the country than the Liberal party could possibly elect right now," Harper said in an interview with CanWest News Service.

A new poll by Ipsos Reid for CanWest News Service and Global National suggests Canadians will elect a strong minority Conservative government Monday with a solid NDP check on its power. The survey also says the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois under Gilles Duceppe are in a tight battle for official Opposition status.

Darrell Bricker, president of the polling firm, says the survey's bottom line is Harper will be the next prime minister.

"Harper is going to win on Monday night, there is no question about that," Bricker said in an interview.

The poll suggests the Tories enjoyed the support of 38 per cent of respondents, up one point from the previous week. By contrast, the Liberals were down three points to 26 per cent.

The NDP climbed one point to 19 per cent and the Green party was unchanged at five per cent.Barring a weekend surge, the Conservatives are unlikely to score the 155 seats they need for a majority in the 308-seat House of Commons.

"They are pretty well at the top of their cycle," Bricker said.

Based on its findings, Ipsos Reid projects the Conservatives could win 143 to 147 seats.

The Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois could take 59 to 63 seats each, and the NDP 39 to 43 seats, more than double their number in the 2004 election.

In an interview aboard his campaign bus in southern Ontario, Harper vowed to deal with regional alienation, giving the West a place of power in his administration.

"The West just wants a bigger part in running the country and a more important place in the country, to know that it's not just an appendage of the country," Harper said Friday. "My mandate will be judged by dealing with western alienation. I could never fail on it. If I can't do it, who's going to do it?"

Harper told CanWest if the tide turns abruptly and the Conservatives lose the election on the last weekend to Liberal fearmongering, the loss would divide the country, deep freeze relations with the United States and leave Parliament adrift without an agenda.

"The Liberals are trying to win this election by running in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. It means that if they pull it off, you're going to end up with a badly fractured country. That sends a message to a lot of Canadians that the federal government is corrupt and can't be fixed. That's a pretty serious consequence, but I don't think we're going to be there."

Speaking to voters in southern Ontario, Harper also sought to distance himself from Liberal attacks that he would move Canada sharply to the right wing of the political spectrum.

"Mr. Martin is talking now ... about highly divisive issues because he has laid out no positive vision for this country," Harper said.

"I don't think it's what people want to hear ... and I also think people know he's doing this because he can't get past the scandal and the corruption that keep happening, and keep happening right in the middle of the campaign itself."

Martin's campaign continued Friday to portray Harper as a political bogeyman, accusing him of keeping outspoken candidates out of the spotlight in order to muzzle them.

"With each day that passes, it's getting harder and harder for Stephen Harper to keep his socially conservative, far-right candidates out of the public eye," he said in St. John's, N.L. "They're still there. They're just in hiding."

Martin identified several of the candidates by name, including Harold Albrecht, Cheryl Gallant, Rob Merrifield, David Sweet and Rob Anders.

"I don't know where they are," said Martin.

"Maybe they're all in some kind of a safe house, minding their time, watching Jeopardy."Martin said he is not engaging in personal attacks or negative politics, insisting he has is shining a spotlight on the actual words of Harper and his candidates."I would take great exception that I'm playing fast and loose. It's never been my politics."

Martin continued to hammer away at his main rival.

"The bottom line is this: That any Parliament with Stephen Harper as prime minister is a Parliament that will put a woman's right to choose in jeopardy. And we need to hear Mr. Harper's position, his whole position. It is not complex."

"And so to Stephen Harper, I issue a simple challenge: 'Tell us what you really think. Yes or no. Do you support a woman's right to choose or not? Will you protect a woman's right to choose?'"

Conservative candidate Rona Ambrose said Martin is doing a great disservice to women when he tries to scare them on issues like abortion.

"The position is that we support a woman's right to choose," she said, repeating positions outlined by Harper.

"Mr. Harper has been very clear about this both to our caucus members before we left Parliament and we have a very clear position on this. This is not going to be an issue raised in Parliament. A Conservative government, if elected, will not introduce legislation on this issue.

"In Vancouver, NDP Leader Jack Layton unleashed the most fiery speech of his campaign, calling on voters to abandon what he predicted will be the "smoking hulk" of a defeated Liberal party."

Mr. Martin is trying to perpetrate one more Liberal fraud in this election, hoping you'll reward him one more time with your vote," Layton said. "He says you have to hold your nose and vote Liberal. Again he's saying this. Well Paul, it's not working this time."

Jack Layton found himself in a position similar to the late stages of the last election -- trying to ensure that his supporters actually cast their votes for NDP candidates, instead of strategically voting to lift up the Liberals or hold back the Conservatives.

Layton verged on mocking the prime minister's troubled campaign, saying he was busy fighting the Tories while Martin "puddle jumps from Liberal riding to Liberal riding, trying to save the furniture."

Duceppe warned Quebec voters against giving Harper a blank cheque with a mandate Monday.

He also said the federal government should not fund any challenge by anglophone groups of Quebec government laws or policies but should maintain funding for francophones in other provinces who want to contest actions of other provinces. Duceppe has called on Harper not to provide funding for anglo Quebec activists or anyone who wants to challenge Bill 101.

"Bilingualism could be great progress in the rest of Canada. This is not the case in Quebec," he said.

The poll of 2,000 people, conducted between Tuesday and Thursday, the last one CanWest will publish before voters go to the polls Monday, is considered accurate within 2.2 percentage points 19 times out of 20.

With files from Mark Kennedy, James Gordon (Ottawa Citizen) and Elizabeth Thompson (Montreal Gazette)

Link: Canada.com

Middle East File: Iranian opposition: Regime planning nuke test before March 20, 2006

If true, the USA and Israel might speed up their plans to smack Iran. Be assured, however, that Iran, a client state of Russia, will do little or nothing without assurances of the Kremlin's protection.

The Islamic regime is perhaps sensing its impending demise and pulling its foreign reserves out of European banks in this January 20, 2006 report. The Swiss bank UBS AG has also terminated business with Axis of Evil twins Iran and Syria, in this January 22 report.

1/19/2006 7:59:00 PM -0500
Tehran plans nuclear weapon test by March

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 (UPI) -- Tehran is planning a nuclear weapons test before the Iranian New Year on March 20, 2006 says a group opposed to the regime in Tehran.

The Foundation for Democracy citing sources in the U.S and Iran offered no further information.

The FDI quotes sources in Iran that the high command of the Revolutionary Guards Air Force have issued new orders to Shahab-3 missile units, ordering them to move mobile missile launchers every 24 hours in view of a potential pre-emptive strike by the U.S. or Israel. The order was issued Tuesday, Jan. 16.

The group says the launchers move only at night, and have been instructed to change their positions "in a radius of 30 to 35 kilometers." Prior to the new orders the Shahab-3 units changed position on a weekly basis. Advance Shahab-3 units have been positioned in Kermanshah and Hamadan province, within striking distance of Israel. Reserve mobile launchers have been moved to Esfahan and Fars province.

Link: UPI

Latin America File: Sandinistas poised for a comeback in Nicaragua's 2006 presidential election

Too bad Ronny's not around anymore. Looks like GW may be crossing swords with not only Chavez but a revitalized Ortega.

Ortega, Again
by Otto J. Reich

Twenty years ago this summer, Washington’s hottest debate centered on the Contras’ war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua—and how to keep the nations of Central America from falling into the hands of Marxist terrorists or right-wing death squads. It was the equivalent of today’s Iraq debate. The eventual victory of freedom in Nicaragua came at a cost of tens of thousands of lives—and it is now in jeopardy.
The hard Left in Latin America has learned its lessons: It is no longer trying to gain power by force, because it fears (with just cause) the unmatched power of the United States and the willingness of recent Republican presidents to use it in the defense of freedom; it is therefore resorting to political warfare to regain power, and one of its battlefields is again Nicaragua.

In many ways the fight 20 years ago was simpler. On one side, the Sandinistas—armed, organized, trained, and supported by the USSR, Cuba, and an assortment of international terrorist groups—were determined to impose a Communist dictatorship. On the other side, the armed Contras and the unarmed Nicaraguan resistance—supported by the U.S.—were trying to prevent Nicaragua from falling into the totalitarian abyss. Today’s battle is more complicated: Two bad actors of the 1980s, Daniel Ortega and Arnoldo Alemán, are trying to wrest power from the duly elected president, Enrique Bolaños. Alemán and Bolaños were anti-Sandinistas, but that is where the similarity ends. After a successful run as mayor of Managua, the then-popular Alemán became president in the mid-1990s and proceeded to treat the country as his personal fief and bank, as the Somoza family had done before him—stealing food from the mouths of a population that years of war and Sandinista misrule had turned into the poorest in the region.

Suddenly Alemán resembled more the kleptomaniac, autocratic Ortega than the democrat he had claimed to be. Since his election, Alemán had stolen so much money that he needed protection. Who better to provide it than Ortega, who controlled the Sandinista congressmen and most of the judicial branch? One might well ask how a despicable party boss like Ortega can control a nation’s judiciary. The answer lies in the agreement signed late on the night the Sandinistas—unexpectedly—lost the 1990 election. Ortega’s first reaction to his defeat was to refuse to accept the verdict of the people and to threaten to remain in power by force. But the presence of many international observers prevented such an obvious self-coup. So, to relinquish the presidency, Ortega demanded a disproportionate number of congressional seats and retention of the judges the Sandinistas had installed during their eleven years of rule. The vast majority of the judges now answered to Ortega.

Like Alemán, Ortega also needed protection: He had been accused of massive human-rights violations during his ten years as leader, for which the Sandinista-controlled Assembly amnestied him. Later, his stepdaughter publicly and convincingly accused him of sexually abusing her over many years. Ortega now needed the support of the person whose party had gained control of a majority in the Assembly to avoid the legal complications of the abuse charges: the corrupt Arnoldo Alemán. In 2000, Alemán and Ortega decided to enter into a Pact.

In essence, the Pact was an attempt to put the entire government under the control of those two party strongmen, while at the same time leaving in place the façade of independent democratic institutions. In January 2002, President Bolaños took office and soon launched an internationally recognized anti-corruption campaign. Against great odds, and in spite of the fact that Ortega and Alemán controlled the National Assembly and the Supreme Court, Alemán was convicted on corruption charges.

The Ortega-Alemán alliance has been striking back at President Bolaños with a vengeance. First, Ortega used his control of the judges to release Alemán from prison, and to allow him to serve his corruption sentence under house arrest at Alemán’s own luxury ranch. Then, in October 2004, the two Pact leaders attempted a legislative coup d’état. They tried to bring trumped-up charges of election-finance violations against Bolaños, in order to remove him from office. An immediate outcry from much of the international community and Nicaraguan civil society cut this attempt short. Finally, in November 2004, Ortega and Alemán decided that if they could not seize control of the executive branch of government they would simply strip it of its power.

The National Assembly began to pass a series of laws and constitutional “reforms” designed to transfer a great deal of power to the National Assembly: The effect would be to create a “mega-legislature” more powerful than any legislative body in the Western Hemisphere, and to leave the executive branch virtually powerless.

In a normal democracy, Bolaños could have turned to the Supreme Court for protection against a naked power grab by the legislative branch. But the Nicaraguan Supreme Court is one of the most discredited institutions in the country: Because of the Pact, its members have been personally selected by Ortega or Alemán, and they respond to orders from their party bosses. La Prensa, Nicaragua’s largest most respected newspaper, had this to say on June 6 about the Supreme Court: “The worst part of this fight between the Executive and the Legislature is that the Judiciary cannot resolve it, because it is not independent, rather it obeys one of the parties of the conflict and therefore it lacks the authority and credibility to judge and resolve such a case.” To understand the character of the Nicaraguan Supreme Court, it helps to know that it may be the only supreme court in the world on which three sitting justices have had their U.S. visas revoked because of corruption.

Under these circumstances, President Bolaños was left with few options if he wished to defend the bedrock democratic principle of separation and independence of powers. He appealed to the Organization of American States, which in 2001 had adopted the Inter-American Democratic Charter, committing all member nations to be “representative democracies.” Article 3 of the charter requires that OAS member states have “separation of powers and independence of the branches of government.” Bolaños also brought suit against the National Assembly in the Central American Court of Justice (CCJ). The regional court ruled early in 2005 that the attempted constitutional reforms violated the OAS Inter-American Democratic Charter, two Central American treaties, and Nicaragua’s own constitution. The National Assembly responded by ordering up an instant ruling from the ever-compliant Nicaraguan Supreme Court claiming the CCJ did not have jurisdiction, despite the fact that Nicaragua is a signatory of the treaty. On April 1, the presidents of all the Central American nations jointly issued a statement supporting President Bolaños.

The new secretary-general of the OAS, former Chilean foreign minister José Miguel Insulza, is trying to find a peaceful solution to the crisis—which is now nearing a boiling point. There are currently two competing sources of authority in the country: President Bolaños, backed by the Central American Court of Justice, much of Nicaraguan civil society, and the international community; and the Ortega/Alemán-controlled National Assembly, backed by the rubber-stamp Supreme Court, the National Prosecutor’s Office, and National Comptroller’s Council, all headed by appointees of the Pact.

No one can predict how this crisis will end; violence is possible. The police and the army are currently taking their orders from Bolaños, but the Pact is pressing to convince the police that they must obey orders from the courts. If the Pact convinces the police to switch sides, Ortega and Alemán can complete their planned takeover of the executive power. There is little doubt that the Sandinista party, with its history of orchestrating violent street demonstrations for political effect, could try to make Nicaragua ungovernable and attempt to remove Bolaños from office. The Pact would be in virtual control of all branches of government, and the way opened for the manipulation of a fraudulent Ortega “election” to the presidency in 2006.

Nicaragua is a test case for the OAS’s new Inter-American Democratic Charter. Two of democracy’s cleverest enemies in Central America—Ortega and Alemán—have refined a technique of hollowing out democratic institutions from the inside in order to illegitimately rule a country from their position as political party bosses. We may soon get an indication of whether the OAS has been able to keep pace with the times, and has evolved techniques and methods of its own to confront successfully these new types of challenges to democracy in the hemisphere. Friends of freedom and democracy should be paying close attention, and supporting Nicaragua’s elected leader, Enrique Bolaños. The neighborhood’s enemies of freedom are also watching, and probably doing more than that.

—National Review, July 18, 2005, p. 26f

Latin America File: Chinese special forces train Venezuelans, provide security detail for Chavez

The government of the People's Republic of China has moved aggressively into the Western Hemisphere with extensive espionage and state-sponsored organized crime rings, commercial port facilities, and indirect control of the Panama Canal. Taking into account the numerous Cuban advisors in Red Venezuela, here we see the Asian and Latin American components of the Communist Bloc in action, tightening like a noose around North America.

China Trains Venezuelan Commandos
January 20, 2006:

Three years ago, the United States withdrew U.S. Army Special Forces instructors, who had been training Venezuelan special operations soldiers. Venezuela has resumed that training, using several hundred instructors from the Chinese special forces (Quantou Budui). The Chinese have been in Venezuela for about six months, and are training Venezuelan troops in recon techniques, and counter-terrorism tactics. The Chinese speak good Spanish, and are apparently enjoying their assignment. Over a hundred other Chinese troops are also providing personal security for Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. China has also sent some intelligence specialists, who are helping Venezuela to upgrade their military intelligence capabilities. The Chinese are apparently very interested in finding out about the training techniques used by the American Special Forces instructors, and the Venezuelans are telling all they know.

Link: Strategy Page

USSR2 File: Foreign news agencies in CIS prevented from broadcasting in recent weeks

If these issues are not corrected in the very near future, one must conclude that Putin's neo-Soviet FSB state is reducing the avenues by which Russians and other citizens of the CIS can obtain factual information and Western perspectives.

Tajikistan Suspends BBC Radio Broadcasts
Created: 19.01.2006 16:11 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:11 MSK
MosNews

Tajikistan has suspended the BBC’s local FM radio service. The country passed a law requiring foreign media outlets with FM services to register with the Justice Ministry.

The new law gives 20 days as of January for a radio station to re-register. The BBC said it was impossible to gather all the necessary documents before that “unrealistic” deadline. It might take about six months, the broadcasting corporation said.

However, the station will continue to broadcast on short and medium wave.

Britain’s envoy to Tajikistan, Graeme Loten, quoted by Reuters, called the situation “extraordinary” and said in a statement the embassy had spoken to the Tajik Foreign Ministry to express its concern. “I can only assume that the suspension of BBC programmes has come about because of a misunderstanding,” he said. “But if that is the case then really the best way forward would be for the government of Tajikistan to allow the BBC programmes back on air.”

Tajik officials insisted there was nothing sinister about the move, which affected broadcasts in the capital Dushanbe and the northern city of Khojand. “This is simply a procedural question,” Igor Sattarov, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, told reporters. “We’re working with the Justice Ministry and the BBC to resolve this.”

Tajikistan faced international criticism for tightening the screws ahead of presidential polls later this year in which the current leader Imomali Rakhmonov will seek re-election for another seven-year term. Rakhmonov has run the state since 1992.

Link: Moscow News

Broadcasters off the air in Russia
December 23, 2005

INTERNATIONAL broadcasters BBC and Germany's Deutsche Welle have been knocked off the air in Moscow.

Konstantin Eggert, Moscow bureau editor for the BBC's Russian service, said the company which broadcasts the corporation's programs had lost its licence, causing it to lose its medium wave transmission in the Russian capital.

"We officially have a right to broadcast. We were not the ones who lost the right to broadcast, it was the service provider," he said.

Grigory Kliger, head of the Oktod operating company, told Moscow's Ekho Moskvy radio the licence for the frequency had run out and the documents needed to renew it had not been ready in time.

Russian news agencies reported the service provider, which broadcasts the British Broadcasting Corporation's news in Russian along with English-language programming, did not have a licence from the federal agency that regulates programming.

A spokesman for the agency, Rosokhrankultura, told Interfax news agency the BBC made its broadcasts without a broadcasting licence.

"The BBC only had a technical licence from the Communications Ministry, but it did not have a licence from (our agency)," the spokesman said.

But other officials said the problem arose from a mix-up rather than from any desire to halt the broadcasts.
The BBC is well-known and prestigious in Russia and its service was popular in Soviet times for Russians keen to find a Western source of news.

Meanwhile, Deutsche Welle (DW) said today it had stopped medium-wave transmissions in Russia because Moscow had taken away its radio frequencies.

Russian officials told DW there were frequency and licensing problems, the broadcaster said. DW has been negotiating with Russian authorities for months for a new licence.

"I'm very concerned and hope the interruption in transmissions will not last for more than a few days," said Miodrag Soric, editor in chief of DW Radio.

The DW bureau in Moscow confirmed the broadcasts could no longer be heard in the city on the medium-wave band. DW had been broadcasting in German and Russian alternately.

In Berlin, the German Foreign Office said it was in intensive talks with the Russian authorities and sought "a solution so that Deutsche Welle can go back on air as soon as possible".

Wolfgang Boernsen, a Christian Democratic party spokesman on media issues, demanded that former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder phone Russian President Vladimir Putin and seek a restoration of the transmission rights

Link: The Australian

Grey Terror File: Bin Laden breaks one-year silence with new tape; second tape features Zawahiri

Osama bin Laden's lieutenant, Egyptian Ayman Al-Zawahiri, according to the testimonies of ex-FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko and others, is an agent of the Russian Federal Security Service. Al-Zawahiri trained at an FSB camp in Dagestan for six months, sometime between 1996 and 1998, depending on which authorities are consulted.



ANOTHER al Qaeda Audiotape - Latest from Ayman al Zawahiri

20 January 2006: An audiotape posted on an Islamic website is purportedly that of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command of al Qaeda’s terror network. Al Zawahiri was the reported target of a U.S. air strike in Pakistan last week.

The 18-minute tape was posted with text that stated that it is "a new speech by Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri, may God protect him".

The message was delivered in the style of classical Arabic poetry, and al Zawahiri praises "the martyrs of the Crusader campaign against Afghanistan." This audio message was posted a day after Al-Jazeera television broadcast an audiotape by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, warning of pending attacks in the "heartland" of the United States.

"Same intonation, same praises and proses, but different audio segments," stated one analyst.

21 January 2006: UPDATED: In a seemingly ever-evolving news story, intelligence analysts now confirm that the 18-minute recording posted on an Internet web site is indeed that of terrorist leader Ayman al Zawahiri. In this audio message, he praises those who were killed in the US air strike in the Damadola village in Pakistan, where US forces reportedly targeted a house they believed al-Zawahiri was in. Previous reports by analysts of the audio message strongly suggested that the message was NOT new, but a new release of a 2001 audio message by al Zawahiri mourning members of al Qaeda who were killed in Afghanistn during 2001.

Link: Northeast Intelligence Network

Bin Laden Threat Points to Imminent Attack, Analyst Says
By Sherrie Gossett, Staff Writer
CNSNews.com
January 20, 2006

(CNSNews.com) - An audio statement by Osama bin Laden broadcast on al-Jazeera television Thursday appears to be related to recent threats made by an al Qaeda front in Europe and points to an imminent attack, according to a Washington-based analyst.

Christopher L. Brown of the Hudson Institute earlier this month analyzed the Jan. 6 videotaped message of Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's chief deputy. The tape, Brown said, and other al Qaeda communications indicated a high probability that al Qaeda would launch a major terrorist attack in the next 30 days and that the United States was the likeliest target.

Cybercast News Service reported on Brown's analysis in an exclusive report published on Jan. 11. Brown, a researcher with a Washington think tank, has briefed members of Congress and senior administration officials on key threats. He has also prepared testimony and briefing materials for officials at the Department of Defense, State Department, CIA, National Security Council and White House.

"The new operation of al Qaeda has not happened, not because we could not penetrate the security measures," bin Laden said during the broadcast. "It is being prepared, and you'll see it in your homeland very soon.

"The al Qaeda leader also offered a truce to the American people, referring to polls that indicate the majority of U.S. citizens favor troop withdrawal from Iraq.

"We are a nation that Allah banned from lying and stabbing others in the back," said bin Laden. "Hence, both parties of the truce will enjoy stability and security to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, which were destroyed by war."

Brown told Cybercast News Service that approximately "six to eight weeks ago," the Abu-Hafs al-Masri Brigades -- an al Qaeda front headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- posted threats on the Internet promising attacks soon in the "land of the Romans," adding that bin Laden would make an appearance "around the Christmas holidays."

Intelligence officials are now saying they believe the bin Laden audiotape was made in December. "That makes sense to me," Brown said. "The Jan. 6 [Zawahiri] video was likely also made in middle to early December.

"The Brigades is one of the primary front names for al Qaeda operations in Europe and North America.

Earlier this month Brown as well as Dan Darling of the Manhattan Institute for Policing Terrorism, told Cybercast News Service that the "land of the Romans" could be a symbolic reference to the United States as the great imperial power of the age.

He added that it could also be a reference to the "Romanesque" architecture in Washington, D.C.

Bin Laden uses the term "Romans" as a synonym for Crusaders and America. In an audiotape broadcast on Al-Jazeera on Jan. 4, 2004 bin Laden called for jihad to "repulse the raid of the Romans, which started in Iraq; no one knows where it will end."

Italy -- an obvious possibility for the "land of the Romans" -- has received numerous threats from the Brigades over the last six months.

In early January, three Algerians from the Salafist Group for Call and Combat -- or GSPC -- were arrested in southern Italy. Officials said they were suspected of being linked to a planned series of strikes against both Italy and the United States. The alleged U.S. attacks were designed to outdo the Sept. 11, 2001, strikes and targeted ships, stadiums and railway stations.

Still, al Qaeda is known to use misdirection when announcing its targets.

The Brigades' Internet posting, under the name of al Qaeda's reputed military commander Saif al-Adel, said the attacks would involve unidentified poisonous substances and surface-to-air missiles procured from Chechnya.

The message was posted the same month French terrorism investigators reported that an interrogation of al Qaeda suspect Abu Atiya revealed the group had allegedly procured advanced Russian-made man-portable missile systems and ricin, botulin and other toxins from Chechnya.

These weapons have not been found but were allegedly smuggled into Europe.

The missile system reference was specifically to the sophisticated SA-18 missile, which has greater altitude and range than its predecessors and includes better protection against electro-optical jammers found on military aircraft. Brown acknowledged the possibility that the weapons were smuggled into the U.S.

The alleged author of the Brigades posting, Saif al-Adel, is al Qaeda's top military commander. "He's the head of al Qaeda's military committee within the Shura Council," said Brown, "a position analogous to the Secretary of Defense within the U.S. government, which means al-Adel answers directly to Bin Laden and Zawahiri."

In addition, al-Adel is the direct superior to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the reputed head of the Abu-Hafs al-Masri Brigades and leader of al Qaeda's operations in Iraq."

As large-scale operations in either of these regions requires the direct approval of bin Laden or Zawahiri, the command path for such an order would most likely be from them to al-Adel, then to Zarqawi, and finally to assets in the area meant for attack," said Brown.

"Hence, the importance of this specific threat, given that it references both al-Adel and the Abu-Hafs Al-Masri Brigades," he added.

As previously reported by Cybercast News Service, Brown believes a timing pattern inherent in the Ayman al-Zawahiri videos and Abu-Hafs al-Masri brigade statements "green-lighting" attacks indicate a "99 percent" chance al Qaeda will launch a major terrorist attack soon outside the major theaters of Iraq and Afghanistan.

A Cybercast News Service report on Sept. 8, 2005, detailed Brown's warning regarding an impending October attack. The article was followed by the Bali bombings on Oct. 1, 2005. Brown also previously predicted within a 30-day time frame, the July 2005 bombings and their location in London.

Bin Laden's audiotape represents the first time since December of 2004 that bin Laden has issued an audio statement. The al Qaeda leader has previously promised he would not appear again on video until after the next attack on America, suggesting to some that his infrequent appearances are planned to maximize dramatic impact. His silence or other factors led several pundits to speculate that the al Qaeda leader was dead.

Link: Cybercast News Service

At Once Upon a Time in the West we strongly adhere to the position that some of these shadowy Al Qaeda affiliates are little more than fronts for Russian military intelligence (GRU) and the Federal Security Service (FSB). Our position applies especially to the case of Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, which, in letters to the London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi, claimed responsibility for the following terrorist actions:

1) the electrical blackout of August 14, 2003 in the northeastern United States and central Canada;
2) the attack on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad on August 19, 2003;
3) the bombing of two synagogues in Turkey on November 15, 2003, and the British consulate and HSBC bank in Istanbul on November 20;
4) a hotel bombing in Jakarta, Indonesia in 2003;
5) the March 11, 2004 Madrid attacks; and
6) a letter published on July 2, 2004, endorsing the three-month Al Qaeda ultimatum issued against Europe on April 14, 2004

Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades also claimed responsibility for the terrorist bombings in London in July 2005. However, in the blog, "Red Terror File: FSB behind July 2005 London bombings; planned attacks in France year before" we noted Litvinenko's observation that the London bombings were orchestrated by the FSB, the former head of which was in Scotland that day, rubbing elbows with fellow G-8 leaders.

Our position also applies to the Islambouli Brigades, a murky group that claimed responsibility for the attacks that downed two Russian airliners on August 24, 2004 and the August 31 suicide bombing outside a Moscow subway station that killed nine people. This group denies responsibility for the Beslan school massacre, which occurred within days of the other two incidents. (Shamil Basayev, a probable agent of Russian military intelligence, assumed responsibility for the atrocity in North Ossetia.) Terrorism experts believe that the group is named after Khaled Islambouli, the leader of another terrorist group that assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981. The Islambouli Brigades also claim responsibility for the assassination attempt on Pakistani Prime Minister-designate Shawkat Aziz on July 31, 2004, but Pakistani authorities have not confirmed this claim.

This understanding of Islamo-Marxist terrorism harmonizes well with GRU defector Viktor Suvorov's description of pre-war Grey Terror, in which the Soviet civilian/military security apparatus employs real and imaginary terrorist groups to destabilize the West prior to Missile Day. Suvorov explains:

All these operations — because of course none of these events is an accident — and others like them are known officially in the GRU as the 'preparatory period', and unofficially as the 'overture'. The overture is a series of large and small operations the purpose of which is, before actual military operations begin, to weaken the enemy's morale, create an atmosphere of general suspicion, fear and uncertainty, and divert the attention of the enemy's armies and police forces to a huge number of different targets, each of which may be the object of the next attack.

The overture is carried by agents of the secret services of the Soviet satellite countries and by mercenaries recruited by intermediaries. The principal method employed at this stage is 'grey terror', that is, a kind of terror which is not conducted in the name of the Soviet Union. The Soviet secret services do not at this stage leave their visiting cards, or leave other people's cards. The terror is carried out in the name of already existing extremist groups not connected in any way with the Soviet Union, or in the name of fictitious organisations.

The GRU reckons that in this period its operations should be regarded as natural disasters, actions by forces beyond human control, mistakes committed by people, or as terrorist acts by organisations not connected with the Soviet Union.

Link: Spetsnaz: The Story Behind the Soviet SAS

Final Phase Backgrounder: KGB colonel Gordievsky: Russian secret services neutralize opponents through false political parties

In his first book, New Lies for Old, KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn anticipates by several years the purpose behind the perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev:

To be credible and effective, a deception should accord as far as possible with the hopes and expectations of those it is intended to deceive. Since the communist strategists were aware, especially through their knowledge of the Bilderberg papers, that the West half expected and ardently desired the disintegration of the communist bloc, they could anticipate that the projection to the outside world of a fictitious disintegration of the bloc would be advantageous--provided always that it was accompanied in parallel by an actual, but partially concealed, implementation of the long-range policy of strengthening the bloc and changing the world balance of power in its favor (page 43).

Under the leadership of Alexander Shelepin (1958-1961), the KGB was transformed from a mere intelligence-collecting organization into a dangerous vehicle for disinformation. The purpose of this reorganization was to fulfill communism's long-range plan, drafted in November 1960 at the Eighty-One Party Congress and reiterated in Nikita ("We will bury you") Khrushchev's speech of January 6, 1961. Golitsyn explains:

These two basic documents have continued to determine the course of communist policy to the present day. They explain in detail how the triumph of communism throughout the world is to be achieved through the consolidation of the economic, political, and military might of the communist world and the undermining of the unity and strength of the noncommunist world (page 35).

At this point, during the 1960s, the KGB began in earnest experimenting with false opposition parties like Rodina, as well as periods of false freedom, like the Prague Spring. These elements of deception, in addition to pseudo-capitalist schemes such as Lenin's New Economic Policy, which deceived the West in the 1920s, converged in the glasnost ("openness") and perestroika ("restructuring") of the 1980s. Thus was born the concept of "collapsible communism."

At this time the CPSU delegated the restructuring of Eastern Europe and the creation of false opposition parties to the KGB. One of the first faux parties the KGB created, in 1989, was the absurdly named Liberal Democratic Party. A bombastic KGB buffoon by the name of Vladimir Zhirinovsky was appointed leader. To the KGB was also delegated the task of guiding the "new" Russia through the turmoils of capitalism under B0ris Yeltsin and the Red Mafiya, until Moscow's Leninist masterminds determined that the historic moment had arrived to utilize their strategic gains against the benighted West, reassemble their empire, and move against the bourgeois nations. In 2006, as Latin America falls to neo-communism and southern Africa groans under the tyranny of Marxist dictatorships, the world is now at this point.

In the meanwhile, following orders from Yuri Andropov's student Mikhail Gorbachev, the CPSU "banned" itself and fractured into a myriad number of parties spanning the political spectrum. In 1993 those CPSU members who elected to remain Communists formed the Union of Communist Parties-Communist Party of the Soviet Union (UCP-CPSU), an umbrella organization for revolutionary socialists of all hues. In 2004 the UCP-CPSU sent delegates to a congress in Moscow where it was resolved to reassemble the CPSU as a single party, just like old times. (See blogs, "USSR2 File: UCP-CPSU leader demands restoration of the Soviet Union" and "USSR2 File: Communist Party of the Soviet Union Openly Reestablished.")

The KGB, now the FSB, was not idle during Russia's tumultous decade of freedom, the 1990s. In 1999 they implemented a coup by installing one of their own in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, who quickly reinstated the symbols of the USSR and reconsolidated political power in Moscow. Fast forward to 2006: A "former" FSB director openly heads the G-8. But that's OK, 'cause communism's dead. I know, because the communists told me so.

In the recent interview below, published by the Chechenpress on January 19, 2006, Oleg Gordievsky, another KGB defector, affirms that his former employer is not only responsible for manufacturing fake political parties, but also propagating the myths that the CIA was behind the assassination of JFK and the manufacturing of AIDs. The KGB/FSB is guilty of those very crimes that its propagandists and useful idiots on the Left project upon the US intelligence establishment. (See blog, "Blast from the Past File: BBC report on new documentary: Cuba behind JFK assassination.")

Oleg Gordievsky: "I wish victories to your great nation!"
CHECHENPRESS, the Department of interview, 19.01.06

Our correspondent Sajhan Umarov converses with the former colonel of KGB Oleg Gordievsky living nowadays in England.

* * *

Question: Dear Oleg Antonovich, some days ago the management of Antiterrorist Centre of CHRI has made the statement in which warns the public of preparing provocations of the Russian special services against a management and citizens of CHRI. In the statement, in particular, it is told, that the Russian special services organize under inspection to themselves public and right protecting centres uniting mainly persons of the Chechen nationality. The purpose of these actions is to discredit the Chechen management and various provocations against the Chechen communities in the Western Europe. In this connection I would like to ask you to explain to our readers how serious is what warns ATC of CHRI and how provocations of the Russian special services may complicate difficult life of the Chechen refugees?

The answer: Creation by the Russian special services of so-called "false" or "provocative" political groups and the organizations is very dangerously, as they decompose and corrode the society. Activity of these groups created by special services is directed, first of all, against most active people, against intelligency, against people thinking and having political convictions. Special services through the agency involve politically active people in such groups created by them in which behind them the secret-service control is carried out.

Through the agents in such groups KGB - FSB pushes political opponents of regime to rash statements, arranges between colleagues and adherents various squabbles, by means of which people get separated among themselves. Finally, all political activity or is brought to nothing, or people provoke on illegal rash actions of the extremist plan, or them decline to refusal from political struggle.

Question: From history of NKVD-KGB we know about similar operations of the Soviet special services against the emigrant centres in Europe. In the beginning communistic, and today putin's propagation represents all these provocations and the political murders made by agents of special services under the instruction of communistic leaders as "great feat of security officers, protecting the Native land from enemies, traitors and terrorists". Tell, how it all occured in reality, and whether really all victims chekist terror were so dangerous, what they should be killed?

The answer: History of VKCH-KGB knew many examples when special services arranged the provocations against those whom in the Kremlin counted the political enemies. So, in 20th years of the last century they created the all-Union organizations "Trest" and "Sindikat". These groups had emissaries in France, Germany, Baltic, Poland and as operated in other countries of the West. Using the agency in these organizations, security officers managed to destroy and entice in the USSR a number of outstanding political fighters with the communistic regime. One of which was Boris Savinkov, the remarkable strategist on struggle against bolsheviks, the person possessing strong personal qualities. In some days after his capture and the strongest tortures he jumped out in flight between ladder floors. Boris Savenkov has prefered death to treachery and service to security officers.

In 1925 security officers have enticed into the USSR one of remarkable English scouts Sydney Raily whom as, by means of tortures, forced to cooperation. After refusal to work with them, security officers have shot him in woods near Moscow.

During the second world war, using guerrilla movement, security officers created guerrilla groups whose primary goal was not an opposition to invaders, but struggle against national-liberation movements in Byelorussia, Poland and Ukraine.

After war, in 60th years, under the direction of the agent Nord, by reconnaissance of KGB in USA was created a book publishing house "Liberty". Using which KGB has created a myth that president Kennedy has killed CIA in interaction with the right political forces in USA. By the way, this lie is in use to this day, and in it many still trust. An active role in this KGB provocations has played their agent, so-called "international-journalist" Genrich Borovik.

Further, Fillip Aigy - the former employee of CIA who has run away to Cuba and under "roof" of KGB has created the publishing house which has let out the book under the name "Inside the company". In what him actively helped Edgar Cheporov, his messenger and the propagandist from KGB . In common they have created the false version about CIA and its role in so-called penetration into national-liberation movements of the countries of the third world, about corruption and crimes among officers of CIA.

In 70th years in New York interethnic and racial contradictions between Jews and black Americans who were immediately used by KGB in ideological struggle against USA were sharply designated. So the officer of KGB Anatoly Tihonovich Kireev has created special group which is artificial in New York kindled this conflict and pitted among themselves representatives of these ethnic groups.

In 1986, during realization of active action, KGB managed to place in the English press false article, that a virus of illness AIDS was developed in confidential laboratories VPK of USA then was tested on inhabitants in the countries of Africa and Latin America. At that time this KGB forgery has done a lot of noise. However on it KGB has not calmed down and has very soon provoked one more scandal where rich American citizens were accused in buying of Latin American children which in USA use in operations on change of internal organs.

In 1968 before intrusion into Czechoslovakia, agents - illegals under the instruction from the centre dug in the weapon in territory of CHSSR and profaned the Jewish cemeteries with fascist swastika, then in world MASS-MEDIA distributed slanderous fabrications about activization in Czechoslovakia of the right extremist forces.

In 1979 KGB in Afghanistan the false group of pro-soviet adjusted persons was created, using which was overthrown the lawful president of the country Amin and aggression of the USSR against this country was begun. Besides during storm of a palace of the president by people from this adjusted group by order from KGB were killed Amin and members of his family.

It is necessary to note that KGB actively used the provokers disguised as fighters with regime, and against dissidents. So, Andrey Sinjavsky and Julia Daniel were provoked by secret agents of KGB. Before court in a prison cell to prisoner Sinjavsky was placed the agent, Hiy Fedorovich Vasiliev, who managed to find out many details from him, that subsequently used KGB in court against dissidents. They then gave Sinjakovsky six years of camps.

Andropov, with the help of figureheads has declined Peter Jakir and Victor Krasin to a public repentance on TV. In the performance to please KGB dissidents have completely refused the belief and have cast a shadow on the movement. And only due to such leaders as Sharansky, Orlov, Ginzburg and Bukovsky, who have sustained tortures and were not broke under an impact of executioners, dissident movement in the USSR was rescued.

In relation with Soljenitsin KGB used a lot of the agents, inside the country and abroad. In due time the chairman of KGB Andropov has convinced members of the Political bureau to send the disgraced writer from the country, thus Andropov promised to impose the writer with an agency so, that he could not struggle with the Soviet authority from abroad in any way. That is what happened: everywhere, where occured Soljenitsin, him met agents of KGB, they have so imposed him, that no person, not controllable by them simply had no access to the writter. For this reason, being rescueed from KGB agencies, Soljenitsin had to leave from Switzerland for USA where he as was met by agents of KGB who have provoked him on well-known Boston speech. After that performance Soljenitsin actually was completely lost for the western public.

Question: Murder of leaders of CHRI Johar Dudaev, Zemikhan Jandarbaev, Aslan Maskhadov, frank terror against each Chechen where he would not live, proofless accusations of the international terrorism, lie and slander, what is it, single actions or the systematic special action of the Russian special services spent by them with a view of constraint of management of CHRI and his citizens to refusal of the sovereignty and independence in exchange for life? And where, in your opinion, all these secret centres are located, from where does all this evil come? What will you advise us? What should we do to stop this incessant terror which with violence and cynicism has surpassed all legal frameworks?

The answer: it is extremely necessary, that everyone - Chechens, Russian and representatives of other nationalities who today struggle with Putin's regime, understood, that their main enemy is KGB. For effective struggle against this decease rallying is necessary. It is necessary to understand, that in struggle against you KGB uses highly professional agents who will use and inflate any your contradictions. They will use everything, starting from household questions and finishing religion, color of a skin and a cut of eyes.

And if that the person does not understand something , and splits Resistance movement as though not meaningly I can assure you that all these "thoughtless" are pretending, or already operate under the direct task from Lubjanka. All this people sooner or later get in chekist networks, then work on them already is realized. During revealing of KGB provokers, and it is very important work, it is necessary to operate circumspectly but also to not run at all into general suspiciousness and mistrust to all.

I can advise unification of all forces in struggle against security officers. Further, if there is such who begins to divide inside Resistance people to various attributes, for example, creed, a financial position, a national belonging, it is necessary to check such people and specify for what they do it. Concerning them accurately it is necessary to interrogate their familiars, and to find out well,who are this people and how they have appeared in movement.

Except for it, without fail it is necessary to establish secret apartments and secret address places on which officers of special services accept the agents. It can be made by supervision over the operative worker which works against you, it is necessary to establish places of his visiting and whom he there meets. After an establishment of such apartments and places it is necessary to have shadowed them and to not let at all KGB know, that their secret address is known. It is necessary to watch an apartment until all persons visiting it will be revealed. As a rule, it may be no more than two officers of KGB and about five agents.

Further, actively it is necessary to carry out educational work in MASS-MEDIA about methods which use special services of Russia in struggle against the political opponents and national-liberation movements. The special attention should be given to such countries as Turkey, Iraq and Egypt where such KGB provokers are many and where they feel like practically unpunishedly.

Except for it it is necessary to remember, that under orders of KGB those who, declaring himself the active participant of Resistance movement, under various pretexts evades from public applications should cause the greatest suspicion in provocative activity or subscribes under various pseudonyms. Instead of real struggle against KGB and its mode is engaged in demagogy, tries to provoke internal disassemblies and distracts people on struggle with each other and as discredits known leaders of Resistance, accusing their various ridiculous infringements.

As I already have specified earlier, such people, as a rule, being covered under various pseudonyms, in every possible way avoid direct criticism to address of special services and personally the president of Russia, they under any circumstances publicly do not name a surname of officers of the Russian special services as it is to them very strictly forbidden by internal instructions. Except for it, KGB provokers leave from answers to questions on sources of their financing activity.

In conclusion of interview I would like to wish your great people endurance and patience in struggle for freedom and independence of your Native land, and the prompt victory in this severe war. Thank you for attention.

Chechenpress information:

Oleg Gordievsky - the former colonel of KGB. On ideological reasons, 11 years has worked on the English investigation. Has received worldwide popularity when after exposure in 1985, Englishmen have secretly taken him out from the USSR. At once after his occurrence in London the British authorities have turned out from the country 25 agents of KGB working in quality of "journalists" and "diplomats". Oleg Gordievsky in 1985 is in absentiaed sentenc to a death penalty under article "betrayal of motherland". In FSB of Russia him, till now consider as "traitor, not deserving the mercy". The author of numerous books and articles exposing secret terrorist activity of Soviets, and the Russian special services.

Link: Chechenpress

Middle East File: US ties Syrian military spy chief to Iraq insurgency

Is there any surprise here? Syria's Ba'athist regime is cut from the same National Socialist cloth as Saddam's regime. With a little help from Russia, Syria also facilitated the speedy removal of Saddam's WMDs from Iraqi soil into Lebanon weeks before the US-UK invasion.

Methinks the White House is prepping public opinion for smacking Iran and Syria in very short order. The mugshot to the left is Asset Shawkat, Syria's chief of military intelligence.

US ties Syrian official to Iraq insurgency
Wed Jan 18, 2:43 PM ET

The White House on Wednesday for the first time named a Syrian official as having "directly contributed" to support for the insurgency in Iraq, as the United States moved to freeze his assets.

The charge came after the US Treasury Department slapped the financial sanctions on the official, Syrian military spy chief Asset Shawkat, the brother-in-law of President Bashar al-Assad.

"Mr. Shawkat, as Syria's chief of military intelligence, has directly contributed to Syria's support for terrorism, including the insurgency in Iraq, Palestinian terrorist groups given shelter in Damascus, and Hezbollah and other terrorist groups in Lebanon," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

Shawkat "has also been deeply involved in Syria's ongoing interference" in Lebanon, he added. "Today's action is a significant signal that those, like Mr. Shawkat, who support Syrian terrorism will be held to account."

Two US officials said that, while Washington has repeatedly accused Damascus of siding with insurgents targeting Iraqi and US troops in Iraq, it was the first time it had tied a Syrian official directly and by name to the violence.

Earlier, the Treasury Department placed Shawkat on a list of "specially designated nationals" under a presidential anti-terrorism order, freezing any US assets he holds and barring US citizens from transactions with him.

Stuart Levey, the Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said the director of the powerful Syrian Military Intelligence (SMI) agency had been "a key architect of Syria's domination of Lebanon."

Shawkat was also "a fundamental contributor to Syria's long-standing policy to foment terrorism against Israel," Levey said in a statement.

In addition, Levey said, Shawkat "has access to the highest levels of the Syrian power structure" by virtue of his marriage to Bushra al-Assad, the president's sister.

Shawkat is a close confidant of Assad and an important member of his inner circle of advisors, the Treasury said.

The action comes after the Treasury in June blacklisted Syria's Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan and Rustum Ghazali, its former spymaster for Lebanon, under the same anti-terrorism order.

Link: Yahoo News

Blast from the Past File: Free man Agca to reveal masterminds behind pope death plot

The FSB hitmen will wait for Agca to lower his guard and then . . . Actually, if Agca is murdered before he can blab and if his murder can be traced to some point in Eastern Europe such as, oh say, Moscow, ahem, then there will be yet more confirmation that there is perfect continuity of personnel and ideology between the old Soviet regime and Putin's pseudo-czarist/neo-Soviet FSB state.


18.01.2006
Eurasian Secret Services Daily Review
AIA staff

Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot Pope John Paul II, said he is ready to reveal those, who ordered the assassination in an interview, which will cost $5 million, Turkish media reported.

The Soviet KGB and several other Warsaw bloc special services were under suspicion. Agca's attorney said he is "puzzled" about a report saying his client offered to capture Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" six years ago.A Turkish newspaper has printed letters it said were penned by Mehmet Ali Agca, who was in prison at the time. One letter addressed to the head of Turkish intelligence speaks of hunting bin Laden. It also claims that Agca planned two attempts on the life of the late Syrian President Hafez Assad. The newspaper provided no details about how it obtained the letter. There have been questions about the mental health of Agca, who has been known for frequent outbursts and claims that he is the Messiah or Jesus Christ.

Facing public outrage in Turkey over Agca's release, Justice Minister Cemil Cicek on Tuesday formally asked an appeals court to review the decision for his release to see whether there were any legal flaws. Cicek has suggested Agca might have been released by mistake and may have to serve at least 11 more months in Turkey for his crimes here. Agca will remain free until the court reviews the case.

Link: Axis Information and Analysis

North Korea File: State TV: Kim visited China

See blog below on same subject.

N Korea TV officially confirms Kim Jong Il visited China
18.01.2006, 14.11

TOKYO, January 18 (Itar-Tass) - North Korean television has for the first time aired an official confirmation that the country's leader, Kim Jong Il, made a visit to China and had talks with President Hu Jintao there.

Link: ITAR-TASS

Grey Terror File: MSM report confirms Los Angeles harbor mined with explosives

According to the article immediately below and the post from Northeast Intelligence Network, posted here several days ago, these explosives can be detonated by cell phones. Jim Amormino, spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department, however, appears to contradict himself with respect to the safety of divers, swimmers, and boaters in the area. The location of these explosives near Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station is troubling. The article denies that personnel from that facility were responsible for planting these explosives.

The second article in this blog relates a number of incidents in which men of Middle Eastern origin and suspicious behavior bulk purchased disposable cell phones in recent weeks.

Explosives found in Huntington Beach Harbour
ASSOCIATED PRESS
12:36 p.m. January 11, 2006

HUNTINGTON BEACH – Divers worked Wednesday to remove at least eight commerical grade explosives discovered in the harbor here, imposing a cell phone ban to prevent accidental detonation.

The explosives were described as blasting caps used to trigger large explosions in mines and other sites and were considered highly unstable, said Jim Amormino, spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

They are about the size of shotgun pellets and were spread over a 150-yard area beneath nine to 15 feet of water, he said. They appeared to be intentionally placed on the ocean floor, he added.

"They are very unstable in salt water. They do pose a threat to the divers, any swimmers, any boaters in the area," he said. "Cell phone signals can detonate those explosives" so a "no cell phone" zone was ordered for several hundred feet surrounding the shoreline, Amormino said.

Amormino said usually a blasting cap is used as a detonator when connected to a larger explosive, such as TNT, but divers hadn't found any evidence of stronger explosives. By itself, this type of cap is capable of causing an explosion equivalent to that of a hand grenade, he said.

The explosives do not pose a danger to any houses or yachts in the area, he said.

Two of the caps had been successfully removed by early afternoon.

They were discovered late Tuesday by environmental divers hired by the Huntington Harbour Association to search for seaweed, officials said.

"The question is how long they've been there and how did they get there? We have no idea," he said, adding that officials think it's unlikely the explosives are from the nearby Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station.
Several agencies were called to help remove the explosives, including the bomb squads, the FBI, the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Link: SignOnSanDiego

Surge in Sale of Disposable Cell Phones May Have Terror Link
Phones Can Be Difficult or Impossible to Track; Large Quantities Purchased in California, Texas
By BRIAN ROSS and RICHARD ESPOSITO

Jan. 12, 2006 — - Federal agents have launched an investigation into a surge in the purchase of large quantities of disposable cell phones by individuals from the Middle East and Pakistan, ABC News has learned.

The phones -- which do not require purchasers to sign a contract or have a credit card -- have many legitimate uses, and are popular with people who have bad credit or for use as emergency phones tucked away in glove compartments or tackle boxes. But since they can be difficult or impossible to track, law enforcement officials say the phones are widely used by criminal gangs and terrorists.

"There's very little audit trail assigned to this phone. One can walk in, purchase it in cash, you don't have to put down a credit card, buy any amount of minutes to it, and you don't, frankly, know who bought this," said Jack Cloonan, a former FBI official who is now an ABC News consultant.

Law enforcement officials say the phones were used to detonate the bombs terrorists used in the Madrid train attacks in March 2004.

"The application of prepaid phones for nefarious reasons, is really widespread. For example, the terrorists in Madrid used prepaid phones to detonate the bombs in the subway trains that killed more than 200 people," said Roger Entner, a communications consultant.

150 Phones in One Sale, 60 Phones in Another

The FBI is closely monitoring the potentially dangerous development, which came to light following recent large-quantity purchases in California and Texas, officials confirmed.

In one New Year's Eve transaction at a Target store in Hemet, Calif., 150 disposable tracfones were purchased. Suspicious store employees notified police, who called in the FBI, law enforcement sources said.

In an earlier incident, at a Wal-Mart store in Midland, Texas, on Dec. 18, six individuals attempted to buy about 60 of the phones until store clerks became suspicious and notified the police. A Wal-Mart spokesperson confirmed the incident.

The Midland police report, dated Dec. 18 and obtained by ABC News, states: "Information obtained by MPD [Midland Police Department] dispatch personnel indicated that approximately six individuals of Middle-Eastern origin were attempting to purchase an unusually large quantity of tracfones (disposable cell phones with prepaid minutes attached)." At least one of the suspects was identified as being from Iraq and another from Pakistan, officials said."

Upon the arrival of officers, suspects were observed moving away from the registers -- appearing to evade detection while ridding themselves of the merchandise."

Other reports have come in from other cities, including Dallas, and from authorities in other states. Authorities in Pennsylvania, New York and other parts of Texas confirmed that they were alerted to the cases, and sources say other jurisdictions were also notified.

The growing use of the throwaway cell phones has been cited by President Bush as an important justification for expanding the wiretap laws under the Patriot Act.

"Law enforcement officials can now use what's now called roving wiretaps, which will prevent a terrorist from switching cell phones to get a message out to one of his buddies," Bush said on April 20, 2004.

Legitimate Uses May Have Spurred Sales, Too

Law enforcement sources say it is possible some large purchases that have been identified as being sent to the Middle East could have been sent for resale in a sellers' market for handsets, or simply given to friends and relatives. Officials are also investigating these possibilities.

Managing the complex balancing of these two issues -- significant and legitimate uses and their potential for misuse has been an ongoing dilemma for law enforcement.

For now, both intelligence officers and bomb technicians have been monitoring reports of large-quantity purchases.

Some such purchases may have innocent explanations, but even law enforcement officials themselves say disposable phones are sometimes their own phones of choice when operating in hostile environments. The CIA recently used them in a kidnapping in Milan, Italy. Italian authorities were able to track the telephones. But they mostly tracked them to a dead end -- the false identities in which they were purchased.

Possible purchasers of disposable cellular phones could also include political extremists, terrorist supporters, sympathizers or others simply shaken by the recent revelations of the spy agency's widespread monitoring of calls, including calls to and from the United States to foreign countries.

Police Report Identifies Terror Links

In the Midland, Texas, arrest report, police also identified the individuals as linked to a terror cell:

"Evasive responses provided by the subjects, coupled with actions observed by officers at the onset of the contact prompted the notification of local FBI officials to assist in the investigation," the report said. "Upon the arrival of special agents, and as a result of subsequent interviews, it was discovered that members of the group were linked to suspected terrorist cells stationed within the Metroplex.

"Law enforcement officials have not elaborated on the information in the report or specified which terrorist group the individuals were allegedly linked to.

In addition, special agents reported that similar incidents centering on the large-scale purchases of tracfones had been reported throughout the nation -- identifying individuals of Middle-Eastern descent as the purchasers."

ABC News is working to confirm the details in the police report.

"Upon conclusion of the initial investigation, three of the suspects were taken into custody on immigration violations, with one individual arrested for possession of marijuana -- the drug having been discovered during the search of the group's vehicle. Also found within the green 2002 Kia van were additional cell phones, the total believed to be approximately 60.

"FBI officials told ABC News that while the cases may wind up in the hands of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the FBI would benefit from any intelligence gleaned and would take the lead if a solid terrorist connection emerged.

ABC News' Jill Rackmill contributed to this report.
Link: ABC News

USSR2 File: Communists to protest European body's debate on Soviet crimes

There are only two reasons that Russian communists oppose exposure of Soviet crimes: The communists have not repented of these crimes, nor do they want their future victims to be reminded of past atrocities committed in the name of the "workers' revolution." The armband in the photograph above features the symbol of the violent, youth-oriented National Bolshevik Party. Note ominous synthesis of Nazi and Communist motifs.

The Council of Europe (COE), including its Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), is not to be confused with the organs of the European Union. The COE is a separate entity.

Russian Communists Protest Proposed PACE Debate on Soviet Crimes
Created: 16.01.2006 15:14 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 15:14 MSK
MosNews

Russian communists have staged protests against the Parliament Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) which is to consider a resolution on the international condemnation of crimes by communist regimes.

On Monday, communist activists held a rally outside the Swedish embassy. Sweden was the initiator of the proposed resolution and will give a speech on it at PACE’s January session.

The communists are planning similar rallies near the embassies of France, Latvia, Azerbaijan and the United States.

The draft resolution published on the PACE Web site says, “the Assembly is convinced that the awareness of history is one of the preconditions for avoiding similar crimes in the future. Furthermore, moral assessment and condemnation of crimes committed play an important role in the education of young generations. The clear position of the international community on the past may be a reference for their future actions. Moreover, the Assembly believes that those victims of crimes committed by totalitarian communist regimes who are still alive or their families, deserve sympathy, understanding and recognition for their sufferings.”

However, it mentions that “in spite of the crimes of totalitarian communist regimes, some European communist parties have made contributions to achieving democracy.”

“The Assembly is of the opinion that there is an urgent need for an in-depth and exhaustive international debate on the crimes committed by totalitarian communist regimes with a view to giving sympathy, understanding and recognition to all those affected by these crimes,” the draft resolution says.

Link: Moscow News

Grey Terror File: Divers discover Los Angeles harbor recently mined with explosives

You can be sure that cave-dwelling Islamo-Marxist terrorists from Afghanistan were not responsible for the mining of a Los Angeles harbor. This is not their modus operandi. We offer one theory below, after the news report.

On the one hand, law enforcement (LE) officials admit that the situation is "very serious." On the other hand, as is routine these days--in order not to destabilize the shopping mall regime or, that is, to upset the public--LE refuses to characterize the incident as "terrorism." Strictly speaking, they are correct. It's probably sabotage, another act of war.

This story has now been confirmed in the MSM.

Explosives Found in Huntington Beach Harbor
Posted by Douglas J. Hagmann on 2006/1/15 4:31:33

On Wednesday, 11 January 2006, environmental divers working for Merkel Associates of San Diego, hired to check on algae growth in the Huntington Beach Harbor discovered seven or perhaps eight commercial-grade explosive detonators that were “strategically placed” on the ocean floor in Long Canal, near Bonaire Circle in about 10-15 feet of water.

According to law enforcement officials, each detonator, or blasting cap, was attached to a 10-foot-long, brightly colored wire. An analysis of the explosives determined that they were placed on the harbor floor within 36 hours of their discovery. Following their discovery, eight law enforcement agencies responded to the scene; at least 15 divers, including ten from the Orange County Sheriff's Department, four from the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and one diver from the FBI searched the floor of the harbor for additional explosives and to recover the explosives that were found.

During the recovery operation, Jim AMORMINO of the Orange County Sheriff's Department described the explosives as “commercial grade detonators used to trigger large explosions in mines or other sites and are considered highly unstable. They are concussion-type explosive devices, as opposed to fragmentation type. The detonators could cause an explosion equivalent to a hand grenade, and could definitely injure anyone near, any diver near there, any person in water, any boat near that explosion. They are typically attached to a bigger explosive device. This was our concern, (that) they were attached to a bigger explosive device,” stated AMORMINO.

About the size of a shotgun shell, the explosives were spread over a 150-yard area and could be detonated by the use of cell phones or specific radio signals. During the recovery of the explosives, authorities banned cell phone use to prevent accidental detonation. AMORMINO added: "The situation is very serious. We're confident we located all of them. Now the question at this stage is how they got there. They were intentionally placed there." Meanwhile, official publicly stated that although they have no idea how the explosives got there (in the harbor) or how many more of them are out there, they stated that “terrorism was not suspected.” Officials also believe that it is unlikely that the explosives are from the nearby Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. Authorities continue to interview nearby residents for any information to this discovery.

Link: Northeast Intelligence Network

The location of these underwater explosives near Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station is troubling. The article denies that personnel from that facility were responsible for planting these explosives. This incident does bear all the hallmarks of a Spetsnaz operation. Spetsnaz refers to one of several units of special forces in the Russian military. GRU defector Viktor Suvorov describes the capabilities and targets of Spetsnaz diver units:

The spetsnaz seaborne brigades can in a number of cases be an irreplaceable weapon for the Soviet high command. Firstly, they can be used for clearing the way for a whole Soviet fleet, destroying or putting out of action minefields and acoustic and other detection systems of the enemy. Secondly, they can be used against powerful shore-based enemy defences. Some countries -Sweden and Norway for example — have built excellent coastal shelters for their ships. In those shelters the ships are in no danger from many kinds of Soviet weapon, including some nuclear ones. To discover and put out of action such shelters will be one of spetsnaz's, most important tasks. Seaborne spetsnaz can also be used against bridges, docks, ports and underwater tunnels of the enemy. Even more dangerous may be spetsnaz operations against the most expensive and valuable ships — the aircraft carriers, cruisers, nuclear submarines, floating bases for submarines, ships carrying missiles and nuclear warheads, and against command ships.

Link: Spetsnaz: The Story Behind the Soviet SAS

Blast from the Past File: Failed pope assassin released from jail; Stasi files show KGB plot

The Russian security service, under whatever nom de jour, has always been an institutional master of assassination, sabotage, and deception. In the early 1980s authors like Claire Sterling, who exposed the KGB plot behind Pope John Paul 2's failed assassination, were eagerly vilified by leftist colleagues. The common mantra was that Sterling was a CIA plant. Of course, how foolish of us not to know that . . .

The "collapse" of communism in Eastern Europe and the reunion of the two Germanies eventually provided the documentation needed to show that the alleged Bulgarian Connection was not merely a Bulgarian Concoction. In March 2005 it was revealed from the files of the East German Stasi that the KGB, utilizing Bulgarian agents and Turkish extremists like Mehmet Ali Agca, was in fact the orchestrator of the death plot.

It will be most interesting to see how long Agca survives after his release. If he knows anything about the Soviet origin of the plan of which he was part, then he won't live long. Comrades Putin and Patrushev will see to that. In the picture above Pope John Paul 2 meets his would-be assassin for the first time in Agca's Rome prison cell, on December 27, 1983.

Man who shot Pope freed from jail
Published: 2006/01/12 14:47:17 GMT

The Turkish gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II almost 25 years ago has been released from prison.

Mehmet Ali Agca served nearly 20 years in Italian jails for the attempted murder. In Turkey, he was jailed for bank robbery and another murder.

Agca, 48, shot the Pope in St Peter's Square in 1981, but has never explained why. The pontiff later visited him in jail and publicly forgave him.

The Turkish government is appealing against the release.

Hours after Agca walked free, Turkish Justice Minister Cemil Cicek said he wanted to make sure there had not been any legal errors.

Agca reported to the army after he was freed, as he never did his mandatory military service.

It is not clear if he will actually serve, get a medical exemption, or pay a fine.

His brother Adnan told the Associated Press (AP) news agency that Agca was looking forward to having a meal of beans and rice while overlooking the Bosphorus strait, which runs through Istanbul.

Anger at home

Agca fired at Pope John Paul II on 13 May 1981, hitting him four times.

The gunman was pardoned by the Italian authorities in 2000 and extradited to Turkey, where he was jailed for the 1979 murder of a left-wing Turkish journalist and two bank robberies.

Last week, a Turkish court ruled Agca had completed his term for those offences.

Agca's release has been divisive in Turkey.

The daughter of the journalist he killed published a front-page letter in the national newspaper Milliyet calling him "not just the murderer of my father... I see him as our national assassin".

Nationalist supporters cheered Agca's release, throwing flowers at the car that took him away from the prison.

"Mehmet Ali Agca is a role model for everyone who loves the Turkish nation," Seyfi Yilmaz told AP outside the prison.

Agca's lawyer, Mustafa Demirbag, told AP his client wanted to put the assassination attempt behind him and "extend the hand of peace and friendship to everyone".

Soviet 'involvement'

Agca was a 23-year-old known criminal with links to Turkish far-right paramilitaries at the time of the attack in Rome.

The Turkish government should guarantee Agca's security because he knows so many secrets and he may be killed Ferdinando Imposimato Former Italian magistrate.

There were claims that the Soviet KGB and its Bulgarian counterpart were behind the assassination attempt, but prosecutors at a trial in 1986 failed to prove a link to the Bulgarian secret service.

On a 2002 visit to Sofia, John Paul II said he had never believed in a Bulgarian link to the shooting.

One of Italy's most respected magistrates in the 1980s, who probed the attack at the time, has warn that Agca's life is at risk because of the many secrets he knows.

Ferdinando Imposimato is convinced of Soviet bloc involvement. The Pope at the time was preaching a message that challenged Soviet communism's collectivist ideology.

"I think the Turkish government should guarantee Agca's security because he knows so many secrets and he may be killed," he said in an interview with Reuters TV on Wednesday.

Agca fired several times at the late Pope John Paul II as he waved to crowds from an open car.

The critically wounded pontiff underwent emergency surgery for serious wounds to the abdomen and hand.
According to his own account, he only just survived.

He met his attacker two years later in an Italian prison, when he publicly forgave him.

Pope John Paul II died in April 2005 at the age of 84.

Link: BBC

1981 attack on Pope planned by Soviets: Report
Agence France-Presse
Rome, March 30, 200505:01 IST

New documents found in the files of the former East German intelligence services confirm the 1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II was ordered by the Soviet KGB and assigned to Bulgarian agents, an Italian daily said on Wednesday.

The Corriere della Sera said that the documents found by the German government indicated that the KGB ordered Bulgarian colleagues to carry out the killing, leaving the East German service known as the Stasi to coordinate the operation and cover up the traces afterwards.

Bulgaria then handed the execution of the plot to Turkish extremists, including Mehmet Ali Agca, who pulled the trigger.

The daily said the documents had been handed over to Bulgaria and would be made available to the Italian parliamentary commission inquiring into the activities of formerly Communist eastern European regimes in Italy.

The newspaper said the documents consist mostly of letters from Stasi operatives to their Bulgarian counterparts seeking help in covering up traces after the attack and denying Bulgarian involvement.

Ali Agca, who is now in jail in Turkey, claimed after his arrest that the operation was under the control of the Bulgarian embassy in Rome. The Bulgarians have always insisted they were innocent and argued that Agca's story was part of an anti-communist plot by the Italian secret service and the CIA.

The paper said the documents back up the pope's own memories of the assassination attempt in May 1981 in his book "Memory and Identity: Conversations Between Millenniums," in which he said he was convinced that the attack was not planned or directed by Ali Agca.

Link: Hindustan Times

Grey Terror File: Iraqi documents expose terror camps; Russia moved Iraq's WMDs to Syria and Lebanon

The Left unrelentingly derides the Bush Administration and its international allies for leading Operation Iraqi Freedom to overthrow the National Socialist regime of Ba'athist Saddam Hussein. However, the Left is chronically afraid of the truth and, thus, diligently ignore the facts. In addition to possessing Russian-manufactured WMDs, as the third article below demonstrates, Iraq was an integral component in the international terror network, with its operational command center at the Lubyanka in Moscow.

The picture above shows the Salman Pak terrorist training camp, located 15 miles southeast of Baghdad, on the Tigris River. Photographic documentation reveals the presence of a jet fuselage within the camp perimeter. According to defector testimony, Saddam's agents used the fuselage to train foreign Islamic terrorists to hijack commercial aircraft. In the National Review article below, the author contends that this jet was a Russian-built Tupolev 154.

Saddam's Terror Training Camps
What the documents captured from the former Iraqi regime reveal--and why they should all be made public.
by Stephen F. Hayes
01/16/2006, Volume 011, Issue 17

THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.

The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis. According to three officials with knowledge of the intelligence on Iraqi training camps, White House and National Security Council officials were briefed on these findings in May 2005; senior Defense Department officials subsequently received the same briefing.

The photographs and documents on Iraqi training camps come from a collection of some 2 million "exploitable items" captured in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan. They include handwritten notes, typed documents, audiotapes, videotapes, compact discs, floppy discs, and computer hard drives. Taken together, this collection could give U.S. intelligence officials and policymakers an inside look at the activities of the former Iraqi regime in the months and years before the Iraq war.

The discovery of the information on jihadist training camps in Iraq would seem to have two major consequences: It exposes the flawed assumptions of the experts and U.S. intelligence officials who told us for years that a secularist like Saddam Hussein would never work with Islamic radicals, any more than such jihadists would work with an infidel like the Iraqi dictator. It also reminds us that valuable information remains buried in the mountain of documents recovered in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past four years.

Nearly three years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, only 50,000 of these 2 million "exploitable items" have been thoroughly examined. That's 2.5 percent. Despite the hard work of the individuals assigned to the "DOCEX" project, the process is not moving quickly enough, says Michael Tanji, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who helped lead the document exploitation effort for 18 months. "At this rate," he says, "if we continue to approach DOCEX in a linear fashion, our great-grandchildren will still be sorting through this stuff."

Most of the 50,000 translated documents relate directly to weapons of mass destruction programs and scientists, since David Kay and his Iraq Survey Group--who were among the first to analyze the finds--considered those items top priority. "At first, if it wasn't WMD, it wasn't translated. It wasn't exploited," says a former military intelligence officer who worked on the documents in Iraq.

"We had boxloads of Iraqi Intelligence records--their names, their jobs, all sorts of detailed information," says the former military intelligence officer. "In an insurgency, wouldn't that have been helpful?"

How many of those unexploited documents might help us better understand the role of Iraq in supporting transregional terrorists? How many of those documents might provide important intelligence on the very people--Baathists, former regime officials, Saddam Fedayeen, foreign fighters trained in Iraq--that U.S. soldiers are fighting in Iraq today? Is what we don't know literally killing us?

ON NOVEMBER 17, 2005, Michigan representative Pete Hoekstra wrote to John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence. Hoekstra is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He provided Negroponte a list of 40 documents recovered in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan and asked to see them. The documents were translated or summarized, given titles by intelligence analysts in the field, and entered into a government database known as HARMONY. Most of them are unclassified.

For several weeks, Hoekstra was promised a response. He finally got one on December 28, 2005, in a meeting with General Michael Hayden, principal deputy director of national intelligence. Hayden handed Hoekstra a letter from Negroponte that promised a response after January 1, 2006. Hoekstra took the letter, read it, and scribbled his terse response. "John--Unacceptable." Hoekstra told Hayden that he would expect to hear something before the end of the year. He didn't.

"I can tell you that I'm reaching the point of extreme frustration," said Hoekstra, in a phone interview last Thursday. His exasperated tone made the claim unnecessary. "It's just an indication that rather than having a nimble, quick intelligence community that can respond quickly, it's still a lumbering bureaucracy that can't give the chairman of the intelligence committee answers relatively quickly. Forget quickly, they can't even give me answers slowly."

On January 6, however, Hoekstra finally heard from Negroponte. The director of national intelligence told Hoekstra that he is committed to expediting the exploitation and release of the Iraqi documents. According to Hoekstra, Negroponte said: "I'm giving this as much attention as anything else on my plate to make this work."

Other members of Congress--including Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and Senators Rick Santorum and Pat Roberts--also demanded more information from the Bush administration on the status of the vast document collection. Santorum and Hoekstra have raised the issue personally with President Bush. This external pressure triggered an internal debate at the highest levels of the administration. Following several weeks of debate, a consensus has emerged: The vast majority of the 2 million captured documents should be released publicly as soon as possible.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has convened several meetings in recent weeks to discuss the Pentagon's role in expediting the release of this information. According to several sources familiar with his thinking, Rumsfeld is pushing aggressively for a massive dump of the captured documents. "He has a sense that public vetting of this information is likely to be as good an astringent as any other process we could develop," says Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita.

The main worry, says DiRita, is that the mainstream press might cherry-pick documents and mischaracterize their meaning. "There is always the concern that people would be chasing a lot of information good or bad, and when the Times or the Post splashes a headline about some sensational-sounding document that would seem to 'prove' that sanctions were working, or that Saddam was just a misunderstood patriot, or some other nonsense, we'd spend a lot of time chasing around after it."

This is a view many officials attributed to Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Steve Cambone. (Cambone, through a spokesman, declined to be interviewed.) For months, Cambone has argued internally against expediting the release of the documents. "Cambone is the problem," says one former Bush administration official who wants the documents released. "He has blocked this every step of the way." In what is perhaps a sign of a changing dynamic within the administration, Cambone is now saying that he, like his boss, favors a broad document release.

Although Hoekstra, too, has been pushing hard for the quick release of all of the documents, he is currently focusing his efforts simply on obtaining the 40 documents he asked for in November. "There comes a time when the talking has to stop and I get the documents. I requested these documents six weeks ago and I have not seen a single piece of paper yet."

Is Hoekstra being unreasonable? I asked Michael Tanji, the former DOCEX official with the Defense Intelligence Agency, how long such a search might take. His answer: Not long. "The retrieval of a HARMONY document is a trivial thing assuming one has a serial number or enough keyword terms to narrow down a search [Hoekstra did]. If given the task when they walked in the door, one person should be able to retrieve 40 documents before lunch."

Tanji should know. He left DIA last year as the chief of the media exploitation division in the office of document exploitation. Before that, he started and managed a digital forensics and intelligence fusion program that used the data obtained from DOCEX operations. He began his career as an Army signals intelligence [SIGINT] analyst. In all, Tanji has worked for 18 years in intelligence and dealt with various aspects of the media exploitation problem for about four years.

We discussed the successes and failures of the DOCEX program, the relative lack of public attention to the project, and what steps might be taken to expedite the exploitation of the documents in the event the push to release all of the documents loses momentum.

TWS: In what areas is the project succeeding? In what areas is the project failing?

Tanji: The level of effort applied to the DOCEX problems in Iraq and Afghanistan to date is a testament to the will and work ethic of people in the intelligence community. They've managed to find a number of golden nuggets amongst a vast field of rock in what I would consider a respectable amount of time through sheer brute force. The flip side is that it is a brute-force effort. For a number of reasons--primarily time and resources--there has not been much opportunity to step back, think about a smarter way to solve the problem, and then apply various solutions. Inasmuch as we've won in Iraq and Saddam and his cronies are in the dock, now would be a good time to put some fresh minds on the problem of how you turn DOCEX into a meaningful and effective information-age intelligence tool.

TWS: Why haven't we heard more about this project? Aren't most of the Iraqi documents unclassified?

Tanji: Until a flood of captured material came rushing in after the start of Operation Enduring Freedom [in October 2001], DOCEX was a backwater: unglamorous, not terribly career enhancing, and from what I had heard always one step away from being mothballed.

The classification of documents obtained for exploitation varies based on the nature of the way they were obtained and by whom. There are some agencies that tend to classify everything regardless of how it was acquired. I could not give you a ratio of unclassified to classified documents.

In my opinion the silence associated with exploitation work is rooted in the nature of the work. In addition to being tedious and time-consuming, it is usually done after the shooting is over. We place a higher value on intelligence information that comes to us before a conflict begins. Confirmation that we were right (or proof that we were wrong) after the fact is usually considered history. That some of this information may be dated doesn't mean it isn't still valuable.

TWS: The project seems overwhelmed at the moment, with a mere 50,000 documents translated completely out of a total of 2 million. What steps, in your view, should be taken to expedite the process?

Tanji: I couldn't say what the total take of documents or other forms of media is, though numbers in the millions are probably not far off.

In a sense the exploitation process is what it is; you have to put eyes on paper (or a computer screen) to see what might be worth further translation or deeper analysis. It is a time-consuming process that has no adequate mechanical solution. Machine translation software is getting better, but it cannot best a qualified human linguist, of which we have very few.

Tackling the computer media problem is a lot simpler in that computer language (binary) is universal, so searching for key words, phrases, and the names of significant personalities is fairly simple. Built to deal with large-scale data sets, a forensic computer system can rapidly separate wheat from chaff. The current drawback is that the computer forensics field is dominated by a law-enforcement mindset, which means the approach to the digital media problem is still very linear. As most of this material has come to us without any context ("hard drives found in Iraq" was a common label attached to captured media) that approach means our great-grandchildren will still be dealing with this problem.

Dealing with the material as the large and nebulous data set that it is and applying a contextual appliqué after exploitation--in essence, recreating the Iraqi networks as they were before Operation Iraqi Freedom began--would allow us to get at the most significant data rapidly for technical analysis, and allow for a political analysis to follow in short order. If I were looking for both a quick and powerful fix I'd get various Department of Energy labs involved; they're used to dealing with large data sets and have done great work in the data mining and rendering fields.

TWS: To read some of the reporting on Iraq, one might come away with the impression that Saddam Hussein was something of a benign (if not exactly benevolent) dictator who had no weapons of mass destruction and no connections to terrorism. Does the material you've seen support this conventional wisdom?

Tanji: I am subject to a nondisclosure agreement, so I would rather not get into details. I will say that the intelligence community has scraped the surface of much of what has been captured in Iraq and in my view a great deal more deep digging is required. Critics of the war often complain about the lack of "proof"--a term that I had never heard used in the intelligence lexicon until we ousted Saddam--for going to war. There is really only one way to obtain "proof" and that is to carry out a thorough and detailed examination of what we've captured.

TWS: I've spoken with several officials who have seen unclassified materials indicating the former Iraqi regime provided significant support--including funding and training--to transregional terrorists, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ansar al Islam, Algeria's GSPC, and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Did you see any of this?

Tanji: My obligations under a nondisclosure agreement prevent me from getting into this kind of detail.
Other officials familiar with the captured documents were less cautious. "As much as we overestimated WMD, it appears we underestimated [Saddam Hussein's] support for transregional terrorists," says one intelligence official.

Speaking of Ansar al Islam, the al Qaeda-linked terrorist group that operated in northern Iraq, the former high-ranking military intelligence officer says: "There is no question about the fact that AI had reach into Baghdad. There was an intelligence connection between that group and the regime, a financial connection between that group and the regime, and there was an equipment connection. It may have been the case that the IIS [Iraqi Intelligence Service] support for AI was meant to operate against the [anti-Saddam] Kurds. But there is no question IIS was supporting AI."

The official continued: "[Saddam] used these groups because he was interested in extending his influence and extending the influence of Iraq. There are definite and absolute ties to terrorism. The evidence is there, especially at the network level. How high up in the government was it sanctioned? I can't tell you. I don't know whether it was run by Qusay [Hussein] or [Izzat Ibrahim] al-Duri or someone else. I'm just not sure. But to say Iraq wasn't involved in terrorism is flat wrong."

STILL, some insist on saying it. Since early November, Senator Carl Levin has been spotted around Washington waving a brief excerpt from a February 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency assessment of Iraq. The relevant passage reads: "Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control."
Levin treats these two sentences as definitive proof that Bush administration officials knew that Saddam's regime was unlikely to work with Islamic fundamentalists and ignored the intelligence community's assessment to that effect. Levin apparently finds the passage so damning that he specifically requested that it be declassified.

I thought of Levin's two sentences last Wednesday and Thursday as I sat in a Dallas courtroom listening to testimony in the deportation hearing of Ahmed Mohamed Barodi, a 42-year-old Syrian-born man who's been living in Texas for the last 15 years. I thought of Levin's sentences, for example, when Barodi proudly proclaimed his membership in the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, and again when Barodi, dressed in loose-fitting blue prison garb, told Judge J. Anthony Rogers about the 21 days he spent in February 1982 training with other members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood at a camp in Iraq.

The account he gave in the courtroom was slightly less alarming than the description of the camp he had provided in 1989, on his written application for political asylum in the United States. In that document, Barodi described the instruction he received in Iraq as "guerrilla warfare training." And in an interview in February 2005 with Detective Scott Carr and special agent Sam Montana, both from the federal Joint Terrorism Task Force, Barodi said that the Iraqi regime provided training in the use of firearms, rocket-propelled grenades, and document forgery.

Barodi comes from Hama, the town that was leveled in 1982 by the armed forces of secular Syrian dictator Hafez Assad because it was home to radical Islamic terrorists who had agitated against his regime. The massacre took tens of thousands of lives, but some of the extremists got away.

Many of the most radical Muslim Brotherhood refugees from Hama were welcomed next door--and trained--in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Spanish investigators believe that Ghasoub Ghalyoun, the man they have accused of conducting surveillance for the 9/11 attacks, who also has roots in the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, was trained in an Iraqi terrorist camp in the early 1980s. Ghalyoun mentions this Iraqi training in a 2001 letter to the head of Syrian intelligence, in which he seeks reentry to Syria despite his long affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Reaching out to Islamic radicals was, in fact, one of the first moves Saddam Hussein made upon taking power in 1979. That he did not do it for ideological reasons is unimportant. As Barodi noted at last week's hearing, "He used us and we used him."

Throughout the 1980s, including the eight years of the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam cast himself as a holy warrior in his public rhetoric to counter the claims from Iran that he was an infidel. This posturing continued during and after the first Gulf war in 1990-91. Saddam famously ordered "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great) added to the Iraqi flag. Internally, he launched "The Faith Campaign," which according to leading Saddam Hussein scholar Amatzia Baram included the imposition of sharia (Islamic law). According to Baram, "The Iraqi president initiated laws forbidding the public consumption of alcohol and introduced enhanced compulsory study of the Koran at all educational levels, including Baath Party branches."

Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law who defected to Jordan in 1995, explained these changes in an interview with Rolf Ekeus, then head of the U.N. weapons inspection program. "The government of Iraq is instigating fundamentalism in the country," he said, adding, "Every party member has to pass a religious exam. They even stopped party meetings for prayers."

And throughout the decade, the Iraqi regime sponsored "Popular Islamic Conferences" at the al Rashid Hotel that drew the most radical Islamists from throughout the region to Baghdad. Newsweek's Christopher Dickey, who covered one of those meetings in 1993, would later write: "Islamic radicals from all over the Middle East, Africa and Asia converged on Baghdad to show their solidarity with Iraq in the face of American aggression." One speaker praised "the mujahed Saddam Hussein, who is leading this nation against the nonbelievers." Another speaker said, "Everyone has a task to do, which is to go against the American state." Dickey continued:

Every time I hear diplomats and politicians, whether in Washington or the capitals of Europe, declare that Saddam Hussein is a "secular Baathist ideologue" who has nothing do with Islamists or with terrorist calls to jihad, I think of that afternoon and I wonder what they're talking about. If that was not a fledgling Qaeda itself at the Rashid convention, it sure was Saddam's version of it.

In the face of such evidence, Carl Levin and other critics of the Iraq war trumpet deeply flawed four-year-old DIA analyses. Shouldn't the senator instead use his influence to push for the release of Iraqi documents that will help establish what, exactly, the Iraqi regime was doing in the years before the U.S. invasion?

Link: Weekly Standard

Ya’alon: Iraq Moved its Chemical Weapons to Syria Before War
16:52 Dec 18, '05 / 17 Kislev 5766
By Scott Shiloh

Former IDF Chief-of-Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya’alon said in an interview with the New York Sun on Thursday that Iraq moved its chemical weapons to Syria six weeks before the war started.

"He transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria,” said Ya’alon. “No one went to Syria to find it.”

Ya’alon’s assertion that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction were clandestinely sent to Syria on the eve of the war contradicts U.S. President George W. Bush’s statement last Wednesday at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. Bush said then that “much of the intelligence” on Iraq “turned out to be wrong,” and that it appears that Saddam did not possess weapons of mass destruction.

Despite his admission to what could be one of the greatest intelligence blunders of all time, Bush defended his decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

“Given Saddam's history and the lessons of September the 11th, my decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision. Saddam was a threat - and the American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power,” said Bush.

Ya’alon, who was IDF Chief of Staff from July 2002 to June 2005, speculated, however, in April 2004 that Iraq transferred its weapons “to another country, such as Syria.”

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has also contended that Iraq’s WMD were transferred from Iraq to Syria before the war. In December 2002, Sharon told Israel's Channel 2 Television that “chemical and biological weapons which Saddam is endeavoring to conceal have been moved from Iraq to Syria."

Syria has long been known to be developing its own chemical weapons (CW) of mass destruction. In March 2004, former CIA director George Tenet told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "Damascus has an active CW development and testing program that relies on foreign suppliers for key controlled chemicals suitable for producing CW."

A senior official in the Iraqi embassy, Entifadh Qanbar, generally supported Ya’alon’s claim that Iraq moved its chemical weapons to Syria, but said that his government “is basically operating in the dark” because it doesn’t control its own intelligence agency.

Link: IsraelNN.com

Russia Moved Iraqi WMD
Charles R. Smith
Thursday, March 3, 2005

Moscow Moved Weapons to Syria and Lebanon

According to a former top Bush administration official, Russian special forces teams moved weapons of mass destruction out of Iraq to Syria.

"I am absolutely sure that Russian Spetsnatz units moved WMD out of Iraq before the war," stated John Shaw, the former deputy undersecretary for international technology security.

According to Shaw, Russian units hid Saddam's arsenal inside Syria and in Lebanon's Bekka valley.

"While in Iraq I uncovered detailed information that Spetsnatz units shredded records and moved all WMD and specified advanced munitions out of Iraq to Syria and Lebanon," stated Shaw during an exclusive interview.

"I received information from several sources naming the exact Russian units, what they took and where they took both WMD materials and conventional explosives. Moscow made a 2001 agreement with Saddam Hussein to clear up all Russian involvement in WMD systems in Iraq," stated Shaw.

Shaw's assertions match the information provided by U.S. military forces that satellite surveillance showed extensive large-vehicle traffic crossing the Syrian border prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Moscow Paranoid About WMD

Shaw's information also backs allegations by a wide variety of sources of Russia's direct involvement in Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. One U.N. bioterrorism expert announced that Russia has been Iraq's "main supplier of the materials and know-how to weaponize anthrax, botulism and smallpox."

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Robert Goldberg cited former U.N. weapons inspector Richard Spertzel, who stated that Moscow supplied Baghdad with fermentation equipment to produce biotoxins.

According to Spertzel, the Russians on the U.N. inspection team in Iraq were "paranoid" about his efforts to uncover smallpox production.

Goldberg noted that no country has "done more to rebuild" Saddam's chemical and biological weapons programs or "been more aggressive in helping hide the truth" than Russia.

It is a fact that Saddam Hussein rose to power backed by Russian weapons and Russian money. Saddam was in debt to Moscow for over $8 billion for the arms he purchased from Russia when he was captured by U.S. forces.

The primary Iraqi chemical weapons were VX nerve gas and mustard gas, a blistering agent, both obtained from Russia.

According to the book "Russian Military Power," published in 1982, "It is known that the Soviets maintain stocks of CW (chemical weapons) agents."

The two primary Russian chemical weapons in the 1982 Soviet inventory were the nerve agent "VX" and "blistering agents - developments of mustard gas used so effectively in World War I."

Russian Chemical Weapons in Iraq

Iraq did most of its WMD killing using Russian-made MiG and Sukhoi aircraft equipped with chemical sprayers. In addition, Saddam used French-made artillery and helicopters to dump gas on Iranian troops and Iraqi Kurds.

Iraq obtained Russian delivery systems and the same inventory of Russian-made chemical weapons at the same time. Iraqi SU-22 Fitter attack jets were armed with Warsaw Pact-designed bombs filled with chemical weapons. Iraq used these Russian jet fighters to drop chemical weapons on Iranian troops during the Iran-Iraq war.

Iraq tried to use these SU-22 jets during the 1991 Gulf War, but they were detected and destroyed on the ground before they could launch a deadly chemical attack.

Other Russian weapons found with chemical weapons include the FROG-7 missile, 122 mm rockets, 152 mm artillery and the M-1937 82 mm mortars. All the Iraqi artillery missiles, rockets, shells and mortar rounds filled with chemical weapons are of Russian design.

Iraqi forces were trained by Russians in the use of chemical weapons and equipped by Russia with anti-chemical suits. The Iraqi armed forces were trained, equipped and supplied with the proper logistics to perform chemical warfare by Russia.

Lebanon and Syria

The arming of Iraq with such weapons has a direct impact on events today in the Middle East. The presence of former Iraqi WMD systems in Lebanon raises serious questions surrounding the Feb. 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Many blame Syria for Hariri's murder.

However, the possibility that Hariri discovered the location of the Iraqi WMD systems inside his country lends some credible backing to a Syrian assassination effort to silence him.

In addition, the sudden sale of advanced missile and other weapons to Damascus by Moscow also supports the allegation that Syria is hiding something for Russia.

Russian weapons makers have previously insisted on hard, cold cash payments for their missiles, especially after the fall of Saddam and the collapse of credit deals done with Baghdad. More importantly, the Syrian economy is in bad shape, making it difficult for Damascus to come up with the required money for advanced Russian weapons.

Instead, it now appears that Moscow has extended both very good terms and no down payment required to Syria for an extensive purchase of advanced missiles and weapons. This is in contrast to weapons sales to other "good" Russian customers such as China, which can afford to pay up front for weapon systems.

CIA Failed

There is no question that the Russian effort to remove Iraqi WMD systems was the most successful intelligence operation of the 21st century. The Russians were able to move hundreds of tons of chemical, biological and nuclear materials without being discovered by CIA satellites or NSA radio listening posts.

"There is a clear sense on how effective they were," noted Shaw. "The fact that the CIA did not know shows just how successful the Russian operation was," he concluded.

Link: NewsMax.com

The 9/11 Connection
What Salman Pak could reveal.
By Deroy Murdock
April 3, 2003, 2:40 p.m.

Not far from Baghdad, Coalition forces may uncover evidence linking Saddam Hussein's regime with airline hijackings in general and the September 11 attacks in particular.

Salman Pak, a training camp on the Tigris River some 15 miles southeast of Iraq's capital, could clarify this question. According to Iraqi defectors and U.S. intelligence analysts, this is where Hussein's agents polished the air-piracy skills of foreign Islamist terrorists.

Details on this facility and its al Qaeda ties recently emerged in a Manhattan federal courtroom. Former CIA Director James Woolsey and Iraq scholar Laurie Mylroie offered sworn expert testimony in a largely overlooked lawsuit filed by the families of two people killed on 9/11. They are suing Iraq's government, among other rogue entities and individuals, for allegedly helping to murder their loved ones.

"I believe it is definitely more likely than not that some degree of common effort in the sense of aiding or abetting or conspiracy was involved here between Iraq and the al Qaeda," Woolsey said on March 3. President Clinton's CIA chief from 1993 to 1995 added: "Even if one cannot show that...any of the individual 19 hijackers were trained at Salman Pak, the nature of the training and the circumstances suggest, to my mind, at least, some kind of common aiding, abetting, assistance, cooperation — whatever word you might want to take."

Mylroie, a Pentagon terrorism consultant and Iraq-policy adviser to Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign (and author of The War Against America), also testified March 3. She believes "It took a state like Iraq to carry out an attack as really sophisticated, massive and deadly as what happened on September 11."
Top Iraqi defectors amplify these American suspicions.

"There have been several confirmed sightings of Islamic fundamentalists from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Gulf states being trained in terror tactics at the Iraqi intelligence camp at Salman Pak," Khidir Hamza, Iraq's former nuclear-weapons chief, told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee last July 31. "The training involved assassination, explosions and hijacking."

"This camp is specialized in exporting terrorism to the whole world," former Iraqi army captain Sabah Khodada told PBS's Frontline in an October 14, 2001 interview. Khodada worked at Salman Pak. He said that instruction there was "all for the general concept of hitting and attacking American targets and American interests." He added: "We saw people getting trained to hijack airplanes...They are even trained how to use utensils for food, like forks and knives provided in the plane...They are trained how to plant horror within the passengers by doing such actions." A map of the camp Khodada drew for Frontline closely matches satellite photos of the base, thus bolstering his story.

"I was the security officer in charge of the unit," at Salman Pak, an ex-Iraqi lieutenant general told Frontline anonymously in a November 6, 2001 interview. "This unit was under the direct supervision and control of the Iraqi Intelligence Service," he added. "And the fact that the training was concentrated on a plane made it even stranger as far as I was concerned."

Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Aldouri, denied this to Frontline that October 29. "I am lucky that I know the area, this Salman Pak. This is a very beautiful area with gardens, with trees," Aldouri said. "It is not possible to do such a program there, because there's no place for planes."

Oddly enough, that satellite photo shows no rose bushes. But clearly evident is the Russian-built Tupolev 154 airliner on which these Iraqi emigres report hijackings were rehearsed.

"We were told it was for counterterrorist training," former U.N. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer said in the Scotsman newspaper on February 18. "We automatically knocked off the word 'counter.'" Duelfer and his team saw the jet on a January 1995 visit.

Meanwhile, in a February 24 letter to James Beasley, Jr., the attorney in the aforementioned lawsuit, Czech U.N. Ambassador Hynek Kmonicek affirms an October 26, 2001 statement by Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross: "In this moment we can confirm, that during the next stay of Mr. Muhammad Atta in the Czech Republic there was the contact with the official of the Iraqi intelligence, Mr. Al Ani, Ahmed Khalin Ibrahim Samir, who was on 22nd April 2001 expelled from the Czech Republic on the basis of activities which were not compatible with the diplomatic status." Atta flew from Virginia Beach, Virginia to Prague on April 7, 2001. Car-rental records place him in the Czech capitol the next day. He flew home to Florida that April 9.

"If he [Atta] goes there and meets with an Iraqi intelligence officer, and then turns right around and comes right back, it looks an awful lot to me like it was an operational meeting," Woolsey said in court. "Certainly he and Mr. Al-Ani were unlikely to be discussing or looking at the lovely architecture of Medieval Prague."
Czech officials sent Al-Ani packing just two weeks after his meeting with Atta when they caught the Iraqi casing and photographing Radio Free Europe's Prague headquarters, some believe in hopes of bombing it.

Iraq also is tied to the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Chief conspirator Ramzi Yousef reached America bearing an Iraqi passport, although he fled to Pakistan on a Pakistani passport issued to one Abdul Basit Karim, a Pakistani-born resident of Kuwait whose identity Mylroie surmises that Yousef assumed, perhaps with the help of Iraqi intelligence agents who had access to immigration files before U.S. and allied forces drove them from Kuwait.

For his part, Indiana-born and Iraqi-reared Abdul Rahman Yasin — indicted for mixing the chemicals in the bomb that shook the Twin Towers, killing six and injuring roughly 1,000 people — returned to Iraq after the explosion, stopping first at the Iraqi embassy in Amman, Jordan. He lived freely in Baghdad for a year. Iraqi officials say they have kept him in custody since 1994, though they neither have prosecuted him nor extradited him to face American justice.

Also, according to the State Department's "Patterns of Global Terrorism — 2001,"released May 21, 2002, "Iraq was the only Arab-Muslim country that did not condemn the September 11 attacks against the United States." That day, an official Iraqi broadcast said America was "...reaping the fruits of [its] crimes against humanity."

Some have dismissed the notion that supposedly secular Saddam Hussein would conspire with Muslim extremists like Osama bin Laden and the men of al Qaeda. Woolsey and Mylroie note that Hussein sometimes embraces Islam for political purposes. The Iraqi flag, for instance, has borne the Arabic words Allahu akbar ("God is great") since 1991, the year Hussein lost Gulf War I. Terrorists often invoke this Islamic incantation before blowing themselves apart. Whatever their differences on Heaven, Hussein and bin Laden share a common foe on Earth: America.

Said Woolsey, "I've used the analogy a number of times about the Iraqi government and al Qaeda as being like two Mafia families who hate each other, kill each other's members from time to time, insult one another, but are still capable of cooperating against what they consider to be a greater enemy — namely, us."

Are these apparent ties tough to prove? You bet. Iraq's work with homicidal zealots does not resemble a municipal bond deal, with contracts registered at City Hall. As Woolsey noted, "This is putting together pieces of a puzzle in which quite likely both parties are doing everything they can to keep these pieces from being fitted together."

So why has the Bush administration not highlighted these ominous connections? One theory is that showcasing pre-9/11 evidence of Salman Pak might make people wonder why nothing was done about it before the atrocity. Another view is that federal officials who implemented President Clinton's light touch towards Iraq are in no hurry to remind Americans of how foolish their policy was.

In either case, we soon may know much more about Salman Pak — assuming it has not been thoroughly sanitized. Baghdad's liberation should snap open government file cabinets and loosen captured officials' tongues. Before long, they may reveal the extent of Saddam Hussein's complicity in the September 11 massacre.

Link: National Review

USSR2 File: Putin regime restores Soviet anthem and symbol; Cheka founder statue re-erected near Moscow

That didn't take long. Did the symbols of the USSR ever really go away during Yeltsin's pseudo-capitalist retro-New Economic Policy? I think not. Notwithstanding the retention of the double-headed eagle symbol of the czars and the tricolor flag of "new" Russia, the Chekists are showing who is in charge of the Russian Federation. Soviet communism has always been a scary mixture of Russian nationalism and international socialism. "Post-communist" parties like United Russia and the National Bolsheviks synthesize both streams of ideology. Is anyone in the West paying attention, apart from a few overzealous bloggers?

The communists are patient masters of gradualism as they reacclimatize both Russian and Westerner to the symbols of the Stalinist oppression that will return, mark my words, if permitted.

KGB's founder back on his plinth in Russia.
By Andrew Osborn in Moscow.
[12.09.2004, 23:04]

Thirteen years ago, democracy-hungry Russians yelped with joy as a statue to one of the Soviet Union's most brutal secret policemen was toppled. Yesterday, in a potent symbol of the new Putinised Russia, a new statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of what was later to become the KGB, was erected.

Brushing aside the fact that "Iron Felix" presided over Lenin's Red Terror and had the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on his hands, a monument to him was unveiled yesterday in the town which bears his name - Dzerzhinsky - just outside Moscow. The statue was erected to commemorate what would have been his 127th birthday, and its unveiling was reportedly attended by some 300 schoolchildren and officials.

The toppling of the original Dzerzhinsky statue in August 1991 from its plinth in Lubyanka Square in front of the KGB's headquarters was an epoch-defining moment. The 14-ton bronze statue was so solid that it had to be toppled by a crane, purportedly supplied by the US embassy in Moscow. Thousands cheered as it came down and reformers said it was a sign that Russia wanted to put its bloody past behind it and neuter the Soviet security apparatus Dzerzhinsky helped set up.

That statue has languished in a park near Moscow's main modern art museum among other fallen Soviet idols ever since, but it too may make a return to centre stage. Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow's powerful mayor, has said he is minded to re-erect it, arguing that it is aesthetically superb and that Dzerzhinsky did a lot for the country's homeless and railways.

But Dzerzhinsky, a Pole by birth, is better remembered for his ruthlessness, his unswerving brutality and for his many victims. A member of Lenin's inner cabinet, the goatee-bearded leather-jacket-wearing Bolshevik founded the Cheka secret police, the precursor to the KGB, and openly stated that "organised terror" was essential if the revolution was to survive.

In the six years after 1917 when the Communists seized power it is estimated that at least half a million people were executed by Dzerzhinsky's agents, who often claimed their victims in the dead of the night, knocking on their victims' doors. Political opponents, priests, aristocrats and capitalists were all shot - without trial - merely for who they were and what they represented.

Dzerzhinsky also set up the first Soviet labour camps, later to become known as the gulags, on the remote Solovetsky Islands south of the Arctic Circle. In short, he established the system of terror which Stalin inherited, and indeed backed his bid to replace Lenin. Known among liberals as "the shame of Russia", a new statue to him is unlikely to be well received among those who thought they had seen the last of his likeness in 1991.

Link: Agentura

Russian parliament approves red star for army emblem
June 5, 2003: #4 - JRL 7210

MOSCOW, June 4 (AFP) - The Russian parliament Wednesday approved a bill reinstating the Soviet-era red star as a symbol of the armed forces featuring on its emblem alongside the tsarist-era double-headed eagle.

The bill, passed on first reading by 271 votes to 105 with two abstentions, was presented to parliament by President Vladimir Putin last November in support of a proposal by Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov.

Ivanov declared then that the star, adopted by the Bolshevik commissariat for military affairs on April 19, 1918 and worn by Red Army troops throughout World War II, was "sacred for soldiers."

The yellow-bordered red star was the ubiquitous symbol of the Red Army until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Russian defence ministry's daily publication, however, never dropped the name of Krasnaya Zvezda, or Red Star.

The liberal parties opposed the return of the star, claiming it denoted an attachment to a discredited regime.
In its new design, the armed forces' emblem is to bear the Russian state's sheaf and imperial eagle, with the red star at its four corners. On the reverse, the two-headed eagle carries a sword and a crown of laurels in its claws.

In 2001, Putin restored the former Soviet anthem with new words written by the same Soviet-era poet who had written the words to the original version.

The star is still widely visible, engraved into the masonry of many buildings and shining from the summit of Russian state power, the tops of the towers around the Kremlin walls.

The bill approving the incorporation of the red star into the army emblem is to be voted on in second reading on Friday.

Link: Johnson's Russia List

Putin OKs calendar glorifying communism
Document includes Soviet holidays, founder of intelligence service
By Toby Westerman Tuesday, February 12, 2002

Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken another step in the glorification of his nation's communist past and the exoneration of communism's bloody history, according to a recent report published in the Italian news daily Corriere della Sera.

The Putin government has allowed Russia's internal security organization, the FSB, to issue a calendar – meant only for use within the organization – commemorating several former Soviet holidays, while portraying Russian security headquarters on Lubyanka Square as it appeared before the collapse of the USSR.

Corriere della Sera obtained a copy of the spy calendar after a Russian newspaper secretly photographed it. The calendar's issuance follows several actions by the Putin government re-establishing Soviet customs and usage, which include the Russian military's use of Soviet insignia and revival of the Soviet anthem – but with different lyrics.

Featured prominently in the new FSB calendar is the statue of the founder of the Soviet secret police, Felix Dzerzhinsky, generally regarded in the West as a purveyor of terror and murder. In reality, the statue was one of the first Soviet monuments to be toppled as the USSR collapsed. Its removal – accompanied by cheering crowds – is considered one of the defining moments of the fall of the Soviet state.

The Communist Party and the Russian intelligence community have sought – so far in vain – to have Dzerzhinsky's statue placed back on its pedestal. It now lies rusting in a grassy area in front of a Moscow art gallery.

At the request of Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, on Dec. 20, 1917, organized an intelligence service referred to as the "Cheka," the abbreviation for the "Extraordinary Commission for the Struggle against Counterrevolution, Espionage, Speculation and Sabotage."

All subsequent Russian intelligence organizations, including the notorious KGB, are traced back to the Cheka. Corriere della Sera points out that Putin, as well as Russian intelligence officers both past and present, observe Dec. 20 as the common anniversary date for all Russian intelligence services. The date is marked in red on the new FSB calendar.

All Russian intelligence service officers also refer to each other as "Chekists."

Ironically, no mention is made of the very effective Tsarist intelligence service, the Okhrana, whose methodology was copied by Dzerzhinsky's communists. Putin asserts that the Russian secret police only "went bad" under Josef Stalin, who took power following Lenin's death in 1924.

"This is not true," Corriere della Sera reminded its readers, recounting instances that earned Dzerzhinsky and the Cheka a well-deserved reputation for terror and mass murder before Stalin. Corriere della Sera rhetorically asked, "Aren't the Chekists … ashamed to commemorate the very individual who followed to the letter" Lenin's directives on the elimination of the Russian middle class?

Seeking to hold present-day "Chekists" accountable for the pride they demonstrate in the early Soviet past, Corriere della Sera invoked an often quoted slogan of the Dzerzhinsky era: "We are not fighting a war against individuals, we are exterminating the bourgeois as a class."

The bloody early Chekist history became more vivid as Corriere della Sera provided additional historical information. "In Kharkov prisoners were flayed alive; in Poltava priests were impaled; in Odessa captured white officials (Tsarist opponents of Lenin's communists) were slowly fed into furnaces," Corriere della Sera reminded its readers.

Observed Corriere della Sera, "The Cheka was exactly what Lenin wanted it to be – an army of devastation."

Link: WorldNetDaily

Duma approves Soviet anthem
Friday, 8 December, 2000, 15:18 GMT

The lower house of the Russian parliament has voted to bring back the tune of the old Soviet national anthem as the new Russian anthem.

The Duma overwhelmingly approved the bill, by 381 votes to 51. It will now go to the upper house, the Federation Council for final approval.

The Duma voted to retain the double-headed eagleThe bill will restore the anthem's music by Aleksandr Aleksandrov but without the original text, which includes praise of Lenin.

The Duma also voted to keep the tsarist double-headed eagle as the country's coat of arms, and the pre-revolutionary white, red and blue tricolour, which has served as the Russian flag since the fall of communism.

And it voted to restore the red flag as the symbol of the Russian armed forces.

President Vladimir Putin had asked the Duma to resolve the issue quickly by giving the bills three readings in the space of one morning.

Strong criticism

A statement by the liberal Yabloko faction, which voted against the bill, said that the measure "deepened the schism in society".

Yeltsin and his chosen successorAnd former Russian President Boris Yeltsin attacked Mr Putin for backing the bill, in what is said to be the first public criticism of the man he promoted to be his successor.
But supporters of the bill deny that it will do any harm.

"Adopting the music of the anthem of the Soviet Union as the main song of the Russian Federation can in no way be seen as compromising Russian statehood or an insult to our democracy," Communist deputy and former Soviet parliament speaker Anatoly Lukyanov was quoted as saying during the session.

But what about the tune?

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia ditched the anthem and replaced it with Patriotic Song, by the 19th-century Russian composer Mikhail Glinka.

But the lack of words to the Glinka tune provoked complaints last summer from the Spartak Moscow football team that it had nothing suitable to belt out before matches.

The old Soviet anthem, by contrast, is a stirring, singable melody.

It was written during the dark days of World War II, as Red Army troops began to turn the tables on the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front.

Many older Russians associate the anthem more with the victory over Hitler than with communist oppression.

Others associate it with Soviet-era sports victories and other achievements.

Putin unmoved

But Mr Yeltsin disagreed.

"My only association with the old anthem is party congresses and conferences that consolidated the power of the party's bureaucrats," he said.

Mr Yeltsin told the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper that he was "categorically" against its revival, despite opinion polls showing that many Russians favoured this.

"The president of a country should not blindly follow the mood of the people," he said. "On the contrary, it is up to him to actively influence it".

Link: BBC

Latin America File: Brazil's communist government harbors FARC agent

Blogger Luís Afonso Assumpção of Porto Alegre, Brazil recently composed a short but flattering review of the Once Upon a Time in the West blog (reprinted under Visitors' Comments). We have also perused his excellent blog Swimming Against the Red Tide and, much to our shock and surprise (NOT!), learned that Brazil's communist government harbors a FARC agent. What is FARC, pray tell? The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the biggest, oldest Marxist insurgent army in Latin America.

The picture above shows Brazilian President Lula da Silva, who hosted the July 2005 Sao Paulo Forum, Latin America's Communist Bloc.

Since 2002 Lula's Workers' Party has governed Brazil, with a little help from the Communist Party. Take a gander at the party logos. Wow man, like, the red is hurting my eyes. After Brazilians voted in communism, Pravda launched an online Portuguese edition. Go figure.

In a sensational article, Heitor de Paola, one of the most prolificous editors from Media Without Mask website in Brazil, has revealed a true atomic bomb: Antonio Palocci, Lula's 2002 campaign chief and now the almighty minister of economy is in fact the extra-official representative of FARC (major drug-dealing-terrorist group in Colombia) interests in Brazil.

He created a pro-Farc committee in 2002 when he was the mayor of the city of Ribeirao Preto. Heitor has found this news that was published only in the local newspapers NINE MONTHS after the fact, when Palocci was already in charge of Lula da Silva campaign that year. The information was totally hidden from a larger audience since that time, surviving only as a rumour. Now , when the Cuba-Lula affair has put Palocci under fire, that it emerged again. Read the details here:

"I have denounced, together with other columnists from Media without Mask website that the 'motherland saviour' , Minister of Economy Antonio Palocci Filho, is not waht it seems, he is the extra-official representative of Colombian drug-dealing-terrorist group called FUERZAS ARMADAS REVOLUCIONARIAS DE COLOMBIA - FARC in Brazil. And his performance in charge of Brazil's economy is part of a genius plan from the SAO PAULO FORUM (fsp) to mold the economy in the false 'stability' axis where it is, with incredibly high interest rates and daily bankrupt of hundreds of companies while banks are profitting as ever!, to serve as a support of a totalitarian project of Fidel, Chávez and Luila to Latin America".

Here's the proof of Palocci-Farc link.

Media Without Mask: "It's a text by Joel Silva, Free Lancer and Marcelo Toledo, reporters from a newspaper called “Folha de Ribeirao” with the collaboration of Evandro Spinelli, dating march, 10th, 2002, that was only made available through the internet nine months later, in december, 10th, 2002 and, as a magic trick. disappeared until now. The title is 'Dangerous Liasons - Group wants to spread the 'causes' from FARC'. It continued 'PT's (worker party) secretary launched a supportive committe to the Colombian guerrilla'. This is the text"" The ofice will be officially launched march, 20th, in the executive chamber of Ribeirao Preto's .

The office will be localized at 'citizens temple', a non-profit cultural organization, whose Palocci is one of the founder-members. The group will be called 'Solidarity to the Colombian People and to the National Liberation Movements Committee' (....)

Part o f the committee says they want to defend the causes of FARC, but not its violence. 'The idea is the we could spread to all Brazil the situation of Colombian people and the true causes of the FARC's fight against the local government'. One of the members, Paulino, is radical : 'I don't think that elections will solve (the problems of Brazil), it's the revolution. Today in Brazil thereś no condition to make an armed revolution, but not in Colombia. They (FARC) have an organized military.

Palocci and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva were not found to speak about the episode yesterday. The committee will gather pro-Farc signatures and will defend the Farc's arguments around Brazil. During the launching a guerilla's activist will be present. 'We need to speak out and to launch Farc's committees all around the world to denounce the problems that occurred in that country', said Beto Cangussú (PT) - on of the founders.

To 'seal the deal', there was a meeting in Ribeirao Preto joining Paulino and Oliverio Medina - the unofficial Farc's spokenperson in Brazil, that even was got caught in 2000, accused from terrorist activities by Colombian government (note: Medina is under arrest right now in Brazil , on a eve of his expulsion to Colombia)."

Comments: Nothing to comment. Only a question : Am I being too paranoid? No, just like Andy Grove's (Intel Chairman) book said "Only the paranoid survive"!!

Link: Swimming Against the Red Tide
Original Source: Media Without Mask

To paraphrase Afonso's profound response to this revelation: No comment.

Communist Bloc Military Updates: Peace Mission 2005, Sino-Russian military coordination begins

Russia's missile power, which can be conveyed at hypersonic speeds around the globe. China's man power, which can be conveyed via commercial container ship fleets, refitted as troop transports. The Russian Federation is a formidable foe for the USA and NATO. The People's Republic of China is a formidable foe for the West's allies in East Asia: Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines. Can you imagine, in the days of overt communism in Russia, the USSR and the PRC conducting joint military exercises? Not likely! The White House and NATO leaders would be on the edge of their seats.

The USA warily watched the unprecedented Sino-Russian exercises that comprised Peace Mission 2005. "Clearly, there's interest in anything that affects the security in the Pacific regions," Brigadier General Carter Ham of the US Joint Staff said last week. (See last article in this blog.) Be assured, Russia and China are seeking peace on their terms, not the West's.

Analysis: Sino-Russian War Games
by Edward Lanfranco
Beijing (UPI) Aug 23, 2005

The first-ever Sino-Russian joint military exercise in China commenced live fire operations on Tuesday according to state-run media. Analysts see this as a major event worth monitoring from three different long-term perspectives.

First it is a clear political signal of growing strength sent by China to possible regional rivals, specifically the United States, Japan and Taiwan. Second is the Chinese-sponsored exercise being a much-needed opportunity to practice coordinated operations involving varied branches of the armed forces to professionalize.

Third is giving the Chinese a field demonstration to assess Russian military hardware in action before approving future purchases.

In the first area, regional conflict, a delegation of visiting analysts speaking off the record with United Press International Tuesday expressed concern about the element of uncertainty Russia introduced to potential China conflicts in East Asia that involve the U.S.

Japan is the only country where Russian interests are directly at stake. Both China and Russia have maritime border disputes with the Japanese. The Chinese are fighting a multifaceted war of words with Japan that includes delimitation of East China Sea boundaries primarily tied to mineral and energy exploitation. The former Soviet Union took the Kurile Islands away from Japan in 1945 at the end of World War Two, and the Japanese still wants Russia to return them.

Russian involvement in China's genuine ongoing attempts to cow Taiwan into submission and return to mainland sovereignty without a shot fired is, at best, a wild card element that only gets played in the extreme hypothetical parameters of current scenario projections; multiple permutations have be realized before it becomes a viable factor.

The key feature of the ongoing Sino-Russian exercise is it being the starting point for the Chinese military on the learning curve of the C4ISR (command and control, communication, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) operational environment.

China's armed forces, including its conventional land troops, naval flotillas, air arm, marine corps, and airborne troops, all moved to the practice sites in late June and began individual unit drills in mid-July according to state-run Chinese media.

A senior officer of the Chinese People's Liberation Army told reporters the eight day long war games, dubbed "Peace Mission 2005," are comprised of three stages.

Major General Zhang Qinsheng, PLA chief of staff at the headquarters for the joint military exercise said the third phase of the military exercise starting Tuesday, involve more than 7,000 Chinese troops and 1,800 Russians will be a coordinated land, sea, and air operation using live ammunition.

The first phase of the war games, held in Russia's far eastern port city of Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan, focused on joint strategic consultation and decision-making processes for combat situations.

The second stage of the drill commenced Saturday at the port of Qingdao in China's Shandong province, where headquarters for Peace Mission 2005 is located. Qingdao is the command center for the PLA Navy's North Sea Fleet as well as being a major manufacturing hub noted for white appliance maker Haier as well as the home of Tsingtao beer.

In this phase, which ended Monday, commanders had been practicing rapid deployment of forces in combat theaters in order to deal with theoretical situations of common strategic concern.

Zhang was quoted in Chinese media as saying, "commanders of the two troops adjusted their decisions and organized coordinated actions in the second phase, which also included transporting and deploying troops."

Chinese and Russian military personnel on Tuesday begin phase three, practicing live fire tactical operational deployment in three separate scenarios: an offshore blockade involving both missile-guided destroyers and jet fighters; an amphibious landing conducted by the air force, marines and paratroopers; and finally a forced evacuation with cover fire provided by Russian strategic bombers and advanced Chinese fighter planes.

This third stage of Peace Mission 2005 is considered an important test for Russian military hardware sales. In separate off-the-record interviews with a military attaché based in Beijing and a U.S. congressional source this week UPI learned China is believed to be paying very close attention to equipment performance evaluations as the precursor to large-scale arms purchases.

China reported Russian weapons in the exercise include Il-76 military transport planes, Il-78 aerial refueling tankers, A-50 early warning radar aircraft, strategic missile carrying Tu-95MS, long-range Tu-22M3 bombers, a frontline Su-24M2 bomber, an air defense interceptor Su-27SM, a large anti-submarine vessel, a destroyer called the Marshal Shaposhnikov, large landing ships, rescue towboats, a logistic support vessel and airborne combat vehicles.

The PLA has not identified Chinese weapon systems taking part in the exercise except to say hardware is "advanced."

Russian troops arrived on the Shandong peninsula and nearby waters on Aug. 9, including elements of the 76th Airborne Division, the 55th Marine Corps Division plus the Russian air force and Pacific Fleet.

According to Chinese media sources, Sino-Russian forces held their first joint practice on the three scenarios between August 14 and 16. Operations officially commenced Aug 18.

All rights reserved. © 2005 United Press International.

Link: SpaceWar.com


Russia plans another joint military exercise with China in 2006
11:15 26/ 08/ 2005
MOSCOW, August 26 (RIA Novosti)

Following the historic Russian-Chinese military exercises conducted of the Shandong Peninsula, Russia is contemplating a similar exercise with China in 2006, a Defense Ministry official said.

"We first have to analyze the results of the Peace Mission 2005 joint Russian-Chinese anti-terrorist exercise," the official said. "It has not been decided yet, but I think we will conduct another exercise with China next year.

"Russia and China have started working on certain ideas regarding the exercise, including the possibility of the participation of other Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member countries Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. India, Mongolia, Iran and Pakistan have observer status.

"It is possible by the time we decided to conduct new exercises with China, other SCO countries would be willing to join, including the observers, like India," the official said.

Link: RIA Novosti

Russian fleet arrives in China for wargames closely watched by US
BEIJING (AFP) Aug 12, 2005

Ships from the Russian Pacific Fleet arrived in the eastern Chinese port of Qingdao Friday for large-scale wargames with ally China that the United States is closing watching.

China and Russia will hold rare joint exercises involving nearly 10,000 troops next week, which the Chinese defence ministry said were aimed at strengthening their ability to fight terrorism and separatism.

The drills from August 18-25 will involve the armies, navies, air forces and other units of the two countries' militaries.Vessels arriving in Qingdao Friday included anti-submarine ships and landing craft, with a company of marine corps on board, Xinhua news agency said.

On Thursday, eight Russian planes arrived at Qingdao airport, including an A-50 long-range early warning plane, a Su-27 fighter, a Su-24 tactical bomber, a Il-78 aerial refueling plane and four Il-76 transporters.

The drills, known as "Peace Mission 2005", will start at Vladivostok and will later move to the Yellow Sea and the area off the Jiaodong peninsula in eastern China's Shandong province.

They have aroused keen interest in Washington, which will attempt to monitor them.

"Clearly, there's interest in anything that affects the security in the Pacific regions," Brigadier General Carter Ham of the US Joint Staff said last week.

"So PACOM (Pacific Command) is keenly interested in that and will monitor that to the extent possible."

Link: SpaceWar.com

Communist Bloc Military Updates: Russia intensifies war plans under Putin; bombers training on Sept. 11, 2001

Spy satellites operated by the USA can easily spot most activity of the Russian Armed and Strategic Rocket Forces. The only permanent way the Russians can avoid this situation is to disable watching satellites with their own killer satellites or missile strikes. However, as soon as their satellites are "blinded," the Americans would immediately suspect the Russians and the US Armed Forces would move into battle mode. China is the only other country with such spaceborne capabilities. Although Kremlin propagandists might like the West to think otherwise, Osama bin Laden most assuredly does not possess such technical capabilities.

While we cannot rule out a Russian atack on US military satellites in the minutes and hours before open hostilities, there are only several tactics that Russia can employ to disguise a preemptive strike against the West. The Russian leadership must camouflage their war moves in the form of a preannounced military exercise, which then quickly segues into the real thing: Missile Day.

The picture above is explained in the article immediately below. The long article that follows is published by the Nuclear Threat Initiative and deserves careful reading. Russia is preparing for war in full view of her intended targets.

New Ballistic Missile Launched From Russian Nuclear Sub
Created: 21.12.2005 11:27 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 11:27 MSK
MosNews

The Russian strategic nuclear submarine Dmitry Donskoy successfully launched the new Bulava ballistic missile in the White Sea Wednesday morning.

The missile hit a target at the Kura firing range on the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Russian Navy’s Captain Igor Dygalo told Ekho Moskvy radio.

“This was the first underwater launch of a Bulava missile and the second launch conducted as part of a series of tests of the missile,” he said.The Dmitry Donskoy carried out the first test surface launch of a Bulava missile from a point in the White Sea on Sept. 27, 2005.

The seaborne strategic missile system Bulava can carry at least 10 independently targetable nuclear warheads. Its effective radius is at least 8,000 kilometers.

Link: Moscow News

Chronology of Significant Military Maneuvers
by Dr. Nikolai Sokov, CNS Senior Research Associate
August 2004

Inevitably, key doctrinal documents, such as the National Security Concept, the Military Doctrine, or the October 2003 "White Paper" issued by the Ministry of Defense, are of very general nature. They provide broad guidelines on military posture and the use of force, but are usually short on details. As a rule, additional information can be gleaned from military maneuvers, whose patterns offer important insights into anticipated conflict scenarios and planned responses to different types of attack.

During the 1990s, Russian military maneuvers (or, at least, the publicly available information about them) yielded little useful information because maneuvers were few and small-scale. When the use of nuclear weapons was simulated, it was usually independent of general purpose forces and without a relationship to specific scenarios. Besides, the shaping of views on possible future conflicts and the ways of fighting them takes time. The situation began to change in 1999. On the one hand, a string of conflicts in the Balkans, especially the conflict in Kosovo in the spring of 1999, provided the likely scenarios that the Russian military deemed most dangerous. On the other hand, the Russian defense budget began to grow as the country emerged from the 1998 financial meltdown and the general economic situation started to improve. In addition, a significant reduction of the Armed Forces allowed the reallocation of funds from personnel support to training.

Since 1999, the Russian military has regularly conducted large-scale maneuvers that play out several conflict scenarios, including those that involved the use of nuclear weapons. As a result, many maneuvers held in the last five years provide important insights into doctrinal and operational details that are absent from key documents. Below is a brief review of the more important exercises conducted since 1999. Their typical features can be summarized as follows.

Every scenario that involved the use of nuclear weapons (at least, every scenario that can be reconstructed from open sources) played out a variation of a "regional war" (as classified in the Military Doctrine)—the lowest-level conflict in which the use of nuclear weapons is allowed. Apparently all of the scenarios assumed participation of nuclear-weapons state(s), first and foremost the United States (in one case nuclear-capable long-range aircraft were used in Central Asia, but whether they simulated the use of nuclear or conventional weapons remains unclear). Early maneuvers (1999-2002) concentrated on air attacks such as those used in the U.S. military campaigns in the Balkans, especially in Kosovo in 1999; recent maneuvers have learned from the experience of the war in Iraq in 2003. No later than in 2001 defense against tactical ballistic missiles was introduced as well. In many instances, Russian forces trained to disrupt enemy satellite links to break down communications, coordination, and targeting (this element was probably present in all or the majority of maneuvers, but went unreported). Since 2002, scenarios have included simulations of a large-scale attack by enemy ground forces; in these cases defense included a call-up of reserves and transfer of ground troops between theaters of operations.

The use of nuclear weapons usually took place at a relatively late stage of maneuvers and was associated with one of two situations. In the first scenario, it occurred several days after an intense air defense campaign, when, according to the scenario, Russian troops had exhausted their ability to withstand the assault. The second situation involved a large-scale combined air and ground attack, which required the call-up of reserves (fitting the definition of a "regional war"—the standing army is insufficient for defense and a transfer of troops from other military districts becomes necessary); nuclear weapons again entered the picture after several days of fighting with conventional forces. The call-up of reserves can be regarded as a reliable indicator of when the nuclear threshold is about to be crossed; in the case of an exclusively air campaign the threshold is less clear.

The weapon of choice for the limited use of nuclear weapons was in all cases heavy and medium bombers (Tu-95MS, Tu-160, and Tu-22M3) using long-range cruise missiles and short-range weapons. In recent years, the same platforms were used to deliver both nuclear and precision-guided conventional weapons. The apparent number of nuclear weapons used in each case was small—less than ten. The usual choice of targets was the following: (1) airbases and other military installations in European NATO countries involved in the simulated attack against Russia and, in at least one case, in Japan; (2) undisclosed targets in the continental United States (launched either from the vicinity of Iceland or from the Russian northeast); (3) naval targets—aircraft carrier groups in the Pacific Ocean and the Baltic Sea, as well as in the Indian Ocean and the Black Sea, once each; (4) in 2003 one other class of ground targets was added—those in the Indian Ocean (presumably, the U.S. base on Diego Garcia).

Land- and sea-based strategic missiles participated in most, but not every large-scale exercise. It has remained unclear whether they were integrated into scenarios or maneuvers were simply used as a backdrop for training launches. It appears that in some cases they were probably an integral part of the exercise and were intended to simulate limited strikes, perhaps against targets in the continental United States.

A fairly stable pattern of maneuvers during the period of 1999-2004 demonstrates that the limited use of nuclear weapons is now firmly integrated into a rather broad range of scenarios of possible conflicts. Virtually any large-scale attack by forces that are numerically and qualitatively superior to the Russian Armed Forces risks crossing the nuclear threshold. A broader view suggests several more important observations, however:

Russian Armed Forces have apparently ceased training for a global war that involves a massive exchange with nuclear strikes—a scenario common during the Cold War. Implicitly, a large-scale strike remains an available option, but, true to all the doctrinal documents since 1993, such conflict is regarded as a very low probability;

The United States is considered the most dangerous opponent and it appears that the likelihood that the United States might threaten—whether openly or indirectly—to use force against Russia to achieve certain political goals is still regarded as high, especially among the military;

There has been a remarkably low emphasis on low-intensity conflicts that involve diffuse fighting against paramilitary and guerilla forces. It is possible that the Russian military simply does not see this kind of training as necessary in the view of the ongoing war in Chechnya. Regardless, the skew toward "regional wars" would seem to be an important drawback of these scenarios, especially since they tend to inadvertently increase the dependence on nuclear weapons.

SUMMER 1999: West-99 (Zapad-99) maneuvers

The West-99 maneuvers were conducted a few months after a crucial April 1999 meeting of the Security Council. Held shortly after the beginning of the war in Kosovo, the meeting apparently initiated the development of a new military doctrine designed to deter the limited use of force against Russia. By all indications, the West-99 maneuvers were designed to test a doctrinal innovation—the limited use of nuclear weapons for the purposes of deterring a limited conventional attack or, if deterrence failed, for deescalating the conflict and returning the status quo ante.

From the start, official Russian military representatives claimed that the West-99 maneuvers had no relationship to the war in Kosovo (they had been planned well before that war, in late 1998) and that they did not involve the simulated use of nuclear weapons.[1,2] Only after the end of the maneuvers did Minister of Defense Igor Sergeyev admit that the intention was, indeed, to test defense against an attack against Russia that was similar in style and scale to the war in Kosovo and that an important element of these maneuvers was a demonstration of the ability and the willingness to use nuclear weapons under conditions when "all means of resistance have been exhausted," i.e., when conventional forces are unable to repel the attack on their own.[3,4]

The scenario included three stages. In the first stage (June 21-22), the alert status of troops in all Western military districts was enhanced and troops in Leningrad military district were transferred to full combat mode. In the second stage (June 22-25), Russian troops and the Baltic fleet together with the Belorussian army defended against an attack from the West. That attack included a strike with 450 aircraft and 120 cruise missiles against the territory of Belarus and with 110 aircraft and 40 cruise missiles against Kaliningrad oblast. In the final stage (June 25-26), Russian troops repelled the attack and returned the situation to the status quo ante; that stage included the simulated use of nuclear weapons. Primary attention was paid to Kaliningrad exclave—a piece of Russian territory between Poland and Lithuania widely considered Russia's "Achilles' heel" as it is the part of the country most difficult to defend. According to the scenario, troops in Kaliningrad oblast and the Baltic fleet were supposed to repel the attack without reinforcements.[5]

The "nuclear component" included simulated strikes with air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) from heavy bombers from "around the corner"—Russian Air Force slang that denotes a flight toward the northern tip of Norway and then a turn left toward the north Atlantic—a typical training and combat mission in Soviet times.

Two Tu-95MS heavy bombers undertook a 15-hour flight "around the corner" toward Iceland, where they simulated the launch of ALCMs against U.S. territory. Simultaneously, two Tu-160 heavy bombers took a similar route, but simulated ALCM launches against continental Europe from near the northern tip of Norway. According to newspaper reports, their targets were airbases in Poland and the Baltic states (it was assumed that the territory of these countries was used by NATO), Norway, as well as aircraft carrier groups in the Barents Sea. Upon their return to the Russian territory, the heavy bombers conducted live launches against test ranges in southern Russia.[2,6,7,8,9]

Following the end of the West-99 maneuvers, Deputy Chief of the General Staff Yuriy Baluyevskiy told reporters that not only aggressors, but also countries whose territory is used for an aggression would become potential targets, a clear reference to the relevant provision of the Military Doctrine that allows the use of nuclear weapons not only against nuclear states and their allies, but also states that attack Russia "in concert with" nuclear states.[10]

In September 1999, smaller-scale maneuvers were conducted in the Far East. The main purpose of these maneuvers was similar to West-99: the Pacific fleet and the Long-Range Air Force simulated defense from and strikes against aircraft carrier groups.[11]

Sources: [1] "Strategicheskiye komandno-shtabnye ucheniya proidut na territoriyakh dvukh voyennykh okrugov," Interfax, 15 June 1999. [2] Sergey Sokut, Oleg Ternovskiy, "Nashi letchiki nanosyat 'udary po NATO'," Nezavisimaya gazeta, 25 June 1999. [3] "Na ucheniyakh 'Zapad-99' otrabatyvalos uslovnoye primeneniye yadernogo oruzhiya," Interfax, 9 July 1999. [4] Vladimir Georgiyev, "Dve nedeli nazad Rossiya primenila yadernoye oruzhiye," Nezavisimaya gazeta, 10 July 1999. [5] Yuriy Golotyuk, "Dan prikaz emu na zapad," Izvestiya, 22 June 1999. [6] "V ramkakh ucheniy 'Zapad-99' rossiyskiye letchiki proveli uspeshnyye puski raket po nazemnym tselyam," Interfax, 23 June 1999. [7] Igor Korotchenko, "Rossiyskaya armiya gotovitsya k otrazheniyu agressii," Nezavisimaya gazeta, 23 June 1999. [8] Aleksandr Koretskiy, "Rossiya nanesla yaderniy udar po SShA," Segodnya, 2 July 1999. [9] Dana Priest, "Russian Bombers Make Foray to Iceland," Washington Post, 1 July 1999, p. 1. [10] Yuri Golotyuk, "Premiera minoborony na 'zapadnom teatre'," Izvestiya, 29 June 1999. [11] Valeriy Aleksin, "Samolety i rakety nad okeanom," Nezavisimaya gazeta, 15 September 1999.

APRIL 2000

April 2000 Air Force maneuvers were relatively small-scale. They simulated defense against strikes by land- and carrier-based aircraft. These maneuvers were conducted in the southwest of Russia between the Black and Caspian seas and included strikes against land and sea targets. In addition to tactical aircraft, Tu-22M3 medium bombers (classified in Russia as long-range or strategic) played a prominent role, as well as Tu-95MS and Tu-160 heavy bombers, which for the first time conducted launches of conventional long-range Kh-101 ALCMs. Maneuvers also included the use of S-300 anti-aircraft and tactical anti-missile systems.

Sources: [1] Ivan Safronov, "Yugoslavskiye uroki rossiyskikh VVS," Kommersant-Daily, 18 April 2000. [2] Sergey Sokut, "Razvorot v yuzhnom napravlenii," Nezavisimoye voyennoe obozreniye, 21 April 2000 Vyacheslav Martunyuk, "S-300 protiv Tu-22," Nezavisimoye voennoye obozreniye, 19 May 2000. [5] Sergey Balashov, "U 'dalnikov' khoroshiye perspektivy," Krasnaya zvezda, 24 April 2000.

SEPTEMBER 2000

In early September 2000, the Russian strategic Air Force participated in a large air defense exercise that included the armies of Central Asian states, Armenia, and Belarus. Tu-95MS, Tu-160 and Tu-22M3 long-range bombers flew missions in the vicinity of the Black and Caspian seas, as well as in the west of Russia. Cruise missile launches were conducted in the north of Russia by Tu-95MS and in the south by Tu-22M3. These maneuvers had several distinguishing features that set them apart from earlier exercises, including West-99:
According to Chief Instructor-Pilot of the 37th Air Army (the "home" of strategic bombers) Maj.-Gen. Vasiliy Malashchitskiy, this was the first time since the breakup of the Soviet Union that long-range Air Force units simulated combat missions over the Black Sea;

Anti-naval component: the Russian Air Force simulated attacks on carrier groups;

11 heavy bombers (eight Tu-160 and three Tu-95MS), which had been acquired from Ukraine in 2000, participated in maneuvers for the first time;

For the first time since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russian strategic bombers were temporarily based in the territory of Belarus;

Heavy bombers trained for other temporary basing options—forward bases in the north of Russia (Vorkuta, Tiksi, Anadyr); all of these bases can potentially be used for strikes against U.S. territory.

Sources: [1] Vladimir Mukhin, "Na prostorakh SNG—voennyye ucheniya," Nezavisimaya gazeta, 8 September 1999. [2] Anatoliy Dokuchayev, "Novaya formula udara," Krasnaya zvezda, 11 October 2000. [3] "Strategi otbombilis," Nezavisimoye voyennoye obozreniye, 15 September 2000. [4] Yuriy Golotyuk, "Belorusskiy front," Vremya novostey, 16 January 2001. [5] Sergey Sokut, "Kurs na lokalnyye konflikty," Nezavisimoye voyennoye obozreniye, 8 February 2001.

FEBRUARY 2001

During a "strategic command and staff training" conducted February 13-16, long-range Air Force units performed missions in the north of Russia (an "around the corner" mission around Norway toward the North Atlantic, coming within the range for launches against U.S. territory) and in the Far East close to Japan; the latter flights apparently simulated strikes against U.S. bases in Japan. Japanese authorities filed a formal protest, accusing Russian aircraft of violating their country's airspace. Subsequently, heavy and medium bombers performed traditional live launches in the south of Russia. As part of the maneuvers, the Strategic Rocket Forces launched a Topol ICBM from the Plesetsk test range; this launch was conducted by a crew from the division where the missile had been deployed rather than test range personnel. Almost simultaneously, a strategic submarine launched an SLBM (type not reported) from the Barents Sea. According to unofficial reports, launches of the ICBM and the SLBM were synchronized with live ALCM launches in the south of Russia; this allowed the testing of early warning systems.

According to unofficial assessments, activities of strategic forces, both air- and land-based, simulated limited use of nuclear weapons under conditions in which a limited conventional conflict has gotten out of control and is escalating. One U.S. journalist (with reference to a National Security Agency report) suggested that in the Far East, Russian strategic forces simulated interference in a conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan, on the side of China. According to that estimate, the Russian scenario supposedly began with a Chinese attack against Taiwan, followed by the use of U.S. naval and ground forces, after which Russia threatened nuclear strikes against U.S. forces in the region, including in South Korea and Japan. According to that report, the scenario in the western part of Russia assumed the now-traditional scenario of a NATO attack that had been practiced in several earlier maneuvers. None of Russian open sources mentioned the "Taiwan scenario;" all of them referred only to an attack against Russia itself.

Sources: [1] Yuriy Golotyuk, "I v vozdukhe tozhe problemy," Vremya novostey, 19 February 2001. [2] "Strategicheskaya komandno-shtabnaya trenirovka VS Rossii," Nezavisimaya gazeta, 17 February 2001. [3] Sergey Grigoriyev, "Rossiya pobedila," Nezavisimoye voyennoye obozreniye, 28 February 2001. [4] Aleksandr Golts, "Sovershenno sekretniy sabotazh," Itogi, 28 February 2001, pp. 14-15. [5] Bill Gertz, "Russian Forces Help China in Mock Conflict," Washington Times, 30 April 2001, p. 1.

APRIL 2001

The next "command and staff training" took place less than two months later and was primarily devoted to air defense. It was part of the larger maneuvers Yuzhniy Shchit Sodruzhestva-2001 ("The Southern Shield of the Commonwealth-2001"). According to Chief of the Air Force Anatoliy Kornukov, these maneuvers featured the largest number of long-range bomber sorties in three years. Russian long-range bombers (two medium Tu-22M3 and two heavy Tu-95MS) again landed in Belarus. That mission was used to test air defenses in the west of Russia and Belarus; the bombers' routes were intended to simulate likely attack routes of NATO aircraft. Similar raids were also conducted in Central Asia over Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

Practice bombing with high-yield FAB-3000 gravity bombs, which had not been used since the war in Afghanistan, was conducted by a Tu-22M3 at a test range in Saratov oblast near the main basing site of heavy bombers. Subsequently, Tu-160 and Tu-22M3 bombers conducted practice launches of Kh-55 long-range and Kh-22 short-range cruise missiles, respectively, in Kazakhstan. Newspaper reports hinted at a possible relationship between these launches and the unstable situation in Afghanistan. Toward the end of the maneuvers, Russian Tu-95MS strategic bombers also made raids toward Alaska in what U.S. officials described as routine annual springtime maneuvers, closely skirting U.S. airspace.

Sources:[1] Sergey Babichev, "Shchit u sodruzhestva prochen," Krasnaya zvezda, 7 April 2001.[2] Dmitriy Vladimirov, "Osobennosty natsionalnogo bombometaniya," Izvestiya, 10 April 2001.[3] Boris Talov, "Pokazatelnaya bombezhka s pritselom na obshchuyu bezopasnost," Rossiyskaya gazeta, 6 April 2001.[4] "Russian Bombers Skirt U.S. Airspace off Alaska," Washington Post, 30 April 2001, p. 5.

SEPTEMBER 2001

Maneuvers to simulate defense against a large-scale airspace attack began on 10 September 2001. According to Air Force chief Anatoliy Kornukov, they were intended to cover the whole Arctic, as well as northern parts of the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans, including the vicinity of Norway, Iceland, the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. The main task was reportedly to penetrate the air defense of NATO and North America (NORAD). As part of the exercise, long-range bombers were moved to auxiliary bases in Anadyr, Tiksi, and Vorkuta. A new element of these maneuvers was, according to newspaper reports, training for the use of long-range ALCMs outside the reach of NORAD (since Russia has had long-range nuclear ALCMs since the 1980s, apparently these reports meant conventional ALCMs, which began to appear in the Russian Armed Forces only in the late 1990s). The only real launches planned in these regions involved short-range missiles launched from Tu-22M3 over the Kamchatka Peninsula in a simulated attack against an aircraft carrier group.
The plan was abruptly changed immediately after news of terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC on 11 September 2001 reached Moscow. To avoid possible complications and misperceptions, the Air Force terminated all "practical activities" planned for the ongoing maneuvers following a request from the United States. This included a termination of flights not only toward U.S. territory, but also "around the corner" toward Norway and Iceland. Launches of short-range ALCMs from five Tu-22M3 bombers (three belonging to the Naval Air Command and two from the Air Force) over Kamchatka against seaborne targets were still conducted, but only within Russian territorial waters. Also, both heavy and medium bombers practiced missile launches at an internal Russian test range near the Caspian sea.

Sources: [1] Yuriy Golotyuk, "Bombardirovshchiki letyat na vraga," Vremya novostey, 11 September 2001. [2] Yuriy Golotyuk, "Yaderniy konflikt otstavit," Vremya novostey, 12 September 2001. [3] "Pod Saratovom nachalis ucheniya dalney aviatsii," RIA Novosti, 13 September 2001. [4] Ivan Safronov, "Rossiyskaya dalnyaya aviatsiya uletela nedaleko," Kommersant-Daily, 15 September 2001. [5] "Na Kamchatke zavershilis komandno-shtabnyye ucheniya Tikhookeanskogo Flota," Kommersant-Daily, 19 September 2001.

FEBRUARY 2002

These maneuvers were dubbed a "compensation" for the cancellation of Strategic Air Force maneuvers in September 2001. The scenario was changed, however: instead of flight routes toward U.S. territory and Europe, Russian long-range bombers simulated attacks against targets to the south of the Russian border consistent with plans (developed in the mid-1990s) for defeating a possible incursion of Islamic extremists from Afghanistan to Central Asia. Air Force activities were closely coordinated with the 201st Russian division deployed in Tajikistan. It is possible that earlier plans were cancelled in part out of a desire to reemphasize U.S.-Russian cooperation in the fight against international terrorism. It is difficult to determine whether U.S. bases, which appeared in Central Asia in the end of 2001, figured in the exercises.

Russia soon departed from the practice of demonstrative restraint, and in April Russian heavy bombers performed the now-routine flights toward U.S. airspace near Alaska. Some observers attributed that change in behavior to the U.S. decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty.

Sources: [1] Yuriy Golotyuk, "Bombardirovshchiki letyat na yug," Vremya novostey, 14 February 2002. [2] Marina Kalashnikova, "Soglasny ne soglashatsya," Nezavisimaya gazeta, 29 April 2002.

JUNE-JULY 2002

Public reports did not mention the participation of nuclear-capable delivery vehicles in maneuvers that took place in June-July 2002, but the event was nevertheless interesting in many respects. For the first time since the 1980s, the Russian army simulated the call-up of reserves, the rapid transfer of reservists from the European part of Russia to Siberia, and then, using these troops, the repelling of an external aggression. According to the Military Doctrine, the call-up of reserves takes place during regional and large-scale wars, i.e., the types of conflicts that are associated with use of nuclear weapons.[Yuriy Golotyuk, "Ot taigi do yaponskikh morey," Vremya novostey, 24 June 2002.]

AUGUST 2002

Large-scale maneuvers in the Caspian Sea did not involve nuclear-capable delivery vehicles, but they were held in a strategically important region, which is widely considered a hotbed of tension and an area of possible conflict, including between Russia and the United States. On the surface, these exercises simulated the use of special forces against terrorists who had captured an oil rig. The scale of maneuvers was considerably greater, however: 10,500 personnel, 60 ships, and more than 30 aircraft. According to many independent assessments, Russia intended to show muscle and assert its dominant role in the region.

Sources: [1] Sergey Sokut, "Voyennyye vozvrashchayutsya na Kaspii," Nezavisimoye voyennoye obozreniye, 16 August 2002. [2] Tatyana Koroleva, "Voprosy bezopasnosti kaspiiskogo regiona otrabatyvalis vo vremya uchenii 'More Mira-2002'," Panorama (Almaty, Kazakhstan), 16 August 2002. [3] Igor Plugatarev, "Kto est kto na Kaspii," Nezavisimaya gazeta, 1 August 2002. [4] Nikolay Lubyanskiy, "Sbor-pokhod na Kaspii," Nezavisimoye voyennoye obozreniye, 2 August 2002. [5] Roza Tsvetkova, "Na Kaspii Rossiya perekhodit ot voyennoy teorii k praktike," Strana.ru, http://www.strana.ru, 8 August 2002.

OCTOBER 2002

In October 2002 Russia conducted unprecedented large-scale launches of strategic weapons: a sea-launched ballistic missile from the Okhotsk Sea launched against a target on the Kola Peninsula (a highly unusual trajectory for Russian test launches); a Topol (SS-25) from a road-mobile launcher; a SS-N-18 SLBM from a Delta III submarine; ALCMs launched from two Tu-160 and two Tu-95MS heavy bombers against targets in the Volga region and in the north of Russia. All ballistic missiles were launched within one hour. According to unofficial assessments, the exercises tested Russia's ability to conduct a large-scale nuclear strike.[Nikolay Poroskov, "V pomoshch amerikanskomu drugu," Vremya novostey, 14 October 2002.]

FEBRUARY 2003

On 12-13 February 2003, Tu-22M3 medium bombers conducted strikes at test ranges in Saratov oblast (eight aircraft on February 12) and in Kazakhstan (eight aircraft on February 13). According to Long-Range Air Force chief Igor Khvorov, in both cases aircraft practiced the destruction of enemy airbases. He noted that, in contrast to the Soviet period, land targets have become the main priority of long-range aircraft, including medium bombers, whereas previously their main targets were sea-based (probably carrier groups). [Mikhail Timofeyev, "Strateg Tu-160 uchitsya bombit," Nezavisimoye voyennoye obozreniye, 13 March 2003.]

MARCH 2003

The Strategic Rocket Force held a relatively small-scale exercise combined with an inspection by the Ministry of Defense. The exercise was conducted in the Teykovo division, which consists of road-mobile Topol ICBMs, and lasted for ten days. The central element of the event was an attempt by Russian satellites to find Topol mobile launchers when dispersed from the basing area. In addition to satellites, several groups of Special Forces also searched for the launchers. Following that phase of the exercise, a Topol ICBM from the Teykovo division was launched from Plesetsk test range; an unusual element of the event was that the launch command was relayed by radio instead of customary phone lines. In the meantime, the "radio-electronic suppression" service ("sredstva radio-elektronnoy borby," or REB) tried to jam the signal in vain. Similar, but barely reported, maneuvers were conducted by strategic Air Force (the 37th Army).

Sources: [1] "Inspektsiya minoborony proveryayet raketnyye voyska," Izvestiya, 25 March 2003. [2] Dmitriy Litovkin, "Burya pod snegom," Izvestiya, 2 April 2003. [3] Vladimir Mukhin, "Flot Rossii gotov k pokhodu v araviyskoye more," Nezavisimaya gazeta, 2 April 2003.

MAY 2003: INDIAN OCEAN MANEUVERS

In May 2003, Russia conducted unprecedented maneuvers in the Indian and Pacific Oceans together with India. They took place immediately after the end of major combat action in Iraq. Official military sources announced that these maneuvers had been planned in advance and had no relation to the war in Iraq. That statement appeared credible: the first trip of Russian naval ships to the Indian ocean since the 1980s undoubtedly required many months of preparation; coordination with India also required time and effort.

The departure of ships, originally planned for February, was postponed until early April due to the increasingly tense situation in the Persian Gulf.[1,2,3] Still, it appears significant that Russia decided to hold maneuvers in spite of the still-ongoing war. Many elements of these maneuvers can be interpreted as a signal to the United States that American power was not invincible as far as the Russian military was concerned.

According to newspaper reports, the scenario of these exercises simulated escalation of a regional conflict to the nuclear level; they were supposed to improve coordination between the Strategic Air Force, the Navy and other branches of the Armed Forces in the west, east, north and south of Russia, as well as in South Asia.

The "air" component of the exercises included four Tu-160 and nine Tu-95MS heavy bombers, twelve Tu-22M3 medium bombers, and four Il-78 "flying tankers." Two Tu-160 and four Tu-95MS heavy bombers flew to the Arabian Sea and after a five-hour flight, Tu-95MS bombers launched cruise missiles against naval targets from a distance of 3,000km; Russian ships in the area provided targeting information and in-flight trajectory correction. The missiles that were launched were nuclear-capable Kh-55. (Initially news sources mistakenly reported a new modification—Kh-65SE equipped with conventional warheads.) The cruise missiles were unarmed, however. In the meantime, Tu-160s, according to newspaper reports (there was no official confirmation), simulated the launch of cruise missiles against Diego-Garcia; reportedly, they targeted U.S. military installations on the island. According to Chief of the Air Force Vladimir Mikhaylov, en route to the Indian Ocean, Russian heavy bombers crossed the territories of "two CIS countries," Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Other long-range bombers held practice bombing at test ranges inside Russia. In the Pacific Ocean, four Tu-22M3 medium bombers (two belonging to the Air Force and two to the Navy) launched four Kh-22M short-range anti-ship missiles against simulated naval targets (probably carrier groups).

Russian ships in the Arabian Sea (the group consisted of nine ships from the Pacific and Black Sea Fleets) simulated a search-and-destroy mission vis-à-vis American Los Angeles class SSNs and launched sea-based cruise missiles. Simultaneously, strategic submarines from the Northern and the Pacific fleets conducted SLBM launches while Russian Space Forces simulated disruption of U.S. satellite communications.[4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]

The second stage of maneuvers, which began only a few days later, was devoted to joint actions of the Russian and the Indian navies and included, among other elements, submarine search-and-destroy missions (two Indian submarines served as notional targets).[14,15]

Sources: [1] Vladimir Mukhin, "Morskiye pekhotintsy iz Rossii gotovy k vysadke v Irake," Nezavisimaya gazeta, 21 February 2003. [2] "Sergey Ivanov: Pokhod rossiiskikh korabley v indiyskiy okean ne svyazan s situatsiyey vokrug Iraka," Strana.ru, http://www.strana.ru, 25 February 2003. [3] Oleg Zhundusov, "Ne shandarakhnut by v kogo ne nado," Izvestiya, 5 March 2003. [4] Igor Korotchenko, "Moskva repetiruyet yadernyy udar po SShA," Nezavisimaya gazeta, 14 May 2003. [5] "Rossiyskiye krylatyye rakety porazili tseli v araviyskom more," RIA-Novosti, 14 May 2004. [6] Sergey Yezhov, "Takogo eshche ne bylo," Strana.ru, http://www.strana.ru, 15 May 2003. [7] Viktor Myasnikov, "Indiyskaya mnogokhodovka," Vremya MN, 16 May 2003. [8] "20-21 maya nachnutsya sovmestnyye ucheniya rossiyskogo i indiyskogo flotov," Strana.ru, http://www.strana.ru, 18 May 2003. [9] "Rossiyskiye strategicheskiye bombardirovshchiki porazili Tikhiy okean," Kommersant-Daily, 15 May 2003. [10] "Otryad rossiyskikh korabley vypustil v indiyskom okeane krylatuyu raketu," Strana.ru, http://www.strana.ru, 16 May 2003. [11] Igor Korotchenko, "Potentsial sokhranen," Nezavisimoye voyennoye obozreniye, 23 May 2003. [12] Dmitriy Litovkin, "Rossiyskiye moryaki vozvrashchayutsya s ucheniy," Izvestiya, 4 July 2003. [13] T. Geynutdinov, "The 'Long' Road to the Ocean," Morskoy Sbornik, 17 August 2003, p. 49-54. [14] Ivan Safronov, "Rossiyskiy flot budet poyavlyatsya v Indiyskom okeane chashche," Kommersant-Daily, 21 May 2003. [15] Sergey Gorbachev, "INDRA-2003: S bala na korabl," Krasnaya zvezda, 28 May 2003.

AUGUST 2003

In August 2003 the Russian Pacific Fleet held maneuvers in the Sea of Japan and Sea of Okhotsk. Several Northern Fleet submarines were transferred to the area under the polar ice. Two Tu-160 heavy bombers were transferred from their main base at Engels (Saratov oblast) to the Pacific; Russia's Minister of Defense Sergey Ivanov flew to the maneuvers on board of one of these bombers. Long-range bombers (including Tu-160s, Tu-95MS from Ukrainka base in the Far East, and Tu-22M3) simulated elimination of a large enemy naval group together with the Navy at a great distance (more than a thousand kilometers from shore). The exercises also tested the brand-new system of sea and air surveillance that had been created in the Far East.

Almost simultaneously Russian troops and the Navy held another exercise in the Caspian Sea, this time their scenario assumed defense against an attack from the sea instead of the 2002 scenario of anti-terrorist operations.

Sources: [1] Aleksey Chernyshov, "Anatoliy Kvashnin gotovit tikhookeanskiy flot k ucheniyam," Kommersant-Daily, 9 June 2003. [2] Vladimir Mukhin, "Novyye geopoliticheskiye tseli Rossii," Nezavisimaya gazeta, 29 August 2003. [3] "Sergey Ivanov vyletel na ucheniya na bombardirovshchike," Interfax, 22 August 2003. [4] "Chetyre osobennosti voyennykh manevrov na Dalnem Vostoke," Oborona i bezopasnost (WPS), 29 August 2003. [5] Ivan Safronov, "Sergey Ivanov poletel na 'Belom Lebede'," Kommersant-Daily, 23 August 2003.

FEBRUARY 2004: SECURITY-2004

These exercises were advertised as the biggest in over 20 years. They lasted about a month—from late January to 17 February with some elements continuing beyond that point—and involved all branches of the armed forces as well as all six military districts. Officially they were classified as "command and staff training" (komandno-shtabnaya trenirovka) as opposed to maneuvers. Deputy Chief of the General Staff Colonel General Yuriy Baluyevskiy described the difference in the following way: exercises (training) primarily involve the command and staff level with troops playing a subsidiary role while maneuvers emphasize troop operations.[1]

Like similar events in previous years, these exercises were apparently intended to test the ability of the Russian Armed Forces to fight the most likely conflicts of the future—limited and regional wars; among them the latter category allows for limited use of nuclear weapons for the purposes of de-escalation and termination of a conflict that cannot be won with conventional weapons alone. Formally the scenario assumed attacks "by terrorists" from four directions: east, south, west, and northwest. Accordingly, defense was simulated on all four fronts (with the emphasis on the south and the northwest), plus against air and space attacks.[1]

In an attempt to dispel the impression that Russia was training for a war against the United States, Baluyevskiy emphasized at a press conference that "There is no hint that [the enemy] is the United States of America. There is no hint that it is any other state, whether European or Asian: the opponent is notional."[1] Many observers remarked, however, that from a military point of view there is no such thing as an abstract opponent. Specific states are always kept in mind.[2] One prominent expert, former director of the research institute of Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF) Vladimir Dvorkin, rhetorically asked which country other than the United States could mount a space attack, against which the Armed Forces were defending Russia.[3] Indeed, Baluyevskiy noted Russian concerns that the United States was apparently contemplating making nuclear weapons "an instrument of achieving military missions and lowering the nuclear threshold." His reference to the October 2003 Ministry of Defense document was also telling: that document did list the enlargement of NATO and a string of U.S. military campaigns in the 1990s and the early 2000s as security challenges. He also admitted that "one does not fight Bin Laden with strategic missiles."

The phase that involved General Purpose troops included mobilization of 10,000 reservists in the Siberian Military District (MD) and their transport to several training centers in the European part of Russia for live-fire exercises. After that troops from the Moscow MD were transferred further to the Leningrad MD to reinforce border guards in a simulation of an external attack from the northwest (it is likely that the scenario assumed the territory of Baltic states was being used by NATO for an attack on Russia). Reportedly, new systems of command, control and communications were tested during the exercises.[4,5]

The naval phase involved 10 surface ships and seven submarines and included, among other elements, live-fire exercises of anti-missile defenses: the heavy cruiser Petr Velikiy intercepted cruise missiles launched from Russian heavy bombers, a sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM) launched from a submarine (at least, this was planned, but it has remained unclear whether this latter launch was implemented), and the firing of an intermediate range ballistic missile (there is no information about where it was launched from and reports indicated that these were simulators of ballistic missiles).[6,7] According to some reports, these exercises tested the naval version of the tactical missile defense system S-300, which is called "Fort-M."[8]

Simultaneously, 14 heavy bombers (Tu-160 and Tu-95MS) conducted flights in three directions: to the North Atlantic, to the north of Russia (over the Barents Sea), and to the south (the Ashuluk test range in Astrakhan Oblast).[9] In contrast to previous exercises, Tu-160s that flew over the North Atlantic did not conduct launches of ALCMs. However, three Tu-95MS bombers launched ALCMs over the Barents Sea. Two were launched at the Novaya Zemlya test range and at least one was intercepted by surface ships as part of the anti-missile defense practice.[10,11,12]

Launches of strategic ballistic missiles occupied an unusually prominent place: one SLBM, two ICBMs, and a civilian launch vehicle with a military satellite.

In a rare exception, the launch of RSM-54 or RM-29RMU missiles [NATO designation SS-N-23] toward the usual target—the Kura test range in Kamchatka—from the Project 667BDRM [NATO name Delta-IV] submarine Novomoskovsk failed. This failure occurred at a most inopportune moment: as President Vladimir Putin observed the launch from the strategic submarine Arkhangelsk, a Project 941 Akula (NATO name Typhoon) submarine. An attempt to immediately launch another missile failed as well.

Immediately following the first failure, a flurry of reports made contradictory claims: there was an explosion, the missile fell into the water, the launch was blocked by a satellite, etc. The Chief of the Navy Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov quickly declared that no "physical" launch should have taken place at all: it was supposed to be a simulation.[13] Not a single commentator believed that announcement, however. In the end, it became clear that between the third and the fourth minutes of the launch sequence the targeting system of the submarine failed and the electronic system immediately blocked the launch.[14,15]
The day after the Novomoskovsk's failed launches, another submarine of the same class, Karelia, made a fresh attempt to launch an SLBM of the same type. At first, the flight was normal, but after 98 seconds (at the time of the separation of the first stage) the missile began to deviate from its trajectory, activating the self-destruction mechanism.[16,17]

In contrast to several failures of the Navy, the SRF passed the exercise with flying colors. The SRF and the Space Troops planned three launches: a Molniya (R-7) space-launch vehicle with a military satellite, a Topol ICBM, and an RS-18 (a.k.a. UR-100UTTKh, NATO designation SS-19), which was remotely launched from Baykonur in Kazakhstan, demonstrating the ability to control ICBMs directly anywhere in Russia without passing through the full command chain.

The central piece of the exercise was the launch of a Topol ICBM (an earlier version of Topol-M) conducted from a mobile launcher about 50 kilometers from Plesetsk.[18,19,20,21] The missile carried a new warhead equipped with hypersonic engines that allow the warhead to reach speeds of Mach 6 and change its trajectory.[22,23,24] A combination of complicated trajectory and high speed makes the new warhead very difficult to intercept. Some sources reported that the new Topol warhead was based on the new X-90 (AS-19 Koala) hypersonic cruise missile, which eventually is supposed to replace the old Soviet X-55 ALCM.

Sources: [1] Press conference of First Deputy Chief of the General Staff Col.-Gen. Yuriy Baluyevskiy, 11 February 2004 (text available at http://www.mil.ru). [2] Aleksandr Babakin, Oleg Yelenskiy, Vladimir Mukhin, "Yadernyye zuby Sergeya Ivanova," Nezavisimaya gazeta, 13 February 2004. [3] Aleksandr Babakin, Oleg Yelenskiy, Vladimir Mukhin, "Bessrochnyye ucheniya do pobednogo kontsa," Nezavisimoye voyennoye obozreniye, 13 February 2004. [4] Sergey Vasilyev, "'Skiff' startuyet iz glubiny," Krasnaya zvezda, 17 February 2004. [5] "V Barentsevom more nachalis ucheniya Severnogo Flota," MurmanNews.Ru, http://www.murmannews.ru, 17 February 2004. [6] "Uchimsya voyevat po-sovremennomu," Krasnaya zvezda, 11 February 2004. [7] Vladimir Mukhin, "Neudachnyye puski raket rassleduyet komissiya," Nezavisimaya gazeta, 20 February 2004. [8] Dmitriy Litovkin, "Giperzvukovaya 'Koala'," Izvestiya, 20 February 2004. [9] Nikita Petrov, "NPRO-2004 Soyedinennykh Shtatov - nenadezhniy shchit protiv rossiyskikh raket," Strana.Ru, http://www.strana.ru, 3 February 2004. [10] "'Petr Velikiy' otrazil vozdushnyye ataki," Strana.Ru, http://www.strana.ru, 17 February 2004. [11] Vladimir Mukhin, "Dalnyaya aviatsiya porabotala v Barentsevom more," Nezavisimoye voyennoye obozreniye, 20 February 2004. [12] "Putin nabluydaet za ucheniyami Severnogo flota," Strana.Ru, http://www.strana.ru, 17 February 2004. [13] "Glavkom VMF: Stsenarii ucheniy predusmatrival tolko uslovnyy pusk raket," Strana.Ru, http://www.strana.ru, 17 February 2004. [14] Dmitriy Litovkin, "Ballisticheskiye rakety Putina ne porazili," Izvestiya, 18 February 2004. [15] Vadim Solovev, Vladimir Ivanov, Viktor Myasnikov, "Ne v raketakh delo, a v umnoy nachinke," Nezavisimoye voyennoye obozreniye, 20 February 2004. [16] Vladimir Mukhin, Andrey Riskin, "Morskoy shchit Rossii vzorvalsya nad Severnym morem," Nezavisimaya gazeta, 19 February 2004.[17] "Rossiyskiy yadernyy shchit dal treshchinu," Kommersant-Daily, 19 February 2004. [18] Andrey Borisov, Vadim Solovev, "Putin za tri chasa zapustil v nebo tri rakety," Nezavisimaya gazeta, 19 February 2004. [19] Dmitriy Litovkin, "U Rossii - novoye oruzhiye," Izvestiya, 19 February 2004. [20] "Chto i kuda zapustili kosmicheskiye voyska," Kommersant-Daily, 19 February 2004. [21] Yuriy Avdeyev, Aleksandr Bogatyrev, Vladimir Gundarov, Aleksandr Dolinin, "Garantiya neuyazvimosti," Krasnaya zvezda, 19 February 2004. [22] Dmitriy Litovkin, "Giperzvukovaya 'Koala'," Izvestiya, 20 February 2004. [23] Nayl Gafutulin, Sergey Severinov, Aleksandr Bogatyrev, "Proryv k oruzhiyu novogo pokoleniya," Krasnaya zvezda, 20 February 2004. [24] Fedor Rumyantsev, Yelena Shishkunova, "Rossiiskaya raketa probila amerikansuyu PRO," Gazeta.Ru, http://www.gazeta.ru, 20 February 2004.

Last updated 15 November 2004

Link: Nuclear Threat Initiative

(See blog, "Communist Bloc Military Updates: Peace Mission 2005, Sino-Russian military coordination begins" for even more recent Communist Bloc military maneuvers.)

Middle East File: Israel planning preemptive March strike against Iran's nuke plants

Events are convergening rapidly in the Middle East as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, thumbs his nose at Israel, the USA, and their allies, daring them to stop the Islamic republic's nuclear program. In the meanwhile, embassies are closing down in Jordan, the royal family has left the country, and North Korea's leader is apparently en route to Russia and China. Iran, like North Korea, is a client state of Russia.

In the picture above, Ahmadinejad pays his respects to Ayatollah Khamenei.

Israelis plan pre-emptive strike on Iran
IAN BRUCE, Defence Correspondent
January 10 2006

Israel is updating plans for a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities which could be launched as soon as the end of March, according to military and intelligence sources.

The news comes as Germany yesterday warned Tehran's regime that it would face "consequences" if it removes UN seals from portions of its atomic programme and resumes enrichment of fuel which could be diverted for military use in breach of international agreements.

The Israeli raids would be carried out by long-range F-15E bombers and cruise missiles against a dozen key sites and are designed to set Tehran's weapons programme back by up to two years.

Pilots at the Israeli air force's elite 69 squadron have been briefed on the plan and have conducted rehearsals for their missions.

The prime targets would be the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, 150 miles south of Tehran, a heavy-water production site at Arak, 120 miles south-west of the capital, and a site near Isfahan in central Iran which makes the uranium hexafluoride gas vital to the arms manufacturing process.

Sources say one, possibly two airfields in Kurdish northern Iraq have been earmarked as launch-points to reduce flying time over Iran.

The Iranians have meanwhile dispersed production facilities across hundreds of miles of remote countryside to make a single, knockout blow more difficult. They have also ringed the sites, some of them deep underground, with missile batteries and radar-controlled anti-aircraft guns.

Part of the reason for an acceleration of Israel's contingency strike plans is that Russia agreed last month to sell Tehran £700m-worth of advanced SA-15 Gauntlet mobile missile systems.

Some are believed to be destined for defence of Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant on the Gulf coast, which Russian engineers are helping to build.

Although Western military strategists think an attack on Tehran's scattered sites would be fraught with difficulties and could not be carried out without loss to the attacking forces, few doubt Israel's commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear firepower.

An Israeli source said: "We believe Iran will have useable nuclear weapons by 2007 unless something is done to prevent it. If Tehran is allowed to start enrichment of uranium, it will be too late.

"Underground facilities have to be supplied with air, water and fuel from the surface. They also have entrances which are vulnerable to conventional attack. Close down the infrastructure and you close down the facility."

Link: The Herald

Iran military chiefs killed in plane crash
01.09.2006, 04:46 AM

TEHRAN (AFX) - Several top Iranian military officers were among at least 11 people killed when a Falcon plane crashed, local media reported.

The military plane came down near Orumiyeh in northwestern Iran near the Turkish border and all 11 people aboard were killed, the Mehr agency reported.

Emergency services chief Farzad Panahi told the Fars agency the plane was carrying 15 people, including eight Revolutionary Guard commanders. Thirteen were killed and two missing, he said.

The Fars agency has close links to the Revolutionary Guards, which are known locally as Pasdarans.

Among the dead are Ahmad Kazemi, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards ground forces, Fars said, and a number of other top commanders, including an intelligence chief.

A Guards spokesman quoted by Al-Alam television said the plane came down around 8.30 am (0500 GMT), with Mehr reporting the plane crashed after one of its engines stopped working.

The crash comes barely a month after an Iranian military transport plane hit a high-rise housing block in Tehran after suffering engine failure.

A total of 108 people were killed in the Dec 6 incident, which raised concerns about the state of the planes used by the military.

Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has been subject to tough US sanctions, hindering the purchase of critical spare parts for all US-made planes in its air force, civilian flag carrier Iran Air and domestic airlines.

newsdesk@afxnews.com afp/jsa
Copyright AFX News Limited 2005.

Link: Forbes

Two More Embassies in Jordan Close
AMMAN, 9 January 2006

Three Western embassies in Jordan have closed for security reasons “until further notice,” warning of a new threat of attacks on Western targets in the kingdom.

The Canadian and Australian embassies yesterday followed Britain in announcing the closure of their missions in the Jordanian capital, Amman.

The move comes two months after bomb attacks claimed by Al-Qaeda against three luxury hotels in Amman that killed 60 people plus three bombers and wounded about 100 more.

Australia warned travelers in a statement of the threat of new attacks on Western targets in the kingdom, a key US ally regarded as one of the most stable countries in the volatile Middle East. “Reports suggest terrorists may be in the final stages of planning attacks against Westerners and places frequented by Westerners in Jordan,” the embassy said. “The Australian Embassy in Jordan will be closed until further notice due to the security situation.”

An official from the Canadian Embassy in Jordan told AFP that its embassy would remain closed “until further notice” due to security reasons. Sources close to the embassies said the British mission had received a threatening e-mail on its Internet site that it had handed to the Jordanian authorities. No direct threats were received by the Australian or Canadian embassies, the sources said.

Jordanian government spokesman Nasser Jawdeh told AFP yesterday that the kingdom “is confident in the capacities of its security services which have studied the threat and evaluated it.” And he reiterated the government’s position voiced initially after the British announcement.

“The security services believe that that does not necessitate the closure of embassies, nevertheless we take any threat seriously and that’s why we have reinforced security around these embassies,” he said. The Nov. 9 attacks were claimed by the Al-Qaeda in Iraq group of Jordanian-born Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, who has threatened new attacks on his homeland.

In August, a Jordanian soldier was killed in a rocket attack in the southern port city of Aqaba, also blamed on Zarqawi’s group. He already faces a death sentence in Jordan over the 2002 murder of a US diplomat and is the most wanted man in Iraq, where there is a $25 million US bounty for his death or capture. Jordan’s state security court on Dec. 18 handed him a second death penalty in absentia for planning to blow up a border crossing with Iraq.

The Australian Embassy referred to a statement by Zarqawi, saying he had suggested “Al-Qaeda’s targets in Jordan might include a number of places frequented by foreigners, including tourist hotels, embassies and consulates.” Zarqawi, in an audiotape attributed to him and posted on the Internet in November, warned of more attacks if Amman did not meet his demands.

The voice on the tape demanded the departure of British and US troops, the closure of the US and Israeli embassies, and an end to training in Jordan for Iraq’s fledgling security forces.

A Canadian Foreign Ministry travel advisory, dated Saturday, said the Jordanian government maintained “security measures that make it difficult for extremist groups to operate.” However it added that travelers “should exercise caution.”

The British Embassy in Jordan announced Saturday it would remain closed “until further notice” and warned of the threat of new attacks on Western targets in the kingdom.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office in London would not comment on whether there had been a specific threat against the embassy in Amman, saying only that the closure was prompted by the security situation in Jordan.

Link: Arab News

King, Queen on private trip

Their Majesties King Abdullah and Queen Rania on Sunday left Jordan on a several-day private trip. HRH Prince Feisal was sworn in as Regent — Petra

Link: Jordan Times

North Korea File: Russia and China deny Kim on secret visit

North Korea is a long-time client state of Moscow and Beijing. The KGB-managed "collapse" of communism in Russia did not alter Russian-North Korean relations in any substantial way. Hence, any trip by Kim to the twin capitals of the Trans-Asian Axis should be viewed with suspicion.

Report: N. Korean Leader Visiting China
Jan 09 10:44 PM US/Eastern
By KWANG-TAE KIM, Associated Press Writer
SEOUL, South Korea

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has traveled to China on a rare trip outside his country, a South Korean military intelligence official said Tuesday.

The official told The Associated Press he received the information from intelligence inside China. The official spoke on condition his name not be used because of the sensitivity of the information. "We confirmed he went to China," the official said.

"We don't know why."

China's foreign ministry said it could not confirm the report and had no immediate comment.

Kim, who seldom travels abroad, last visited China in April 2004 for a summit with Chinese leaders. North Korea and China, both communist countries, have traditionally had close ties.

Chinese President Hu Jintao visited North Korea in October.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported earlier in a dispatch out of Beijing that the reclusive North Korean leader's train had crossed the border into northeastern China amid tight security. The agency did not say where it got its information.

The visit comes at a sensitive time for North Korea, which remains at odds with the United States over stalled international talks aimed at getting Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

China is under pressure from the United States and other governments to use its leverage as North Korea's main ally and aid donor to push Pyongyang for concessions.

North Korea on Monday sent its highest-level signal yet that the nuclear talks are unlikely to resume soon, repeating its demand that the U.S. drop sanctions to end the impasse.

"Under the present situation it is illogical to discuss with the U.S., the assailant, the issue of dismantling the nuclear deterrent built up by the DPRK for self-defense," an unnamed Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

DPRK refers to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the communist state's official name.

North Korea and the United States have been engaged since 2003 in multi-party talks aimed at persuading Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear programs. Though the talks also involve China, Japan, South Korea and Russia, their progress is usually determined by the existing level of tension between North Korea and Washington.

In September, the United States imposed sanctions on a bank in the Chinese territory of Macau, alleging it helped the North distribute counterfeit currency and engage in other illicit activities.

The next month, Washington sanctioned eight North Korean companies it claimed were fronts for proliferating weapons of mass destruction.

North Korea's increasing anger comes as U.S. officials have been taking a harder verbal line. Alexander Vershbow, the new U.S. ambassador to Seoul, last month called North Korea's government a "criminal regime." On Thursday, his boss, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, called it a "dangerous regime."

Link: Breitbart

N Korea officials decline to confirm Kim’s visit to China
10.01.2006, 10.26
PYONGYANG, January 10 (Itar-Tass)

North Korean officials have declined so far to confirm or refute reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has begun a confidential visit to China.

Staffers of the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s department for press and information have declined to comment to Itar-Tass on foreign media reports saying that the train carrying the North Korean leader crossed the border into China earlier on Tuesday.

Sources from the Chinese Embassy to Pyongyang also said they could provide no information on that issue.

Meanwhile, the South Korean news agency Yonhap has reported referring to unnamed Chinese sources in Beijing that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il began on Tuesday an unannounced visit to China.

The visit is connected here with attempts by the North Korean leadership to find a breakthrough in stalled six-way talks on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

Although the official Beijing keeps silent on the issue, the source says a special train carrying the North Korean leadership and accompanying him officials crossed the border into China at 6:30 am local time.

Link: ITAR-TASS

North Korea's Kim on way to Russia via China - source
By Jack Kim and Lindsay Beck
SEOUL/BEIJING (Reuters)

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il passed through China on Tuesday on the way to Russia, a source with knowledge of the stopover said. South Korean and Japanese media said Kim was making a secret visit to China.

"He passed through China. He left today for Russia," the source, who requested anonymity, told Reuters.

"He did not meet any (Chinese) leaders," the source said, adding that Kim may stop over in China on his way home.

The source declined to provide further details.

There was unusually heavy security near the train station in the Chinese border city of Dandong and talk of a special train from North Korea passing through before dawn on Tuesday, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said, quoting a source in the city.

Japan's Kyodo news agency had a similar report quoting diplomatic sources in Beijing.

Asked if Kim was in China, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said he had not been authorised to release specific information.

"But I want to point out that China and North Korea are friendly neighbours and maintain a tradition of exchanges of high-level visits," he told a regular news conference.

Asked if there were plans for such a visit, he said: "Yes."

South Korea's presidential Blue House also could not confirm the trip, which would come as regional powers, including China and Russia, seek to nudge the North back into talks on its nuclear ambitions.

Chinese President Hu Jintao visited North Korea in October on a trip that was seen as underscoring Beijing's role in persuading Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons programmes.

Yonhap quoted its source as saying the level of security in Dandong resembled that seen in April 2004 when the North Korean leader visited China.

Link: TheStar.com

Jan 10 2006 5:28PM
Moscow denies N. Korean leader plans to visit Russia
MOSCOW. Jan 10 (Interfax)

Moscow has not confirmed reports by a number of Western media outlets alleging that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il would visit Russia in the near future.

"These reports don't have any grounds," a Russian Foreign Ministry source told Interfax on Tuesday.

A number of Western media outlets reported earlier from Beijing, citing unofficial sources, that Kim was crossing China on his way to Russia.

The North Korean Embassy in Moscow also refused to confirm that Kim might visit Russia in the next few days.

"We don't know anything about this, we don't have such information," the North Korean Embassy press attache in Moscow told Interfax on Tuesday.

Link: Interfax

Grey Terror File: Failed missile attack and more laser incidents against planes near LAX

Since at least 1995 a number of incidents have occurred where unknown persons have aimed lasers at the cockpits of commercial aircraft flying in and out of US airports. The most recent reported incident occurred at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX, above) on the night of January 8, 2006:

Planes Approaching LAX Hit by Lasers
January 9, 2006

LOS ANGELES - There's growing concern about lasers being aimed at commercial jetliners, lasers that could blind the pilot. Officials are saying very little. However, there were apparently two incidents last night.

Pilots will tell you the two most vulnerable times during a flight is takeoff and landing because they're flying so slow and flying very low to the ground. Somebody took advantage of that last night and aimed two laser beams or several laser beaming -- beams at planes flying into lax.

One pilot says any distraction in the cockpit can be dangerous, but laser beams have several potential hazards that can put the crew and passengers at serious risk.

"The main problem is that the pilot's losing his eyesight for a few second seconds, which is very important scanning the instruments, sanction other air traffic and complying with the air traffic controller's instructions in order to maintain the safety of the flight," said pilot Andy Bagyuj.

The FBI confirms two different pilots landing at LAX Wednesday night encountered laser light aimed right at their plane. The pilots said they saw three bright green flashes aimed at an American Airlines jet 19 miles out from LAX and a United 757, 7 miles outside of the Santa Monica Airport.

This isn't the first time someone has aimed lasers at a plane. Last January a laser beam was pointed at a jet line out of Burbank and in December of 2004 it happened four times in six days.

The lasers did not hurt the pilots and the planes did land safely. However, the FBI is now investigating to confirm whether or not those beams were lasers and more importantly where they came from.

Link: ABC News Local Affiliate

This is not the first troubling incident to affect aircraft near LAX in recent weeks. On Saturday, November 26, 2005, someone, presumably positioned on a boat in Santa Monica Bay, appears to have launched a shoulder-fired missile at American Airlines Flight 612, near LAX. Some missile launchers, known as MANPADS, it should be noted, utilize lasers as guidance systems.

The initial report was broadcast on Monday, November 28 by a few radio stations and published on a few news websites, before promptly disappearing down the memory hole. The first report also contained several inaccuracies that bloggers and forum posters, especially at Free Republic, immediately noticed. For example, the flight in question was 612, not 621, and departed LAX on Saturday, November 26, not Monday, November 28, as was implied by the broadcast. The only websites of any significance to cover the incident were WorldNetDaily (WND) and the Northeast Intelligence Network. The intial report was as follows:

Pilot Reports 'Missile' Fired at Jetliner Near LAX
Monday, November 28, 2005

FBI agents and Homeland Security officials spent the weekend investigating the report of a possible missile fired at an American Airlines plane taking off from Los Angeles International Airport.

Sources tell ABC News the pilot of American Airlines Flight 621, en route to Chicago, radioed air traffic controllers after takeoff from LAX. He told them a missile had been fired at the aircraft and missed.

The plane was over water when the pilot said he saw a smoke trail pass by the cockpit.

FBI agents believe it was a flare or a bottle rocket, but say they may never know if that's what it actually was.

Philadelphia, KYW Newsradio
Link expired

At WND, Jack Cashill, who has also published articles on the demise of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island, New York in 1996, offered the following assessment of the LAX "missile mystery":

What really happened to AA Flight 612
Friday, December 9, 2005
By Jack Cashill

The rumor mill started humming Monday morning, Nov. 28, after ABC Radio aired the following report:

FBI and Homeland Security agents spent part of the weekend investigating the report of a possible missile fired at a plane leaving Los Angeles international airport. ABC's Alex Stone has the details.

... the pilots radioed air-traffic controllers saying what appeared to be a rocket had been fired at the aircraft and missed as American Airlines Flight 621 was climbing over the water. It had just taken off from LAX. The plane was enroute to Chicago ... When it landed, FBI agents spoke with the pilots. Sources say those agents now believe it was a flare or a bottle rocket that passed by and they don't think it was any threat to the aircraft.

This report did not run for long, possibly no more than once or twice. Still, thousands of people heard it, and many of those were understandably suspicious when no other major media outlet picked up the story.

Not satisfied with rumors, retired United Airline pilot, Ray Lahr, and aviation audio expert, Glen Schulze, decided to investigate. The pair have been cooperating in Lahr's ongoing Freedom Of Information Act suit in federal court against the CIA and the National Transportation Safety Board regarding the demise of TWA Flight 800. What they have found about the LAX flight is inconclusive, but intriguing, and deserves serious inquiry.

For starters, the flight was AA 612 and not AA 621 as reported. Lahr and Schulze checked its progress using the LAX airport monitor. Those interested in doing the same can enter Nov. 26, 12:49, 20-mile range, and then click on "start."

You will see every airplane aloft in the Los Angeles area on the map. In about a half minute, "AAL612" appears as a green aircraft crossing the shoreline. If you click on the aircraft, it will turn red, and the flight data will appear in a box to the right. Over the next few minutes, the aircraft turns south. At approximately 6,000 feet and off the coast of Redondo Beach, a new target will appear.

"The unidentified target's altitude does some funny things," observes Glenn Schulze, "from a constant 1,500 feet to suddenly showing 7,500 feet where it remains, which is the same altitude as AA FL 612 at this point in AA FL 612's climb-out."

According to Lahr, AA 612 seems "to split and become TWO! It remains TWO for a while, both targets moving together, then they separate, the mirror target fades, and AA 612 (thank God) is alone again, heading slightly south east."

The unidentified target appears for 12 to 13 sweeps of the FAA LAX TRACON radar rotating at a 4.7-second sweep rate. "This target can not be easily explained away as a radar ghost or artifact or swamp gas," adds Schulze, "as it exists and tracks over the ground for almost 50 seconds as it travels along with AA FL 612.

"Dynamite evidence!"

What makes the evidence particularly compelling is that the pilots apparently saw what the radar was reporting. Those who are interested in the pilot's commentary can go to the following site. The relevant conversation is at the very end of this segment, during the last minute. This conversation takes place several minutes after the incident and alludes to an earlier conversation.

ATC: Flare or a rocket?
AA 612: It looked more like a rocket.
ATC: American 612, how far away was it from your position?
AA 612: It was about half way between us and the coastline when we first called that last center guy.

Whatever the pilot saw prompted enough concern for LAX officials to contact the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. It also prompted a very serious report on ABC radio.

The most comprehensive reporting on the subject appeared Dec. 3 in an LAX area newspaper called The South Bay Daily Breeze. The headline says it all: "Smoke Trail Wasn't Threat to Plane, Say Investigators."

The article describes what the pilot saw as an "an unusual vapor trail," one that was "at least a mile below the airplane." FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller assured the readers that this presumed trail "absolutely posed no threat." This claim would be more reassuring had the FBI not also convinced the reporter that "whatever left the vapor trail did not appear on radar, and the pilot never reported seeing any kind of projectile."

The existing evidence would seem to refute all of those claims. The pilots saw not a vapor trail, but a "flare or a rocket." They saw it when the plane was no higher than 6,000 feet. Anything "at least a mile below them" would likely be swimming. The radar did pick something up, and the pilots considered the event sufficiently alarming to report it.

A veteran Airline Pilots Association safety investigator, Lahr was once much more likely to accept aviation authorities at their word. Having spent the last several years fighting them for information in the federal courts, he has grown increasingly skeptical.

The FBI may have its reason for quieting fears, Lahr understands, but as the distorted investigation of TWA Flight 800 has shown, a pacified population is a vulnerable one.

Link: WorldNetDaily

Coincidentally, or not so coincidentally, less than one week before the LAX missile mystery, news reports revealed that two Chinese nationals appeared before a court in Los Angeles on charges of conspiring to import shoulder-fired missiles into the USA.

Chinese Men Plead Not Guilty to Arms Smuggling Charges in U.S.
Posted 11/21/05 15:51
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, LOS ANGELES

Two Chinese men pleaded not guilty Nov. 21 to charges of plotting to smuggle surface-to-air missiles to the United States, according to judicial sources.

California resident Chao Tung Wu, 51, and Yi Qing Chen, 41, were accused by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of trying to sneak into the United States QW-2 shoulder-fired missile systems used by the Chinese military.

A U.S. law adopted after the September 11, 2001 attacks prohibits importing anti-aircraft missile systems.

An indictment unsealed earlier this month charged that the pair “conspired with foreign nationals to smuggle in the United States shoulder-fired and surface-to-air missiles designed to shoot down aircraft.”

If convicted, each California man would face mandatory punishment of 25 years to life in prison.

Wu, Chen and others were originally indicted in August as part of “Operation Smoking Dragon,” a federal investigation into an international smuggling ring.

The men have also been charged with conspiring to distribute methamphetamine and Ecstasy along with millions of counterfeit cigarettes.

Wu was also implicated in a scheme to import “Supernotes,” high quality counterfeit 100-dollar bills, into the United States, according to prosecutors.

Link: DefenseNews.com

In late 2004 LAX administrators and law enforcement authories were already anticipating that MANPADS could be a potential threat to arriving and departing aircraft. The airport itself has also been the object of foiled terrorist attacks, such as in 1999 when Algerian terrorist Ahmed Ressam attempted to smuggle a bomb into the USA from Canada by way of the Port Angeles, Washington car ferry, which links to Victoria, British Columbia.

LAX Beefs Up Anti-Missile Security
Wednesday, December 15, 2004

LOS ANGELES — Counterterrorism officials are beefing up security at Los Angeles International Airport to protect jetliners from terrorists armed with shoulder-launched missiles.

There is no immediate threat to aircraft, according to authorities, who said they were prompted to step up security because of recent overseas strikes against airliners, coupled with the availability of such weapons on the black market.

"The threat is real," said John Miller, head of the Los Angeles Police Department's counterterrorism bureau. "With about 20,000 of these available on the black market, for $2,000 to $3,000 each, there is no indication it will not be tried again."

Among the new measures are expanded helicopter surveillance, new perimeter fencing, stepped-up police patrols and additional training to help authorities identify such weapons.

While shoulder-launched missiles haven't been used against airliners in the United States, terrorists have fired missiles weighing less than 40 pounds at some two dozen commercial aircraft around the world.
Last year, terrorists armed with a shoulder-launched missile struck a DHL cargo jet taking off from Baghdad International Airport, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing. In November 2002, two shoulder-launched missiles nearly missed a jet carrying 271 people.

A study conducted by the Rand Corp. concluded earlier this year that Los Angeles International Airport is "a particularly attractive target" for terrorists. Increased patrols and the use of such technology as powerful laser beams to intercept missiles could make the airport safer, Rand said.

According to security experts, the airport has been targeted in five attacks or attempted attacks by terrorists over the last three decades. One of the best known was an attempt to detonate a suitcase bomb at the airport on New Year's Eve 1999. The plot was foiled when an Algerian man was caught attempting to sneak the explosives into the United States from Canada.

To guard against shoulder-fired missiles, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., has proposed equipping commercial planes with lasers that destroy the infrared guidance sensors on portable missiles.

The laser defense would cost about $1 million for each jetliner. C-17 military transport jets are already using such technology.

Link: Fox News

In an apparently unrelated incident, a few weeks after the LAX missile mystery, in December 2005, a man was arrested in New Jersey for aiming a laser at a flying helicopter:

Man Accused of Aiming Laser at News Copter
Dec 19 6:02 PM US/Eastern

NEWARK, N.J. - Authorities on Monday arrested a man and accused him of shining a laser pointer into the cockpit of a hovering news helicopter, temporarily blinding the pilot.

Pedro Vega, 36, was charged with offenses including assault. The WNBC- TV helicopter was covering a traffic accident Nov. 18 when the laser was shone into the cockpit from about 1,000 feet away, said Bill Maer, a spokesman for the Passaic County sheriff. A helicopter cameraman's film was being used as evidence, Maer said. Vega confessed to police, he said.

Vega faces charges of causing or risking widespread injury or damage, tampering with evidence, and giving false reports to law enforcers.

He also has been charged with interference with transportation and assault. He could be sentenced to up to two years in prison, Maer said.

Vega, of Paterson, N.J., was to be arraigned within three days, Maer said. He has not been charged with Patriot Act violations because the crimes were not committed against a commercial aircraft, Maer said.

Link: Breitbart

Laser attacks against commercial aircraft, as noted above, have not been restricted to LAX:

Laser attacks on commercial aircraft
Release date: 01 Jan 2005

The US FBI is investigating a series of incidents in which powerful visible lasers have been directed at the cockpits of commercial aircraft.

The latest occurence was at Cleveland International Airport, but pilots of 2 other aircraft reported having green lasers shone into their cockpits within the past week. All aircraft landed safely. Police dispatched patrol cars and helicopters to investigate, but found nothing.

In September a Delta Air Lines pilot reported an eye injury from a laser during an approach to the Salt Lake City airport. The aircraft also landed safely.

Illumination by a laser beam at night can distract pilots; and if the laser is powerful enough or sustained on the eye long enough, eye damage can occur. According to the FBI, many varieties of pointer lasers exist. Some that project a beam that can reach 1,500 ft cost as little as $15. Gangs in California have used the technique of bundling lasers to use against law enforcement helicopters.

After unknown lasers illuminated several commercial aircraft in 1995, the Federal Aviation Administration began recording laser attacks against aircraft and helicopters. By 2003, over 200 incidents had been listed.
Link: RIN

While one cannot make any definitive statement without more information, incidents like this may fall under "grey terror," described by ex-GRU officer Viktor Suvorov as an integral component in the Soviet Union's pre-war destabilization operations:

The overture is carried by agents of the secret services of the Soviet satellite countries and by mercenaries recruited by intermediaries. The principal method employed at this stage is 'grey terror', that is, a kind of terror which is not conducted in the name of the Soviet Union. The Soviet secret services do not at this stage leave their visiting cards, or leave other people's cards. The terror is carried out in the name of already existing extremist groups not connected in any way with the Soviet Union, or in the name of fictitious organisations.

Link: Spetsnaz: The Story Behind the Soviet SAS

Final Phase Backgrounder: Moscow and Beijing's "One Clenched Fist"

During the days of overt communism in Eastern Europe, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the People's Republic of China feigned enmity, publicizing their hostility with manufactured border skirmishes and other diversions. On December 25, 1991 the Leninist strategists in Moscow offered the world a Christmas present: the USSR was going to implode and communism would be outlawed. Somewhere in the Kremlin there was chuckling and the tinkling of glasses of vodka.

Following the much-ballyhooed demise of communism in Russia, the "ex"-communist leaders of Russia saw fit to establish a strategic partnership with their former, openly communist "enemy" in China. The result? The Trans-Asian Axis, in which the Moscow-Beijing Axis assumes the leadership role. Fast forward to "Peace Mission" 2005, the first-ever joint military exercise between the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China. (See blog, "Communist Bloc Military Updates: Peace Mission 2005, Sino-Russian military coordination begins.")

Anatoliy Golitsyn, a KGB officer who defected to the West one December thirty years before, however, had warned the West of the ruse. Few listened. Those that did lost their jobs. Golitsyn's prediction, published five years in advance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, follows:

After successful use of the scissors strategy in the early stages of the final phase of policy to assist communist strategy in Europe and the Third World and over disarmament, a Sino-Soviet reconciliation could be expected. It is contemplated and implied by the long-range policy and by strategic disinformation on the split.

The communist bloc, with its recent accretions in Africa [PT: Namibia, 1990; South Africa, 1995; Congo, 1997] and South-East Asia, is already strong. European-backed Soviet influence and American-back Chinese influence could lead to new Third World acquisitions [PT: Venezuela, 1998; Brazil, 2002; Argentina, 2003; Bolivia, 2005] at an accelerating pace. Before long, the communist strategists might be persuaded that the balance had swung irreversibly in their favor. In that event they might well decide on a Sino-Soviet “reconciliation.” The scissors strategy would give way to the strategy of “one clenched fist.” At that point the shift in the political and military balance would be plain for all to see. Convergence would not be between equal parties, but would be on terms dictated by the communist bloc. The argument for accommodation with the overwhelming strength of communism would be virtually unanswerable. Pressures would build up for changes in the American political and economic system on the lines indicated in Sakharov’s treatise. Traditional conservatives would be isolated and driven toward extremism. They might become victims of a new McCarthyism of the left [PT: political correctness]. The Soviet dissidents who are now extolled as heroes of the resistance to Soviet communism would play an active party in arguing for convergence. Their present supporters would be confronted with a choice of forsaking their idols or acknowledge the legitimacy of the new Soviet regime.

-- Anatoliy Golitsyn, New Lies for Old: The Communist Strategy of Deception and Disinformation (New York, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1984), pages 345-346.

Communist Bloc Military Updates: BRIC Alliance partners Russia and India begin military coordination

Russia and India are two of the four members in the BRIC Alliance (Brazil-Russia-India-China). Openly communist governments rule in China and Brazil. The communist masters of "post-communist" Russia continue to deceive the West. The communists hold the balance of power in the Indian parliament. Conditions are right for the entrance of India into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in 2006.

Russia, India to Hold Joint Paratroop Exercises in August
Created: 08.01.2006 16:56 MSK (GMT +3)
Updated: 14:14 MSK, 6 hours 53 minutes ago
MosNews

Indian and Russian paratroopers will hold their second series of joint exercises in August in Russia. “We have planned two joint exercises in 2006, with India and NATO,” the commander of Russia’s elite Airborne Troops, Colonel General Aleksandr Kolmakov, was quoted by the BBC as saying.Kolmakov said this time the joint war games with India would be held on Russian soil.Last October he led the Russian Airborne combat unit for the first such joint anti-terror war games Indra-2005 with Indian paratroopers at the Mahajan range in Rajasthan.

Link: Moscow News

The Indo-Russian military exercises scheduled for the summer of 2006 follow last October's joint maneuvers.

Russia, India to Hold Major War Games
Created: 27.08.2005 13:01 MSK (GMT +3),
Updated: 13:01 MSK, 3 hours 42 minutes ago
MosNews

Russia and India are going to hold largest-ever anti-terrorist war games in mid-October using airborne commandos and ground forces, India’s Defense Ministry was quoted by Daily Times as saying.

The exercises will be held in the Thar Desert bordering Pakistan and last for a week. The ministry said the war games would “seek to strike interoperability between land forces for possible future operations under international peacekeeping banners in third countries.”

It will include blitzkrieg-style anti-terrorist commando operations with the use of aircraft and helicopters and involve approximately 800 servicemen — commandos and special troops’ members — from each side.Indian defense officials say Moscow is New Delhi’s closest military ally and accounts for more than 70 percent of India’s military hardware.

The announcement of future war games came shortly after Russia and China finished an unprecedented joint military drill.

Link: Moscow News

Feature: Eurasia's New Communist Bloc: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization

Is the SCO a Military Confederacy?
By Frederick W. Stakelbeck Jr.
FrontPageMagazine.com October 6, 2005

The members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will recognize the organization’s fifth anniversary in June 2006 with a much anticipated celebration, “Everyone agrees this first jubilee date must be celebrated accordingly,” said Vitally Vorobyev, Russia’s coordinator in the SCO. Washington, however, will not be joining in the festivities.

The reason for Washington’s sour mood? Growing anxiety surrounding the ultimate mission of the SCO and its impact on Central Asia and the Middle East. Pictures taken by journalists of Russian President Vladimir Putin during the recent Peace Mission 2005 military exercises, showing the president in full military attire and holding a large model warplane were not reassuring. His subsequent flight in a supersonic bomber specifically designed to deliver a nuclear payload did not help either.

This raises an important question: With SCO leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Hu Jintao and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad openly embracing military modernization and improved synergies, is the organization destined to become a military confederacy with the U.S. as its main target?

“For the SCO to be turned into a military and political bloc or alliance, the present-day SCO would need to be dissolved. The legislation of some of the SCO member-countries makes this [military confederacy] impossible,” said Vitally Vorobyov. He immediately followed these comments with a contradictory statement, “Cooperation between defense agencies within the SCO framework can and should develop. The SCO makes provision for this, its nothing new.”

Statements of this type from high-level Russian and SCO officials continue to perplex western intelligence officials, leading some to speculate that it may be only a matter of time before the SCO begins to exert its collective military influence in Central Asia and the Middle East.

Peace Mission 2005

In August, “Peace Mission 2005,” a joint eight-day military exercise involving 10,000 Russian and Chinese troops, was held in Russia’s Far East and China’s Shandong Peninsula. The exercises were led by Russian General Makhmut Gareyev, a veteran of World War II who fought against both Germany and Japan. Requests by Washington to reduce the scope of the exercises were rejected by both Russia and China.

The joint exercises involved beach landings, airborne assaults, naval blockades, anti-ship missiles and precision bombing from strategic bombers. To the surprise of western intelligence officials, Russian Tu-95MS Bear and Tu-22M3 Backfire strategic bombers designed to carry nuclear-tipped cruise missiles were deployed during the exercises. The exercises reportedly involved a mock intervention to stabilize an imaginary country driven by ethnic strife.

In response, the U.S. launched a week long “Joint Air Sea Exercise 2005” in Okinawa and Guam which included 10,000 troops and 100 warplanes from the USS Kitty Hawk strike group. In addition, the U.S. and South Korea participated in a twelve day “Ulchi Focus Lens 2005” military exercise. Taiwan has already announced that it has scheduled its own invasion defense exercise code named “Yama Sakura” for 2006. Taken collectively, the military exercises send a clear message to Moscow and Beijing that the U.S. is prepared to respond to any collaborative military threat.

Recent Military Exchanges

In September, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov announced his country had agreed to supply China with a total of 40 IL-76 transport and IL-78 refueling planes at a cost of about $1 billion. Later this month, Ivanov is expected to sign contracts to deliver Russian military vehicles to China.

The recent plane and vehicle sales continue a trend of Russian military hardware transfers to China which have included: 200 fourth-generation fighter aircraft, several S-300 air defense batteries, guided missile destroyers and sophisticated submarines worth a combined $15 billion over the past ten years. In 2004 alone, Russian arms exports to China totaled $2.3 billion.

According to Konstantin Makiyenko, the deputy director of the Center for Strategic and Technological Analysis, a Moscow-based think tank, China is also interested in purchasing Russian made A-50 Mainstay AWACS planes and a manufacturing license for the Su-30MK2 multi-role fighter. Moreover, Beijing has made it clear that it wants to accelerate the purchase of advanced Russian fighters, unmanned aircraft and long and short-range missiles as part of its ongoing modernization program.

Not surprisingly, Russian Defense Minister Ivanov announced this month that Russian servicemen would travel to China for training stating, “Russia needs more experts who can speak Chinese.” More than 500 Chinese students already study at Russian military universities. But why the sudden urgency for improved communication between the two militaries?

Indeed, Washington has begun to take notice of the evolving relationship. As U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack commented in August, “We would hope that anything that they [China and Russia] do is not something that would be disruptive to the current atmosphere in the [Central Asia] region.” Unfortunately, Mr. McCormack may be disappointed.

Future Military Exercises

Immediately after the completion of their historic joint military exercises, Russia and China announced plans to hold additional joint exercises in 2006. Both countries anticipate expanding the exercises to include SCO member states Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, as well as observer states India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan. “It is possible by the time we decide to hold such exercises with China; other SCO countries would be willing to join, like India,” one Russian official said. Russian Defense Minister Ivanov concurred, “I think that future Russia-China military exercises will be held and other members of the SCO will probably take part in them.”

Russia and India are scheduled to hold their first joint army drill next month, with mock raids on terrorist facilities taking place in the Indian province of Rajastahn, on the border with Pakistan. Andrei Kokoshin, a former secretary of the Russian Security Council and a member of parliament said the impending follow-up to the Peace Mission 2005 exercises could be part of a Russia-China-India triangle which supports the increased activity of the SCO. “The exercise might focus on maintaining stability in Central Asia and ensuring the security of oil supplies via sea routes,” Kokoshin said.

Chinese, Indian and Russian naval assets working in unison to protect oil supplies in the Persian Gulf? This comment shows another disturbing aspect of the emerging confederacy, an increased willingness to use its combined military strength to secure strategic energy reserves located in the Middle East. The mere thought of the Persian Gulf clogged with warships enforcing multilateral allegiances and interests is enough to make any analyst stay up all night.

General Yury Baluyevskiy, Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, further elaborated on the topic of SCO military cooperation, “I do not rule out that, if a decision is made by the SCO, of which Russian and China are members, the armed forces of our countries may be involved in performing certain tasks.” General Baluyevskiy failed to elaborate on what those “certain tasks” would include.

Observer country Pakistan is also becoming more active in the military aspects of the SCO. In September, Chinese General Liang Guanglie, a member of the Central Military Commission and Chief of Staff of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), met with Pakistani General Ehsan Ul Haq, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to strengthen military-to-military ties. During the meeting in Beijing, the two generals exchanged views on issues of common global and regional interest, as well as army building.

The most troubling development of the past month related to the SCO is the growing prospect of a nuclear-obsessed Iran joining the organization as a permanent member. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the newly elected conservative President of Iran, is a proven U.S. antagonist and a firm believer in spreading revolutionary Islamist ideology throughout the Muslim world. His recent comments at the U.N. concerning the U.S. show a preparation for confrontation with the U.S. Making matters worse, Iran is planning to build up its military forces. Iran had planned to double its military budget by 2010, but thanks to record oil revenues, that timetable has been adjusted to 2008.

New Thinking Needed

The SCO is a menacing confederacy of powerful nations arising out of the shadows of the Cold War that could cause tremendous global instability and even lead to world war. Geopolitics aside, the SCO has the potential to become the most powerful alliance on earth, combining Russia’s energy, military and technology expertise; China and India’s economic and human capital; and Iran’s enormous energy resources and growing military capabilities. This unique combination makes the SCO a formidable adversary for the U.S.

In February, Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) chief of staff General Liang Guanglie said the Peace Mission 2005 exercises would, “protect the peace and stability in our region and the world.” The world? The world has been led to believe that the SCO is a regional alliance designed to address issues of mutual concern such as terrorism, separatism and extremism - whatever they may mean at the moment for the members of the SCO. With military operations scheduled for 2006 and an expanded list of participating nations, the military threat posed by the SCO is starting to take shape.

At this time, what steps need to be taken by the U.S. to prepare for a possible SCO military threat? First, the U.S. Congress, Department of Defense and U.S. intelligence community must recognize that the continued military modernization and integration involving Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Iran will directly threaten the U.S. and its allies within the next several years. This is an uncomfortable reality, but one which is taking shape right before our eyes.

Second, calls by the SCO and others in the international community for an immediate withdraw of U.S. troops from the Middle East and Central Asia should be disregarded, due to the horrific consequences that the inevitable power vacuum would cause. Instead, strategic alliances should be strengthened with countries such as Georgia and the Ukraine to counter any regional threat.

Third, recent calls by Iran for a Muslim seat on the UN Security Council should be viewed for what they are: an effort by Tehran to weaken U.S. legitimacy in the international community and diminish its influence in Central Asia and the Middle East. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s announcement that his country will sell “peaceful” nuclear technology to other Islamic countries is too chilling to contemplate.

In short, the SCO is an immature, but potentially dangerous confederacy of countries with a mutual interest to dethrone the U.S. and, if necessary, confront it militarily. Under the guise of economic partnership, regional alliances and friendship, China, Russia and the other members of the SCO are rapidly increasing their collective power. Recent Pentagon reports identifying China as a growing threat are indeed accurate, but don’t go far enough.

The reports are deficient in that they base their analysis and predictions on countries such as China acting unilaterally. As a result, compulsory discussions concerning the rise of regional and global alliances that threaten the U.S. are not taking place. This could be a fatal mistake, since the SCO has become the perfect vehicle for coordinated military action in the future.

Link: FrontPageMag.com

Red Terror File: FSB behind July 2005 London bombings; planned attacks in France year before

In March 2004 the pro-Chechen website Kavkaz Center published several articles alerting readers to the possibility that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the criminal organization that was once known as the KGB, was preparing terrorist acts in France. At that time French authorities were in fact receiving letters from a shadowy terrorist organization that threatened to attack the French rail system.

Anna Politkovskaya, an independent Russian journalist mentioned in one of the articles below, claims that the FSB poisoned her in September 2004, on a commercial flight between Moscow and Rostov, as she endeavored to reach Beslan, in North Ossetia, to cover the school hostage situation.

As it turned out, a major terrorist attack did occur in Europe the following year. On July 7, 2005 a bus and three subway trains were bombed in London. In an interview with Polish publication FAKT, ex-FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko contends that his former employer was behind the bloody deed. President Vladimir Putin of Russia, ex-KGB officer and ex-FSB director, was in Scotland that day, rubbing elbows with his unsuspecting peers at the G-8 meeting. No doubt, the Russian leader carefully assessed the reactions of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the world leaders to the event. As of January 2006 Putin is now the president of the G-8. Go figure.

Below, Litvinenko also contends that Osama bin Laden's lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is an FSB agent. This revelation, if true, would suggest that, ultimately, Putin's Chekist regime in Russia may have had a hand in the 911 terror attacks. In fact, in a future blog we will address evidence that points to an East Bloc connection to the events of September 11, 2001.

FAKT: Alexander, who, in your opinion, is the originator of this [London] terrorist attack?

A. Litvinenko: You know, I have spoken about it earlier and I shall say now, that I know only one organization that has made terrorism the main tool of solving political problems. It is the Russian special services. The KGB was engaged in terrorism for many years, and mass terrorism. At the special department of the KGB they trained terrorists from practically every country in the world. These courses lasted, as a rule, for a half-year. Specially trained and prepared agents of the KGB organized murders and explosions, including explosions of tankers, the hijacking of passenger airliners, strikes on diplomatic, state and commercial organizations worldwide.

FAKT: Could you name ... some of the terrorists prepared at the "special courses" of the KGB-FSB?

A. Litvinenko: The bloodiest terrorists in the world were or are agents of the KGB-FSB. These are well-known, like Carlos Ilyich Ramiros, nicknamed "the Jackal," the late Yassir Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Adjalan (he is condemned in Turkey), Wadi Haddad, the head of the service of external operations of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hauyi, the head of the communist party of Lebanon, Mr. Papaionnu from the Cyprus, Sean Garland from Ireland and many others. All of them were trained by the KGB, received money from there, weapons and explosives, counterfeit documents and a communication equipment for carrying out of acts of terrorism worldwide.

FAKT: Some may object that each of the listed figures, and the forces supporting them, were engaged in solving their own political problems.

A. Litvinenko: Certainly, all these figures and movements operated under their own slogans; however, none of them especially hid their "intimate" ... relationship with the Kremlin and Lubyanka. There is a simple question: whether the Russian special services would train and finance people and groups that were not supervised by Lubyanka and did not serve the interests of the Kremlin? You understand perfectly, they would not. Each act of terrorism made by these people was carried out as an assignment and under the rigid control of the KGB of the USSR. And [the terrorism] ... is not casual after the disintegration of the USSR and [reform of the KGB]....

FAKT: Every terrorist you have named is from 'the old staff' of the KGB. Could you name someone from recent history?

A. Litvinenko: Certainly, here it is. The number two person in the terrorist organization al Qaeda, who they are crediting with the series of explosions in London, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is an old agent of the FSB. Being sentenced to death in Egypt for terrorism and hunted by Interpol, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in 1998, was in the territory of Dagestan, where for half a year he received special training at one of the educational bases of the FSB. After this training he was transferred to Afghanistan, where he had never been before and where, following the recommendation of his Lubyanka chiefs, he at once ... penetrated the milieu of bin Laden and soon became his assistant in al Qaeda.

FAKT: Could you hint at least, where this data comes from?

A. Litvinenko: I can. During my service in one of the most secret departments of the FSB, top officials from the UFSB of Dagestan, who had directly worked with Ayman al-Zawahiri ... were called to Moscow and received high posts.

FAKT: What can you say concerning the acts of terrorism in London ? From what region and with what forces was this strike directed?

A. Litvinenko: In reply to this question I can definitely say that the center of global terrorism is not in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or the Chechen Republic. The terrorist infection is spread worldwide from Lubyanka Square and the Kremlin cabinet. And until the Russian special services are outlawed, dispersed and condemned, the terrorism will never stop: bombs will blow up and blood will be shed. Terrorism has no expiration date.... I would like to repeat, that all the terrorists, whom I have named, were supported by the heads of the Soviet and Russian special services - Yuri Andropov, Vladimir Putin, Nikolay Patrushev and others. These people are the main terrorists.... And until we condemn them ... global terrorism will continue.

Link: JRNyquist.com


F.S.B. planning major terrorist acts in France

Kavkaz Center news and information agency has received an e-mail from Special Department of the Southwestern Front of CRI Armed Forces, saying that according to the Chechen intelligence reports, Russian FSB (Federal Security Service formerly known as KGB) is preparing to carry out large-scale terrorist attacks on French soil, which will involve great human casualties. This information was received from one of the 9 invaders, who were captured by Chehcen troops on March 14 in Itum-Kala District of CRI.

The statement reads:

«One of the captives turned out to be an FSB officer, who told the Chechen side that the FSB agents are preparing a major terrorist act on the French soil. The officer reported that about 200 kilograms of explosives have already been delivered to France through diplomatic channels. At the present moment the explosives are stored on the premises of the Russian Embassy in Paris. During the first decade of March terrorist groups of the FSB, a total of four groups of two men each, completed all preparations necessary to carry out the blasts of cars and trains that will presumably be stuffed with explosives. It is a known fact that the explosive devices will go off from cellular phone signals».

A part of the mission of the FSB agent caught by Chechen authorities was to establish contacts with some individual Commanders of the active Chechen Resistance and incline them towards claiming responsibility for making the terrorist threats against the European states, including France. Russia has offered million US dollars in cash in exchange. It has also been established that one of the ringleaders of Kadyrov's gang formations of collaborators is acting as a liaison in discussing these issues (nickname Musost, his units are operating in the city of Argun). Presumably, if the Commanders of the Chechen Resistance decline the deal, then Musost will make an announcement on behalf of the Chechen side and will claim responsibility for the terrorist attacks in France, which the FSB has prepared to be carried out.

We consider it of vital importance to warn the French government about the upcoming terrorist acts that Russian FSB is planning to perpetrate. We are also announcing that starting March 14, when the Russian POWs were captured, our bases up in the mountains were subjected to unceasing bombings at night. Judging by the targets set by Russian warplanes and by the intensity of the air strikes, the Russian command seems to be trying to remove the captives. One can only be guessing what purpose it is being done for».

2004-03-17 08:14:06
Link: Kavkaz Center

Letters to France sent by Russian F.S.B.

Grani.ru news agency reported that journalist of the New Gazette ('Novaya Gazeta') Anna Politkovskaya did not rule out the fact that Russian secret services may be behind making written threats against France and French interests abroad. Ms. Politkovskaya says that the business of the secret services is the fight against 'international terrorism', but «they are actually the ones not responsible for anything». This is the opinion that the journalist expressed on the air of Echo of Moscow radio ('Ekho Moskvy').

«As soon as the government of Ansar left its posts for not being able to save their fellow people, everybody else is safely putting on some weight on the terrorist acts, including the secret services», - Ms. Politkovskaya said. – «Therefore I assume that they are devising all sorts of plots so that on the one hand they could keep pretending to be looking for somebody, but in reality not protecting us and not looking for anybody. To be really looking for somebody means to prevent and to protect the people. And this is not happening».

«Concerning the information that the FSB wants to blow up France, after the story with Qatar I am no longer surprised about anything», Politkovskaya says. «Sure, it is possible, if you take the story with Yandarbiyev into an account», the journalist added. Al the same time she did not rule out that the threat maybe coming from a mentally deranged person.

After the news about such a letter «there was nothing but the feeling that someone just signed that name under the letter, it could be a mentally sick person», she said. «It seems to me that we have entered the stage of overall madness due to uncertainty and variety of terrorist acts (too many people are capable of committing them). We are not counting mentally ill persons, who become more and more vulnerable from these events», – Politkovskaya mentioned.

2004-03-17 15:08:22
Link: Kavkaz Center

Chechen Envoy warns: Russian F.S.B. may blow up metro in Paris

Vice-Premier of the CRI Government Akhmed Zakayev told the Echo of Moscow radio live on the air: «It is a fact that the Russian secret services have already spread their terrorist methods of violence against political opponents, which was confirmed in Qatar. I don't rule out that in order to enlist closer support from France, Russian secret services might also go for a provocation like blasts in the metro or somewhere else in Paris».

At the same time, Mr. Zakayev mentioned that he does not have the complete reports available: «I will soon have more accurate information on it and will be able to say something in this regard». «I can't be groundlessly accusing the FSB of the preparation of blasts», he said.Mr. Zakayev said that the message that Chechens are allegedly threatening the French authorities is nothing but anti-Chechen propaganda. «In both Chechnya and Russia, the Chechens got used to be demonized all over Russia long time ago», he said. - «Unfortunately, the same thing is now spreading across Europe».

«How can you comment on the alleged 'letter of Barayev', since he is no longer alive, or on some alleged letter from his group, which is allegedly planning a terrorist act in France?» Mr. Zakayev mentioned, - «Unfortunately, French Interior Ministry has become a branch of Shabalkin’s office (Russian colonel, spokesman for the war in Chechnya), because virtually the same absurd Shabalkin’s reports are picked up by French law enforcement almost immediately».

2004-03-17 20:40:37
Link: Kavkaz Center

It is common knowledge in Europe, where citizens are exposed to news that is not normally broadcast in North America, that the FSB planted the bombs that blew up Russian apartment buildings in 1999. These tragedies, of course, propelled Putin to the presidency and provided a pretext for reinvading Chechnya.

We may also want to consider the following question: Is the Kremlin, which is a master of political provocation, creating some sort of plausible deniability when "Islamic terrorists" (meaning Spetsnaz, or Russian special forces) detonate a WMD in a US city?

In a future blog we will consider some of the FSB's domestic and foreign black operations. Specifically, with respect to the former, we will provide compelling, albeit circumstantial evidence for the Chekists' orchestration of the apartment bombings, the seige of the Moscow theatre in 2002, the downing of the two Russian airliners in August 2004, and the hostage taking crisis at the Beslan school in September of that year. With respect to the latter, we will provide direct confirmation of the FSB's role in the February 2004 assassination of former Chechen president Yandarbiyev in Qatar. We will also answer the question: Why?

Latin America File: Venezuela's Marxist dictator seizes private oil fields

Venezuela takes over private oil fields
By NATALIE OBIKO PEARSON
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: Saturday, Dec 31, 2005

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela's state oil company said Friday it has successfully signed agreements to bring all 32 privately operated oil fields under government control after reaching a deal with Spanish-Argentine oil company Repsol YPF.

The Venezuelan government had set a deadline of today for all private companies holding contracts to independently pump oil in the country to agree to new joint ventures that will be majority-owned by the state oil company.

The 15,000 barrel-a-day Quiamare-La Ceiba oil field, however, was the only one not to have submitted to the contract changes due to objections by Exxon Mobil Corp., which jointly operates the field with Repsol.

Repsol has acquired Exxon's 25 percent stake in the field and agreed to convert its operating agreement into a joint venture, Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., or PDVSA, said in a statement. The company did not provide a cash value for the deal.

The government had threatened to reclaim oil fields from companies that refused to sign the so-called transitional joint-venture agreements, which will later be converted into permanent agreements with PDVSA.

Of 22 companies that held operating agreements, Chevron Corp., BP PLC, Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Brazil's state oil company Petrobras S.A. were among those that signed earlier.

The state could take as much as a 90 percent stake in the new ventures. The amount the private companies have invested in the fields will determine the amount of control they have, Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez has said.

The changes will significantly reduce the oil companies' share of profits and control over operations. The companies have also expressed concern that the changes could undermine the value of their Venezuelan assets. Analysts say the contract uncertainty has caused output to decline slightly at the 32 privately run fields as companies have been unwilling to continue investments.

The contract changes are part of a wider strategy by President Hugo Chavez's administration to exert more control over the oil industry.

In less than four years, his government has sharply raised taxes and royalties charged to foreign oil companies and demanded $3 billion in unpaid taxes.

Separately, Exxon has heavily invested in Venezuela's Orinoco tar belt , holding a 41.7 percent stake in the 120,000 barrel-a-day Cerro Negro project to upgrade extra heavy crude. It has also been planning to join PDVSA in a $3 billion petrochemicals project.

But Ramirez, who is also president of PDVSA, has said that the dispute caused by its resistance to the operating agreement contract changes could hurt the company's future investments in the country.

Link: Press Democrat

Red Terror File: FSB-Managed Russian Mafiya Subverts Australia

The Russian civilian/military security apparatus (FSB/SVR/GRU), according to various testimonies, retains operational control of the Russia Mafiya for the purpose of subverting the West. The term "ex-KGB" should be taken with a grain of salt. Read Red Cocaine, by Joseph Douglass. Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev (left), is the current director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), which assumed the domestic roles of the Committee for State Security (KGB). Patrushev replaced Putin in that position.

Russian Gangsters Plague Australia — Police Report
Created: 07.01.2006 17:07 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 17:07 MSK, 4 hours 13 minutes ago
MosNews

Russian gangsters, including ex-KGB agents, have infiltrated Australia, establishing extortion, gun-running and prostitution rackets, Australian Federal Police say. They are involved in fraud, drugs and blackmail, according to an AFP and Australian Crime Commission report obtained by The Sunday Telegraph.

Renowned for their audacity and efficiency, Russian criminals have established a foothold in Australia, the report reveals.

Some of those involved were once members of the KGB, where they learned skills such as debugging, computer hacking and strategic recruitment.

Their activities in Australia are centered on Sydney, especially Bondi, and the Gold Coast.

Extortion within Australia is mainly limited to members of the emigre Russian community.

However, unlike mafia organizations of the past, Russian gangs are not reliant on family bonds, but are based on loose criminal networks.

Australian authorities are working with the FBI, Interpol and New Zealand police to root out the problem.

Customs Minister Chris Ellison said organized crime would be monitored vigorously in Australia.

“The AFP, in conjunction with partner agencies domestically and internationally, is conducting pro-active initiatives to monitor the activities and garner a greater understanding of their threat to Australian interests,” he said.

Link: Moscow News

Blast from the Past File: BBC report on new documentary: Cuba behind JFK assassination

No news here. In 1963, astute anti-communists determined that the assassination of JFK was a communist, possibly a KGB, operation. It is unlikely that the Cuban secret service would make a momentous move in that direction without instruction from the Soviet security apparatus. Instead, the KGB spin machine with its Western fellow travellers presented the assassination as a plot contrived by the CIA or American Mafia, a tack they still take today.

JFK assassination 'was Cuba plot'
Wednesday, 4 January 2006, 23:08 GMT

A new documentary exploring the death of John F Kennedy claims his assassin was directed and paid by Cuba.

Rendezvous with Death, based on new evidence from Cuban, Russian and US sources, took three years to research.

One source, ex-Cuban agent Oscar Marino, said Havana had exploited Lee Harvey Oswald, who was arrested but shot dead before he could be tried.

Conspiracy theories on the killing have variously accused Cuba, Russia and the US of acting alone or jointly.
According to Oscar Marino, the Cubans wanted Kennedy dead because he opposed the revolution and allegedly sought to have its leader Fidel Castro killed.

Mr Marino told film director Wilfried Huismann that he knew for certain the assassination was an operation run by the Cuban secret service G2, but he declined to say whether it had been ordered by Mr Castro.

I realised that I was used, I felt ashamed - we missed a moment in history. --Laurence Keenan, Former FBI agent

Cuban intelligence made contact with Oswald after being alerted by the Russian KGB in 1962 when he returned to the US after living in the Soviet Union for three years, Cuban and Russian sources say.

"He [Oswald] was so full of hate, he had the idea. We used him," Mr Marino said.

A possible Cuban connection was investigated by the US immediately after Kennedy's death.

But an FBI officer sent to follow the Oswald's trail during a visit to Mexico was recalled after only three days and the investigation called off.

Laurence Keenan, now 81, said it was "perhaps the worst investigation the FBI was ever involved in".

"I realised that I was used. I felt ashamed. We missed a moment in history," Mr Keenan said.

Veteran US official Alexander Haig told the filmmaker that Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B Johnson, believed Cuba was to blame and feared a pronounced swing to the right if the truth were known that would keep the Democrats out of power for a long time.

Mr Haig - a US military adviser at the time and later a secretary of state - told the filmmakers Johnson said: "We must simply not allow the American people to believe Fidel Castro could have killed our president."

"He [Johnson] was convinced Castro killed Kennedy and he took it to his grave."

Communist sharpshooter

John F Kennedy, the 35th US president, was assassinated as his motorcade drove through Dallas in November 1963.

Lee Harvey Oswald, an ex-marine sharpshooter who worked in a book warehouse overlooking the assassination, was arrested but killed shortly afterwards.

He had a Russian wife, called himself a Communist and agitated on behalf of Castro's Cuba.

Link: BBC

USSR2 File: UCP-CPSU leader demands restoration of the Soviet Union

Dr. Evil? Putin's successor? We'll see.

14:41 2002-08-17
There is no other way. We must restore the Soviet Union!

A former Soviet Union official expressed his opinion about the coup of August 1991

PRAVDA.Ru correspondent Ilya Tarasov interviewed Oleg Shenin, a former member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Currently, Oleg Shenin is one of the leaders of the Council of the Union of Communist parties. This interview is timed to cooincide with the anniversary of the coup d'etat that took place in the Soviet Union on August 19-21 of 1991.

What was your role in the events of August of 1991? Is it true that the members of the State Committee for Emergencies designated you to fulfill Mikhail Gorbachev’s position?

I thought so before, and I think so now: the institution of the State Committee for Emergencies was the only chance to save the achievements of socialism. It was the only way to fulfil the holy will of the people that voted for the preservation of the Soviet Union on March 17 1991. I was actually not a member of the State Committee for Emergencies. However, of course, I was aware of everything that was going on. I will not estimate my own role. Like I said, the institution of the committee was an absolutely correct thing to do. In regard to the other part of your question, I do not know the answer. It was all about the salvation of the country back in those days, not about our official positions.

People are still thinking about the following question: was the collapse of the Soviet Union appropriate or not? What was Mr.Gorbachev’s role in this respect?

My position is clear. It has never been changed. That’s why I will not give a long answer to this question. In short, I will cite George Bush and his aide Crawford, who wrote in their memoirs: “If Gorbachev’s authority and political determination were like those of Stalin, we would have the Soviet Union now. It would be a renewed and strong Soviet Union.”

Was it possible for the State Committee for Emergencies to win? What were its mistakes?

If you don’t believe in your own victory, then what’s the point of doing anything at all? We all had the same way of thinking, but we lacked the time to organize everything well. We should have addressed the people and told them that Mikhail Gorbachev was the prime enemy and the destroyer of the Communist Part and the Soviet Union. I am sure that it would have been understandable for the majority of the people, because, as we say it now, the president’s rating was very low. There were a lot of people who saw the criminal steps that he was making. The question of the deployment of military troops in Moscow was not an important issue. We should have been guided by the Constitution of the USSR.

It would be enough for the Office of the Prosecutor General of the USSR to open that red book and imprison everyone who infringed upon its spirit. To be more precise, there is article 64 of the Criminal Code of Russia: High Treason. The sense of this crime was particularly about the deliberate activity against the integrity of the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin would be the first man to go to jail. He unleashed a war for the separation of Russia, and rushed the law on the supremacy of republican laws over the ones of the union. All other national separatists would be sent to prison along with Yeltsin.

History does not stand the word “would,” but I think that this would have chilled out other hotheads as well. Therefore, if the Office of the Prosecutor General of the USSR had fulfilled its state duty, then there wouldn’t have been a need in the State Committee for Emergencies.

What about the events to defend the White House in Moscow? Was it an artificially organized national protest, or was it the real voice of the people indeed?

You have already answered this question yourself. The military men who took part in those events do not conceal that they were receiving instructions from the White House. This was an organized provocation, which did not have anything in common with people’s will.

What do you think about the path that Russia is currently on? What do you think about the actions of the current leadership? Are there any prerequisites for more catastrophes?

The course of the current regime does not have any development. It will eventually lead to a dead end. The government is trying to retrieve capitalism in a fast way. They realize that capitalism is totally incompatible with the interests of the majority of Russian people. The country does not have any official state ideology. There is no national idea, just because of the fact that it is impossible to create one. Capitalism is a society where money rules everything, where you can sell and buy anything, even morality.

Young people’s heads are being stuffed up with only one idea: money is your idle. Private oligarchics' capital is ruling Russia now. This is closely connected with the state bureaucracy and criminal groups. Both the president and the government are dancing to their tunes, whatever they might say or do for the people.

Putin’s regime started direct cooperation with the “world government” after the September 11 attacks. Putin’s regime and the aggressive NATO are being drawing together. There has been much damage done to Russia’s defensive capacity. Russia is not receiving anything in return, except for shallow promises. However, the government is still running this policy of treason. And if there is a catastrophe, then the government will have the support of foreign weapons.

The crash of capitalism is inevitable because of the objective laws of the public development. Even George Soros realizes that. He once wrote that the capitalist system does not show any tendency for balance. The owners of the capital will keep on saving it, until the situation goes out of control. Soros predicted the inevitable collapse of the world capitalism system. History does not know any alternative for capitalism except for socialism. We do not have any other way out, but to struggle for the restoration of Soviet power, socialism, and the USSR under the guidance of the single Communist Party.

Oleg Shenin was interviewed by Ilya Tarasov
Translated by Dmitry Sudakov

Link: Pravda

USSR2 File: Communist Party of the Soviet Union Openly Reestablished

The following news item was published by the Toronto-based communist association, the International Council of Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People. According to that group's website, the Northstar Compass, the council is "dedicated to the Re-Establishment of the Soviet Union as a Socialist State." As such, it is opposed to "Putin's capitalist regime and its imperialist backers." This is a half-truth. The council is most certainly dedicated to its stated task, but be assured Putin is just as Red as his feigned opponents in Russia and elsewhere. The council's role is nothing other than communist dialectics at work. Fifteen years of oligarchical capitalism under unreformed communists Yeltsin and Putin have demonstrated to the whole world that free markets and freedom are a curse, and not a blessing. The answer to this chaos? Why, communism, of course. Nay, call it neo-communism, if you will, but collectivism nevertheless.

FROM NEWSPAPER
Word of a Communist

CPSU Is Reborn! Long Live the CPSU!
From the Statement of the XXXIII Congress of UCP-CPSU

Last February 29, 2004 there took place a Congress in Moscow that give birth to the reborn Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The main report at the Congress was given by Oleg Shenin. There were 149 delegates attending this Union of Communist Parties-CPSU, that represented the 14 communist and workers parties that belonged to the UCP-CPSU. Each party had the opportunity to send 15 delegates to this Congress, irrespective of the party. Some parties were unable to spend this kind of money from all former republics of the USSR.

Of the 14 parties that were in the UCP-CPSU, 12 communist parties unanimously voted to give rebirth to one CPSU, but two parties decided not to join; they were RCWP and UCP. Discussions took place as to what transpired in 1993 and the reasons were analyzed. Since the UCP-CPSU existed for 11 years, it was time to get all the parties into one mighty CPSU.

When the delegates voted unanimously to give rebirth to one CPSU, the delegates stood up and sang the International with such fervor that the roof shook.

Commissions were elected to work on the new Constitution, new rules and other elements needed to reorganize in all former republics of the USSR the one mighty Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Oleg S. Shenin was elected as its chairman.

Northstar Compass congratulates this long-overdue attempt to unify all the anti-capitalist parties into one mighty CPSU. NSC receives newspapers, statements and letters from all the parties and, it seems that comrade Oleg Shenin still has a few bridges to cross before ALL the anti-regime parties come into one mighty CPSU. The bridge is built, now it is time to cross to the other side – the results await! Good luck comrades!

Michael Lucas, Editor

We Shall Inform You as This Exciting News Develops!

Link: Northstar Compass

Final Phase Backgrounder: The European Union, Gorbachev's "New European Soviet"

While visiting London on March 23, 2000, Mikhail Gorbachev referred to the European Union as the "new European Soviet," in effect, without openly saying so, the Trojan horse by which the USSR would absorb Western Europe without firing a shot. Thus far, the scheme has worked. Witness the entrance of Eastern European countries into both the EU and NATO folds, and the docile behavior of France and Germany toward Putin's Chekist regime.

The following excerpt of a debate from the British House of Commons Hansard, June 8, 1995 supports Global Green Gorby's shrewd observation. He was in a position to know. And so was KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn.

Mr. Gill: I shall quote from the treaty which was signed between the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation in November 1992. It was a treaty of peace and friendship. Article 1 reads: "There shall be peace and friendship between the Russian Federation and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland."

The second sentence of article 3, which comprises seven lines, states that the parties "affirm that relations between them will be governed in particular by their commitments under the documents of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, including the Helsinki Final Act, the Charter of Paris for a new Europe and the Helsinki Document of 1992."

If we take all these proposals in isolation, they appear to be innocent. But they cannot be taken in isolation. We must have regard to what else has been signed and the cross-referencing that ensues, which means that our freedom to manoeuvre as a country is severely circumscribed. That is part of the grand design of the Russian strategists.

I think that the hon. Member for Gateshead, East (Ms Quin) will agree that, when we are examining treaties, it is important to read their texts. It is necessary to read and understand the precise language that is used. That point will not be wasted on right hon. and hon. Members who are only now awakening to the significance and consequences of the Maastricht treaty, which sadly not all of us have read--I except myself.

I have read the documents that are before us and I question why we need a collective political dialogue between the European Union and Russia, especially in the light of the Russian strategy to establish hegemony over the Union. Britain's interests would be better served, in my opinion, by independent, bilateral, arm's length dialogue, and nothing more.

I note the use of the adjective "regular" in the draft agreements. When the EU uses "regular", it signifies an intention to institutionalise dialogue. In other words, the EU will become engaged in continuing negotiations with Russia. That is precisely what the Russian strategists intend.

I do not agree that we should allow the EU to have continuing dialogue and negotiations with the Russians, in whom it is unwise to place so much trust. The House should not facilitate a further erosion of our sovereignty, freedom of action and independence. The political independence of the so-called successor states in Russia is strictly provisional. That has been made clear, inter alia, by Mr. Primakov, the head of the Russian foreign intelligence service. On 13 December 1994, The Independent reminded its readers that three months earlier Mr. Primakov had said in Moscow that, apart from the three Baltic republics, the other 12 former republics which belonged to the Soviet Union would largely reunite. In other words, the picture that we see now is not the one that may be established in the fulness of time.

By entering into agreements with the successor states, the EU will find that when the Soviet Union re-establishes itself, which I suggest it might well do, the agreements will continue after the model of the United Nations membership of Ukraine and Belorussia when the Soviet Union existed overtly.

The draft agreements suggest that the economic co-operation dimension is open ended. I do not agree that it is wise to allow the EU carte blanche to negotiate open-ended economic co-operation arrangements on our behalf. Does such negotiation mean--this is a serious and important question--that Russian experts, including security agents, will be allowed free rein within our military and industrial complex, in our industries and utilities, for example? Of course it does. The House should stop to think what such collective agreements would entail.

In "The Perestroika Deception", Anatoly Golitsyn shows that the west has fallen for an elaborate strategic deception and is being manipulated by a group of Leninist strategists. The object of Russian strategy is the destruction of the nation states and their replacement by collective blocs and networks, with the ultimate Leninist goal of world government. I am glad to see that the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) is interested in what I am saying. I think that he is nodding in agreement. Every time that the House--

Mr. Tony Banks: Why are all the statues of Lenin being pulled down if there is a Leninist strategy?

Mr. Gill: The hon. Gentleman is gullible to think that the past is indeed the past. The absurdity of that approach never ceases to amaze me. What would the hon. Gentleman say if I crossed the Floor and declared that I was a socialist? Would he believe me? He would be wrong to believe me, because I am a capitalist, not a socialist. It stretches credulity to its absolute bounds to think that suddenly, overnight, all those who were Communists will suddenly adopt a new philosophy and belief, with the result that everything will be different. I use this opportunity to warn the House and the country that that is not the truth.

Every time the House approves one of these collective agreements, not least treaties agreed by the collective of the European Union, it contributes to the furtherance of the Russian strategy. It is high time that Parliament woke up to what is going on and ended the automatic acceptance of a politically correct view of the world. As a start, the House could do much worse than to make it clear to the Foreign Office that it disapproves of its tactics, of its collectivist approach to Britain's interests and of its evident practice of placing the interests of Moscow before those of this country and this country's people.

Link: British House of Commons Hansard