It's a Jungle Out There

Financial Sense ^ | Monday, February 18, 2002 | J. R. Nyquist

[Tailgunner Joe]

The world is full of bad people doing bad things. There are regimes that persecute Christians, Buddhists and others. There are double-crossing generals, arms and drug traffickers, treacherous diplomats and false fronts. There are double agents and blackmailed politicians. There is blood in the streets, revolution, war and hatred in today's world. You wouldn't know it from looking out a suburban window in America. But beyond our borders things aren't nice. People are suffering.

On Feb. 11 FoxNews.com reported that Chinese authorities were cracking down on Christian churches that operate outside government control. Nearly 24,000 Christians have recently been arrested and 129 have been killed, according to the Committee for Investigation on Persecution of Religion in China. Not only are Christians persecuted, but Buddhists and Falun Gong members are also victimized. Top Chinese leaders have been implicated in these repressive measures that included beatings, electric shock, rape and other tortures. According to official Chinese documents, obtained by Chinese Christians based in the United States, these harsh measures were approved by Chinese Vice President Hu Jintao (slated to be China's next top leader).

Meanwhile, on China's southern frontier, a different kind of murderous campaign is underway. In Nepal, Maoist rebels have killed at least 102 people in violent attacks. The attacks began late Saturday when Communist rebels set fire to buildings in the Achham district, 375 miles northwest of Katmandu. According to Nepal's security minister, the Communists killed 49 police officers, 48 Royal Napalese Army soldiers, among others, including the district's chief administrator.

Did somebody say Communism was dead?

On Feb. 6 pravda.ru reported on, and on Feb. 12 Toby Westerman of WorldNetDaily.com commented on, this year's official calendar of the Russian secret police (now FSB, formerly KGB, MGB, NKVD, OGPU, GPU, VChK). This new calendar commemorates several Soviet holidays and honors "Iron" Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of Communism's repressive "organs." Holidays of note in the calendar include VChK-KGB Day, Dec. 20, and Dzerzhinsky's birthday, Sept. 11. No mention is made in the 2002 Calendar of the Tsar's secret police, known as the Okhrana. As pointed out by Westerman, the slogan of Dzerzhinsky's organization was: "We are not fighting a war against individuals, we are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class."

Is it not strangely coincidental that the World Trade Center, as a symbol of the world bourgeoisie, was brought down on Dzerzinsky's birthday? Citing a source in the General Staff the Russian press has reported [see Feb. 18 Moscow Times] that "several dozen" of the 254 al-Qaeda prisoners held by U.S. forces at Guantanamo Bay carry Russian passports. Stranger still, the U.S. Department of Defense will neither confirm nor deny that Russians citizens are being held. "We are not talking at all about the nationalities at Guantanamo," said Major Ben Owens at the Defense Department.

An Izvestia source alleges that the U.S. has refused to inform Moscow on the number of Russians held at Guantanamo. The United States has also, most curiously, denied official Russian access to the prisoners. But perhaps this isn't so curious considering the startling revelations of Saturday's Los Angeles Times story, "Al Qaeda Linked to Russian Arms Broker."

The "largest arms-trafficking organization in the world," run by a Russian national named Viktor Bout, has apparent connections to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. According to the L.A. Times, there is "far-reaching" evidence that Viktor Bout's trading empire aided bin Laden." Bout has also been linked to Africa's illicit diamond trade, through which bin Laden's organization made millions.

The weapons Bout ships to Africa and Asia are from "former" Soviet bloc nations. It is said he uses "former" Soviet cargo planes piloted by "former" Soviet military officers. It is also believed that he is hiding out from Western investigators in the "former" Soviet Union.

It's funny about "former" Soviet officers, clients and citizens. They not only turn up in the skies over Angola or the Congo, in Columbia's escalating Civil War or in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay. They also turn up in Afghanistan. Pavel Felgenhauer's Thursday column at Moscow Times offered amazing details about Gen. Muhammed Fahim, the latest and newest Afghan defense minister, who was "very warmly" received in Moscow last week. Apparently Fahim was not a simple Afghan freedom fighter attached to the late Gen. Ahmad Shah Massood (mortally wounded by a Taliban bomb shortly before 9-11). According to Felgenhauer, "Fahim became a general … under Soviet command."

According to Felgenhauer, Fahim "had a lengthy and friendly audience with President Vladimir Putin [in Moscow]." Fahim's Tajik forces are armed by Russia and supported by Russian military advisors. Even better, the Tajik air force is basically a Russian operation from the pilots to the mechanics to the aircraft. The new Afghan defense minister, as commander of the Northern Alliance and as liberator of Kabul, will soon control the main Afghan military machine that Russia plans to augment.

Fahim's Northern Alliance is also financed by heroin trafficking in which Russian middlemen play a significant role. As Felgenhauer states, "There have been repeated and reliable reports that Afghan heroin produced by the Northern Alliance is transported through Tajikistan and Russia to consumers in Europe with the help of Tajik and Russian civilian and military officials."

This recalls the research of Joseph D. Douglass, Jr., in his book "Red Cocaine," in which he explains how Moscow got control of the lion's share of the global narcotics trade. As Douglass explains, "Soviet strategy for revolutionary war is a global strategy. Soviet narcotics strategy is a sub-component of this global strategy and is best understood in this context."

Is it possible that the Russians support, control and coordinate the narcotics trafficking of Gen. Fahim's Northern Alliance? And was the death of Gen. Massood at the hands of Al Qaeda arranged to advance Gen. Fahim in his place? No doubt, the emerging story of Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout, who operates the world's largest arms-trafficking operation in the world, is also suggestive. Put this together with the 2002 calendar of the Russian security services, the special importance of Sept. 11 as Felix Dzerzhinsky's birth date, the Russian alliance with Communist China, the vicious persecution of Christians by Beijing, the support for Muslim extremist who are waging Jihad on America, and you begin to see the kind of jungle we find ourselves in today.

In closing I would like to quote from Steven Emerson's shocking book, "American Jihad," where he reveals the FBI's impotence and radical Islam's presence here on American soil. Emerson says that although there is "a strong Islamic tradition of tolerance and human dignity," the extremists "have a disproportionate influence." One prominent Muslim cleric maintains that 80 percent of the 1,200 mosques in this country have been taken over by radicals. According to Emerson, "Although our pluralist ideals tend to view this statement as an automatic exaggeration, the reality is far more sobering. The vast majority of American mosques are funded with Saudi Arabian money, and most of the funders subscribe to the Saudi doctrine of Wahhabism … that supports the spread of Islam through violence."

It may also be a jungle here, in our own country, as well.

[Tailgunner Joe]