Vegas Mogul Sponsoring Bush Speech at Eastern Europe Provocation Conference

May 11 (EIRNS)--Billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson, funder of the extreme right inside Israel, is sponsoring a speech by President George W. Bush in Prague in early June, at an international conference of right wing "dissidents" and regime-change advocates.

The White House announced April 24 that Bush would speak at Adelson's conference in the Czech Republic June 5, as the first event in a European tour with events in other former Soviet Bloc countries -- Poland, Albania and Bulgaria. Bush will also be at the Group of Eight meeting in Germany, and will visit Italy and the Vatican.

Bush's foray into Eastern Europe and his speech at the highly political Prague conference, come at a time of deterioration of U.S.-Russian relations and could be seen as a provocation in the direction of a new Cold War -- even, given the background of the Prague event, a revival of the outlook of the Anti-Comintern alliance known as Hitler's Axis.

The Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem is the prime sponsor for the Prague conference, which is entitled "Democracy and Security: Core Values and Sound Policies." Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, now a radical-right Israeli political leader and chairman of Adelson's Institute, will speak alongside Bush.

There are two co-sponsors:

1) The Foundation for Social Analysis and Studies in Madrid, a think-tank for the People's Party of Spain, a made-over continuation of the fascist party of Francisco Franco. The People's Party was founded by Franco minister Manuel Fraga Iribarne, a synarchist fascist tied to South American death squads, who put forward José María Aznar to lead the party and to become Spain's president. Aznar will speak alongside Bush and Sharansky.

2) The Security Studies Institute, a Prague-based neoconservative group led by James Woolsey, Frank Gaffney, and others busy stirring the pot for permanent war.

VENETIAN LAS VEGAS

Sheldon Adelson took over Meyer Lansky's old Sands Hotel, and remade it as The Venetian, its themes modeled on Venice, Italy, historic center of oligarchy, tyranny and corruption. Adelson's Las Vegas Sands Corporation is perhaps the world's largest entertainment company, with a capital value over $30 billion.

On May 9, 2007, former Clark County (Las Vegas) Commissioner Lance Malone went in to a high-security federal prison after conviction of conspiracy under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization act. Adrienne Packer, writing May 18, 2003 in Nevada's largest newspaper, the Las Vegas Review Journal, reported that "Sheldon Adelson, owner of The Venetian, ... filtered $190,000 to Malone's campaign through his companies and the Republican Party...."

The U.S. Congress is now in an uproar over whether United States Attorneys were fired for political reasons; one of those fired was Las Vegas-based U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden. Bogden indicted Lance Malone in 2003 on charges of taking bribes to change laws on behalf of nude-dancing club operator Mike Galardi who subsequently employed Malone. When Senator John Ensign (R, Nevada) complained to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about Bogden's firing, the clueless Gonzales reportedly told Ensign, "They didn't feel Dan was being aggressive enough in two areas: adult obscenity cases and anti-terror cases."

Sheldon Adelson has contributed over $700,000 to the Bush-Cheney and other Republican campaigns, and is a director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Adelson's global donations to the Lubavitchers, to Ronald Lauder's Shalem Center and to other ultra-right Israeli politics have helped create a favorable climate in Israel for Dick Cheney's war policies.

Lance Malone's six-year sentence includes three years for a 2005 conviction in a San Diego City Council bribery case involving the same Las Vegas strip club owner Galardi. Coincidentally, San Diego-based U.S. Attorney Carol Lam was also fired.