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Showing posts with label Russia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Russia. Show all posts

Sunday, September 04, 2011

RUSSIAN-ASEAN RELATIONS PROPPED UP

RUSSIAN-ASEAN RELATIONS PROPPED UP

Erle Frayne D. Argonza


I am a strong believer in ASEAN unity, even as I’m strongly convinced that socio-economic and institutional development of its member nations will be accelerated by many folds should they forge an economic union at the least and a political union at the max.

In the international relations terrain, ASEAN can leverage its unified strengths vis a vis former world powers. It is gladdening to note that even prior to the 2015 economic union, such relations are already being forged with couples of nations and regions, inclusive of Russia.

I would prefer the mutual benefits that relating parties can have in terms of the sharing of expertise. Experts constitute the greatest innovators that can build prosperous nations, as 77% of development is constituted by human & social capital. Only 5% of development is contributed by natural resources, so the forging of stronger ties with emerging markets such as Russia should go beyond the conventional “we-bond-to-exchange-natural-resources” Jurassic cliché.

Below is an update ASEAN report about the status of the dialogue between the Russian Federation and the ASEAN.

[Philippines, 04 September 2011]

Source: http://www.asean.org/26480.htm

JOINT STATEMENT OF
THE MINISTERS OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE
ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN NATIONS
AND THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION ON THE OCCASION OF THE
15TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASEAN-RUSSIA DIALOGUE PARTNERSHIP

Bali, 22 July 2011

1. We, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Heads of Delegation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) comprising Brunei Darussalam, the Kingdom of Cambodia, the Republic of Indonesia, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Malaysia, the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, the Republic of the Philippines, the Republic of Singapore, the Kingdom of Thailand, and the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, and the Russian Federation, held the ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conference with the Russian Federation on 22 July 2011 in Bali, Indonesia, on the occasion of the 15th Anniversary of the ASEAN-Russia Dialogue Partnership.

2. We acknowledged with satisfaction that since the establishment of the full ASEAN-Russia Dialogue Partnership in 1996, our cooperative partnership has developed and become comprehensive, turning into an important factor for peace, stability and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region. Considerable progress has been made in all spheres of ASEAN-Russia relations with the establishment of an effective dialogue partnership and cooperation mechanisms.

3. We recalled that the Dialogue Partnership has been elevated to the highest level. The First ASEAN-Russia Summit held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 13 December 2005 laid a strong foundation for the dialogue partnership and defined priority areas of cooperation. The Second ASEAN-Russia Summit in Ha Noi, Viet Nam on 30 October 2010, reaffirmed our commitment to consolidate and further promote ASEAN-Russia progressive and comprehensive partnership. In this regard, we look forward to holding further ASEAN-Russia Summits on a regular basis and an intensified exchange of bilateral visits of Heads of State and Governments of the ASEAN Member States and the Russian Federation.

4. Russia reiterated its continued support for maintaining ASEAN centrality in the evolving regional architecture. ASEAN welcomed Russia’s active contribution to promoting peace, stability and socio-economic development in the region. We reaffirmed our commitment to the development of an ASEAN-led regional architecture that is open, transparent and inclusive, and based on principles of consensus, multilateralism and equality, and generally-accepted norms of international law. This architecture would include the East Asia Summit (EAS), ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM-Plus). ASEAN and Russia are prepared to make efforts with a view to developing working relations between ASEAN-led arrangements and other key multilateral fora, such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Russia appreciated ASEAN’s support for its participation in the East Asia Summit and reaffirmed its readiness to contribute to the EAS process in order to make the expanded forum a common ground for dialogue on broad strategic, political and economic issues of common interest and concern with the aim of promoting peace, stability and economic prosperity in the Asia-Pacific.

5. ASEAN commended Russia’s accession to the 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia (TAC) and its ratification of the Third Protocol to the TAC.

6. We are convinced that the establishment of a South-East Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone (SEANWFZ) can contribute towards global nuclear complete disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation which are crucial for regional peace, security and stability. We confirmed that ASEAN and Russia will work constructively with a view to ensuring early accession of the Nuclear Weapon States to the Protocol to the SEANWFZ Treaty. To that end, the Russian Federation is willing to continue together with other Nuclear Weapon States, consultations with ASEAN on early resolution of outstanding issues pertaining thereof on the basis of the groundwork already done.

7. ASEAN highly appreciated Russia’s continued support for the regular participation of the ASEAN Chair in the G20 Summits.

8. We pledged to continue joint efforts to maintain peace and stability at the regional and global levels. We are convinced that all disputes between states should be resolved through dialogue and by peaceful means without the threat or use of force. We reaffirmed our mutual respect for the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states in accordance with international law.

9. We attached importance to promoting innovative projects in the framework of ASEAN-Russia cooperation, inter alia, in the areas of peaceful use of outer space, non-conventional and renewable energy, tourism, agriculture and food security. We are confident that their realization will contribute to the economic modernization of ASEAN Member States and Russia, the bridging of the development gap between ASEAN countries, socio-economic progress of Siberia and the Russian Far East. Russia reiterated its strong commitment and support for ASEAN’s integration and community building process, including through the Master Plan of ASEAN Connectivity. We agreed to explore enhanced connectivity between ASEAN and other regions, including Russian Far East. ASEAN looked forward to Russia’s support for the implementation of the IAI Work Plan II and other sub-regional initiatives aimed at bridging the development gaps within ASEAN, as well as the practical steps on the Russian side towards developing partnerships in support of the Mekong River basin development and enhancing regional capacity programmes.

10. We are committed, in accordance with the Joint Statement of the Second ASEAN-Russia Summit and the Comprehensive Programme of Action to Promote Cooperation between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Russian Federation 2005-2015, to enhance cooperation in the key areas such as trade, investment, energy security, including renewable and alternative energy, combating terrorism and transnational crime, disaster preparedness and response, science and technology, health care, education, SME, culture and tourism. We noted with satisfaction that the Second ASEAN-Russia Summit gave considerable impetus to the broadening of contacts between the relevant ASEAN bodies and Russian agencies.

11. We noted the fruitful activities of the ASEAN-Russia Working Group on Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime and the ASEAN-Russia Senior Officials Meetings on Transnational Crime Consultations, as a framework for cooperation in tackling terrorism and transnational crime. Russia welcomed the entry into force of the ASEAN Convention on Counter-Terrorism in May 2011. We reiterated strong commitment to work effectively and efficiently to fight against terrorism.

12. We attached importance to the early finalization of the ASEAN-Russia Trade, Economic and Investment Cooperation Roadmap and ASEAN-Russia Disaster Management Cooperation Work Plan, and the implementation of the ASEAN-Russia Energy Cooperation Work Programme.

13. We underscored the need for greater cooperation between ASEAN and Russia in natural disaster early warning and mitigation. To this end, we would further explore practical cooperation, including establishing permanent channels of information exchange, and a system of mutual expert support, including the working-level contacts between National Emergency Management Centre of the EMERCOM of Russia and the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA Centre).

14. We considered the implementation of projects supported by the ASEAN-Russia Dialogue Partnership Financial Fund to be especially helpful in enhancing the outcome of our cooperation. In this regard, ASEAN appreciated the Russian Government’s decision to increase annual contributions to the Fund, beginning in 2011.

15. We recognized the importance of promoting inter-civilizational and intercultural dialogue and moderation, which we considered to be a crucial element in preventing global and regional conflicts and ensuring international peace and security and promoting tolerance, culture of peace and respect for diversity. We further supported cultural cooperation, closer people-to-people contacts, in particular among representatives of parliaments, academia, youth and business communities, and increased cultural exchanges in addition to promoting tourism. In this connection, we considered the Agreement on Cultural Cooperation between the Governments of the Member States of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Government of the Russian Federation of 30 October 2010 to be a basis for such cooperation and therefore called for its early entry into force.

16. We look forward to further enhanced ASEAN-Russia Dialogue Partnership on the basis of mutual benefit and shared interests and see this partnership as an important element of the evolving regional architecture. ASEAN welcomed Russia’s support for an ASEAN community playing proactive role in the global community of nations.

17. We welcomed the steps to carry out the Programme of Activities to commemorate the 15th Anniversary of the ASEAN-Russia Dialogue Partnership and believed that this occasion presents a good opportunity to review our existing cooperation with a view to elevating our partnership to a higher level.

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PROF. ERLE FRAYNE ARGONZA: http://erleargonza.com

Monday, February 07, 2011

RUSSIAN STATE’S KINDNESS TO THE MAFIA OLIGARCHS

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Russia’s federal state had exhibited kindness so far to the mafia oligarchs, one of whom is in jail (the top honcho in the energy industry). This is a clear departure from the Soviet days when organized crime leaders and subordinates were jailed by the thousands in ‘gulag archipelago’ conditions.

The Soviet days are long over in Russia, yet democracy is struggling to take root and governance institutions are strengthening from the fragmentation induced by the anarchic policies of Yeltsin who was, in reality, an agent of the British MI6. It will take some more time for democracy to show strength and resiliency, but clearly the urgency of clipping the powers of the mafia oligarchs is a matter of national security in FSB (KGB) country.

To replay recent history, the former Soviet Union fragmented in ’89 during Gorbachev’s leadership. The Russian Federation was then led by Yeltsin, puppet agent of the Anglo-European oligarchs, and got the largest shares of the pie of Soviet wealth, resources, and military assets (nuke missiles included).

Independent Russia, like the other states, was immediately confronted with the problem of shifting to a market economy. Enterprises were state-owned, and so a sacrosanct policy of the Western puppet Yeltsin was to privatize the firms upon the behest of the International Monetary Fund.

The question thereafter was: who in Russia possesses the money to buy state firms, such as those in heavy industries, oil & coal? Legitimate persons just couldn’t afford those firms no matter if the company prices are dirt cheap, so the option of buyers was the Russian mafia (organized crime groups) of which around forty-five (45) ‘families’ were the largest and most awash with money.

Such mafia groups were far more powerful, wealthy and dreadful than the Sicilian mafia from which the term ‘mafia’ originated. Without further ado, upon the go-signal from Yeltsin’s regime, mafia families gobbled up whatever firm they could lay their hands on. As a result, during the last years of Yeltsin, 80% of Russia’s corporate assets and incomes were in the hands of the mafia.

The dreadful scenario of the mafia taking hold of the nuclear and military assets of Russia soon confronted the patriots of the country. It seems that in the last instance, the FSB (former KGB) was the only institution that can mount a challenge to and clip the gargantuan influence and economic power of the mafia that was rapidly producing the new oligarchy of Yeltsin-era Russia.

And so the FSB, acting as a patriotic fraternal order of sorts, deposed Yeltsin in a silent coup of sorts. Putin, former KGB operative, became the favored leader by the chekka that decidedly took down Yeltsin. With Putin in power, returning Russia to a state of civility was now a huge task laid upon his shoulders.

Returning civility and re-asserting state sovereignty means taking back to Russia its economic powers. It was time to let the new mafia oligarchs taste justice and stop them from further fragmenting the federation. Russia was already on the verge of total fragmentation, and could have been balkanized into mini-states with Russian oligarchs taking over their own respective mini-state to govern, plunder and loot.

Thus was the British oligarchy and its MI6 dirty operators stopped from further destroying Russia and looting whatever they can from its fragile economy by buying dirt-cheap enterprises and joint venturing with Russian mafia families. Putin’s strong arm tactics, with aid from FSB, were necessary in order to restore Russia to its civility and sovereignty, without which the federation could have fragmented at the turn of the new century.

Observably, the FSB is the only solid institution that can face up to the dreaded mafia families and the Anglo-European oligarchs. In China, the equivalent group is the Communist Party that wields draconian powers to direct the compass of growth there. In Turkey, the Army is the one that performs the equivalent of a solid patriotic core that continues to modernize the country and prevent a restoration of the Caliphate.

Each country has its own set of gargantuan national security concerns to look up to, so one better understand Russia from within the context of its colossal dilemmas with the Frankenstein of mafia power. An oligarch in Russia is synonymous to a mafia godfather; oligarchic wealth, derived from criminal operations.

Hard tactics are best to clip the powers of mafia Frankensteins. However, such tactics can no longer recline on Stalinist repression or elimination as Russia is facing a new history of democratic governance. The ‘rule of law’ must be advanced to the max in a global context of strengthening democracies.

[Philippines, 04 February 2011]

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Come Visit E. Argonza’s blogs anytime!

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Thursday, February 03, 2011

WILL BELARUS BE THE START OF MAFIA STATES?

Erle Frayne D. Argonza


The month of February is the 2nd month of the year. 2 in numerology signifies change, whether this be change for the better or for worst. So let me take up with you the matter of change in states from legitimate to mafia regime.

The question worth reflecting is: is it possible for a mafia state to gel in the foreseeable future? We are witnessing today the rise to the executive department of a mafia power in Belarus, so let us continue to observe the events in that country.

By mafia state is meant the rise to power of a mafia group—a group engaged in organized crime—to state power and sustaining that power in the long run. Such a rise would then demolish the accepted rules of the game of governance, though the mafia regime may show semblance of legitimacy through electoral victories.

During the incumbency of any mafia regime, it is possible that mafia operations across the country concerned will become the norm more than the exception. Mafia groups will then declare cities and/or regions within the country as their enclave, and bless those elected and appointed officials there being the strategic powerbrokers.

From the advent of the Great Depression through the recovery era of the late ‘30s and early ‘40s, around five (5) cities in the United States were reputedly under the control of mafia groups. Had such a trend gained momentum in the manner of a domino effect, city after city and then state after state in the USA could have fallen into mafia hands, and it would just be a matter of time before the federal government itself will become the enclave of the most powerful mafia godfather in America.

The scenario of a mafia USA didn’t take place as early enough the trend towards a domino effect was nipped in the bud. Humbled by the power of central government that jailed the topnotch mafia lords, the mafia then became subordinate operators that can be tapped by Establishment rouge elements for sabotage and assassination operations, e.g. the assassination of John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert.

Fast forward to the year 1998, when the Philippines’ presidency of Joseph Estrada gelled. A scary regime it was, as Estrada himself was a growing mafia lord and his Mafiosi pals expropriated the presidential palace by night as a ‘midnight cabinet’. So corrupt was that regime, that the damage it had done to crime solution, fiscal balance, and good governance seem irreparable. It was overthrown in January 2001, and so the mafia state was nipped in the bud before it would calcify in the long run.

As the Philippine mafia was basking in power in 1998-2000, Colombia was showing a peculiar situation. Though its central government was no mafia at all, drug lords were literally the power brokers there. Drug lords were the real government in Colombia, while the central government was only the virtual government. It took about a decade for the legitimate state to re-assert its power and efface the power of the mafia lords who eventually faced squid tactics of elimination.

The situation of a mafia state almost calcified in Russia during Yeltsin’s incumbency as president. So sudden was the shift to capitalism then, as state enterprises were ordered privatized (from their original state-owned status). The only people with huge funds to buy state firms were the mafia families in Russia, so that before Yeltsin bowed out of power 80% of Russia’s corporate world was already in the hands of mafia lords.

That conundrum in Russia was reversed only with the ascent to power of Putin and the FSB (former KGB). The FSB knew that the emerging oligarchs of a capitalist Russia were actually mafia lords. It is within the context of dominating mafia power that the state sampled some oligarchs for jailing as a signal to all mafia groups that their powers are delimited. At a certain juncture, the mafia there knew that it cannot mutate to a political power broker without suffering the consequences.

Yet no matter what measures are done to clip mafia power, sooner or later there will be one state in the world where a long-term mafia state will succeed. It seems that Belarussia is the first such state to endure if ever. As of today though, forces in Germany and Poland are already working out to stamp out the Belorussian mafia from an enduring power entrenchment, and so the events there are worth watching.

A mafia state is like a ‘pacman fever’ (to recall that old video game), that once it is entrenched and endures through time, it can gobble up experientially other states as well. Those most contiguous to it could be the first to be infected. That is why Poland and Germany are bothered so badly, they are mobilizing resources for an overthrow of the mafia presidency in Belarussia.

[Philippines, 02 February 2011]

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Come Visit E. Argonza’s blogs anytime!

Social Blogs:
IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com
UNLADTAU: http://unladtau.wordpress.com

Wisdom/Spiritual Blogs:
COSMICBUHAY: http://cosmicbuhay.blogspot.com
BRIGHTWORLD: http://erlefraynebrightworld.wordpress.com

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ARTBLOG: http://erleargonza.wordpress.com
ARGONZAPOEM: http://argonzapoem.blogspot.com

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@FRIENDSTER: http://erleargonza.blog.friendster.com
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Monday, January 26, 2009

2009 ECONOMIC FORECASTS: DEPRESSION, INTERVENTIONISM, REVERSAL

Erle Frayne Argonza

Magandang hapon! Good afternoon!

2009 will be another bleak year economically, more so for the North (USA, EU, Japan are topmost). The recession that began with the subprime mortgage bubble burst in America in 07, will ensue with even mightier turbulence, as there are no coherent policy solutions of a strategic nature that can salve the economic ailment on a global scale.

As already articulated by this economist/analyst in various articles, the policy environment must be changed and regulatory mechanisms strengthened to immediately gain business confidence and reverse the tide of catastrophe. On the domestic front, the solution begins by following a New Deal type of policy set, which will bring back the fervor of production-driven growth and full employment. On the international/global front, a new financial architecture must be agreed upon via a global summit called for the purpose, akin to a New Bretton Woods.

The only intervention mechanisms we observe today are bailouts of failing financial and business institutions, which are toxically immoral as those criminal oligarchs are even rewarded for their sordid looting and corrupt practices. Only Russia and China have openly resorted to a New Deal type solution, in consonance with the practices of the late regime of Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the USA. As far as the international-global front is concerned, the concurrence of a new treaty that will resonate a new financial architecture is nowhere in sight.

In the absence of genuine solutions that can stabilize ailing economies on both the domestic and international fronts, the downward spirals will continue, until the economies of the North will hit rock bottom depression that will be worse than the one that crashed the USA, UK and Germany almost a century ago (USA, UK, Germany were then the world’s top industrial & military powers). In the absence of capital control policies up North, capital flight will ensue at dizzying speed, draining their respective countries of trillions of dollars and/or euros at levels far higher than the 2008 drain. The smart money that will sneak out will find better shelters in the South (emerging markets notably East Asia + India).

The possibility of North-based companies transferring their headquarters to the South is not entirely ruled out. The other option is for the corporate owners to transfer domicile from the North to the South, leaving their ailing mother companies in the hands of trusted stewards. The era of distance remote control-type management by corporate owners could very well begin this year, which will modify corporate governance by no small means.

The positive light for the global economy is that finally the corporate and state leaders will see light at the end of the tunnel and call for a global conference to carve out a new financial architecture. Laissez faire, a cadaver doctrine before the 2nd world war that was revived by the monetarists and greedy financiers, will finally lay to rest as it gives way to dirigist or interventionist economics. Stronger regulatory mechanisms may be charted this year too, at least on paper.

New Deal, Keynesian, and welfare state doctrines will be blended together to produce an eclectic admixture. Since New Deal has an international facet into it thus rendering it more comprehensive, as the late FDR cogitated the need for international cooperation and development for all countries to end all wars and foment lasting peace, this doctrine will more or less be followed. We will not be surprised if, after the Davos conference, the shape of the future will already be definitively of the New Deal type.

Conclusively, even if the Northern economies will flatten down to zero and/or negative growths, the downward spiral may stop by the last quarter of the year. The full effects of the intervention solutions won’t be felt this year though, as it will take some more years to get them to galvanize. So let us brace for more turbulent winds, while hoping that the storm would finally stop so we can enjoy a delightful holiday season comes December.

[26 January 2009, Quezon City, MetroManila]

Friday, August 29, 2008

GEORGIA LEADERS: VASSALS OF ANGLO-EUROPEAN OLIGARCHY

Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza

It may behoove many folks to conclude that the recent Georgia-Russia conflict was an isolated event that has got to do largely with the localized problem in South Ossetia. Before the folks would make their conclusions and curse Russia to the hilt, they better take note of the facts well, most specially those facts related to the Georgia leadership’s direct connections with the Anglo-European oligarchy that installed the same leadership to power.

There has been the persistent view from the source, the Executive Intelligence Review, of the British oligarchy as the core cabal behind the various hostilities in the world today, a view that I don’t exactly share. I am of the opinion that the British, who work largely through their empire network (Commonwealth of Nations), are mere middlemen for a more secretive elite circle that is centered in the Teutonic-Frankish-Venetian bloodline of financiers.

At any rate, the oligarchs do comprise a network of interlocking interests working out to completely dominate the planet, launch a new world war, and install a global government by converting their main creation, the United Nations, into the global regulatory institution and harbinger of the ‘world rule of law’ to conserve that perpetuate that same oligarchic power based on global totalitarian arrangements.

Below is a report from the Executive Intelligence Review concerning the connections of the Georgia leadership to the George Soros circle.

[18 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to the Executive Intelligence Review database news.]

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British and Soros Stooges in the Georgia Regime

Aug. 11, 2008 (EIRNS)—The following press release was issued today by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee.

Ongoing research has thus far identified the following British and Soros stooges in the current government of Georgia:

1) Prime Minister: Vladimir "Lado" Gurgenidze

A British empire banker, citizen of the United Kingdom.

Born 1970, Tbilisi, Georgia. Beginning in 1997 he worked for the Anglo-Dutch giant bank ABN Amro, living in London 1998-2003. From 1997-1998 he directed the bank's corporate finance operations in Russia and neighboring countries. Among the ABN AMRO conquests was its "twinning project" ensnaring the Bank of Georgia, which had been privatized in 1994-95. From 1998-2000 Grugenidze was ABN AMRO's Director and Head of Mergers and Acquisitions in the Emerging European Markets.

After the 2003 Soros "Rose Revolution" he returned to Georgia and was chief executive (2004-2006) for the Bank of Georgia, in line with the joint UNDP-Soros structural/financial reorganization program for the country ("capacity-building"). Gurgenidze brought in a management team from ABN AMRO and other British-connected banks.

Gurgenidze was appointed Prime Minister and head of the government in November 2007.

2) Head of the National Security Council: Alexander Lomaia

A longtime top executive of George Soros operatons in Georgia, now overseeing the country's military operations.

In 2003-2004, Lomaia was Executive Director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation (Soros Foundation). He "directed the foundation's operational grantmaking and administrative activities, and fulfillment of its annual overall budget of more than $2,500.000. Supervised the staff of up to 50 program, finance, and administrative employees."

In 2003-2004, Lomaia was regional director for the former Soviet Union for the Open Society institute's "Democracy Coalition Project". He "facilitated NGO coalition-building in the newly independent countries of the former Soviet Union to promote an activist democratic reform agenda.... The project facilitated the creation of an international federation of the national coalitions which collectively pursued ... democratic reforms on the international stage."

3) Chairman, Georgia Parliament Committee for Eurointegration: David Darchiashvili

Former Executive Director, Open Society Georgia Foundation.

Darchiashvili has worked for the Soros-dominated NGO networks since 1992, primarily in the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development, a "partner institution" to the Soros Open Society Institute (among its achievements were publishing a Georgian translaton of neoconservatve Francis Fukuyama's " "The End of the History and the Last Man").

Darchiashvili was executive director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation in the period (approximately) 2006-2007, apparently succeeding now-prime minister Gurgenidze as head of Soros operations in Georgia. In his present position he coordinates the Parliamentary institutions in Georgia with the British/Soros plans for the European Union, in conjunction with such channels as the Soros "European Council on Foreign Relations."

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

SOROS MANIPULATING WORLD WAR III START UP VIA GEORGIA

Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza

Just exactly what is the overall purpose of the recent Georgia-Russia conflict within the broad context of the agenda of the global oligarchy? Does it have to do with the broad war that was hatched that will begin in the Middle East, with the oligarchic proxy vassal-states taking sides in the conflict? Was the conflict a mere acid test case by the same elites to assess the offensive capabilities of Russia at this juncture?

Below is a report from the Executive Intelligence Review which lends credence to the thesis of NATO forces being honed for that larger forthcoming war. George Soros, the bagman for dozens of financier oligarchs of Europe, was identified as a key operator in fomenting the latest conflict in Central Asia that pitted the oligarchic vassal Georgia with Russia.

[18 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to the Executive Intelligence Review database news.]
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LaRouche Denounces `Obama's Godfather' George Soros Behind Attempt To Start World War III in the Caucasus

Aug. 10, 2008 (EIRNS)—This release was issued yesterday by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC).

Lyndon LaRouche today denounced British agent George Soros, for his hand in the ongoing London-led efforts to trigger World War III in the Caucasus. Soros is the financial and political godfather of both Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and the purported Democratic Party Presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). In the late hours of Aug. 7, as President Saakashvili completed a nationwide television address, claiming to seek a diplomatic solution to the crisis in the autonomous region of South Ossetia, he in fact ordered Georgian troops to fire on Russian peacekeepers, who were in South Ossetia as part of a United Nations mandated force, that has been there since 1994. President Saakashvili's actions now threaten to trigger World War III—precisely what the British intend as their response to the collapse of their post-Bretton Woods international financial system.

"If you want a preview of what the United States would be like under a President Obama, just look at Georgia's recent actions. Georgian President Saakashvili, like Barack Obama, is owned by the same British godfather—George Soros." LaRouche asked: "Would Soros' man Obama be another Dick Cheney if he got into office?"

Soros' own Open Society Institute boasts that it was the backbone of the so-called "Rose Revolution" that swept Saakashvili into power in 2003-2004. As of January 2004, the Soros Open Society Institute, which first set up its office in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, in 1994, began directly bankrolling the Georgian government, as part of a joint program with the United Nations' UNDP (United Nations Development Program), then headed by Mark Malloch Brown, who is now secretary general of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Malloch Brown was so close to Soros, during his tenure at the UN, that he lived in an apartment he rented from the hedge fund speculator.

Saakashvili's reckless provocations, in firing on Russian troops and killing South Ossetian civilians, who are predominantly Russian citizens, drew a strong military response from Russia, which is bound, under its constitution, to defend Russian citizens under attack. The British have been behind the destabilization of the Caucasus region since the collapse of the Soviet Union, funding and arming Chechen rebels, allowing recruitment into the Chechen separatist movements, at mosques in England, and providing safe haven to Russian Mafiya figures, like Boris Berezovsky, who bankrolled anti-Russian separatist and terrorist operations in the Caucasus.

"Now, look at the vast Soros cash flow into Obama," LaRouche concluded. "Soros is a British agent, under the control of British foreign intelligence and special operations services. He is used by them. His sources of funds, after his initial bankrolling by the Swiss branch of the Rothschild banking interests, are murky, at best. Soros is part of Britain's new opium war apparatus—and he virtually owns Senator Obama. And now he is fomenting world war provocations against Moscow, at precisely the moment that I am calling on Russia, China, and India to join the United States in creating a new international financial system that would wipe out speculators like Soros altogether."

EURO-OLIGARCHIC OPERATORS BEHIND GEORGIA CONFLICT WITH RUSSIA

Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza

Good morning!

Going back to the recent Georgia-Russia conflict, which is actually a mere dress rehearsal of NATO for its future big war upon the installation of a totalitarian North Atlantic Empire in the near future, the thesis was raised that Georgia had turned itself into a (b) vassal-state of the Anglo-European oligarchy (or ‘global oligarchy’) and (b) was the same elite’s surrogate it its conflict with Russia.

It would pay to know just exactly who are the people involved behind the scene as operators for the global oligarchy for its latest synarchy engagement in Central Asia. Analysts connected with the Executive Intelligence Review were able to identify one named Mark Brown, who works for the same elites through his sponsor George Soros.

Below is a news item from that details the information about the oligarchic operators involved in the aforesaid conflict.

[18 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to the Executive Intelligence Review database news.]

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Mark `Moloch' Brown: The Empire's Coup Man in Georgia
Aug. 12, 2008 (EIRNS)—

There is good reason for the British Empire's silence about the attack by Mikhail Saakashvili's Georgia on South Ossetia on Aug. 7, an attack that brought the world to the brink of World War III. Saakashvili was put in power by the duo of British agents—billionaire speculator and Nazi collaborator, George Soros, and Lord Mark Malloch Brown, now the United Kingdom's Minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). And, by tracking the records of the UN Development Program (UNDP) which Malloch Brown administered, and Soros's Open Society Institute and its offshoots, the proverbial check stubs will be found.

Lord Malloch Brown has been in the business of overthrowing governments since 1986, when he left the London Economist for the international section of an agressive political consulting firm in the U.S. called Sawyer Miller, and from there advised the Presidential campaign of Corazon Aquino in the Philippines. He stuck with Aquino through the overthrow of President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, a role about which he boasts. In 1990, he represented the Presidential campaign of Peruvian fascist novelist Mario Varga Llosa, a drug legalization advocate, who lost the election after proposing a vicious austerity program to cut the living standards of Peru's lower classes. Sawyer Miller also helped promote the Dalai Lama against China.

From Sawyer Miller, Malloch Brown spent the next 18 years at the World Bank and the United Nations, forming a deep, but secretive relationship with Soros.

He is also secretive about his finances—he lists only his government salary of about $160,000 on financial disclosure forms. Prior to taking the Ministry job, he served as the Vice Chairman of George Soros's hedge fund, the Quantum Fund in 2007. For a bit of comparison, note that Soros earned billions of dollars heading the Quantum Fund in recent years!
Malloch Brown enhances his meager government salary, however, with a government-subsidized home in London called "The Admiralty House," which is valued at about 7.76 million pounds sterling, according to the British government. Both the Spectator and the Times of London have written exposes of Malloch Brown for this sweetheart deal, where the rent is over $300,000 per year, and for which he "leapfrogged" over 20 higher-ranking cabinet members to get the perk. The price Malloch Brown demanded, to leave Soros's Quantum Fund was a fat portfolio covering the entire world, a peerage (he is now a British Lord), the right to attend Cabinet meetings, and the luxurious home.

The subsidized home deal is identical to the arrangement which Malloch Brown had for about five years when he headed the UN Development Program, and then became Deputy Secretary General of the UN, and lived in New York. There he was a tenant at the five acre estate owned by George Soros in Katonah, New York, which the UN paid for, at $120,000 a year, to Soros. It was about 20% below the market price, but when asked about this house by a reporter, Malloch Brown stormed out of the interview, exclaiming, "I am doing God's work!"

Malloch Brown and Soros have been co-conspirators in a global plot against the nation state since at least 1993, when Malloch Brown joined a group organized by Soros that travelled to Serbia and Bosnia, to advise him on how to best spend a $50 million grant to "rebuild" Bosnia, after the British orchestrated war had destroyed it. In the 1990s, Soros had also funded the street thug apparatus OTPOR, that boasts of toppling Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. Soros's network later used the experienced Serbian mob-controllers to create the "democracy shocktroops" for the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia that put Saakashvili into power.

Throughout his time at the UN, Malloch Brown and Soros were a duo. They held a joint press conference in Monterrey, Mexico in 2002, to announce plans on how use UN funds, integrated with private funding from Soros and his ilk, to control the economies and policies of Third World countries. Soros was not there as a philanthropist—he was there as President and Chairman of the Soros Management Fund, a notorious hedge fund.
The Rose Revolution

There would be no Saakashvili regime today without George Soros and Malloch Brown. Even in 2001, Saakashvili was a Soros-financed operative. In January, 2004, at the annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Soros, Malloch Brown, and Mikhail Saakashvili gave a joint press conference where Saakashvili got $1.5 million—two-thirds from Soros's Open Society Institute and one-third from the UN Development Program. The funds were to be for a "Governance Reform Program" for Georgia, of which the main project was payoffs—a "Salary Supplement Fund," for which Malloch Brown arranged millions more.

Malloch Brown's UNDP bluntly describe how he and Soros would, in effect, not only give money, but would stack the Georgia government with the "skilled professionals" they would pick. The UNDP report says that,
Georgia "lacked the skilled professionals needed to design and execute sweeping reforms.... The state lacked the resources to pay salaries" that might lure the kind of globalist operatives that Soros and Malloch Brown wanted there.

So, continues the UNDP Report, "Working in close partnership with billionaire philanthropist George Soros, UNDP moved swiftly.... Speed was recognized as crucial to success. Even before Mr. Saakashvili was sworn into office, UNDP and Mr. Soros's Open Society Institute (OSI) had agreed upon the creation of a new initiative to help the new administration secure the staff and expertise it needed." The initiative—to pay a supplemental salary to Saakashvili and top government officials—went on for three years, and Saakashvili himself admitted its importance at a Washington, D.C. press conference in early 2004, when asked about his financial dependence on Soros.

Saakashvili said: "Now regarding George Soros's contribution, this is primarily UNDP Fund: United Nations Development Program Fund to fund capacity building for Georgian government, and George Soros will not be the only contributor. We said we expect, as we already have pledges from a number of other contributions. We only have at this moment, two million dollars contributed by UNDP and Soros, but we have some other pledges, we need at least eight million dollars already this year and we will need some more for the next year.... Soros played good role in bolstering democratic processes in Georgia. He was very instrumental for many NGOs in their development and I think there is nothing bad about that, wrong about that."

Malloch Brown's UNDP report even boasted that this funding had provoked "Russian President Vladimir Putin ... to chide Mr. Saakashvili that he was on Mr. Soros's payroll." By 2006, the salary supplements were over $1 million per month, says the UNDP report.

These are the funds that go to a large contingent of Soros agents who are the government of Georgia: head of the National Security Council, Alexander Lomaia; Gigi Bokeria, Deputy Foreign Minister (who had been one of the early trainees of the Serbian Otpor for street demonstrations); Chairman of Georgia Parliament's Committee for Eurointegration: David Darchiashvili, to name a few.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

EU-BRITISH OLIGARCHS PRACTICE WAR VIA VASSAL GEORGIA

Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza

The ‘peace arena’ is getting to be fuzzier by the day as armed hostilities are escalating worldwide. The latest among these was that brief full-scale hostilities between Georgia and Russia, hostilities that were directly related to South Ossetia.

On the level of appearance, it was a conflict among neighbors Georgia and Russia. However, when one reflects on the added facet of Georgia’s application to the NATO as a member-state, the underpinning machinations of the Anglo-European oligarchs will be easily seen.

As already elucidated by this analyst, the global oligarchy had already formulated the blueprint for its wars of the future and the mutation of the EU and USA into totalitarian police states in the short run. Global ‘synergistic anarchy’ (synarchy), modeled after the ancient Empire of Rome, is a key strategy of the same oligarchic circles to foment conflicts across the globe, aimed as always to preposition the financier and industrial interests of their respective families and members.

It is very clear to this analyst that Georgia’s leaders have chosen to gravitate to the power orbit of the financier oligarchs, and desire to be counted among the NATO member-states. This same military umbrella will be the military arm of a forthcoming North Atlantic Empire comprising of the EU and USA, an empire that is now rapidly shaping before our own eyes.

The presence of NATO in Afghanistan and its proxy war versus Russia via the new vassal-state Georgia are among the exercises aimed at honing the military might of the alliance. The encirclement of Russia is being tested at this moment, as well as assessing the firepower capabilities of the revived Russian state whose very own leaders have turned hawkish during the last few years.

Below is an article by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, leader of the Shiller Institute, regarding the oligarchic machinations behind the Georgia-Russia conflict.

[15 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to Executive Intelligence Review database news.]
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IN THE FACE OF GLOBAL COLLAPSE
British, EU Target Russia With Shooting War in the Caucasus
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche


With the underpinnings of the present world financial system growing shakier by the day, the outbreak of warfare in the Caucasus shows how quickly the current world situation can be thrown out of joint. It also gives us a foretaste of how quickly it could expand into a new general war. Even if no one can precisely predict how much time we have left to address the underlying cause of the growing threat of war—namely, the systemic crisis of the world financial system—the military operations in the Caucasus nevertheless make clear that our brief window of opportunity could close quite suddenly.

"Caucasus War Catches Europe Flat-Footed," was Spiegel-Online's headline to its article on Aug. 8 about the escalation of the conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia—a conflict which has taken on the character of a typical proxy war between the United States and Russia. The article's author, Hans-Jürgen Schlamp, reports from Brussels on the alleged "helplessness" of the European Commission and of the French government, which currently holds the EU Presidency, all of which can do nothing except express their "deep concern."

Nothing could be further from the truth. Back in February, when the European Union—Great Britain, France, and other nations, supported Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence, it was already perfectly clear that this destabilization would not only affect the Balkan states, but was also giving the green light to every conceivable separatist movement and minority throughout the world. Just as in the Balkan wars leading up to World War I, and also in the 1991-95 Balkan War, this ethnically complicated region is serving as a chessboard for British geopolitical destabilizations, with the ultimate aim of drawing the great world powers into the conflict, and/or preventing any peaceful economic cooperation on the Eurasian continent. And it is certainly no accident that, since Dec. 12, 2007, the chief of the EU's planning team for Kosovo has been none other than the British diplomat Roy Reeve, a Russia expert, whose previous postings took him to Northern Ireland, Ukraine, Armenia, and Georgia—i.e., precisely those countries which have problems with nationalities and ethnic minorities.

Already on July 15, Ronald D. Asmus of the German Marshall Fund (GMF) wrote that a war between Georgia and Russia was in the offing, and that this could easily ruin relations between Russia and the West. And that was obviously the intention all along. Asmus also chaired a meeting of the GMF earlier this year in Brussels, where five former military general staff members presented an outrageous report proposing that NATO be transformed into a globally operating intervention force which, under certain circumstances, would be permitted to launch a first strike with nuclear weapons.

With its so-called "Rose Revolution," and its desire to join NATO, Georgia has turned out to be a willing instrument of the Anglo-American strategy for encirclement of Russia. But what induced Georgia to reoccupy South Ossetia at this particular moment, 16 years after the latter declared its independence? The war in the Caucasus is part of a global destabilization effort, coinciding with the arrest of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, as well as with the destabilizations of Turkey, Pakistan, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, by means of terrorist attacks or sanctions—and we are only mentioning the most prominent of many other similar crisis spots.

Financial Crisis Fuels War Threat

As I already pointed out above, the overall context of these events is the escalating collapse of the global financial system, which has been pulling ever larger chunks of the real economy down into the abyss with it. The Federal Reserve is now committed to using its rediscount facility for making practically unlimited liquidity available to the two de facto insolvent mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae—which together, guarantee $5.3 trillion in U.S. mortgages! Not only does this have enormous hyperinflationary ramifications, but it only plugs one solitary hole in the leaking boat. In the United States, speculators are debating whether it's 3,000 or 5,000 banks which are bankrupt; eight banks have already officially shut their doors so far this year. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy—or what's left of it, after years of "outsourcing"—is sinking ever more deeply into depression: the auto sector, the airline industry, the construction sector. More and more states and municipalities are being forced to make draconian cutbacks, such as in California, where 22,000 state employees have been laid off, and another 200,000 are threatened with having pay reduced to the minimum wage.

Meanwhile, some analysts have joined Lyndon LaRouche in the view that the rate of collapse in Europe is going to be even faster. Spain's collapsing real estate sector is bringing a massive banking crisis in its wake, and similar scenarios are playing out in Great Britain, where the Royal Bank of Scotland has had to write off $12 billion in the aftermath of the government takeover of Northern Rock. The situation in Denmark is equally dismal. The official inflation rate in the EU is hovering above 4%, whereas the real rate of inflation for less well-off wage earners is far greater, because they have to spend the bulk of their income on food, energy, gasoline, housing, etc. And when none other than former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, "Mr. Bubble" himself, starts talking about the crisis of the century—a crisis for which he is personally responsible—then it's clear that he wants to prepare the world for the great crash immediately ahead.

It wouldn't be the first time in history that the international financial oligarchy has attempted to keep a worldwide financial and economic crisis under control by fanning the flames of war. And anyone who prepares for war, must first create an enemy image, so that the population can be brought into line.

Vile Attacks on China

That is precisely the intention behind the repulsive China-baiting being emitted by the media and by politicians on the occasion of the Olympic Games. Regardless of whether it's coming from witting agents of the British Empire faction, or from mindless dumbos on the morning news shows: The irresponsible gossip that has been spread during the run-up to the Olympic Games, has been simply monstrous. Without any regard for the truth, and without a shred of knowledge of China's history and culture, the wildest assertions have been floated—assertions which could well succeed in poisoning relations with China, and in helping prepare for coming conflicts with China (and with Russia).

Not only were the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Beijing wonderfully beautiful and poetically conceived, but they were also a magnificently staged demonstration of the 5,000-year history of this great nation, one which, for a long time, was the world's leader, and which is now preparing to resume that role sometime in the future. Even though China certainly has its fair share of problems—for example, the poverty of the great majority of its rural population, and also a certain degree of Western materialism which has infected part of its population—what counts is the vector of development, and in China that vector is going upwards—in contrast to what's happening with the arrogant sophists of the West's empire faction.

The Chinese government has blocked Internet access to anti-Chinese propaganda emanating from international and British organizations in connection with Tibet and the Uighurs—and it has every right to do so. After all, do the British and American governments allow the Taliban's tracts or al-Qaeda's instructions to be circulated around the country? What do destabilization efforts by an enemy power, have to do with democracy and human rights?

The fact that in Europe, a politician who voted for the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, or a representative of the media which, even after the Irish "No" in their referendum, did not run a single pertinent article on an EU treaty which would abolish parliamentary democracy in Europe once and for all, and would establish an oligarchical dictatorship, would now dare to decry a lack of democracy and human rights in China—that is truly the height of Goebbels propaganda! It would have made Goebbels pale with envy. Europe is dominated by a truly terrifying democracy deficit, resulting in an increasingly deep-seated and extremely dangerous cultural pessimism, as expressed in the famous retort, "There's nothing we can do about it, anyway." And so, those politicians and journalists who raise a fuss about democracy in China, ought to go out and listen to what the population thinks about the political class and the media—in Germany, for example.

If we are to make use of the fast-closing window of opportunity, which will hopefully remain open long enough for us to prevent the great catastrophe, then we will have to embark on a radically different path. One very promising impulse in that direction, is an article that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov wrote for the current issue of the journal Russia in Global Politics, under the title "Russia and the World in the 21st Century," which directly reflects the positions of President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Lavrov affirms the obvious fact that the epoch of the past 400-500 years, during which European civilization has dominated the world, is now closing, and that a new vision is therefore required. He rejects not only the idea that the world will gradually adopt Western values, and the theory of "the end of history"—the idea of a global Anglo-American empire—but he also rejects the idea of a "post-American" world without the United States.
The Russian Foreign Minister emphasizes that he absolutely disagrees with the idea that current developments must end in chaos and anarchy. Rather, he believes that a new international political, financial, and economic architecture can be created, one in which Russia must play a major role as an equal partner.

The Anglo-Saxon (i.e., free-trade) model is tottering, Lavrov writes, just as it was in the 1920s, and therefore today, just as then, the model of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal is called for. China, India, Russia, and Brazil must be integrated into this new reform of our international institutions. On this basis, plans can be made for a common future for the entire Euro-Atlantic region and for the world as a whole, a future in which security and prosperity become truly inseparable, he states.

Two Options

The Western nations today have essentially two options: Either they follow the British line, treating Russia, China, and India as antagonists—which means, for example, using Georgia for anti-Russian operations, fostering separatist tendencies inside China, setting financial locusts against India, and other such things. In which case, the great catastrophe is sure to come.

Or, they can heed the proposal which LaRouche has been making for some time, that a new international financial and economic order, in the tradition of Roosevelt and his New Deal, and Bretton Woods, be put onto the agenda. In such an arrangement, the United States, Russia, China, and India must collaborate as a core grouping, around which other sovereign nations can congregate. And that is essentially what Foreign Minister Lavrov says in his article.

For Europe's nations, this means that they must extricate themselves from the European Union straitjacket which, for Germany, since Maastricht at the latest, has become a new Versailles Treaty. Europe's nations can, and certainly should cooperate as a Europe of sovereign republics—which will be vastly more in keeping with the spirit of humanist Europe, than is possible today with an EU bureaucracy which is farther away from Europe's humanist tradition, than Earth is from a galaxy a couple million light-years distant.

Let us hope that the coincidence of what Greenspan himself has described as the financial system's crisis of the century, with the realization of how quickly war can break out, will be sufficient to shock responsible people back to reason.