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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally, in another sign of reviving relations between Moscow and Managua, neglected during the 1990s and early 2000s, the Kremlin has donated 23 metric tons of medical supplies to Nicaragua. “Russia has been and will be cooperating with Nicaragua. Our assistance is not determined by any particular conditions and is based on principles of non-interference in the country’s domestic affairs,” the Russian ambassador in Managua, Igor Kondrashev, intoned. The “medicine” will be transported in two cargo containers. Of course, we can trust the Soviets to not slip a few missiles or nukes into those containers. Sure, comrade, whatever you say! Earlier this year Moscow donated 100 buses to Managua’s transit system. In July the two Communist Bloc allies established a visa-free regime and set up an oil consortium between Nicaragua’s Petronic and several Russian companies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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