Russia’s Threat in the Americas

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/russias-threat-in-the-americas/

March 28, 2014 by Joseph Klein

President Obama dismissed Russia as no more than a “regional power” in remarks he made to the press in The Hague on March 25th, where he was attending a summit meeting on nuclear security. “Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors not out of strength, but out of weakness,” he said.

True, the Russian Federation is a shadow of the Soviet empire in its heyday. And Russia is not driven by a global Communist ideology that it seeks to spread to every part of the world in opposition to the capitalist democratic model, as the Soviet Union tried to do. But that does not make Russia a weak neighborhood bully posing little threat beyond its “immediate neighbors,” as President Obama seems to think. Mitt Romney was right when he said during the 2012 presidential campaign that Russia is “our number one geopolitical foe.”

First, consider Russia’s nuclear arsenal. According to a Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists study published in May 2013, it was estimated that, as of March 2013, Russia had “a military stockpile of approximately 4,500 nuclear warheads, of which roughly 1,800 strategic warheads are deployed on missiles and at bomber bases.” Russia is also “modernizing its nuclear forces, replacing Soviet-era ballistic missiles with fewer improved missiles. In a decade, almost all Soviet-era weapons will be gone, leaving a smaller but still effective force that will be more mobile than what it replaced.”

While these are only estimates, since Russia is not transparent about how many nuclear weapons it has, the size of Russia’s arsenal and its ambitious modernization program do not connote the image of weakness that Obama wants to paint of Russia as a mere “regional” power. By way of comparison, the United States “has an estimated 4,650 nuclear warheads available for delivery by more than 800 ballistic missiles and aircraft,” according to a Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists study published in January 2014.

These numbers and Russia’s modernization strategy should be placed in the context of a very disturbing statement made last December by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Dmitry Rogozin: “We have never diminished the importance of nuclear weapons—the weapon of requital—as the great balancer of chances.” Rogozin has said that Russia was prepared to use nuclear weapons if attacked first even by only conventional weapons.

Russia is also on the march far from its immediate neighborhood and much closer to the United States. According to Gen. James Kelly, commander of U.S. Southern Command, who discussed his concerns regarding the increased presence of Russia in Latin America at a Senate hearing earlier this month, there has been a “noticeable uptick in Russian power projection and security force personnel. It has been over three decades since we last saw this type of high-profile Russian military presence.”

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced last month plans to build military bases in such countries as Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, as well as outside of Latin America including Vietnam, the Seychelles, and Singapore. “The talks are under way, and we are close to signing the relevant documents,” Shoigu said. Russia is also on the lookout for refueling sites for Russian strategic bombers on patrol.

Russia is already a major arms supplier to Venezuela, whose navy has conducted joint maneuvers with Russian ships. At least four Russian Navy ships visited Venezuela last August, the Venezuelan daily El Universal reported.

“Two Russian Tupolev Tu-160 Blackjack strategic bombers flew last October from an airbase in southwestern Russia and landed in Venezuela in routine exercise,” Russia’s Defense Ministry announced, according to the Voice of Russia. “The nuclear-capable bombers, which took off from the Engels airbase in the Volga region, ‘flew over the Caribbean, the eastern Pacific and along the southwestern coast of the North American continent, and landed at Maiquetia airfield in Venezuela,’ the ministry said in a statement.”

Nicolas Maduro, the President of Venezuela, is so enamored of Putin that he expressed support last year for the Russian president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. During a visit to Moscow by Maduro last summer, Maduro and Putin reaffirmed, in Putin’s words, “their wish for continuing their course towards strategic cooperation in all sectors.”

Putin was the first Russian president to visit Cuba since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Pravda quoted Putin as declaring in 2012 that Russia gained the consent of the Cuban leadership to place “the latest mobile strategic nuclear missiles ‘Oak’ on the island,” supposedly as a brush back against U.S. actions to create a buffer zone near Russia. Last month, according to a report by Fox News Latino, “the intelligence-gathering ship Viktor Leonov docked in Havana’s harbor without warning.” It was reportedly armed with 30mm guns and anti-aircraft missiles.

Left-wing Argentinian President Cristina Fernández is intent on forging closer relations with Russia, inviting Russia to invest in fuel projects. In return for Russia’s support of Argentina’s quest to annex the Falkland Islands, Fernández supported Putin’s grab of Crimea. Crimea “has always belonged to Russia,” she said, just as the Falkland Islands have “always belonged to Argentina.” She added that the Crimean referendum was “one of the famous referendums of self-determination.”

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa praised Russia as a “great nation” during a visit to Moscow last October after Putin pledged to invest up to $1.5 billion into new domestic energy projects in Ecuador. Correa said Ecuador was also interested in buying Russian military equipment.

Brazil is planning to purchase short-to-medium-range surface-to-air Pantsir S1 missile batteries and Igla-S shoulder-held missiles from Russia. It has already bought 12 Mi-35 attack helicopters. This is all part of what Brazil views as a growing strategic relationship with Russia, as Brazil leads efforts to counter U.S. electronic surveillance that included alleged spying on Brazilian citizens. “More than buying military equipment, what we are seeking with Russia is a strategic partnership based on the joint development of technology,” said Brazilian Defense Minister Celso Amorim after meeting with his Russian counterpart.

After Daniel Ortega, the leader of the Sandinista revolution, returned to power in Nicaragua in 2007, Russia and Nicaragua have moved in the direction of a strategic economic and military relationship. In October 2013, for example, Nicaragua and Russia signed a memorandum of international security cooperation. Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev noted during his visit to Nicaragua that “Nicaragua is an important partner and friend of Russia in Latin America,” pointing to the coincidence of views of the two countries’ authorities “on many issues.” For his part, Ortega said: “We are very grateful and very much appreciate the Russian people’s support of our country.”  Ortega welcomed the arrival of two Russian strategic bombers Tupolev Tu-160.  Ortega added that Putin had sent him a letter, in which the Russian leader reaffirmed his “readiness to continue to work together with our country.”

According to a March 2014 report by the Strategic Culture Foundation, a progressive, pro-Russian think tank, Nicaragua’s

parliament has ratified a cabinet resolution allowing Russian military divisions, ships and aircraft to visit the republic during the first half of 2014 for experience sharing and training of military personnel of the Central American republic. Furthermore, the parliament has approved the participation of Russian military personnel in joint patrols of the republic’s territorial waters in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean from January 1 through June 30, 2015.

Russia is also forging a closer relationship with El Salvador, which has been led by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (“FMLN”) that arose out of a left-wing guerrilla movement from the country’s 1979-1992 civil war. Leftist ex-guerrilla Sanchez Ceren has just won the presidential election. He can be expected to build on the “Federal Law On Ratification of the Agreement on the Foundations of Relations” between the Russian Federation and the Republic of El Salvador, signed by Vladimir Putin in November 2012. It was the first interstate agreement between the two countries since they established diplomatic relations in 1992.

In fact, given Ceren’s background – one of five top guerrilla commanders during the civil war that left 76,000 dead and over 12,000 missing – we can expect a more avowedly anti-U.S. government that will welcome Russia’s outstretched arms. After all, the FMLN leadership during the civil war described its own ideology as “Marxism-Leninism.”

On a regional level, the Strategic Culture Foundation has reported that the Central American Common Market, which includes Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, “advocates the creation of a free trade zone with the Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.”

Foreign ministers from members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and Russia declared their intention, after meeting in Moscow last May, that they were working to establish a means of continuous dialogue “to discuss and synchronize positions on international issues.” CELAC includes thirty-three countries in the Americas, but the United States and Canada are excluded.

“Imperial Russia never left, to be blunt,” Stephen Blank, senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council said as quoted in Deutsche Welle. “What they’re looking for in Latin America is great-power influence, they have never forsaken that quest. There’s no doubt that Moscow is dead serious about seeking naval bases and port access in Latin America.”

In the Middle East, also out of range of Russia’s “immediate neighbors,” Russia continues to prop up the Assad regime in Syria with increased shipment of arms. Reuters reported in January 2014 that “[I]n recent weeks Russia has stepped up supplies of military gear to Syria, including armored vehicles, drones and guided bombs.” Putin also managed to out-maneuver Obama regarding the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons program, buying more time for Assad and enhancing his legitimacy.

Moreover, Russia is running interference for Assad at the United Nations Security Council, where Russia, along with China, vetoed a series of resolutions aimed at condemning and sanctioning the Assad regime. Its veto power in the Security Council puts Russia in parity with the other four permanent members of the Security Council – the U.S., the United Kingdom, France and China. As Russia demonstrated with regard to Syria as well as the veto it recently exercised to block a Security Council resolution on Crimea, Russia is exploiting this lever of “soft power” to exert its influence on the global stage.

Russia is also continuing to cultivate stronger ties with Iran, while also participating in the negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program that include the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany. Russia is one of Iran’s leading trading partners, selling Iran nuclear technology and arms. When Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif visited Moscow last January he extended an invitation to Vladimir Putin to visit Tehran. Putin replied: “I hope to visit you in Tehran very soon. We have a large bilateral agenda. This relates firstly to our trade and economic ties, of course.” Putin also went out of his way to praise the Iranian regime, declaring that the nuclear negotiations were advancing because of “the efforts of the Iranian authorities and the stance of the Iranian authorities.” More recently, because of the mounting tensions over the Ukraine crisis, Russia has threatened to stop cooperating with respect to the nuclear negotiations with Iran. That may not mean very much, considering Russia’s existing back door dealings with Iran that reduce Iran’s economic incentives to negotiate in good faith. However, just by making this threat and having it paid attention to in Washington and other world capitals, Russia has made a point regarding its influence beyond its “immediate neighbors.”

Finally, there is the whole battleground of cyber warfare which has no geographical boundaries. An article in the winter 2014 publication of inFocus Quarterly, titled “Russian Cyber Capabilities, Policy and Practice” by David J. Smith, Senior Fellow and Cyber Center Director at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Washington and Director of the Georgian Security Analysis Center in Tbilisi, paints a grim picture.

“Russia—its government and a motley crew of sometimes government-sponsored but always government-connected cyber-criminals and youth group members—has integrated cyber operations into its military doctrine,” according to Mr. Smith. Russia “has used cyber tools against enemies foreign and domestic, and is conducting strategic espionage against the United States.”

After describing the multifaceted Russian approach to information warfare and the government’s close links with the “thriving cyber-criminal industry” and extensive well-trained youth groups all too happy to sell their services to the government, Mr. Smith concluded:  “In sum, Russia—in its capabilities and its intent—presents a major cyber challenge to the United States.”

Russia is not a superpower on the order of the former Soviet Union. But Putin’s animosity towards the United States, coupled with Russia’s expanding role internationally through alliances with countries in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, Russia’s exploitation of its permanent member status on the UN Security Council and its nuclear arms and cyber warfare capabilities, all add up to a very dangerous geopolitical foe.  President Obama needs to wake up to the fact that Vladimir Putin will not be content to play only in his own neighborhood, and that he has a variety of tools at hand to cause serious mischief far from Russia’s own borders.

Western Hemisphere left wide open by Obama's weakening policies

Source : http://www.wnd.com/2014/03/putin-to-put-russian-bases-in-latin-america/

WND EXCLUSIVE

PUTIN TO PUT RUSSIAN BASES IN LATIN AMERICA

Western Hemisphere left wide open by Obama's weakening policies

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/03/putin-to-put-russian-bases-in-latin-america/#mgZsPmfSZocGyjA8.99

WASHINGTON – As the world remains riveted on Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, Russian President Vladimir Putin is shifting gears to Latin America.

As first outlined by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu last February, Putin now plans to keep the United States off-balance as Moscow sets up actual military bases and massive arms sales in the Latin American region.

Moscow’s plan follows a recent announcement by Iran to have its warships patrol in waters off the U.S. coast.

Russia and Iran have stated their increased presence is also in response to U.S. military deployments near their countries, including the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization up to Russia’s borders.

The establishment of permanent Russian bases and a major Russian presence in the Western Hemisphere will challenge U.S. policies and threatens to diminish Washington’s influence in the region. At the same time, it will give Moscow a basis to stage offensive weapons in the Western Hemisphere, placing another formidable challenge to U.S. homeland defenses from potential missile threats.

WND previously has pointed out that the U.S. lacks adequate missile defenses in the Gulf of Mexico from any missile attack from the south. In addition, WND has reported Russia has begun deploying missile-bearing nuclear submarines in the Southern Hemisphere, further accentuating that threat.

Experts such as former Strategic Defense Initiative Director Ambassador Henry Cooper have argued because of this threat, the U.S. needs to deploy existing Aegis missile defense systems in the southern portion of the U.S.

Aegis missiles launched either from U.S. Navy ships or from shore are capable of intercepting orbiting nuclear weapons, but the resulting high-altitude explosion could also cause an electromagnetic pulse event.

An EMP attack, in turn, could knock out the vulnerable U.S. electrical grid system and other critical infrastructures that U.S. society depends. A catastrophic attack lasting months and years, furthermore, has to potential to kill up to 90 percent of the U.S. population through starvation and lack of medical assistance.

Discover just how significant the EMP threat is in F. Michael Maloof’s “A Nation Forsaken” – autographed! – from the WND SuperStore.

While published reports say Putin is looking to establish military bases in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, all of whom are close allies of Moscow, WND’s informed sources say the Russian president’s focus will be on Nicaragua, which is relatively politically and economically stable.

Putin is reportedly concerned with Venezuela’s instability, since it is going through serious economic problems, with demonstrations eroding the support of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

At the same time, Putin’s strategy eyes Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua – not only for navy port visits, but also for refueling Russian bombers at their air bases.

This potentially significant increase in Russian military presence in Latin America would give Moscow the ability to undertake combat missions not only in Latin America but also around North America itself.

Latin American publications already are reporting that the Obama administration is doing little or nothing to counter Russian, Iranian or even Chinese expansion in the region.

The Obama administration had announced the end of the Monroe Doctrine, a 19th century declaration that stated any efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in North or South America would be viewed as acts of aggression, requiring U.S. intervention.

Last November in a speech before the Organization of American States in Washington, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced, “The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over. … The relationship that we seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states.”

In referencing any threat from European powers, Kerry said, “We should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere.”

Kerry’s declaration on behalf of the Obama administration, however, didn’t take into account U.S. adversaries setting up bases in the Western Hemisphere at the invitation of countries in the region.

Russian press reports justify Putin’s decision as power projection and improving its image abroad.

“Russia has started reviving its navy and strategic aviation since the mid-2000s, seeing them as a tool to project the Russian image abroad and to protect its national interests around the globe,” RIA Novosti said. “Now, Moscow needs to place such military assets in strategically important regions of the world to make them work effectively toward the goal of expanding Russia’s global influence.”

“Little doubt remains that Moscow believes that the region of Latin America can play a growing role in world affairs and has expanding mutual interests with Russia to check U.S. power,” asserts Russian expert Stephen Blank of the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation.

In terms of arms sales, Blank says Putin is looking to Brazil to buy fighter aircraft and surface-to-air missile systems.

“If successful, this would mark a step toward creating a group of industrialized countries that employ Russian designs and design bureaus for creating their own military hardware, thereby making the Russian defense sector more secure, pervasive and particularly significant in high tech areas,” Blank said.

F. Michael Maloof, senior staff writer for WND/G2Bulletin, is a former security policy analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He can be contacted at mmaloof@wnd.com.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/03/putin-to-put-russian-bases-in-latin-america/#mgZsPmfSZocGyjA8.99

Communist Guerrilla Leader ‘Wins’ El Salvador Elections

Source : http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/communist-guerrilla-leader-wins-el-salvador-elections/

Communist Guerrilla Leader ‘Wins’ El Salvador Elections

March 21, 2014 by Humberto Fontova

A former Communist guerrilla commander linked to various butcheries during El Salvador’s savage civil war in the 1980s won that nation’s Presidential elections this week by a squeaker.

Nowadays this former FMLF (Faribundo Marti Liberation Front) commander is accused of partnering with murderous Salvadoran drug-smuggling and human-trafficking gangs that operate in 40 U.S. cities, have been declared  “international criminal organizations” by the U.S. Treasury department, and have had members convicted of multiple murders, rapes and tortures within sight of the U.S. capitol. One of these rape-murders was of Washington intern Chandra Levy.

Salvador Sanchez Ceren is the “former” Communist guerrilla declared winner of El Salvador’s presidential elections this week by 6,600 votes. Since 2009, he had served as El Salvador’s Vice President. Ceren’s electoral opponents of the center-right ARENA party alleged blatant Venezuelan-mentored electoral fraud. But the Salvadoran “Supreme Electoral Tribunal” (staffed and controlled by Ceren’s party) overruled ARENA.

Roger Noriega, a former assistant secretary of state for Western hemisphere affairs with many high-level contacts in the region warns that El Salvador’s FMLF is linked, not only to the Communist leadership of the Castro-Venezuela axis, but to the biggest and wealthiest narco-traffickers in the hemisphere, along with their distributors and retailers in the U.S.

Chief among these U.S.-based retailers are the Salvadoran MS-13 and MS-18 gangs. These are not your father’s “gangs,” by the way. Latin gangs have come a long way since the Sharks of Westside Story. And “street gangs” in general have come a long way since the Cripps and Bloods. In 2012, the Obama administration declared MS-13 an “international criminal organization,” quite a distinction for a “street gang” and the first case of such an “honor” for a gang operating in the U.S. Some background:

In the 1980s the Cuba-Soviet backed FMLF waged a terror campaign trying to Cubanize the small and impoverished Central American nation of El Salvador. The government fought back and tens of thousands of Salvadorans perished in a variety of ways on both sides of what became a full-fledged and—as usual for such conflicts– brutal civil war. The U.S. media habitually pegged all resulting deaths on “right-wing death squads”—often spicing up the description with “U.S.-backed” or “U.S.-trained.”

It’s an old story for anyone who fights Communist terror. “If rape’s inevitable” goes the joke, “lay back and enjoy it!” Same apparently goes for Communist revolution. Any resistance will only make things worse and get one demonized by all “respectable” academic and media precincts. There are no historical exceptions to this rule. From Pilsudski and Horthy in Eastern Europe, through Franco in Spain, to Pinochet in Chile— all violently (and successfully) resisted the violent communization of their nations.  And all sport horns and a tail in media/academic depictions.

After being crushed militarily thanks to help from the Reagan administration in the 1980s, the FMLF renounced violence and went respectable as a political party in the 1990s. Now they steal and buy elections. Chicago politics will get you what Bolshevik terror couldn’t, seems like the new motto for Latin American socialists.

This stealing and buying of elections is made easy by the billions of dollars flooding into the area from narco-trafficking. So essentially it’s facilitated by Americans’ appetite for drugs.  Nowadays “revolution” in Latin American is all about narcotrafficking. The Best and the Brightest (and most experienced) in this field is Colombia’s FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia). Colombian officials estimate the FARC’s annual earnings somewhere between $2.4 and $3.5 billion.

The Marxist mumo-jumbo still pops up in “communiqués” and press releases from the FARC from their Venezuelan Chavista allies, and from the FMLF itself. But after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Latin American Communists of every stripe found their new vocations (and funding) in narco-trafficking.

Hollywood tells us that mobsters hate commies. “I kill a communist for fun!” snarls narco-trafficking capo Tony Montana in Oliver Stone’s 1983 screenplay for Scarface. “For a green card, I gonna carve him up real nice!”

In real life it doesn’t work that way. To wit: “Thanks to Fidel Castro,” boasted late FARC commander Tiro-Fijo in a 2002 interview, “we are now a powerful army, not a hit and run band.” A report by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency attributes half of the world’s cocaine supply to Columbia’s FARC, the largest, oldest and most murderous terrorist group in our Hemisphere, whose murder toll dwarfs that of Al Qaeda and the Taliban combined and includes many murdered U.S. citizens. Yes, this same drug-running FARC thanks Fidel Castro for their immense fame and fortune.

“We lived like kings in Cuba,” revealed Medellin drug Cartel bosses Carlos Lehder and Alejandro Bernal during their trials in the ’80s and ’90s. “Fidel made sure nobody bothered us.”

Venezuela’s oil windfall (the nation supposedly sits atop the largest oil reserves on earth) also helps the area’s election-rigging and vote-buying by allied parties and essentially keeps Cuba afloat financially.  Alas, Venezuela’s “21st Century Socialism” is having the predictable effects on oil production. Remember Reagan’s old joke about a sand shortage if socialists controlled the Sahara dessert? Well the same punch line is playing out real-time in socialist Venezuela with oil.  Venezuela’s oil exports to the U.S. dropped from $41.9 billion in 2011 to $30.8 billion in 2013, for instance.

So now many Chavista officials are “wetting their beaks” (in the famous phrase of Don Fanucci in The Godfather) from the narco-trafficking windfall that links Venezuelan officialdom with neighboring Colombia’s FARC and with El Salvador’s FMLF. These latter sit strategically on the main route for FARC/Venezuelan drugs to the U.S. market.

In the ’80s the drug-trafficking route often went from Colombia straight across the Caribbean to Florida, with Cuba as a way station and toll-booth. “The case we have against Fidel and Raul Castro right now is much stronger than the one we had against Manuel Noriega in 1988,” a federal prosecutor in south Florida told the Miami Herald in 1996. Four grand juries at the time had disclosed Cuba’s role in drug smuggling into the U.S. The Clinton administration, hellbent on cozying up to Castro at the time, refused to press ahead with the case against the Castro brothers’ dope trafficking.

Now the main route takes the Colombian-Venezuelan drugs through Central America and Mexico, and eventually across the southwest U.S. border, usually with the help of the FMLF and their Mexican gang allies. Our Southern Command headquartered in Panama does its best to stop them before they reach Mexico but given its status as the red-headed stepchild of U.S. overseas commands it can’t do much.

“Because of asset shortfalls [i.e. Defense budgets cuts],” admitted South-Com commander Marine Gen. John Kelly to the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, “we’re unable to get after 74 percent of suspected maritime drug smuggling. I simply sit and watch it go by.”

Sanchez-Ceren’s “electoral” victory will not make General Kelly’s job any easier.

Foro de Sao Paulo (FSP), Brésil

Olavo de Carvalho explains Lula and the Sao Paulo Forum

Source:  http://www.olavodecarvalho.org/english/other/091022interview_en.html

October 22, 2009

Alek Boyd: Perhaps you remember Olavo that, in November 2005, we were part of a small group of people who were invited to brief former US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Tom Shannon, about the political situation in our respective countries. I do remember, very vividly, your warnings about Lula during that particular meeting. With the passing of time, I must say how pleasantly surprised I am with the turn of perception vis-a-vis Hugo Chavez. Mind you, in November 2005, the DoS still harboured the notion that he was a democrat, purportedly just like Lula. However, recent developments in Honduras show that Lula is as keen on interfering in other countries internal affairs, as his Venezuelan counterpart. Yet one would be hard pressed to conclude, by way of how mass media portrays the Brazilian president, that such is in fact the case. For this reason, taking into account that you are Brazilian, and that you have been following your country's politics for longer than most reporters are aware of Lula's very own existence, I would like to ask you a few things about him, starting with: why do you think the media is given him such benign treatment? Most analysts and media types believe that Lula is a moderate, a democrat. How do you reconcile that with, for instance, the foundation by Lula, at Fidel Castro's personal request, of the Foro de Sao Paulo (FSP)?

There is nothing there to be properly reconciled. The image and the reality, in that case, are in complete contradiction to each other. The legend of Lula, as a democrat and a moderate, only holds up thanks to the suppression of the most important fact of his political biography, the foundation of the São Paulo Forum. This suppression, in some cases, is fruit of genuine ignorance; but in others, it is a premeditated cover-up. Council of Foreign Relations’ expert on Brazilian issues, Kenneth Maxwell, even got to the point of openly denying the mere existence of the Forum, being confirmed in this by another expert on the subject, Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, also at a conference at the CFR. I do not need to emphasize the weight that CFR’s authority carries with opinion-makers in the United States. When such an institution denies the most proven and documented facts of the Latin American history of the last decades, few journalists will have the courage of taking the side of facts against the argument of authority. Thus, the São Paulo Forum, which is the vastest and most powerful political body that has ever existed in Latin America, goes on unknown to the American and, by the way, also worldwide public opinion. This fact being suppressed, the image of Lula as a democrat and a moderate does indeed acquire some verisimilitude. Note that it was not only in the United States that the media has covered up the existence and the activities of the Forum. In Brazil, even though I published the complete minutes of the assemblies of that entity, and frequently quoted them in my column in the prestigious newspaper O Globo, from Rio de Janeiro, the rest of the national media en masse either kept silent, or ostensibly contradicted me, accusing me of being a radical and a paranoid. When at last President Lula himself let the cat out of the bag and confessed to everything, his speech, published on the president’s official website, was not even mentioned in any newspaper or TV news show. Shortly afterwards, however, the name “São Paulo Forum” was incorporated into video advertisements of the ruling party, becoming thus impossible to go on denying the obvious. Then, they moved on to the tactic of harm management, proclaiming, against all evidence, that the São Paulo Forum was only a debate club, with no decisional power at all. The minutes of the assemblies denied it in the most vehement manner, showing that discussions ended up becoming resolutions, unanimously signed by the members present. Debate clubs do not pass resolutions. What’s more, the same presidential speech I have just mentioned also disclosed the decisive role that the Forum played in the sense of putting and keeping Mr. Hugo Chávez in power in Venezuela. Nowadays, in Brazil, nobody ignores that I told the truth about the São Paulo Forum and the rest of the media lied.

On the other hand, it is clear that Lula and his party, being the founders and the strategic centre of the Forum, had to keep a low profile, leaving to more peripheral members, like Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales, the flashiest or most scandalous part of the job. Hence, the false impression that there are “two lefts” in Latin America, one democratic and moderate, and the other radical and authoritarian. There are two lefts, indeed, but they are rather the one that commands, and the other that follows the first’s orders and thereby risks its own reputation. All that the Latin American left has done in the last nineteen years was previously discussed and decided in the Forum’s assemblies, which Lula presided over, either directly until 2002, or through his deputy, Marco Aurélio Garcia, afterwards. The strategic command of the Communist revolution in Latin America is neither in Venezuela, nor in Bolivia, nor even in Cuba. It is in Brazil.

Once the fact of the existence of the São Paulo Forum was suppressed, what has given even more artificial credibility to the legend of the “two lefts” was that the Lula administration, very cunningly, concentrated its subversive efforts upon the field of education, culture, and custom, which only affect the local population, prudently keeping, at the same time, an “orthodox” economic policy that calmed down foreign investors and projected a good image of the country to international banks (a double-faced strategy inspired, by the way, in Lenin himself). Thus, both the subversion of the Brazilian society and the revolutionary undertakings of the São Paulo Forum managed, under a thick layer of praise for President Lula, to pass unnoticed by the international public opinion. Nothing can illustrate better the duplicity of conduct to which I refer than the fact that, in the same week, Lula was celebrated both at the World Economic Forum in Davos, for his conversion to Capitalism, and at the São Paulo Forum, for his faithfulness to Communism. It is quite evident, then, that there is one Lula in the local reality and another Lula for international consumption.

Alek Boyd: Could you expand a bit on the sort of organization the FSP is, and the democratic credentials of some of its members?

The São Paulo Forum was created by Lula and discussed with Fidel Castro by the end of 1989, being founded in the following year under the presidency of Lula, who remained in the leadership of that institution for twelve years, nominally relinquishing it in order to take office as president of Brazil in 2003. The organization’s goal was to rebuild the Communist movement, shaken by the fall of the USSR. “To reconquer in Latin America all that we lost in East Europe” was the goal proclaimed at the institution’s fourth annual assembly. The means to achieve it consisted in promoting the union and integration of all Communist and pro-Communist parties and movements of Latin America, and in developing new strategies, more flexible and better camouflaged, for the conquest of power. Practically, since the middle of the 1990’s, there has been no left-wing party or entity that has not been affiliated with the São Paulo Forum, signing and following its resolutions and participating in the intense activity of the “work groups” that hold meetings almost every month in many capital cities of Latin America. The Forum has its own review, America Libre (Free America), a publishing house, as well as an extensive network of websites prudently coordinated from Spain. It also exercises unofficial control over an infinity of printed and electronic publications. The speed and efficacy with which its decisions are transmitted to the whole continent can be measured by its ongoing success in covering up its own existence, over at least sixteen years. Brazil’s journalistic class is massively leftist, and even the professionals who are not involved in any form of militancy would feel reluctant to oppose the instructions that the majority receives.

The Forum’s body of members is composed of both lawful parties, as the Brazilian Workers’ Party itself, and criminal organizations of kidnappers and drug traffickers, as the Chilean MIR (Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria) and the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia). The first is responsible for an infinity of kidnappings, including those of two famous Brazilian businessmen; the latter is practically the exclusive controller of the cocaine market in Latin America nowadays. All of these organizations take part in the Forum on equal conditions, which makes it possible that, when agents of a criminal organization are arrested in a country, lawful entities can immediately mobilize themselves to succour them, promoting demonstrations and launching petition campaigns calling for their liberation. Sometimes the protection that lawful organizations give to their criminal partners goes even further, as it happened, for example, when the governor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Olívio Dutra, an important member of the Workers’ Party, hosted a FARC commander as a guest of state; or when the Lula administration granted political asylum to the agent of connection between the FARC and the Workers’ Party, Olivério Medina, and a public office to his wife. Sometime before, Medina had confessed to having brought an illegal contribution of $5 million for Lula’s presidential campaign.

The rosy picture of Brazil that has been painted abroad is in stark contrast with the fact that from 40,000 to 50,000 Brazilians are murdered each year, according to the UN’s own findings. Most of those crimes are connected with drug trafficking. Federal Court Judge Odilon de Oliveira has found out conclusive proofs that the FARC provides weaponry, technical support, and money for the biggest local criminal organizations, as, for instance, the PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital), which rules over entire cities and keeps their population subjected to a terror regime. Just as I foretold after the first election of Lula to the presidency in 2002, the federal administration, since then, has done nothing to stop this murderous violence, for any initiative on the government’s part in that sense would go against the FARC’s interest and would turn, in a split second, the whole São Paulo Forum against the Brazilian government. In face of the slaughter of Brazilians, which is more or less equivalent to the death toll of one Iraq war per year, Lula has kept strictly faithful to the commitment of support and solidarity he made to the FARC as president of the São Paulo Forum in 2001.

Alek Boyd: Why do you think worldwide media didn't pick up on the fact that Lula's presidential campaign was illegally funded, to the tune of $3 million, by Fidel Castro, as exposed by Veja?

In face of facts like these, it is always recommendable to take into account the concentration of the ownership of the means of world communication, which has happened over the last decades, as it has been described by reporter Daniel Estulin in his book about the Bilderberg group. Even the more distracted readers have not failed to notice how the opinion of the dominant world media has become uniform in the last decades, being nowadays difficult to perceive any difference between, say, Le Figaro and L’Humanité concerning essential issues, as, for example, “global warming,” or the advancement of new leaderships aligned with the project for a world government, as, for example, Lula or Obama. Never as today has it been so easy and so fast to create an impression of spontaneous unanimity. And since the CFR proclaims that the São Paulo Forum does not exist, nothing could be more logical than to expect that the São Paulo Forum disappears from the news.

Alek Boyd: Other analysts have made the preposterous argument that foreign intervention, imperialism by any other word, has never characterized Itamaraty's policy. In light of "union leader" Lula's direct intervention in helping Chavez overcome the strike in 2002-03 by Venezuelan oil workers, by sending tankers with gasoline, how would you explain such blatant ignorance?

Itamaraty’s traditions, however praised they were in the past, no longer mean anything at all. Today, the Brazilian diplomatic body is nothing but the tuxedoed militancy of the Workers’ Party. At the same time, the intellectual level of our diplomats, which had been a reason of pride since the times of the great baron of Rio Branco, has formidably declined, to the point that nowadays the intellectual leadership of the class is held by geniuses of ineptitude, such as Samuel Pinheiro Guimarães. No wonder then that everywhere now our ambassadors are simple agents of the São Paulo Forum. It cannot be said that this properly expresses Brazilian imperialism, for our Ministry of Foreign Relations does not hesitate to sacrifice the most obvious national interests before the altar of a more sublime value, which is the solidary union of the Latin American left. There is no Brazilian imperialism, but rather São Paulo Forum’s imperialism.

Alek Boyd: Do you think Marco Aurelio Garcia is behind Zelaya's return to Honduras, as has been alleged? If yes, it is evident that is a matter of a FSP member coming to the rescue of a fallen comrade, but what's in it for Brazil?

The Brazilian government denies having something to do with that, but Zelaya himself confessed that his return to Honduras had been previously arranged with Lula and his right-hand man, Marco Aurélio Garcia. The most evident thing in the world is that this grotesque installation of Zelaya in the Brazilian embassy is an operation of the São Paulo Forum.

Alek Boyd: Given that Tom Shannon is now US Ambassador to Brazil, would you reiterate what you told him about Lula, and his partners in crime, in November 2005, or would you advise differently?

Tom Shannon did not pay due attention to us in 2005 and this was, no doubt, one of the causes of the aggravation of the Latin American situation since then. It is likely that he read Maxwell’s and Alencastro’s speeches at the CFR, and thought that such a prestigious institution deserved more credibility than a handful of obscure Latin American scholars with no public office or political party. Unfortunately, we, not the CFR, were the ones who were right.

Alek Boyd: Finally, as in the case of Chavez, has Lula done enough institutional damage to remain in power, or will he hand over power democratically?

The alternation in presidential power no longer has any great meaning, for the two dominant parties, the Workers’ Party and the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, act in concert with each other and, despite minor differences in the administrative economic field, they are equally faithful to the overall strategy of the Latin American left. Lula himself has celebrated as a big victory of democracy the fact that there are only leftist candidates for the 2010 presidential elections, as if the monopoly of the ideological control of society were a great democratic ideal. On the other side, the most celebrated of the so-called “opposition” leaders, former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, has already acknowledged that between his party and the Workers’ Party there is no substantive ideological or strategic difference, but only a contest for offices. It matters little who will win the next elections, for, in any event, the orientation of the Brazilian government must remain the same: in the social and juridical field, overpowering subversion; in the economic field, moderation to anesthetize foreign investors. The only difference that may arise is in the field of security, in the case that the candidate of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, José Serra, wins, for his party, despite being as much a left-wing party as the Workers’ Party, does not formally belong to the São Paulo Forum, being therefore free to do things against organized crime, which Lula himself could never do. As governor of the state of São Paulo, Serra showed to be the only Brazilian political leader who pays attention to the slaughter of his fellow-countrymen. It is still early to know whether or not he will be able to do what he did in his state, but it is certain that he would wish to do it.