#Espionage: Putin Associate Found Dead in DC Hotel

This is the big story of the day. You can expect it to be spun in more ways that September 11th, but I suspect that Lesin was killed by his own to protect state reputation and secrets. We will never know the real story. Personally... I don't trust my own government anymore than I trust Russia. We can expect a few Hollywood movies attempting to write history, but I doubt the truth will ever really be clear.

(abc)A prominent Russian millionaire with high-level ties to the Kremlin has been found dead inside a Washington hotel, a Russian official and a senior U.S. official told ABC News. Mikhail Lesin, the former head of media affairs for the Russian government who's been accused of curtailing the country’s press freedoms, had been staying at Hotel Dupont when he was found Thursday, according to officials. It's unclear why the long-time adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin was in Washington, but the Metropolitan Police Department is now investigating his death. On Thursday, U.S. authorities notified the Russian embassy in Washington that one of its citizens had died, and Russian officials are now working with American authorities to determine the circumstances of the death, the embassy told ABC News in a statement. Citing an ongoing investigation, an MPD spokesman would only confirm the department is conducting a “death investigation." Lesin is credited with creating Russia Today, the English-language news network backed by the Russian government. Now known as RT, the network “provides an alternative perspective on major global events, and acquaints an international audience with the Russian viewpoint,” according to its website. Lesin “led the Kremlin’s efforts to censor Russia’s independent television outlets,” one U.S. lawmaker charged last year. In fact, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), called on the Justice Department to launch an investigation into Lesin over allegations of corruption and money laundering. In a letter to then-Attorney General Eric Holder, Wicker said Lesin had “acquired multi-million dollar assets” in Europe and the United States “during his tenure as a civil servant,” including multiple residences in Los Angeles worth $28 million. “That a Russian public servant could have amassed the considerable funds required to acquire and maintain these assets in Europe and the United States raises serious questions,” Wicker wrote. It's unclear if the FBI ever begun a probe. From 1999 to 2004, Lesin served as Russia’s Minister of Press, Television and Radio, often traveling with Putin on official trips. In 2013, he became head of Gazprom-Media Holding, the state-controlled media giant that describes itself as one of the largest media groups in Russia and Europe. Lesin resigned the next year, reportedly citing family reasons.

Something tells me that the CIA is working with Putin.

Did Mandela’s friend supply chemical weapons to Syrian rebels?

Prince Bandar bin Sultan and Nelson Mandela

(Terry Crawford-Browne)(h/t Henri le Riche)

REPORTS from Syria by Jordanian journalists allege that it was Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia who distributed those chemical weapons to the Syrian rebels.

If true, it indicates the chemical attack in Damascus to have been a false-flag operation by the American war business.

This would be entirely in keeping with Prince Bandar’s history of organising the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s, the Iran-Contra weapons exchanges, Libya in 2011, the suppression of the Shia uprising in Bahrain, Saudi support for the coup d’etat in Egypt and support for Syrian rebels.

Other reports confirm that Prince Bandar also went to see Russian President Vladimir Putin last month and offered to buy $15bn worth of Russian weapons provided Mr Putin abandoned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Mr Putin gave him short shrift.

Prince Bandar was not only the Saudi ambassador in Washington for 22 years and friends of Ronald Reagan and the Bush family, but he also negotiated the 1985 £43bn Al-Yamamah weapons deal with Margaret Thatcher, which Tony Blair renewed in 2007 with the Al-Salaam weapons deal.

When the British Serious Fraud Office investigated the bribes which BAE Systems paid him, Prince Bandar allegedly threatened blood in the streets of London.

Mr Blair squelched the investigation citing “national security.” The Guardian newspaper revealed a couple of months later how BAE with collusion of the British government had laundered bribes to Prince Bandar of over £1bn through Riggs Bank in Washington DC and other US banks.

Most importantly, Prince Bandar and Ms Thatcher negotiated the Al-Yamamah deal under the British Official Secrets Act, meaning that it cannot be investigated in Britain.

Saudi Arabia ships thousands of barrels per day of oil consigned to the Bank of England, which is then distributed to Shell and BP.

Over the years a surplus has developed, which is guesstimated to be worth over $150bn. Its purpose is a) to guarantee British and US support for the Saudi royal family against domestic insurrection and b) to fund covert destabilisation of resource-rich countries in Asia and Africa under the guise of the war on terror.

Having targeted Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and other countries over the years, Syria and Egypt are Prince Bandar’s current targets. When will SA be targeted by the American and British “war business” given our country’s mineral wealth?

Saudi Arabia made lavish donations to the African National Congress. Prince Bandar was also the only foreigner present at Nelson Mandela’s secret wedding to Graca Machel, and was a frequent visitor to SA when the arms deal was being negotiated.

Putin: “Flexible” Obama Plans To Visit Russia…

Where he will formally hand over signed surrender papers?
Via Weekly Standard:

Russian president Vladimir Putin claims President Barack Obama is ready to Russia, the outlet RIA Novosti reports.
“US President Barack Obama has confirmed plans to visit Russia at the invitation of his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, the Russian president’s spokesman said on Tuesday,” the Russian outlet reports. “Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Obama made the statement when Putin called a second time to congratulate the US president on his reelection.”
RIA Novosti quotes Putin’s spokesman as saying, “Obama thanked [Putin] for the congratulations and the invitation and confirmed his readiness to come to Russia at a date to be agreed by the two sides. … Putin wished his US counterpart success in forming his new team,” he said, adding that the two presidents confirmed their interest in “progressive development of bilateral relations in all spheres, including the economy.”

via weaselzippers.us

Revealed By WikiLeaks: Obama Team Stole Election, Bribed Jesse Jackson And Took Russian Money In 2008

According to internal Emails circulated among the staff at Stratfor, an Austin Texas based private intelligence gathering firm, John McCain was presented with proof that Democrats in Pennsylvania and Ohio used voter fraud to win those states and committed other disturbing crimes. The communiqués were stolen and made public by WikiLeaks. An Email dated November 7, 2008 under the subject line “ Insight – The Dems & Dirty Tricks ** Internal Use Only – Pls Do Not Forward **,” was sent by Fred Burton, Stratfor’s V.P. of Intelligence. It said in part, The black Dems were caught stuffing the ballot boxes in Philly and Ohio as reported the night of the election and Sen. McCain chose not to fight. The matter is not dead inside the party. It now becomes a matter of sequence now as to how and when to “out”. 
Burton also mentioned a “six-figure” Democrat donation/bribe to Jesse Jackson to buy his silence about Israel. On October 14, 2008 Jackson told fellow attendees in at the World Policy Forum in Evian France a ‘President Obama’ would “remove the clout of Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades.”
Burton continued with an explosive charge he apparently considered quite believable, The hunt is on for the sleezy Russian money into O-mans coffers. A smoking gun has already been found. Will get more on this when the time is right. My source was too giddy to continue. Can you say Clinton and ChiCom funny money? This also becomes a matter of how and when to out.
This allegation makes some sense of Obama’s reassurances to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev caught by an open mic. Obama said “….but it’s important for him [Putin] to give me space.”
Medvedev responded: “Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you …”

Obama: “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”
Medvedev: “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir [Putin]…”
Fred Burton is a known quantity in the highest Intelligence circles. He has been Deputy Chief of the Department of State’s counterterrorism division for the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS).
Stratfor has acknowledged that last December its internal communications system was hacked and the group “Anonymous” has taken credit for the sabotage .  WikiLeaks started to publish Stratfor’s stolen Emails last month. Startfor will neither confirm nor deny whether the communiqués attributed to its staff are real or fabrications.

via westernjournalism.com

Putin's Religious War Against the Female Punk-Rock Band Pussy Riot

(NewYorker)Before their arrest, Tolokonnikova was a student of philosophy; Alekhina studied journalism and creative writing and was engaged in religious charities and environmental causes. Samutsevich, the oldest of the three, has a degree in computer programming. They are members of a larger group that also goes by the name Pussy Riot—they use a transliterated version of the English words—that combines radical performance with leftist ideas ranging broadly from anti-authoritarianism to feminism; the group cites figures such as Michel Foucault and Julia Kristeva among their many sources of inspiration, as well as the American punk-rock band Bikini Kill and the riot-grrrl movement of the nineties. Tolokonnikova and Alekhina are mothers of young children whom they have not seen since their arrest.

what are these girls smiling for?

Top Soviet-bloc defector: Marxism infecting U.S.

(via Docs Talk)By Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa
Editor’s note: Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking Soviet-bloc official ever to defect to the West. In December 1989, Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu was executed at the end of a trial whose accusations came almost word-for-word out of Pacepa’s book, “Red Horizons,” subsequently republished in 27 countries. 
After President Carter approved his request for political asylum, Pacepa became an American citizen and worked with U.S. intelligence agencies against the former Eastern Bloc. The CIA has praised Pacepa’s cooperation for providing “an important and unique contribution to the United States.”
A few weeks ago I read “America’s Marxist Picnic,” a touching story by WND’s David Kupelian, which illustrates how much the U.S. government hated Marxism a generation ago.
David’s father was one of America’s top rocket scientists, and he became deputy undersecretary of defense for strategic and theater nuclear forces under Ronald Reagan. During the 1970s, however, the U.S. government considered withdrawing his top secret security clearance because some informer had reported that, during his teen years, his mother had attended an Armenian church picnic where a pro-Soviet speaker gave a talk.
That story moved me. My father also worked for America – not as a top rocket scientist, but as service manager of the General Motors affiliate in Romania. Working for America became a crime when the communists took over Romania at the end of WWII and my father was soon killed by the Red Army.
Today the Communist Party is abolished in Romania, which re-became a trustworthy ally of the U.S.. Meanwhile, the formerly cursed Communist Party USA is throwing its full support to the current president of the United States.
I wrote to David. That’s how this interview was born.


Editor’s note: Ion Mihai Pacepa was interviewed by WND Managing Editor David Kupelian.
WND: Gen. Pacepa, it’s an honor to talk with you. Please tell me, did America win the Cold War? If so, why are we fighting Marxism in our own country today? And if not, what really happened?
Pacepa: Yes, we won the Cold War, but unlike other wars the Cold War did not end with an act of surrender and with the defeated enemy throwing down his weapons. But no, we are not fighting Marxism in our country, because the American people have not yet been warned that their country is being contaminated by Marxism. A few conservative luminaries like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly have warned that Marxism is infecting the United States, but neither the Republicans’ “Pledge to America” nor the Tea Party’s “Contract from America” has mentioned the word Marxism.
So far, to the best of my knowledge, only your “Marxism, American-Style” (June 2012 Whistleblower magazine) and PJ Media’s “Say No To Socialism” have called attention to the looming dangers of Marxism, a heresy that killed some 94 million people and transformed a third of the world into feudal societies in the middle of the 20th century.
There is still a widely popular belief in the U.S. and Western Europe that the nefarious Marxist legacy was uprooted in 1991 when the Soviet Union was abolished, just as the Nazi legacy was extirpated in 1945 when World War II ended. That is simply wishful thinking. There is a considerable difference between these two historical events.
In the 1950s, when I headed Romania’s foreign intelligence station in West Germany, I witnessed how Hitler’s Third Reich had been demolished, its war criminals put on trial, its military and police forces disbanded and the Nazis removed from public office. I also saw how West Germany’s economy was being rebuilt with the help of Marshall Plan money and how the country had become a multi-party democracy and a close friend of the United States. In 1959, when I returned to Romania, West Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) made it the leading industrial power in Europe.

None of those things have happened in the former Soviet Union. No individual has been put on trial, although its Marxist regime killed many more millions than the Nazis did. Most Soviet institutions, under new names, have been left in place and are now run by many of the same people who guided the Marxist state. The KGB and the Red Army, which instrumented the Cold War, have also remained in place with new nameplates at their doors.
“Communism is dead,” people shouted in 1989, when the Berlin Wall began to come down. Soviet Communism is indeed dead as a form of government. But Marxism is on the rise again, and people are not paying attention. Why not? Because most people do not seem to be familiar with the undercover forms of Marxism we are facing today.
Hiding the ugly face of Marxism behind a smiling mask has become a Marxist science, which I described in a large piece recently published in PJ Media. Here let me just say that until 1963, Marxism was mostly camouflaged as “socialism.” The 1963 missile crisis generated by the socialist República de Cuba gave the socialist mask of Marxism a dirty name in the West and few Marxists wanted to be openly associated with it anymore. They therefore began hiding their Marxism under a new cover called “economic determinism,” which became all the rage among leftists who no longer wanted to be labeled socialists.
Economic determinism is a theory of survival rooted in Marx’s “Manifesto” (another theory of survival), but it pretends that the economic organization of a society, not the class war, determines the nature of all other aspects of life. Over the years, economic determinism has assumed different names. Khrushchev’s dogonyat i peregonyat (catching up with and overtaking the West in 10 years) and Gorbachev’s perestroika are the best known.

I wrote the script of Nicolae Ceausescu’s determinism, which was hidden behind the nickname “New Economic Order.” Most Americans, who are not used to dealing with undercover Marxists, have problems recognizing one. In April 1978, President Carter publicly hailed Ceausescu as a “great national and international leader who [had] taken on a role of leadership in the entire international community.” At the time, I was standing next to Ceausescu at the White House – and I just smiled.
Three months later, I was granted political asylum in the United States, and I informed President Carter how Ceausescu had been feeding him a pack of lies. The admiration for Ceausescu’s undercover Marxism had, however, taken on such a life of its own that the U.S. Congress, dominated by President Carter’s Democratic Party, brought the United States a sui-generis version of Ceausescu’s economic determinism. That move generated double-digit inflation. The U.S. prime rate hit 21.5 percent, the highest in U.S. history, and people had to spend long hours in line waiting to buy gas for their cars.
Laura D’Andrea Tyson, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton and later an economic adviser to President Obama, has kept that undercover Marxism alive in the U.S. She even wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on the merits of the allegedly “mixed” socialist-capitalist economies in Ceausescu’s Romania and Tito’s Yugoslavia. Two American presidents went to Bucharest to pay tribute to Ceausescu’s Marxism disguised as economic determinism. None had ever gone there before.
A few months ago, when the devastating economic crisis in Greece exploded, economic determinism lost credibility and our Democratic Party replaced it with “progressivism,” which is the current cover name for American Marxism. The real Progressive Movement was born after the U.S. financial crisis of 1893, which the country tried to solve by redistributing America’s wealth. The progressives pushed through the first federal income tax and they created a string of labor standards that opened up the floodgates of corruption and financial excess that generated the Great Depression. A new Progressive Movement, dubbed the New Deal, led to steep top tax rates, strict financial regulations, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, eventually generating the current economic crisis.
Today’s Progressive Movement was born in New York’s Zuccotti Park. It was first known as the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and advocated the abolition of “capitalist America.” The Democratic Party strongly embraced it and made “Progressive” its new byword. “God bless them,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told the U.S. Congress. “It’s young, it’s spontaneous, it’s focused and it’s going to be effective.”
WND: You have said, “In the Soviet Union, the KGB was a state within a state. Now the KGB is the state.” Please explain that.
Pacepa: General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, the Soviet gauleiter of Romania, who afterwards rose to head the almighty Soviet espionage service for 15 years of the Cold War, used to tell me that “every society reflects its own past.” Sakharovsky, who was a Russian to the marrow of his bones, believed that someday “our socialist camp” might wear an entirely different face, and that even the Communist Party might have become history, but that would not matter. The party was a foreign organism introduced by Lenin into the Russian body, and sooner or later it would be rejected. One thing, though, was certain to remain unchanged: “our gosbezopasnost” (the state security service).
Sakharovsky used to point out that “our gosbezopasnost” had kept Russia alive for the past 500 years, “our gosbezopasnost” would guide her helm for the next 500 years, “our gosbezopasnost” would win the war with “our main enemy, American Zionism,” and “our gosbezopasnost” would eventually make Russia the leader of the world.
Sakharovsky was right. Marxism triumphed in feudal Russia, which had been a police state since the 16th century’s Ivan the Terrible. There Marxism evolved into a secret samoderzhaviye or autocracy, the historical Russian form of one-man totalitarian dictatorship, in which the new Marxist tsar’s political police first exterminated the entire leadership of Lenin’s Communist Party and then, behind a facade of Marxism, quietly took precedence over the original tools of ideology and the Communist Party for running their country.
Only a handful of people working in extremely close proximity to the Soviet and East European rulers knew that after Lenin died his Communist Party gradually became a scramble of bureaucrats, playing no greater role in the Soviet Union than did Lenin’s embalmed corpse in the Kremlin mausoleum.
So far, Sakharovsky has proved to be a dependable prophet. His successor, Vladimir Kryuchkov, who later authored the August 1991 coup that briefly deposed Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, clearly shared the same fanatical belief in gosbezopasnost. Kryuchkov’s successor, Yevgeny Primakov, who was an undercover KGB officer under Sakharovsky, rose to become Russia’s prime minister.
On Dec. 31, 1999, Russia’s first freely elected president, Boris Yeltsin, stunned the world by announcing his resignation.
“I shouldn’t be in the way of the natural course of history,” Yeltsin explained, speaking in front of a gaily decorated New Year’s tree and blue, red and white Russian flag with a golden Russian eagle.
“I understand that I must do it and Russia must enter the new millennium with new politicians, with new faces, with new intelligent, strong, energetic people.”
Yeltsin then signed a decree “On the execution of the powers of the Russian president,” which stated that under Article 92 Section 3 of the Russian Constitution, the power of the Russian president should be temporarily performed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Yeltsin also announced that a special presidential election would be held around March 27, 2000, and he made a strong appeal for people to vote for Putin, who was “a strong person worthy of becoming president.” For his part, the newly appointed president signed a decree pardoning Yeltsin, who was rumored to be connected to massive bribery scandals, “for any possible misdeeds” and granted him “total immunity” from being prosecuted (or even searched and questioned) for “any and all” actions committed while in office. Putin also gave Yeltsin a lifetime pension and a state dacha.
To me, that had all the appearances of a KGB palace putsch.
Indeed, as of June 2003, some 6,000 former KGB officers were holding positions in Russia’s central and regional governments. Among them:

Vladimir Putin, elected president of Russia; Vladimir Osipov, head of the Presidential Personnel Directorate; Sergey Ivanov, defense minister; Igor Sergeyevich Ivanov, minister of foreign affairs; Viktor Ivanov and Igor Sechin, deputy directors in the Presidential Administration; Vyacheslav Soltaganov, deputy secretary of the Security Council; Viktor Vasilyevich Cherkesov, chairman of the State Committee on Drug Trafficking; Vyacheslav Trubinkov, deputy foreign minister; Vladimir Kozlov, deputy media minister; Gennady Moshkov, first deputy transport minister; Nikolay Negodov, deputy transport minister; Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, deputy minister for economic development; Vladimir Makarov, Leonid Lobzenko and Igor Mezhakov, deputy chairmen of the State Customs Committee; Sergey Verevkin-Rokhalsky and Anatoly Sedov, deputy taxes and duties ministers; Anatoly Tsybulevsky and Vladimir Lazovsky, deputy directors of the of the Federal Tax Police Service; Alexander Grigoriev, general director of the Russian Agency for State Reserves; Alexander Spiridonov, deputy chairman of Russia’s Financial Monitoring Committee; Vladimir Kulakov, Voronezh governor; Viktor Maslov, Smolensk governor.

Can you imagine a democratic Germany run by Gestapo officers?
Putin is indeed trying to make Russia the first intelligence dictatorship in history. In 2004, nearly half of all top governmental positions were held by former officers of the KGB. The Soviet Union had had one KGB officer for every 428 citizens. In 2004, Russia had one intelligence officer for every 297 citizens.
A new generation of Russians is now struggling to demolish the barriers Soviet Marxism spent over 70 years erecting between themselves and the rest of the world, and to develop a new national identity. If history – including that of the last 22 years – is any guide, these Russians, who are now enjoying their regained nationalism, will not truly turn westward. They will struggle to rebuild a kind of an Old Russian Empire by inspiring themselves from old Russian traditions and by using old Russian ways and means.
This does not mean Russia cannot change, but for that to happen, it will need help. In order for us to help, we should first fully understand what is now going on behind the veil of secrecy that still surrounds the Kremlin. Man would not have learned to walk on the moon if he had not first studied what the moon was really made of and where it lay in the universe.
WND: Gen. Pacepa, you are credited with playing a pivotal role in waking up the Romanian people and inspiring the overthrow of the tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu. Why is it that a communist nation like Romania could hear and heed your message, but not America?
Pacepa: Emil Constantinescu, the second post-Communist president of Romania, once said:

The missiles that destroyed Communism were launched from Radio Free Europe, and this was Washington’s most important investment during the Cold War. I do not know whether the Americans themselves realize this now, seven years after the fall of Communism, but we understand it perfectly.

The serialization of my book “Red Horizons” by Radio Free Europe was just one of the missiles fired against the Romanian version of Marxism during the Cold War years. We need a kind of Radio Free America. Let’s hope that others, many others, will join our efforts to help the new generation of Americans – who have no longer been taught real history in schools and know little if anything about America’s 44 years of war against Marxism – to understand the deadly danger of this heresy.
American essayist George Santayana, an immigrant like me, used to say that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Let’s hope that others, many others, will help America understand this truism.
WND: Many Americans would roll their eyes at the phrase “Marxism in America,” even though with every passing year we are becoming more and more Marxist. Why are so many Americans so blind?
Pacepa: They are not blind. They just do not really know what Marxism is. Few Americans will roll their eyes hearing the world “Nazism.” Why? Because the hideous crimes committed by Nazism were publicly exposed and their main authors were publicly tried and hanged. Unfortunately, there was no trial of Communism, although this Marxist heresy had killed 10 times more people than Nazism killed. Nazi archives have been opened to the public, who could learn about Nazism’s atrocities from the horse’s mouth. Most Soviet archives are still sealed.
Stalin was famously quoted as saying: If it is not written, it did not happen. But Marxism did happen, it generated a dreadful empire of gulags and it spawned a 44-year Cold War. Let’s open that Pandora’s box. The United States of America is a unique country of freedom, built by people who came to this land of opportunity in search of religious, economic and personal freedom. Once Americans know the truth, they will never allow themselves to become puppets of Marxism.
WND: General, you were the head of Romania’s Presidential House – the equivalent in the U.S. of being White House chief of staff and director of the CIA, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security – but you ultimately defected to the West. You radically changed, and gave your loyalty to America. What woke you up? What changed you?
Pacepa: Michelle Obama once confessed in front of television cameras broadcasting her statement worldwide: “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.” When I was Michelle’s age I also liked to believe that history started with me. It took me a very long time to see the light. Power can generate blindness and it did in my case. It took me many more years to find the courage to renounce my exorbitantly luxurious existence and to face up to the truth about the hidden face of Marxism. Communist rulers have always been very generous with their spy chiefs – that is until they tire of them and kill them off.
It was noon when the U.S. military plane that was bringing me to freedom landed at Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, D.C., on that memorable July 28, 1978, and I was sitting up front in the cockpit with the pilots. It was a glorious, sunny day outside, which only magnified the fireworks popping off inside of me. For many, many years I had learned to hide my personal feelings. For that was the way of life in a Marxist society, where the government had its informants everywhere and where microphones covered you everyplace you went, from the office to the bedroom. But on that unforgettable day I had an overwhelming desire to dance around in a jig all by myself.
I was a free man! I was in America! The joy of finally becoming part of this magnanimous land of liberty, where nothing was impossible, was surpassed only by the joy of simply being alive.
It was my desperate hunger for freedom that woke me up.
WND: What will it take for Americans to wake up?
Pacepa: A “Campaign of Truth” like the one unleashed by President Harry Truman in 1950. I still keep the declassified version of his NSC 68/1950 on my desk. That 58-page document put together by the U.S. National Security Council set forth the strategy of exposing and containing Marxism and Soviet Communism.
“The issues that face us are momentous,” the document stated, “involving the fulfillment or destruction not only of this Republic but of civilization itself.” Truman reasoned that Marxism and Soviet Communism were the mortal enemies of freedom and religion – of all religions – and he believed their expansion could be stopped only “through a concerted effort” that would place the superiority and strength of what he called “truth and freedom” before the peoples of the world.
Marxism is now threatening our country again. Let’s unleash another Truman-style campaign of truth. Let’s remind the leaders of the Democratic Party that Truman was a Democrat. Let also remind them that John F. Kennedy, another Democrat, was ready to start a nuclear war in order to protect the United States from the danger of Marxism. And let’s remind America that the peace and freedom of the world depend on the economic power of United States and the united resolve of its public opinion, as was always the case.
If our capitalist economy and national unity go, so will our prosperity, our security and the peace of the world.
WND: Thank you, Gen. Pacepa. It has been enlightening.
Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest intelligence official ever to defect from the Soviet Bloc, served as acting chief of Communist Romania’s espionage service and top adviser to President Nicolae Ceausescu. He has written several books, including “Red Horizons: The True Story of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescus’ Crimes, Lifestyle, and Corruption” and “Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination.”

Muslims upset at Putin's visit to the Kotel

(EOZ)Vladimir Putin visited the Kotel on Tuesday night:

Throughout the visit, Putin demonstrated curiosity, asked many questions on the history of the place, and spoke about the Jewish connection to the holy site: "You can see how the Jewish past is engraved in the Jerusalem stone," he said.

As you can imagine, Muslims were very unhappy at a world leader saying that Jerusalem has anything to do with Judaism. Hamas called it a cheap stunt, and the Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation said:

We say to Putin and his ilk, that the Wailing Wall is purely Islamic, and is part and parcel of the Al Aqsa Mosque, and non-Muslims have no right to the wall or in the Al Aqsa Mosque. All the historical facts and international documents confirm that the Al-Buraq Wall is Islamic, including the British Shaw Commission. Remember, the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa mosque is 45 years old, and they demolished the buildings and around the Square unjustly for the prayer of the Jews, then carried out the excavations, including the excavation along the bottom of the Al Aqsa Mosque, and during the excavations many of the Islamic and Arabic findings were suppressed, not to mention that these excavations led to the cracks and collapses in the vicinity of the Al Aqsa Mosque and some of its buildings, and the occupation is engaging in Judaization of the place, and we affirm that all rocks the Al Aqsa Mosque and every stone of Jerusalem proves the Arab identity of Jerusalem.

Other Arab media pointed out that Putin wore a kipah.

I'm starting to have sympathies for Assad murdering these people... I shouldn't, but I do. It's obvious that Putin knows how to do what Obama can't... show up in Jerusalem.

Vladimir Putin's Plan to Create a Eurasian Union Is about Reclaiming the Russian Empire

(Libra Bunda / THE DAILY TELEGRAPH): Vladimir Putin is on a roll. Last month, he revealed he was all set to return to the Russian presidency next year, possibly for as long as twelve years. And on Tuesday, he disclosed he was in the process of creating a new global power bloc, the ‘Eurasian Union,’ on the bones of what used to be the Soviet Union. His dream would see Russia again dominating about one fifth of the earth’s surface with an internal market of almost 300 million people. The new union would include authoritarian Kazakhstan and Belarus to begin with before expanding to take in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and then, Mr Putin hopes, other former Soviet republics. Mr Putin did not say so but it is known that he would dearly like to see Ukraine sign up to his master plan. His is a bold idea and one that immediately and unsurprisingly drew admiration from Russian nationalists. Older Russians, who hark after the paternalism and stability of the defunct Soviet Union, are also likely to appreciate the plan. Mr Putin was at pains to say however that his mission was not to recreate the Soviet Union ...other countries ruled by strong men like Mr Putin may well see the idea as a good one. They will of course fight to minimise Russian dominance in the new union. But ultimately they may see the new power bloc as a way of enhancing their marginal voices on the global stage and as a mechanism to shore up their authoritarian regimes at a time when dictators are nervously looking over their shoulders. (MORE PAIN)

I feel less threatened and more pity for any confederation of countries that centralize. It might help tyrannical governments feel less threatened by their own populations, but in a time when there is so much economic instability, It's about the worst thing one can do for one's economy... no wait... correct that... it is the worst thing for the richer countries economy... the country of deadbeats gets bailed out. Russia has nothing to gain by bringing potential equivalents of Greece into their sphere. Sure... they might be rich in resources, but a centralized structure will quickly abuse those resources. I don't feel threatened... I feel bad for them. It has not worked for Europe. It is too bad these totalitarian countries can not bring some proportion of human rights into their government because a stable democracy built on natural resources and a healthy amount of cultural guiding through media public relations to push ideas like equal dignity for genders and tolerance for those who don't threaten to kick your ass would be ideal. Russia seems ok in the gender department, but many of their former satellite states are Muslim.  Good luck with that. While America and Europe are starting to understand that Democracy is not Democracy because someone says so, but rather Democracy is Democracy because government is kept in check, Russia is figuring out a new way to obscure a dictatorship. G-d help them.

Obama and Russia's descent into tyranny

Ryzhkov explains how Vladimir Putin's party of power, United Russia, managed to go from 35% voter support in polls in the region of Tambov in April 2011 to 65% support at the ballot box a month later. And it wasn't a Trumanesque comeback. It was truly epic and terrifying fraud. Using its direct influence over their jobs and salaries, United Russia gathered up university professors and ordered them to force their students, on pain of being flunked, to forge ballots and then travel around the city stuffing ballot boxes with them. Meanwhile cops and election officials blithely looked the other way. Ryzhkov believes that one-third of the votes cast for United Russia in the local elections -- a mind-boggling total of over 100,000 in a region with a total population of just over one million -- were illegal.

americanthinker.com via eye-on-the-world.blogspot.com

...and I thought my teachers were brainwashing the kids in college with feminist leftist dribble... this is what we had in extreme.

Obama’s Hopes For Nuke Treaty Go Down In Flames

WASHINGTON (AP) – In a blow to President Barack Obama, chances faded Tuesday for Senate approval of a major nuclear arms treaty with Russia this year, tripping up one of the administration’s top foreign policy goals.

via patdollard.com

the irony here is I would be for this treaty if Obama's foreign policy were working. Russia should of been made an ally back in the 80's instead of supporting Islam against the Soviets. Another mistake would of been to support Islam against the Serbs who are Russian allies and coreligionists. I have no doubt in the future both our countries will move forward with friendships because we are fighting the same war now, but right now the US state department has no direction besides Saudi cooperation. This is not really about Russia at all and has more to do with America catching up with Russia in some ways.... and sometimes Russia catching up with America. Both our countries need to figure out our objectives before we commit to anything. This is not a slap in the face to Russia. This is a prudent decision to reject this treaty for both Russia and the United State's interests.

Posted via email from noahdavidsimon's posterous

Gorbachev Has Advice for US: Victory in Afghanistan Is Impossible

Mikhail Gorbachev, who pulled Soviet troops out of Afghanistan more than 20 years ago after a bloody decadelong war there, says victory in Afghanistan is “impossible,” and that America is risking another Vietnam if it doesn’t withdraw its own troops soon.The Red Army was forced to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989, after being routed by U.S.-backed mujahedeen fighters — some of whom later joined the Taliban and are NATO’s enemies in the war today. Gorbachev recognized that irony in an interview with the BBC aired today.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said in an interview with the BBC that “Obama is right to pull the troops out” of Afghanistan.
“We had hoped America would abide by the agreement that we reached that Afghanistan should be a neutral, democratic country that would have good relations with its neighbors and with both the U.S. and the USSR,” the 79-year-old former Soviet leader said. “The Americans always said they supported this, but at the same time they were training militants — the same ones who today are terrorizing Afghanistan and more and more of Pakistan.”
The complex history of the U.S. in Afghanistan, where it first armed Islamist fighters during the Cold War and is now fighting against them, makes it more difficult for U.S. troops to abandon the country, Gorbachev said.
“But what’s the alternative — another Vietnam? Sending in half a million troops? That wouldn’t work,” he said. “Victory is impossible in Afghanistan. [Barack] Obama is right to pull the troops out. No matter how difficult it will be.”
More than 150,000 NATO troops, mostly Americans and Britons, have been fighting in Afghanistan for nine years. The Obama administration has pledged to begin drawing down the number of U.S. troops there next year, though American forces are expected to remain in smaller numbers for several years.
Meanwhile, Russian troops may once again be pulled into conflict in Afghanistan, according to new NATO proposals for cooperation with Moscow. The plans, which are being discussed ahead of a NATO summit next month in Lisbon, include Russia’s possible contribution of helicopters and crews to train Afghan pilots, and increased cooperation on counternarcotics and border security, The Guardian reported.
Russia’s envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, dismissed the report today, telling the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, “We’ve already been in Afghanistan, and we didn’t like it much.”
Gorbachev’s comments to the BBC come amid of flurry of interviews he’s given recently, including several in which he’s been boldly critical of Russia’s current leadership.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who once had Gorbachev’s support, has now undermined his country’s democracy, the former Soviet leader told The New York Times. “He thinks that democracy stands in his way,” Gorbachev said.
Sponsored Links “I am afraid that they have been saddled with this idea that this unmanageable country needs authoritarianism,” Gorbachev continued, referring to both Putin and his close ally, President Dmitry Medvedev. “They think they cannot do without it.”
Gorbachev said officials of Putin’s United Russia party are too concerned with clinging onto their own power and don’t want Russians to participate in their nation’s civic life. It’s the same frustrated tone he struck in another interview with Moscow-based Snob magazine last week, in which he warned that Russia’s leadership must start listening to the people or risk mass protests and disorder.
“Our government fears its own citizens,” Gorbachev told the magazine, according to Bloomberg News. “When people finally realize that their opinion is ignored and that nothing depends on them, they’ll go out on the street.
“The most dangerous thing is if the tension building up in society suddenly bursts onto the street with such a force that we’ll all be in trouble.”
Read more at AOL.

via matzav.com

noahdavidsimon's posterous

The Russian Game

The 47-year-old Kasparov, born Garry Weinstein to an Armenian mother and a Jewish father and widely considered the greatest chess player of all time, urged the West to tackle Putin via a list of oligarchs who he said acted as his “wallet” and against whom, he said, there was no shortage of evidence of financial wrongdoing.  via jpost.com Kasparov made a short-lived bid to challenge for the Russian presidency and was arrested and briefly jailed in recent years after anti-Putin protests.

It's incredible how much influence a Russian chessmaster has in politics.  I would have to agree that all leaders should be masters of the great strategic language of sixty four squares, but sadly it is never enough if one can not see beyond the cold blooded code of game theory.  Bobby Fisher certainly is no example of balance and reason, but Kasparov the grandmaster who broke with the Socialists feels that Russia is being hurt by it's own actions and feels that it's totalitarian but very profitable tendencies will in the end drive it's Asian connections away because the Asians will begin to see Russia as an aggressive bear.

Kasparov: It is simply not correct to link the level of democracy to prosperity. It is absolutely clear that the economic wealth of Saudi Arabia exceeds the performance of the Czech Republic. But apparently democracy is quite stable in the Czech Republic, which cannot be said about Saudi Arabia. As we delve into the past, we must not forget about the existing model of society. If we look at statistical data, we see that Protestant countries in terms of economic development are more successful than those observing Catholicism. There is coherence, after all, among different societal factors. Most likely, the system of mutual relations that has evolved in Eastern Europe and Asia corresponds to another level of governance. via rferl.org

Essentially Kasparov clarifies that freedom and profit do not go hand in hand and that Americans must realize that cost benefit analysis will lead to more of the same.

When Kasparov compares Catholicism and Protestant systems he is alluding to free capital.  The Catholic church has been traditionally hostile to interest and banking.  (hence the Catholic's world dependence on Jews to fill the need to make their society sustainable and at the same time burden Jews with the role.  Same thing as Islamic society and Orthodox Christians such as Russian Orthodoxy.  Religious hostility to profit from banks is what leads to a condemned class of wealthy mercantilism.  It is the root of a black market and it is not exclusive to  Religion.  The same black market exists in other ideologies like socialism.  Hostility to banking causes a despised mercantile class that is rich, because Capitalism is natural and denying nature merely creates a fetish.

...Sticking to the current form of governance, which is to say guaranteeing the survival of Putin's regime, will necessarily lead to the demise of Russia within its present borders.  The Far East and Eastern Siberia are already developing according to a Chinese scenario, the full scope of which will be revealed in the near future. In the next 10 to 15 years, a lot of Russian territories will become at least de facto Chinese. This will change the situation in Russia fundamentally.

Furthermore, the situation in the North Caucasus is rather unstable. Mutual relations and the cooperation between Putin and [Ramzan] Kadyrov, the high price that has been paid to buy the loyalty of the local elite through an enormous tribute of multibillion[-ruble] investments, all this cannot be an arrangement for good. The situation in the region can easily get out of control if the capital inflow is interrupted. It is apparent, even when leaving democratic institutions and values aside for a moment, that Putin's regime has led the country down a blind alley. Our task is to usher in a shift of paradigms, a new foundation. via rferl.org

That is a threat that will make the Kremlin take notice, but it contradicts what he says above.  Certainly propping up totalitarianism has worked for Russia as it hide behind a facade of Democracy.  What ever mean spirited chess game Russia has done in the last 20 years has worked for them, but Kasparov obviously sees resource rich Asian states turning on "colonial" Russia out of greed as well. 

Putin must feel consequences.

Without Russia’s technical assistance, Iran wouldn’t be even close to a nuclear bomb, 

At the end of the day, selling nuclear technology to Iran, selling anti-missile defense systems, brings cash. And if America or Israel, or both, at a certain point attack Iran, the oil price goes up, so for Putin it’s a win-win situation.

Unfortunately, it seems the [US] administration is ready to attack Goldman Sachs, but it is not ready to attack Putin’s financial interests. Which means that Iran feels safe. 

...meanwhile Putin sees the chessworld as his key to power.
via jpost.com

Former world chess champion Anatoly Karpov has never been much of a rabble-rouser. During the Cold War he was a loyal Soviet subject whose chess anthologies featured pictures of him harvesting wheat with a scythe -- for fun. He flirted with elected office in the 1990s, but has confined his public activism in the Vladimir Putin era largely to ecological and children's causes. He speaks in a gentle, nasal voice. He collects stamps. 

But Karpov, whose battles with Garry Kasparov in the 1980s defined the
game of kings for an era, is now at the epicenter of an escalating political
imbroglio spreading through the already fractious world of international
chess.

With the backing of his former nemesis Kasparov and national federations from the United States and Western Europe, Karpov is bidding to unseat Kirsan Ilyumzhinov as the president of the International Chess Federation, known by its French acronym, FIDE. Ilyumzhinov is also the mercurial president of the southern Russian republic of Kalmykia, which he runs as his own fiefdom. His tumultuous 15-year reign over world chess has seen a precipitous decline in the prestige of the title of World Chess Champion.  More than chess is at stake. Winning re-election could be crucial for Ilyumzhinov, whose fate as the president of Kalmykia is up in the air. Ilyumzhinov has run his quasi-autonomous, mostly Buddhist republic since shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, but is facing increasing criticism from the local opposition over persistent poverty in the region. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will have to decide whether to nominate him for another term this fall.
"Even if he's not nominated for a new term, [the FIDE presidency] would allow him to remain a flashy, notable person of status," says Nikolai Petrov, an expert on regional Russian politics at the Carnegie Moscow Center.  Karpov, meanwhile, is promising to restore some of the international attention chess enjoyed for most of the last century. "The value of the title of world champion has been degraded, and the popularity isn't there," Karpov said in an interview last week. "No one knows who the world champion is
anymore." (That would be Indian grandmaster Viswanathan Anand, for those keeping score at home.) But a funny thing happened on Karpov's road to the FIDE presidential
election: The Kremlin's point man for chess snubbed him, declaring instead that
Ilyumzhinov will be Russia's candidate for the post. The decision puts the
government in the peculiar position of supporting a deeply eccentric, autocratic regional leader -- Ilyumzhinov claims to have once been briefly abducted by aliens and counts Muammar al-Qaddafi and Chuck Norris among his friends -- over one of Russia's greatest, and most politically loyal, sporting icons.   Why, exactly, is unclear, but the decision has prompted a revolt in the Russian Chess Federation. When the federation's supervisory council convened Friday in the ornate main playing hall of Moscow's Central Chess Club, a majority voted to nominate Karpov. But the meeting was subsequently declared "illegitimate" by Arkady Dvorkovich, the senior Kremlin aide who oversees the federation. Should Dvorkovich's decision stand, Karpov might end up running as a nominee from a European or North American federation. The geopolitical overtones of all this are a throwback, however faint, to chess's Cold War glory days, when the game was as inextricable from matters of national pride and identity as the Olympics. In the West, Bobby Fischer's victory over Boris Spassky in the 1972 World Chess Championship was portrayed as a triumph of American individualism and self-discipline over the collectivism and powerful state sponsorship of the Soviet chess machine. Millions of Americans
followed televised analysis of the intricate on-board maneuvering between the
two grandmasters, inspiring a brief national infatuation with chess. The 1984-1985
Kasparov-Karpov duels were eerily symbolic of the perestroika era, with the young, rebellious Kasparov surviving a grueling series of games to eventually trump Karpov and the fading Soviet hierarchy that supported him.

via foreignpolicy.com

“If you believe that the Iranian nuclear bomb is an imminent threat, not only to Israel but also to the interests of the United States and the Western world, you act,” he said. “If you don’t believe it, you can find thousands of excuses [not to act] – as the Western powers found 75 years ago when not acting against the rise of Nazi Germany.  “Putin’s threat is probably not comparable to the one in the 1930s,” he clarified, “but to a certain degree it will have a very serious impact on the Western system, because the No. 1 Russian export is not oil. It’s corruption. And Putin has found great demand for this product in the West.”  Asked whether issuing such outspoken criticisms placed him at personal risk, Kasparov noted that “I have bodyguards in Moscow.” He added, however: “In Russia, if the state goes after you, nothing helps.”  And questioned as to whether he might try again to seek the Russian presidency, he responded: “In Russia we’re not fighting to win elections, we’re trying to have elections. Our fight is very different... because we do not live in a democratic country. This,” he said, “is something that people in the West and also in Israel don’t want to recognize.”

via jpost.com