Vigilance Needed Against Tamil Extremists

As the Sri Lankan army nears victory over the marxist/terrorist Tamil Tigers, expect a big influx of Tamil refugees into New Zealand.

Also expect Tamil radicals to attempt to expand their use of New Zealand as an organisational base to carry on their struggle from abroad.

This country has been regarded for years as a safe haven for Tamil extremists. Unlike Britain, Germany, the US, Australia and Canada, New Zealand under Labour has refused to clamp down on Tamil extremism.

Hopefully this will change under the National/ACT government.

The New Zealand left have long sympathised with the Tamil Tigers and will amp up their support and propaganda for their cause.

Such as this example from Indymedia

Protest against Sri Lankan army genocide of Tamil population

Global Peace and Justice Auckland is supporting a rally and march organised by the New Zealand Tamil Community for next Wednesday 4th February.


The protest is make the public aware of the murderous attacks on Tamils by the Sri Lankan military in the past two weeks. This follows the Sri Lankan army fighting their way into Tamil areas in North-East Sri Lanka where they are trying to suppress the Tamil struggle for self-determination.

In the meantime we are appealing to the new Foreign Minister Murray McCully to speak out against massacres of Tamils in Sri Lanka. We want him to make a direct appeal to the Sri Lankan government to reign in its troops who are engaged in a thinly disguised genocide of the civilian population in the North-East of Sri Lanka. The International Red Cross have talked about a human catastrophe unfolding. New Zealand must be active in doing all it can to avert this disaster.

The protest is organised by COTANZ (Consortium of Tamil Associations of New Zealand) and GPJA will be giving support. The protest is timed for Sri Lanka’s national day of independence next week. It will be a reminder that as the majority Sinhalese population celebrate Sri Lanka’s national day the Tamil people continue to suffer brutal oppression...

The Tamil people are engaged in a struggle for self determination in their area of North-East Sri Lanka. Their struggle has an armed wing (the Tamil Tigers) which has recently lost several battles as the Sri Lankan army, dominated by members of the majority Sinhalese population, has moved into Tamil areas.

The Tamil people are 18% of Sri Lanka’s population and have a different ethnicity, religion, language and geography from the majority Sinhalese population. Their modern struggle for self-determination dates to before the time of British colonial rule. (The British left in 1948)

New Zealand needs to be especially vigilant in screening Tamil migrants and visitors in the near future.

Unless we want Tamil extremists consolidating and expanding their activities on our soil that is.

"Thankyou Mr President"

A US friend sent me this.

I was never a big George Bush fan because;

He could have abolished the US Department of Education and didn't-thus handing the Democrats the perfect vehicle for indoctrinating the next generation of Americans.

He could have more forcefully challenged Moscow, Beijing and Havana-the real threats to America, but instead chose to tackle the lesser threat of Iraq.

He supported the fraudulent bail-out of the corrupt US banking system-discrediting capitalism for decades and handing the socialists a huge propaganda victory.

However, I admire the fact that he stayed the course in Iraq and never failed to back his troops in the field. He was deservedly loved by many of them for that.



Will America's troops similarly admire Barack Obama in four (hopefully) years time?

I doubt it.

Marxist Exploits Tragic Accident

Don Franks of the Workers Party (ex Wellington Marxist-Leninist Organisation, ex Workers Communist League, ex Socialist Worker) has the tragic accidental police killing of Halatau Naitoko all sorted.

From Indymedia

The NZ police are the armed forces of the capitalist class and it is vital to the establishment that the cops right to shoot and get away with it is protected. Hence the orchestrated pr snow job every time the cops kill someone. Paul Chase, Steven Wallace, and now Halatau Naitoko, who was not even a suspect. Deep seated social changes are needed.

Deep seated mental changes by Don, more like.

Anonymous has added this thoughtful remark;

kiwi pigs are murderers plain & simple, what I have witnessed in the last 10 years makes me wonder how on earth these clown could call someone else a criminal,, we need a civil war is what we need.

"The Time Has Come For a Full Fledged Boycott of Israel"

Here is a prediction you can call me up on.

Israel is about to experience an international boycott/dis-investment campaign, modelled on that which brought down the anti communist South African National Party government.

From Australian based marxist journal Links

Salim Vally of the Palestine Solidarity Committee of South Africa addressing a meeting on February 7, 2008, part of Toronto's Israeli Apartheid Week, draws on the experiences of the South African anti-apartheid movement to inspire the Palestinian anti-apartheid movement.



Salim Vally is also a leader of the Workers Organisation for Socialist Action-the South African affiliate of the world wide alliance of Trotskyist parties, the Fourth International.

You read it here first.

Buy "Investigate" Today!

Check out the latest Investigate magazine. Loudon on Red Jihad-how marxists are manipulating muslim radicals against what's left of the West.

The price of two lattes for a bloody good read.

Was Marian Hobbs A Secret Communist Inside Labour?

Christchurch Press journalist Martin Van Beynen has run several stories on left activists who have requested and received their security files from the SIS.

A few interesting facts have emerged including a possibly significant tit bit on recently retired Labour Cabinet Minister Marian Hobbs.


It is well known that Marian Hobbs (or Logeman as she was known during her first marriage) was involved in the Christchurch branch of the Communist Party.

Ms Hobbs has described this connection as a mere "flirtation" in the 1970s but elsewhere has admitted joining the party in 1975 and leaving in 1982.

The Communist Party of New Zealand in 1975, was a tiny sect paying homage to the memory of Stalin and Mao. In 1977/78, the CPNZ broke with China and transferred its allegiance to Enver Hoxha's Albania. Marian Hobbs was no moderate Eurocommunist, she was a Maoist, a Stalinist and a Hoxhaite.

Like all her comrades Ms Hobbs was very active in protests against the 1981 Springbok Tour. According to the Christchurch Press of the 14th July 2001, Ms Hobbs was a member of a secretive inner cell which spent months preparing the ground for the Springboks arrival.

Hobbs took on the role of Halt All Racist Tours medical aid team co-ordinator and as an official in Christchurch's Coalition Against the Tour. She was arrested several times, including once for the occupation of the Christchurch National Party offices in Lichfield St. She was teaching my wife at Mairehau High School at the time.

Ms Hobbs credits the violence she saw in 1981 with her decision to leave the Communist Party the following year. She claims it brought home to her, the implications in human terms of a real revolution.

Soon after ostensibly leaving the Communist Party Hobbs returned to Labour, in which she had been active as a young Maoist university student in the late '60s.

Labour's constitution bans members of other parties belonging to the Labour Party. This was routinely violated by the Workers Communist League and especially the pro-Soviet Socialist Unity Party which infiltrated Labour at every level.

Usually however, the Communist Party (during its Hoxhaite stage) avoided Labour like the plague.

Martin Van Beynen reports in the Press of January 28th of an SIS informers report of a Christchurch Communist Party meeting. The "need to get Marian Lesley Hobbs to pledge $10" was allegedly discussed.

Significantly, Van Beynen claims that his meeting took place in 1986-four years after Ms Hobbs claims to have left the Communist Party and while I believe she was active in Labour.

"Pledging", within communist parties usually refers to the weekly or monthly "tithe" that most party members pay to the organisation.

Was Marian Hobbs a Hoxhaite for longer than she has previously admitted?

When did Marian Hobbs stop being a communist-either in fact, or in philosophy?

Has Marian Hobbs been dishonest about a key part of her political history?

Perhaps one of my readers who knows Ms Hobbs personally could forward this post to her for comment.

I'm happy to publish her reply.

Obama File 65 Obama's "Brains Trust"? More From the Institute for Policy Studies

Obama file 64 here

Extreme left, Washington based "think tank" Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) has backed the Obama movement through the New Party in the '90s and Movement for A Democratic Society and Progressives for Obama during the recent election.

Now that they have their favoured son in the White house, IPS plans to turn their radical agenda into legislation affecting every American citizen.

IPS has several "transmission belts" into the Obama administration.

Most important is the more than 80 strong grouping of leftist Democrats, the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC).

IPS and their allies in Democratic Socialists of America established CPC in 1991. Now it forms the largest bloc bloc in the US Congress and CPC members chair the majority of the most powerful Congressional Committees.


CPC co chair Lynn Woolsey, IPS director John Cavanagh, CPC co-founder, long time IPS supporter and House Judiciary committee chair John Conyers, CPC co chair Barbara Lee

Other avenues of influence include the IPS founded and guided peace movement "peak" organisation United for Peace&Justice, Progressive Democrats of America, and the US's two main labor union federations, Change to Win and AFL-CIO.

IPS aims to force its agenda into law, through a two pronged approach-based on the strategy used by communists and socialists to push Roosevelt's administration far to the left during the New Deal era.

A Infiltrate radical policy ideas and "progressive" activists into the Obama camp, through CPC, AFL-CIO and its linked organisation Center for American Progress-which has supplied several key Obama administration personnel, including Energy "Czar" Carol Browner.

IPS has enlisted 70 writers to produce a document "Mandate for Change-Policies and Leadership for 2009 and Beyond", which is designed to provide a policy blueprint for President Obama's administration.

In other words-influence the Obama administration from WITHIN.

B Use its muscle-ACORN, AFL-CIO, DSA, Communist Party USA, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy&Socialism, United for Peace&Justice, Code Pink etc to build a huge "people's movement" to march, strike, occupy and agitate for IPS's agenda. Fill the streets with millions of people all co-ordinated around specific demands.

Pressure the Obama administration from BELOW.



Note the four key IPS demands;

Healthcare-Socialised medicine.

Equality-International and domestic re-distribution of wealth.

Climate Change-Zero US CO2 emissions by 2050-yes "zero"!

Peace-Ending the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Immediate $60 billion cuts to defence spending.

IPS has worked with communists and socialists, both in the US and abroad, since its foundation in 1963. The organisation has enjoyed well documented ties to both the former Soviet Union's KGB and Cuban intelligence services and to the socialist governments of Venezuela and Nicaragua.

IPS stands firmly behind the Obama presidency.

Who stands behind IPS?

Obama file 66 here

Abuminah "Why Israel Won't Survive"

Ali Abunimah, is a Chicago based writer and left activist of Palestinian extraction.


Recent book contributions include "No Justice, No Peace," in "The Anti-Capitalism Reader,"

In the '90s Abuminah was close to Barack Obama and claims that Obama was then very sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

From RBO

“I knew Barack Obama for many years as my state senator – when he used to attend events in the Palestinian community in Chicago all the time,” stated Abuminah during an interview last month with Democracy Now!, a nationally syndicated radio and television political program.

“I remember personally introducing [Obama] onstage in 1999, when we had a major community fundraiser for the community center in Deheisha refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. And that’s just one example of how Barack Obama used to be very comfortable speaking up for and being associated with Palestinian rights and opposing the Israeli occupation,” Abunimah said.

Abunimah also was recently quoted saying that until a few years ago, Obama was “quite frank that the U.S. needed to be more evenhanded, that it leaned too much toward Israel.”

Abunimah noted Obama’s unusual stance toward Israel, commenting “these were the kind of statements I’d never heard from a U.S. politician who seemed like he was going somewhere, rather than at the end of his career.”

Abuminah wants to see Israel destroyed and argues why that dream may be closer than ever in his website Electronic Intifada

Once again, Israel demonstrated that it possesses the power and the lack of moral restraint necessary to commit atrocities against a population of destitute refugees it has caged and starved.

The dehumanisation of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims has escalated to the point where Israel can with full self-righteousness bomb their homes, places of worship, schools, universities, factories, fishing boats, police stations and claim it is conducting a war against terrorism.

Yet, it is Israel as a Zionist state, not the Palestinian people, that cannot survive this attempted genocide.

Israel’s “war” was not about rockets — they served the same role as the non-existent weapons of mass destruction did as the pretext for the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Israel’s real goals were to destroy any Palestinian resistance to total Israeli-Jewish control over historic Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

With Hamas and other resistance factions removed or fatally weakened, Israel hoped the way would be clear to sign a “peace” deal with chief Palestinian collaborator Mahmoud Abbas to manage Palestinians on Israel’s behalf until they could be forced out once and for all.

The US-backed “moderate” dictatorships and absolute monarchies led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia supported the Israeli plan hoping to demonstrate to their own people that resistance — whether against Israel or their own bankrupt regimes — was futile.

To win, Israel had to break Palestinian resistance. It failed.

On the contrary, it galvanised and unified Palestinians like never before. All factions united and fought heroically for 23 days.

According to well-informed and credible sources, Israel did little harm to the modest but determined military capacity of the resistance.

Israel not only unified the resistance factions in Gaza; its brutality rallied all Palestinians and Arabs.

Millions of people across the region marched in support of Palestinian resistance, and the Arab regimes who hoped to benefit from the slaughter in Gaza have been exposed as partners in the Israeli atrocities.

If there was ever a moment when the people of the region would accept Israel as a Zionist state in their midst, that has passed forever.

Israel’s problem is legitimacy, or rather a profound and irreversible lack of it.

Israel was founded as a “Jewish state” through the ethnic cleansing of Palestine’s non-Jewish majority Arab population.

It has been maintained in existence only through Western support and constant use of violence to prevent the surviving indigenous population from exercising political rights within the country, or returning from forced exile.

Despite this, today, 50% of the people living under Israeli rule in historic Palestine (Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip) are Palestinians. And their numbers are growing rapidly.

Palestinians will never recognise the “right” of a settler-colonial society to maintain an ethnocractic state at their expense through violence, repression and racism.

For years, the goal of the so-called peace process was to normalise Israel as a “Jewish state” and gain the Palestinians’ blessing for their own dispossession.

When this failed, Israel tried “disengagement” in Gaza — essentially a ruse to convince the rest of the world that the 1.5 million Palestinians caged in there should no longer be counted as part of the population.

In his notorious May 2004 Jerusalem Post interview, Arnon Soffer, an architect of the 2005 disengagement, explained that the approach “doesn’t guarantee ‘peace,’ it guarantees a Jewish-Zionist state with an overwhelming majority of Jews”.

Soffer predicted that in the future “when 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful.”

He was unambiguous about what Israel would have to do to maintain this status quo: “If we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.”

Soffer hoped that, eventually, Palestinians would give up and leave Gaza altogether. Through their resistance, Palestinians in Gaza have defeated this policy.

Israel is not the first settler-colonial entity to find itself in this position.

When F.W. de Klerk, South Africa’s last apartheid president, came to office in 1989, his generals calculated that solely with the overwhelming military force at their disposal, they could keep the regime in power for at least a decade.

The casualties, however, would have run into hundreds of thousands, and South Africa would face ever greater isolation.

Confronted with this reality, de Klerk took the decision to begin an orderly dismantling of apartheid.

What choice will Israel make? Left to its own devices, Israel will certainly keep trying to massacre Palestinians into submission.

But what prevented South Africa’s white supremacist government from escalating violence to Israeli levels of cruelty and audacity was not that they had greater scruples than the Zionist regime.

It was recognition that they alone could not stand against a global anti-apartheid movement that was in solidarity with the internal resistance.

Israel’s “military deterrent” has now been repeatedly discredited as a means to force Palestinians and other Arabs to accept Zionist supremacy as inevitable and permanent.

Now, the other pillar of Israeli power — Western support — is starting to crack. We must do all we can to push it over.

Israel began its massacres with full support from its Western “friends”. Then something amazing happened.

Despite the official statements of support, despite the media censorship, despite the slick propaganda campaign, there was a massive, unprecedented public mobilisation in Europe and even in North America expressing outrage and disgust.

Gaza will likely be seen as the turning point when Israeli propaganda lost its power to mystify, silence and intimidate as it has for so long.

Even the Nazi Holocaust, long deployed by Zionists to silence Israel’s critics, is becoming a liability; once unimaginable comparisons are now routinely heard.

Jewish and Palestinian academics likened Israel’s actions in Gaza to the Nazi massacre in the Warsaw Ghetto. A Vatican cardinal referred to Gaza as a “giant concentration camp”.

British MP Gerald Kaufman, once a staunch Zionist, told the House of Commons, “My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow, [Poland]. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.”

Kaufman continued, “my grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza”.

There have been unprecedented expressions of support for boycott, divestment and sanctions from major trade unions in Italy, Canada and New Zealand.

An all-party group of city councillors in Birmingham, Europe’s second largest municipal government, urged the British government to follow suit.

Israel is extremely vulnerable to such a campaign. Little noticed amid the carnage in Gaza, Israel took another momentous step towards formal apartheid when the Knesset elections committee voted to ban Arab parties from participating in upcoming elections.

Zionism, an ideology of racial supremacy, is a dying project, in retreat and failing to find new recruits. With enough pressure, and relatively quickly, Israelis too would likely produce their own de Klerk ready to negotiate a way out.

Every new massacre makes it harder, but a de-zionised, decolonised, reintegrated Palestine affording equal rights to all who live in it, regardless of religion or ethnicity, and return for refugees is not a utopian dream.

It is within reach, in our lifetimes.

But it is far from inevitable.

We can be sure that Western and Arab governments will continue to support Israeli apartheid under the guise of the “peace process” unless decisively challenged.

The mobilisations of the past three weeks showed that a different world is possible and within our grasp if we support the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

Abuminah speaks some truth here.

Israel is doomed if it follows South Africa's path of appeasement.

Israel screwed up in Gaza by not finishing the job.

The PR disaster that was the Gaza invasion would have been worth it only if the Isreli Defence Force had been allowed to completely destroy Hamas.

Now Israel still has Hamas to deal with and has a greater PR problem than ever.

Israel's only hope is to ignore Western opinion, refuse advice from the Obama administration and vigorously defend her territory against all-comers.

If this happens Israel may have a chance. If it doesn't we are looking at the destruction of the only free nation in the Middle East.

Flirting Across the Florida Straits

Raul Castro and President Obama are like two teenagers eyeing each other at a party.

They both know they want to get together, but neither wants to be seen to make the first move.

How long until they're hot and heavy in the back seat?

From the Communist Party USA's Political Affairs

Cuba has again urged the new US administration of President Barack Obama to act fast towards improving relations between Washington and Havana according to press reports from Guatemala City at the meeting of Non-Aligned Movement foreign affairs ministers meeting.

"We are ready to sit down at a table and talk in a civilized manner, but it is not up to Cuba to take the first step" Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said at a press conference in Guatemala City, confirming the position of President Raul Castro administration towards President Barack Obama.

"Cuba aspires to having normal and respectful relations with the United States," he said, calling on Obama to carry out "a profound revision" of US policy toward Havana, one that would include putting an end to the economic embargo Washington imposed on the communist-ruled island in 1962.

The minister also praised Obama for signing executive orders to close the detention centre for suspected terrorists located on the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay.

"The Guantanamo naval base remains against the will and desire of the people and the government of Cuba" said Roque.

The two countries have had no diplomatic ties since shortly after the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power in 1959, though each maintains an interests sections in the other's capital.

Cuba's former leader Fidel Castro and his brother, President Raul Castro, had recently expressed warm words for Obama, which were in sharp contrast with decades of anti-US rhetoric.

Fidel, retired and still convalescing from the serious illness that forced him to effectively step down in July 2006, has called Obama a honest man and praised his inaugural address.

In an article titled "Reflection" the Cuban revolution leader said he "did not harbor the slightest doubt about the honesty with which Obama".

Raul has said more than once that he was prepared to meet with Obama at a time and place of the US leader's choosing.

Truth in Jest

From an American friend.

Dan Rather, Katie Couric, and an Israeli commando were captured by terrorists in Iraq . The leader of the terrorists told them that he would grant them each one last request before they were beheaded.

Dan Rather said, 'Well, I'm a Texan, so I'd like one last bowlful of hot spicy chili.'

The leader nodded to an underling who left and returned with the chili.

Rather ate it all and said, 'Now I can die content.'

Katie Couric said, 'I'm a reporter to the end. I want to take out my tape recorder and describe the scene here and what's about to happen. Maybe someday someone will hear it and know that I was on the job till the end.'

The terror leader directed an aide to hand over the tape recorder and Couric dictated some comments. She then said, 'Now I can die happy.'

The leader turned and said, 'And now, Mr. Israeli tough guy, what is your final wish?'
'
Kick me in the ass,' said the soldier.'

'What?' asked the leader? 'Will you mock us in your last hour?'

'No, I'm not kidding. I want you to kick me in the ass,' insisted the Israeli.

So the leader shoved him into the open and kicked him in the ass.

The soldier went sprawling, but rolled to his knees, pulled a 9 mm pistol from under his flak jacket, and shot the leader dead. In the resulting confusion, he jumped to his knapsack, pulled out his carbine and sprayed the terrorists with gunfire.
In a flash, all terrorists were either dead or fleeing for their lives.

As the soldier was untying Rather and Couric, they asked him, 'Why didn't you just shoot them in the beginning? Why did you ask them to kick you in the ass first?'

'What?' replied the Israeli, 'and have you two assholes report that I was the aggressor?

The Truth About "Che"

Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the iconic Argentine revolutionary and T Shirt model, is about to gain a new wave of fans with the release of Steven Soderbergh’s "four-hour Spanish-language epic Che".


Former Romanian Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence official ever to have defected from the Soviet bloc.

He had intimate knowledge of the people who turned "Che" from a psychotic mass murderer into the idol of millions of wannabe revolutionaries and vapid trendies.

In an article in Frontpage Magazine Pacepa explains how the KGB turned a failed, cowardly and much flawed revolutionary into a hero.

Some excerpts;

Hollywood is kicking off 2009 with a monumental deception: Steven Soderbergh’s four-hour Spanish-language epic Che, rendering a sadistic Marxist killer as, according to the New York Times, a “true revolutionary through the stations of his martyrdom.”[1] The word “stations” suggests the adoration of Christ in the Stations of the Cross. The movie’s protagonist, Benicio del Toro, does indeed compare “the Cuban Revolution hero Ernesto Guevara” with Jesus Christ.


Soderbergh’s Che is a fiction once created by the KGB community, including my Romanian espionage service, the DIE, and at that time that placed me squarely in the picture. The real Che was an assassin who presided over communist firing squads and founded Cuba’s ghastly gulag system. He was also a coward who called upon others to fight to the death for the communist cause and sent to the scaffold hundreds who did not do that, yet he surrendered himself to the Bolivian army without a fight even though he was armed to the teeth. “Don’t kill me,” Che begged his captors. “I am worth more to you alive than dead.” Soderbergh’s movie omitted this part—it would have demolished his Che...

In the 1960s, the Soviet bloc’s popularity stood at an all-time low. The Soviets’ brutal suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising and their instigation of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis disgusted the world, and every bloc ruler tried to save face in his own way...

The Castro brothers, who feared any liberalization, decided to just plaster a romantic revolutionary façade over their disastrous communism, which was starving the country. They chose Che as poster-boy, because he had been executed in Bolivia, at that time a U.S. ally, and could be portrayed as a martyr of American imperialism.

“Operation Che” was launched to the world by the book Revolution in the Revolution, a primer for communist guerrilla insurrection written by French terrorist Régis Debray, which praised Che to the skies. Debray dedicated his life to exporting Cuban-style revolution throughout Latin America, but in 1967 a Bolivian special forces unit trained by the U.S. captured him, along with Che’s entire guerrilla band.

Che was sentenced to death and executed for terrorism and mass murder. Debray was sentenced to 30 years in jail, but he was released after three years following the intervention of French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, a communist romantically involved with the KGB, who was also the ideologue of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist band. Sartre proclaimed Guevara “the most complete human being of our times...”

In 1970, the Castro brothers shifted Che’s sanctification into high gear. Alberto Korda, a Cuban intelligence officer working undercover as a photographer for the Cuban newspaper Revolución, produced a romanticized picture of Che. That now-famous Che, wearing long, curly locks of hair and a revolutionary beret with a star on it, and looking straight into the viewer’s eyes, is the logo advertising Soderbergh’s movie.

It is noteworthy that this picture of Che was introduced to the world by a KGB operative working undercover as a writer—I. Lavretsky, in a book entitled Ernesto Che Guevara, which was edited by the KGB. The KGB entitled the picture “Guerrillero Heroico” and disseminated it throughout South America—Cuba’s area of influence. Italian millionaire publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, another communist romantically involved with the KGB, flooded the rest of world with Che’s picture printed on posters and T-shirts. Feltrinelli became a terrorist himself, and he was killed in 1972 while planting a bomb outside Milan.

I first heard Che’s name in 1959 from General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, the former chief Soviet intelligence adviser to Romania, who afterwards directed Castro’s “revolution” and was rewarded by being promoted to head the almighty Soviet foreign intelligence organization, a position he held for fifteen years. He landed in Bucharest with his boss, Nikita Khrushchev, for consultations on West Berlin and “our Cuban Gayane.” Gayane was the overall code name of the operation for Sovietizing Eastern Europe.

At that time, the Soviet party bureaucracy believed that Fidel Castro was just an adventurer, and it was reluctant to endorse him. But Sakharovsky had been impressed by the devotion to communism of Fidel’s brother Raúl and of his lieutenant, Ernesto Guevara, and he made them the main protagonists in “our Cuban Gayane.” The two were brought black to Moscow to be indoctrinated and trained, and were given a KGB adviser.

Returned to the Sierra Maestra, Che proved to be a real, cold-blooded assassin in the mold of the KGB—which killed over 20 million people in the Soviet Union alone. “I fired a .32 caliber bullet into the right hemisphere of his brain that came out through his temple,” Che wrote in his diary, describing the execution of Eutimio Guerra, a “traitor of the Revolution” whom he shot in February 1957. Guerra was the seventh person Che had killed. “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is not necessary,” he explained. “These procedures are archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolution must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.”

On January 1st, 1959, the “Cuban Gayane” succeeded, and the KGB charged Che to cleanse the whole Cuba of “anti-revolutionaries.” Thousands were sent to “el paredón” (the wall) and shot. Javier Arzuaga, who was chaplain at La Cabaña prison in early 1959, wrote in his book, Cuba 1959: La Galeria de la Muerte, that he had witnessed “the criminal Che” ordering the execution of some two hundred innocent Cubans. “I pleaded many times with Che on behalf of prisoners. I remember especially the case of Ariel Lima, a young boy who was only 16 years old. Che did not budge. I became so traumatized that at the end of May 1959 I was ordered to leave the parish Casa Blanca, where La Cabaña was located. … I went to Mexico for treatment.”


Che in Moscow in November 1964, just before he secretly left to fulfil his dream of spreading communist revolution to Bolivia...

It is also time to stop the fifty-year-long lie, reinforced by Soderbergh’s movie, that the Castro brothers and their hangman Che were independent nationalists. In 1972I attended a six-hour public speech in which Fidel preached the same lie. The next day I went ocean fishing with Raúl. The other guest on the fishing boat was a Soviet who introduced himself as Nikolay Sergeyevich. “That's Colonel Leonov,” Sergio del Valle, my Cuban counterpart, whispered into my ear. Earlier he had identified Leonov to me as Raúl’s and Che’s KGB adviser in the 1950s and 1960s. There, on that boat, it hit me more clearly than ever before or since that the KGB was holding the reins of the Castros’ revolutionary wagon. Ten years later, Nikolay Leonov was rewarded for his handling of Raúl and Che by being promoted general and deputy chairman of the whole KGB.

In the 1970s, the KGB was a state within the state. Today the KGB, rebaptized FSB, is the state in Russia, and Soderbergh’s Che is manna from heaven for its Latin American surrogates. A couple of months ago two Kremlin’s puppets, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales, expelled on the same day the U.S. ambassadors to their countries. Thousands of people carrying the portrait of Soderbergh’s Che took to the streets calling for Russian military protection. Russian military ships are now back in Cuba—and newly in Venezuela—for the first time since the Cuban missile crisis.

“Deception works like cocaine,” Yury Andropov, the father of contemporary Russia’s era of deception, used to tell me when he was KGB chairman. Then he would explain. “If you sniff it once or twice, it may not change your life. If you use it day after day, though, it will make you into an addict, a different man.” Mao put it his own way: “A lie repeated a hundred times becomes the truth.” Soderbergh’s movie on Che is proving both correct.

On Unemployment and Tomatoes

This may wind some people up.

The spectre of mass unemployment is stalking the world. All sorts of solutions are being proposed, except the obvious one.

Human labour is subject to the law of supply and demand, just like oil or tomatoes.

There is no getting away from this basic truth.

Increase the price of labour beyond what the market will bear and demand will drop-hence unemployment.

What happens to tomatoes when demand fluctuates?

If there is a good growing season and tomatoes are plentiful, prices will drop and people buy more tomatoes relative to other foods. All tomatoes are still sold, none are wasted or left to rot, none are "unemployed".

What happens if the government sets a minimum tomato price-to "protect" tomato producers. Simple-all tomatoes worth less than the arbitrary price are dumped-they become "unemployed".

In a free economy there can be no involuntary unemployment because there is no state interference in the price of labour.

When demand for labour is high, employers bid up the price of labour-they pay more in cash or benefits to attract staff from their competitors.

When demand for labour is low, employers simply re-nogotiate their contracts down to find the right equilibrium. Some workers may get temporarily less, but everyone still has a job. Everyone is still utilised and continues to pay some tax.

Unfortunately, in the western world at least, it is very difficult to lower remuneration packages once established. Regardless of the demand for labour employers have no opportunity to negotiate pay rates downwards.

Therefore, in order to avoid bankruptcy employers have no alternative but to sack staff.

A few workers maintain their pay and perks-the rest are on the scrapheap.

This means companies lose some of their investment in training workers making any recovery slower. The government loses tax revenues and must either cut services, print money (inflation)or raise taxes on those still employing and working, further retarding recovery.

Worst of all thousands of people rot on welfare, just like so many sub-standard tomatoes.

The cure for unemployment is glaringly obvious.

Get the government out of the labour market.

Let people buy and sell their labour like we buy and sell any other commodity.

People are worth more than tomatoes, surely they deserve at least as much freedom?

"This Will End in Tears"

Gerald Warner witing in the UK Telegraph

This will end in tears. The Obama hysteria is not merely embarrassing to witness, it is itself contributory to the scale of the disaster that is coming. What we are experiencing, in the deepening days of a global depression, is the desperate suspension of disbelief by people of intelligence - la trahison des clercs - in a pathetic effort to hypnotise themselves into the delusion that it will be all right on the night. It will not be all right.

We have been here before. In the spring of 1997, to be precise, when a charismatic, young prime minister entered Downing Street, cheered by children bussed in for the occasion waving plastic Union Jacks. A very few of us at that time incurred searing reproaches for denouncing the Great Charlatan (as I have always denominated Tony Blair) and dissenting from the public hysteria. Three times a deluded Britain elected that transparent fraud. Yesterday, when national bankruptcy became a formal reality, we reaped the bitter harvest of the Blair/Brown imposture.

The burnt child, contrary to conventional wisdom, does not fear the fire. After the Blair experience there is no excuse for anybody in Britain falling for Obama. Yet today, in this country, even some of those who remained sane during the emotional spasm of the Diana aberration are pumping the air for Princess Barack. At a time of gross economic and geopolitical instability throughout the Western world, this is beyond irresponsibility.

Hat tip RBO

Rush Limbaugh "I Hope Obama Fails"

I'm with you Rush.

Black&Right

This is brilliant.

Recorded before the US election, this is a man is a philosopher.



hat tip Truth&Consequences

China or Taiwan, Which Will Obama Choose?

Let's see if president Barack Obama maintains US support for Taiwanese independence.

From China Confidential


As U.S. President Barack Obama prepared to take office, the Chinese Ministry of Defense called on him to improve military relations. China also released a 2008 military budget that indicates an 18 percent increase in spending.

Defense ministry spokesman Hu Changming urged Obama to "remove obstacles to exchanges" between the two countries, including a halt of weapons sales to Taiwan.

Hu spoke to reporters, Tuesday, during the release of a military policy paper "China's National Defense in 2008."

Hu sad China hopes to build a stronger military relationship with the United States. He cited forces for independence in Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang as top security concerns for China, as well as the global economic crisis.

The paper did not announce new spending figures for China's 2.3 million-person armed forces. The $59 billion military budget from 2008 represented an 18 percent increase from 2007.

China's foreign ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, reiterated that China opposes American sale of weapons to Taiwan. She told reporters Tuesday afternoon that China feels the United States must abide by three joint communiqués--particularly the principles of the communique to stop sale of weapons to Taiwan.

Defense sales to Taiwan have been a source of contention between the United States and China since the countries established relations, 30 years ago. Just last October, China suspended senior-level visits and exchanges after the United States refused to cancel a $6.5 billion arms sale to Taiwan, including Patriot missiles and helicopters.

Libertarianism and Banning Trade With China

Anonymous asked;

How is a (presumably government-imposed) ban on trade with China consistent with so-called "libertarian" philosophy?

Anonymous asked this question because I advocate a government ban on trade with China and I also claim to be a libertarian.

Some have called this a contradiction.

Here's why it's not.

A libertarian is someone who wants to live a life as free as possible from government interference, hindrance or "support".

Note the "as possible" qualifier. A libertarian is not an anarchist. A libertarian believes in minimal government, not zero government.

In my view a libertarian society is not one in which everone may do as they please, but one where you may do as you want as long as you do not infringe the legitimate rights of others.

Therefore theft, fraud, assault, rape and murder are not acceptable in a libertarian society. Such crimes should be stamped out by the state through its police force, courts and jails-and by the way, I am unconvinced of the moral legitimacy of privately run prisons.

That part of the libertarian state takes care of internal threats. If your actions don't hurt your neighbours, that part of the state won't bother you.

Just as every country has criminal individuals, every planet (as far as we know) has criminal governments.

Some of these governments are satisfied with merely oppressing their own. Many unfortunately move onto threatening other peoples as well.

At the point these rogue governments become in any way a danger to the security and safety of other nations they become of legitimate concern to those nations.

They become the legitimate target of intelligence services and it is the duty of free nations to arm themselves against them.

If intelligence is good enough, it is also perfectly legitimate to pre-emptively strike the offending nation or nations.

For example, if Israel had proof that Iran were developing nuclear weapons with the intention of annihlating Tel Aviv or Haifa, Israel, would be morally justified in striking first.

In a war, or pre-war situation, it is a free nation's duty to ban trade with the actual or potential enemy.

This is justified as necessary to protect the rights of its free citizens.

If Israel kows that Iran is planning war, it should in the name of protecting its people, ban all international intercourse that could in any way strengthen economically, militarily or politically the tyrants of Tehran.

The same principle must apply to New Zealand and its enemies.

It is the duty of any New Zealand government-especially a libertarian government, to clamp down on any private or public support for this country's enemies.

Supporting the enemy of your own country is treason. This is the most serious crime there is, as it threatens not one life but millions. It can (and has) lead to the destruction or enslavement of entire peoples.

If it is a libertarian government's duty to prevent or punish theft, rape, or murder, why should not the same principle apply to treason?

Trading with an enemy is treason, whether hostilities have been openly declared or not. Therefore it is the duty of a libertarian government to prevent such trade.

A failure to do so, is a betrayal of the both the people and the principle.

That is my arguement for the PRINCIPLE that trade bans, in certain circumtances are entirely in accord with libertarian philosophy.

There is ample evidence that China is a long term military and political threat to New Zealand' security. Therefor all genuine libertarians should be working to cut trade, political and even cultural ties to the Butchers of Beijing.

When China abandons its expansionist plans, then we can think about re-forging ties-not before.

I have written several posts on the Chinese threat and will continue to do so.

I pray that New Zealand will not wait until war breaks out to cut the chains to China.

I hope we will wake up before we are so enmeshed in China's net that we have no hope of breaking free.

Biased Inauguration Coverage? No!!!

David Horowitz points out some less than even-handed media treatment.

Headlines On This Date 4 Years Ago:

"Republicans spending $42 million on inauguration while troops Die in unarmored Humvees"

"Bush extravagance exceeds any reason during tough economic times"

"Fat cats get their $42 million inauguration party, Ordinary Americans get the shaft"

Headlines Today:

"Historic Obama Inauguration will cost only $120 million"

"Obama Spends $120 million on inauguration; America Needs A Big Party"

"Everyman Obama shows America how to celebrate"

"Citibank executives contribute $8 million to Obama Inauguration"

Obama File 64 Symbolic? Socialist Singer Seeger Serenades Obama

Obama file 63 here

What could be more symbolic of the Obama's presidency?

At Barack Obama's inauguration concert-lifelong communist Pete Seeger singing fellow communist Woody Guthrie's socialist anthem "This Land is Your Land" on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.



Fred Klonsky-son of communist Robert Klonsky, former SDS activist, Progressives for Obama supporter and brother of Obama colleague Mike Klonsky, marked the occasion on his blog.

How ironic. Here was the legendary Pete Seeger singing for the president-elect at the Lincoln Memorial. Seeger, a life-long radical, one-time communist, fighter for working people and defender of the environment from corporate greed. For the first time many got to hear the original Woody Guthrie lyrics to This Land is Your Land, which include these words:

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn’t say nothing;
That side was made for you and me.

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I’d seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

Fred Klonsky did get one thing wrong, 90 year old Pete Seeger remains a communist to this day.


Seeger first subscribed to the Communist Party paper New Masses in 1932 and formally joined the party ten years later, under the influence of his party member father.

Seeger says he left the party in 1950, but continued involvement in communist fronts and organs for decades including;

American Peace Mobilization; the American Youth Congress; the Communist Party; American Youth for Democracy; the Council on African Affairs; the American Committee for Yugoslav Relief; the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship; the Civil Rights Congress; the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born; the Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy; the Jefferson School of Social Science; Veterans Against Discrimination of Civil Rights Congress; New Masses; Daily World; the Labor Youth League; the California Labor School; the National Lawyers Guild; Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade; the Committee for the First Amendment; the American Peace Crusade; the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee; and the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Obama's communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis was also active in the Committee for Protection of Foreign Born. Both also moved in CPUSA cultural circles in the same time period. It would be fascinating to know if the two ever met.

In 2004 Seeger was still reading the Communist Party paper Peoples Weekly World.

Today Pete Seeger and wife Toshi serve on the advisory board of the Communist Party splinter group Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism-an organisation Barack Obama is very familiar with.

Other CCDS advisory board members include long time obama friend an supporter Timuel Black and radical academics Angela Davis and Noam Chomsky.


Angela Davis left, Pete Seeger, celebrating gift of Communist Party literature to Tamiment Library New York.

Angela Davis and Noam Chomsky both serve on the board of Movement for a Democratic Society, which in turn created Progressives For Obama.

Perhaps for an encore Pete Seeger should have sung "If I Had a Hammer-and a Sickle?"

Obama file 65 here

Auckland Firm Targeted by Socialists, Anarchists

Socialist Aotearoa, anarchists and Muslims targeted Auckland company Rakon last Friday-allegedly for supplying arms components used by the Israel Defence Force.

From Socialist Aotearoa


One hundred and fifty people marched into the industrial estates of South Auckland today to confront Rakon, a New Zealand company that manufactures the crystal oscillators used in Israeli bombs. A highly charged and passionate mobilisation faced down private security guards and a police force that acted like an army, succeeding in launching paint bombs that splattered in blood red explosions on Rakon's corporate cream front.

The warning to Rakon is clear. Divest from your military contracts, or you will face repeated actions until you stop. The example of the Raytheon direct actions in the Irish city of Derry point the way to militant, direct action resistance of the war machine that hides in our industrial estates.



Catholic Worker anarchist Tyler Culpepper got himself arrested for his paintbrush vandalism.


Statue Steve from Northland bro?

Stephen Franks Gets it 100% Right

God its good to have lawyer on the blogosphere, who actually understands human rights.

Commenting on the case where an Invercargill Muslim cafe owner refused service to two Israeli born women, Stephen Franks makes the point that "shunning" is (or should be) a right.

The Israeli ambassador should butt out. I object to his attempt to circumscribe the freedom of Turkish New Zealanders,. The Israeli New Zealanders were right to draw attention to the issue, but they do not need the law or the government to intervene simply because they have been offended.

Though I do not share the Invercargill Turks’ views on Israel in any degree, I defend them. I defend their right to express their views by shunning citizens of a state they consider to be evil.

I would not shun an ANC South African despite their government’s support of Mugabe. I would not shun a Sudanese despite Darfur, without evidence of complicity or support for their odious government’s behaviour. I do not shun Moslems despite their religion’s abhorrent attitude to women. To me it is discourteous to shun people. I have not walked in their shoes. I do not know their personal views of the beliefs or conduct that offends me.

If a government agency acted as the Turks did it would be utterly wrong. The state weilds the coercive power of us all. It must be tolerant in a free society. Without proof of involvement in or support of unlawful acts the State certainly should not discriminate against New Zealand citizens simply because they are of a group in which some members have unpopular opinions.

But the vigour of our values (in the long term our freedoms) may depend on the willingness of individuals to be intolerant so long as they do not coerce their fellow citizens. So I defend the right of any private citizen to shun whoever they want on their own property.

That right to shun can not depend on first establishing exactly what an individual thinks. Most effective social sanctions are class sanctions. They depend on stereotyping. Without stereotyping much essential human action would be paralysed.

I may be hesitant to inflict class punishment for the behaviour of only some of the members of a class. Perhaps at an individual level I might show disgust if I had reason to think they endorsed the detested actions or opinions. But not all of us must be made so squeamish by law.

There are many individual ways to express moral repugnance. Individuals can be obliged to take sides, to say where they stand, and if necessary to wear the costs of unpopular positions. The Springbok tour protesters who told individual rugby fans what they thought of them, who shunned them, were exercising freedom. Freedom is not freedom if we can not do that. Freedom relies on social sanctions as incentives for conduct most of us approve, and as incentives to avoid conduct most of us disapprove. Social sanctions only work if there is a cost to expressing, or supporting, or not denouncing abhorred positions.

Group punishment irrespective of the target’s personal responsibility is exactly what our government is doing to put pressure on the Fijian government. It is the mechanism in some strikes. I defend the right of union members to refuse to unload freight from a state whose aggression they detest, to put pressure on that state’s citizens in turn to put pressure on their state.

Though I do not share the Turks’ views on Israel in any degree, I defend their right to express their views as they have.

Well said Stephen!

In my opinion, shunning or "discrimination" should not only be a right, but in many cases it is a virtue and a responsibility.

That is why I support the banning of trade with China for instance.

While I generally support the Israeli actions in Gaza, I also support the right of the Invercargill cafe owner to act as he did.

A free society must allow both freedom of association and equally as importantly-freedom of non-association.

So Sad

Obama and the KEEPING of Power

It is both fascinating and horrifying to watch Barack Obama's unfolding power grab.

The "shortly to be" president has set up a new organisation, "Organising for America" to hold together and build on the mass movement that brought him to power.



According to the Los Angeles Times, Republicans and some Democrats fear that the new organisation will give Obama both a power base independent of the Democratic Party and a club with which to beat independent minded lawmakers back into line.

As Barack Obama builds his administration and prepares to take office next week, his political team is quietly planning for a nationwide hiring binge that would marshal an army of full-time organizers to press the new president's agenda and lay the foundation for his reelection.

The organization, known internally as "Barack Obama 2.0," is being designed to sustain a grass-roots network of millions that was mobilized last year to elect Obama and now is widely considered the country's most potent political machine.

Organizers and even Republicans say the scope of this permanent campaign structure is unprecedented for a president. People familiar with the plan say Obama's team would use the network in part to pressure lawmakers -- particularly wavering Democrats -- to help him pass complex legislation on the economy, healthcare and energy.

The plan could prompt tensions with members of Congress, who are unlikely to welcome the idea of Obama's political network targeting them from within their own districts. Already, Democratic Party officials on the state level worry that it could become a competing political force that revolves around the president's ambitions while diminishing the needs of down-ballot Democrats.

Though the plan still is emerging, one source with knowledge of the internal discussion said the organization could have an annual budget of $75 million in privately raised funds. Another said it would deploy hundreds of paid staff members -- possibly one for every congressional district in certain politically important states and even more in larger battlegrounds such as Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Virginia and North Carolina.

To paraphrase Lenin;

"It is not the gaining of power that is important-it is the KEEPING of power".

Support "Begging for Billionaires"

US film maker and activist Philip Klein is committed to defending private property rights from the abuse of Eminent Domain.

For centuries Eminent Domain has allowed governments to forcibly purchase private land for public projects-roads, schools, military bases etc.

In recent years this concept has been expanded to allow the seizure of private land for private purposes-ie shopping malls, residential or business developments.

A recipe for corruption, this gives those with money and influence, the power to strip property owners of their time honoured rights.

Corporate fascism I call it.

This problem effects more than just the USA. In a recent review of the Resource management Act, the granting of such powers were briefly mooted before being rightly rejected by the new national government.

Mark my words-the idea will return.

Private property rights are the back bone of a free society. As freedom declines world wide, expect the expansion of Eminent Domain to become more and more common.

Philip Klein has produced a new documentary on the subject Begging for Billionaires . Check out the trailer here.



Go to info@beggingforbillionaires for more information.

"Depressflation"

Former Clinton advisor Dick Morris on what's in store for the US economy-and the rest of us.

Have you ever heard of a "depressflation"?

No surprise if you haven't. It's a term I coined myself, to describe the imminent
-- and inevitable -- result of the Democrats' plans for "rescuing" the economy.

Think 1970s-style "stagflation" but much, much worse: massive inflation, even hyperinflation, together with Depression-like economic stagnation. A depressflation.

Why is this inevitable? Because with a bi-partisan consensus that deficits are vital in fighting the crisis (or easing the pain) there is no constraint on Obama and his party. The sky is the limit on spending, to the tune of a trillion-plus dollars over the next two years alone.

And there are only two ways to pay for it: (1) printing more money, which causes inflation, and (2) hiking taxes, which kills investment, businesses and jobs.

Then the question will be: When will we realize that government intervention is magnifying, not solving the problems that caused the crisis? When will the patience of the public with Obama's remedies run out?

My guess is that it won't be until 2012 -- or after.

Not nice-but realistic.

Australian Linked to Narco Terrorist FARC

An Australian Greens activist has been "designated" by the US Treasury Dept as a key agent of the narco-terrorist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).


He is Vlaudin Rodrigo Vega (aka "Carlos Vlaudin") who stood for the Australian Greens in the Fowler electorate in the 2007 Federal Elections.





According to a January 14th Treasury Department press release;

"Washington, DC--The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) today designated three international representatives of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a narco-terrorist organization. The OFAC action was taken pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (Kingpin Act), which applies financial sanctions against significant foreign narcotics traffickers and organizations, like the FARC.

"Today's action exposes three additional members of the FARC's International Commission," said Adam J. Szubin, Director of OFAC. "The FARC is one of the world's largest suppliers of cocaine and continues to be Colombia's most notorious and vicious narco-terrorist organization. This is the seventh action over the past year that OFAC has taken against this group and we will continue our efforts to financially isolate the FARC, its leaders and their support network."

The three individuals designated are identified as key members of the FARC's International Commission: Omar Arturo Zabala Padilla (alias "Lucas Gualdron"), Maria Remedios Garcia Albert (alias "Soraya" and "Irene"), and Vlaudin Rodrigo Vega (alias "Carlos Vlaudin"). These International Commission members represent the FARC in France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, and Australia.

As representatives of the FARC and members of its International Commission, these individuals work abroad to obtain recruits, support, and protection for the FARC's acts of narcotics trafficking and terrorism. Omar Arturo Zabala Padilla, the FARC's International Commission member for France, Italy and Switzerland, directs nearly 80% of the FARC's activities in Europe, which include contacts with other terrorist groups and arms deals. Maria Remedios Garcia Albert, the FARC's International Commission member for Spain, a key liaison between the leadership of the FARC and its supporters based in Europe, was arrested by Spanish authorities on July 26, 2008 and later released pending trial. Files recovered from the computer of Raul Reyes, a top FARC leader who was killed by Colombian forces in a March 2008 raid, noted the "special support" of Vlaudin Rodrigo Vega, the FARC's International Commission member for Australia."

Mr Vega has admitted being a FARC supporter.

According to The Australian August 5th 2008;

Colombian intelligence was working through Interpol to confirm the identity and activity of an Australian supporter referred to by the nickname "Carlos Vlaudin" in computers captured from FARC, according to a weekend report in the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo.

In June, a Chilean-born candidate for the Australian Greens, Vlaudin Vega, told The Australian he was a FARC supporter. Mr Vega said if his unusual first name were mentioned in the "alleged document" on a FARC computer, it would be him.

In March, Colombian forces killed the No2 FARC leader Raul Reyes and seized his computers. Reyes was responsible for FARC's International Commission, which ran propaganda campaigns and raised money.

FARC is listed as a terrorist organisation in Europe and the US, but not in Australia.

In 2002 Mr Vega was coordinator of the Colombian Solidarity Committee (CSC) in Sydney.

More recently he has been active in the Australian Bolivarian Circles, a support group for Hugo Chavez's socialist Venezuelan government.

Supporters of the Venezuelan and Cuban revolutions assembled on April 11 at the Iberoamerican square to commemorate the failure of the April 2002 US-backed coup against the government of Venezuela’s socialist president, Hugo Chavez.

In April 2007 Mr Vega organised a Sydney event, attended by Venezuelan Charges D'Affaires Nelson Davila and Cuban consul general Nelida Hernandez Carmona to mark the failed 2002 coup attempt against Hugo Chavez. The event was also sponsored by members of Australia's largest Marxist-Leninist organisation Democratic Socialist perspective, including leading member Lisa Macdonald.

From the DSP's Green Left Weekly April 13th 2007

Supporters of the Venezuelan and Cuban revolutions assembled on April 11 at the Iberoamerican square to commemorate the failure of the April 2002 US-backed coup against the government of Venezuela’s socialist president, Hugo Chavez.


Cuban consul general Nelida Hernandez Carmona, Buena Ventura Reyes Acosta, Nelson Davila and Alicia Corredera.


Venezuelan charge d’affaires Nelson Davila, standing in front of a statue of Simon Bolivar, the Venezuelan-born South American independence hero who led a war of liberation against Spanish colonialism in the 19th century, spoke of the need for continued solidarity with Venezuela. Vlaudin Vega of the Bolivarian Circle, organisers of the event, explained that the revolution was strongly rooted in the mass organisation of the people and thus able to defeat the coup attempt. Lisa Macdonald from the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network emphasised the importance of getting the word out to Australians about Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution, led by Chavez’s government.

At the statue of Jose Marti, the vice-president of Cuba’s Institute of Friendship with the People, Buena Ventura Reyes Acosta, stressed that solidarity bonded those who support Cuba and Venezuela.

In August 2001 Mr Vlaudin was the leader of 16 protestors who took over the Colombian consulate in Sydney. Although the matter was resolved peacefully the consulate at one point was surrounded by heavily armed tactical response police.

Congratulations to an Aussie Hero

From the Australian Department of Defence


Mark Donaldson was born in Waratah, Newcastle, NSW on 2 April 1979. He spent his formative years in northern NSW where he graduated from high school in 1996.

Trooper Donaldson enlisted into the Australian Army on 18 june 2002 and entered recruit training at the Army Recruit Training Centre, Kapooka, NSW. He demonstrated an early aptitude for soldiering and was awarded the prizes for best shot and best at physical training in his platoon. Subsequently he was allocated to the Royal Australian infantry corps and posted to the school of infantry at Singleton, NSW, where he excelled in his initial employment training. At the completion of this training he was again awarded best shot and best at physical training, as well as the award for the most outstanding soldier in his platoon.

He was posted to 1st battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, Townsville, QLD in November 2002. It was during this time that Trooper Donaldson decided to pursue his ambition to join the special air service regiment.

In February 2004, he successfully completed the Special Air Service Regiment selection course and was posted to the regiment in may 2004. He was then posted to I Troop, 3 Special Air Service Squadron. Since that time he has been deployed on operations to East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq.

On 12 August 2008, Trooper Donaldson was wounded in action whilst conducting nightime operations in Oruzgan Province, Afghanistan. He recovered from his minor wounds and continued on the deployment.

Trooper Donaldson was involved in an incident on 2 September 2008 in Oruzgan Province, Afghanistan that resulted in him being awarded the Victoria Cross for Australia.

On 2 September 2008, during the conduct of a fighting patrol, Trooper Donaldson was travelling in a combined Afghan, US and Australian vehicle convoy that was engaged by a numerically superior, entrenched and coordinated enemy ambush. The ambush was initiated by a high volume of sustained machine gun fire coupled with the effective use of rocket propelled grenades. Such was the effect of the initiation that the combined patrol suffered numerous casualties, completely lost the initiative and became immediately suppressed. It was over two hours before the convoy was able to establish a clean break and move to an area free of enemy fire.

In the early stages of the ambush, Trooper Donaldson reacted spontaneously to regain the initiative. He moved rapidly between alternate positions of cover engaging the enemy with 66mm and 84mm anti-armour weapons as well as his M4 rifle. During an early stage of the enemy ambush, he deliberately exposed himself to enemy fire in order to draw attention to himself and thus away from wounded soldiers. This selfless act alone bought enough time for those wounded to be moved to relative safety.

As the enemy had employed the tactic of a rolling ambush, the patrol was forced to conduct numerous vehicle manoeuvres, under intense enemy fire, over a distance of approximately four kilometres to extract the convoy from the engagement area. Compounding the extraction was the fact that casualties had consumed all available space within the vehicles. Those who had not been wounded, including Trooper Donaldson, were left with no option but to run beside the vehicles throughout. During the conduct of this vehicle manoeuvre to extract the convoy from the engagement area, a severely wounded coalition force interpreter was inadvertently left behind. Of his own volition and displaying complete disregard for his own safety, Trooper Donaldson moved alone, on foot, across approximately 80 metres of exposed ground to recover the wounded interpreter. His movement, once identified by the enemy, drew intense and accurate machine gun fire from entrenched positions. Upon reaching the wounded coalition force interpreter, Trooper Donaldson picked him up and carried him back to the relative safety of the vehicles then provided immediate first aid before returning to the fight.

On subsequent occasions during the battle, Trooper Donaldson administered medical care to other wounded soldiers, whilst continually engaging the enemy.

He was invested by her Excellency the Governor-General of Australia at Government House, Canberra on 16 January 2009. Trooper Donaldson remains posted to the Special Air Service Regiment in Perth, WA.


Trooper Donaldson is married to Emma and has a daughter Kaylee. His parents are deceased

Franks on Fiji

A bit late but worth commenting on.

Stephen Franks calls for some realpolitik on Fiji.

He warns that Fiji under PM Bainimarama may move even further into the Chinese camp if New Zealand continues to adopt a hard line on demanding new elections.

says Stephen

Bainimarama is less racist than what he replaced. He is probably less corrupt. But most importantly, he is clearly in power. A basic principle of international relations is realism. The de facto ruler is the ruler.so we ‘eat that’ unless we have the power and the nerve to topple that ruler.

Bainimarama is more democratic than the Chinese we’ve been cuddling up to, more rational than Mbeki and his fellow ex terrorists we’ve failed to denounce, and more capable than the regimes we are spending millions propping up in East Timor and Solomon Islands.

When compared with how we’ve treated other regimes we hold our noses with, our Fiji policy is bullying hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy might be justifiable if it was also pragmatic and unavoidable, but the result is a shambles. Ask any of New Zealand’s formerly Fijian Indian population, who have been following it closely.

We are displaying our incompetence to the worried US and Australia, Even the EU are baffled at our naivety as we drive Fiji unwillingly toward China.

China must be astonished by our bumbling as their once remote dream of getting naval port facilities in the middle of the South Pacific becomes more tangible by the day.

For how long will our pathetic forces be able to help our small island neighbours enforce their fisheries zones if there is a real and hostile naval presence in Fiji, sheltering pirate fishing fleets?

Murray McCully, please abandon the Peters/Clark folly.

I certainly share Stephen's concern. But I wonder that Mr Chaudhry and his comrades may have taken Fiji so far into China's clutches that a change in New Zealand policy would have no effect?

Government Spending Will Only Worsen Recession

I have argued before that increased government spending is NOT the way to beat recession.

US economist Dr. Tracy C. Miller agrees

From Frontpage Magazine

President-elect Obama is considering an economic stimulus package that will include increases in government spending and tax cuts of approximately one trillion dollars. Many fear a prolonged depression resulting from a sharp reduction in consumer spending.

After saving very little for many years, Americans have begun to save more in response to the economic crisis. When people spend less on consumer goods and services, producers sell less and cannot afford to employ as many workers. Thus, it seems self-evident that if unemployment is to be reduced and the economy is to recover from the recession, there must be an increase in spending. If consumers insist on saving more and reducing their spending, it is widely believed that the government should offset this decline by spending more on public works projects.

The above analysis reflects several fallacies that are common in popular discussions about economics. First is the erroneous assumption that if people save more money, total spending will decline. While this would be true if they saved money in cash and stuffed it under their mattresses; in today’s economy, almost all savings is deposited in financial institutions or used to buy stocks, bonds, or mutual funds. Financial institutions and corporations that issue stocks and bonds use that money to fund investment projects. If people save more, more can be invested, which means employment will increase in those firms producing capital goods like machines, computers, and factories. No economic stimulus package is needed because the increase in investment spending will offset the decline in consumer spending, creating new jobs producing investment goods to replace the jobs lost producing consumer goods...

ACT MP Roger Douglas is one of the few politicians to understand this point.

John Key and Bill English please take note.

The PLAN! The PLAN! Obama's PLAN Will Save Us!

Stolen appropriately enough from the Communist Party USA website.

This comes across like a Stalinist propaganda film from the '30s.



These people seriously have no idea what they're doing.

Obama File 63 Obama's "Energy Czar" and the Socialists-Foreign and Domestic

Obama file 62 here


The US blogosphere is abuzz with the news that president-elect Barack Obama's pick for Energy, Environment Coordinator (Enerrgy Czar)-Carol Browner, has ties to the Socialist International.

This comes after after revelations that Obama's proposed Labor Secretary Hilda Solis also has ties to Socialist International and to it's US affiliate the crypto Marxist Democratic Socialists of America.

Further to that, a senior member of Obama's economic transition team, former number two man in Congress, David Bonior has also been confirmed as a member of Democratic Socialists of America-an organisation which has consistently supported Obama throughout his career.

According to the Washington Times

Until last week, Carol M. Browner, President-elect Barack Obama's pick as global warming czar, was listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group's Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for "global governance" and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change.

By Thursday, Mrs. Browner's name and biography had been removed from Socialist International's Web page, though a photo of her speaking June 30 to the group's congress in Greece was still available.


Carol Browner addressing SI 13th Congress, Athens, Greece June 30th 2008 -Acting Now on Climate Change


From the Socialist International website

Browner's membership in a senior SI body should not be downplayed. While once the SI was staunchly anti-communist this has changed dramatically in recent years. Since the fall of communism, several former and "still existing" communist parties, including those of Laos, Cuba and China, now actively participate in the International. In many ways, the SI has replaced the old Communist international as a key driver of socialist change.


Zhang Zhijun Deputy Minister, International Department, Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, addressing SI 13th Congress, Athens, Greece June 30th 2008

While active on the international stage Carol Browner certainly doesn't neglect domestic politics.

Earlier this year Ms Browner endorsed Barck Obama through her leadership position in the League of Conservation Voters.



Though living in Maryland, Carol Browner also donated to the 2006 Senate campaign of long time Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders.

CAROL M BROWNER (THE ALBRIGHT GROUP/ATTORNEY), (Zip code: 20912) $500 to SANDERS FOR SENATE on 05/25/06

As did David Bonior.

Bernie Sanders began his political as a student in the Chicago Young Peoples Socialist League and has long supported communist and socialist front activities. Though nominally independent, Sanders caucuses with the Democrats and was a key founder of the now more than 80 strong alliance of leftists Congressmen (and Senator Sanders) the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Sanders is openly socialist and has worked closely with Democratic Socialists of America for years. Like Hilda Solis and David Bonior, Sanders has attended DSA conferences and the organisation openly supported and financed Sanders' successful Senate campaign.

Which Sanders graciously thanked them for.


DSA's Democratic Left Winter 2006

Then Illinois Senator Barack Obama also backed Bernie Sanders' Senate campaign.



Isn't it great, the way socialists are always helping people?

Obama file 64 here