Provincial council elections in 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces on January 31 strengthened Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Dawa Party, a militant Shia Islamic group, while also bringing many Sunnis who had boycotted the 2005 elections back into the political process. More than 14,400 candidates ran for 440 seats in the councils, which appoint the provincial governor and oversee finance and reconstruction. The three provinces of the Kurdish autonomous region and Kirkuk will hold elections in May.

Rather than merely calling Vladimir Putin on the telephone to congratulate him on his March 4 election victory for a new term as president of Russia, Silvio Berlusconi hopped in his jet and headed for Sochi, the Russian resort town that will be the site for the 2014 Winter Olympics. The Italian billionaire and media mogul, who resigned his position as Italy’s prime minister last November, is embroiled in legal battles over charges of bribery, corruption, illegal wiretapping, and sex with an underage prostitute, but those concerns took back burner to his party time with Putin.

Vladimir Putin claimed victory in Russia’s presidential election on Sunday, March 4. "I promised you we would win, and we won — glory to Russia!" he proclaimed to a throng of supporters at Moscow’s Manezh Square, in front of the Kremlin, as tears rolled down his cheeks.

Marta Andreasen (left), the courageous former chief accountant of the European Union, will not give up. In 2002 she was fired for refusing to sign off on the European Commission’s accounts. But she has continued to hold the EU politicians and eurocrats in Brussels to account, exposing fraud, waste and corruption on her website, http://www.martaandreasen.com. In 2009 she was elected as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), an office she uses to shine the light of exposure on the dark dealings of the EU’s priviledged politicians and civil “servants.” In a January 26 article entitled “MEPs should hang heads in shame over ‘jollies,’” published by Public ServiceEurope, Ms. Andreasen exposed recent records of lavish spending by the eurocrats for foreign junkets.

“We need a larger firewall.” So declared Christine Lagarde (left), Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) during a speech in Berlin on January 23, in which she called on taxpayers of the world to chip in $1 trillion to the IMF to stave off a global crisis. “We need to act quickly or else we could easily slide into a 1930s moment,” Lagarde warned, in an obvious reference to the Great Depression.

Rosen Plevneliev managed a narrow victory in Bulgaria's recent presidential elections on a reform platform pledging to clean up the country's corruption-plagued government, one of the most notorious in Europe. On November 3, Plevneliev was certified as the official winner in Bulgaria’s presidential race. The President-elect immediately declared that the first thing he plans to do after assuming office is fire all Bulgarian diplomats abroad who have been exposed as former agents of the communist Committee of State Security (CSS).

Mikhail Gorbachev is coming to Middle America. To Wisconsin’s Fox Cities, to be precise — a group of communities on the Fox River clustered around the city of Appleton. Mr. Gorbachev will be the keynote speaker and main attraction at an October 1st-3rd conference that proposes to launch a new project called Communities for International Development. Some Fox Cities business, media, and academic leaders are all aglow over the supposed opportunities and prestige the Gorbachev visit will bring. However, the Appleton-based John Birch Society offers a far less naпve, and more realistic, take on the hype-driven event.

Much of the world sat glued before their television screens, eyes and ears transfixed by the drama unfolding in a Los Angeles courtroom. The closing arguments by Johnnie Cochran and Chris Darden in the O.J. Simpson trial held millions in thrall.

This is the third and final part of an interview with Christopher Story (left), editor of the London-based journal Soviet Analyst and of The Perestroika Deception by Anatoliy Golitsyn, the Soviet defector and author of New Lies for Old. The interview was conducted by William F. Jasper, senior editor of THE NEW AMERICAN, and took place just outside the San Francisco headquarters of the Gorbachev Foundation/USA. Part One, Dispelling Disinformation and Part Two, Leninists Still Leading, are also available online, along with additional articles related to Anatoliy Golitsyn and Communist deception and convergence that we have linked to at the end of this article.

This is part two of an interview by William F. Jasper, senior editor of THE NEW AMERICAN, with [the late] Christopher Story (left), editor of Soviet Analyst, an intelligence commentary, and editor of The Perestroika Deception by Anatoliy Golitsyn, the Soviet defector and author of New Lies for Old. The interview was conducted August l7, 1995 in the Presidio, San Francisco, outside the headquarters of the Gorbachev Foundation/USA. Part one, Dispelling Disinformation and part three, Red March to Global Tyranny, are also available online, along with a number of related articles that we have linked to at the end of this interview.