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This article appears in the February 23, 2001 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Prince Philip's WWF Leads
Offensive Against Brazil

by Lorenzo Carrasco

[PDF version of this article]

In mid-January, the Brazilian branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), an organization founded by the British Queen's Consort Prince Philip, obtained a court order and carried out a raid to suppress publications exposing its efforts to prevent industrialization of the Amazon and all of South America, claiming that the exposé--whose factual basis is impeccable--is destroying it. The publications were printed by the Ibero-American Solidarity Movement (MSIA) of Brazil, the political movement associated with Lyndon H LaRouche, Jr. in that country, whose legal response to the WWF's lies we report below.

In an article in the Feb. 9 EIR, entitled "Look What Happened in Brazil," U.S. Democratic Presidential pre-candidate for 2004 LaRouche explained why this, and related attacks, occurred: The British monarchy fears LaRouche because its own existence is very much in question. LaRouche there reviewed the underlying issue: That he aggressively represents the interests of the human species, thinking people, whereas Prince Philip represents that oligarchical species that sees itself, as well as everyone else, as being just a different kind of beast.

The Battle Against Free Trade

Within Brazil, the WWF's attack on the activities of the MSIA in that country, using a legal contrivance which allowed them to raid the offices of the MSIA in Rio de Janeiro in January and confiscate printed materials, is designed to further the Anglo-American oligarchy's desperate attempt to stem the resistance building within Brazilian ruling circles, which LaRouche's MSIA has helped catalyze, against the total opening-up of the Brazilian economy that would follow entry into the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The issue of the FTAA is the central agenda item at the upcoming Summit of the Americas, to be held in Quebec City, Canada, this April.

Resistance began to take shape following the failure of the November 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle, when Brazilian diplomacy shed its illusion that the so-called Millennium Round of WTO negotiations would bring enormous benefits, especially for the export potential of Brazilian agricultural products. This cold bath of reality was the driving force that led Brazil to convoke a summit of South American heads of state last August, with the clear intention of forming a South American economic bloc as a counterpole to the FTAA (see "Fujimori Urges S. American Summit: Take Path of Unity," and pp. 60-62, EIR, Sept. 15, 2000). This project, dubbed by then-Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori as the United States of South America, proved a shock to the Anglo-American establishment, which had underestimated the potential reaction against its efforts to turn the continent into a vast looting ground, by means of which they hoped to give new life to their dying world financial system.

This same resistance now extends to business layers, as can be seen in the unusual reaction of the entire country to the attempts of the Canadian government to knock down Brazil's agricultural export capacity, by imposing a ban on the import of Brazilian beef, on the basis of malicious and totally unfounded suspicions that Brazilian cattle are infected with bovine spongiform encephalitis, more commonly known as "Mad Cow disease," which contagion is currently affecting European cattle herds. As Brazilian Agriculture Minister Pratini de Morais stated, after this act of aggression by Canada, "from the standpoint of agriculture, the FTAA is finished." President Fernando Henrique Cardoso himself threatened to boycott the April 20-22 Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, if the incident is not satisfactorily resolved.

Brazil's importance for the Anglo-American scheme is acknowledged in a memorandum issued by a New York Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) task force on Brazil, sent to President George W. Bush on Feb. 13, in which it is recognized that Brazil is "the fulcrum of any successful U.S. policy initiatives in South America." The memorandum thus reflects the clear intent of coopting Brazil to the Anglo-American design, in what is, in effect, a return to the Kissinger diplomacy of forging a "special relationship" with Brazil: That is, by praising Brazil, to coopt it. The document urges President Bush to act: "This moment may not last long, and it should not be allowed to slip away because of lack of attention on the part of the U.S. government. Brazil is too important in everything that is going to happen in South America, for a policy of benign neglect." (A fuller analysis of the CFR document will appear in an upcoming issue of EIR.)

It is in this context that the WWF launched its attack on the MSIA. The MSIA's exposés of that British Crown-led genocidal hit-squad, put at risk the extensive operations under way to castrate, once and for all, the possibility of fully developing the capacities of Brazil, and of South America as a whole, especially with regard to Brazil's considerable scientific and technological potential. Equally important to the WWF, is the determination to neutralize the development of what could become the world's richest breadbasket in the great region known as the Cerrado, in the heart of South America.

It is not just the MSIA's past exposés which have the WWF worried, but rather the MSIA's potential to mobilize an enormous and growing contingent of Brazilian patriots who understand the real motives of the WWF and the network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that attend it, and who could unmask the structure of a virtual parallel government which is slowly but systematically infiltrating, and which intends to supplant altogether, the institutions of government.

In tandem with this process, the NGOs have waged a type of guerrilla war against various infrastructure projects, using the judicial system. The ambiguity of new legislation and procedures for environmental licensing, copied from the equally ambiguous U.S. legislation, has made this possible.

NGOs Infiltrate the Government

There is a clear intent to insert the ideology and even the leaders of the main NGOs into the structure of the Brazilian government. This drive began at the beginning of President Cardoso's first term in January 1999, with the naming of several key NGO executives to government posts. Thus, at the same time that a Defense Ministry was created, which reduced the political role of the military leadership of the country, Justice Minister José Carlos Diaz named Elizabeth Susekind, of the Rios Vivos NGO, as the executive secretary of his ministry, with the assignment to restructure the country's public security policies.

Likewise, Federico Mares, of the NGO Socio-Environment Institute, was appointed to the National Indian Foundation, for the purpose of introducing the principle of limited sovereignty, under the slogan of a new indigenist policy. Similarly, Mary Alegreti, creator of the Chico Mendes mythos (Chico Mendes was a leader of the rubber workers, whose assassination in 1988 triggered an international campaign against Brazil) and propagandist for several environmentalist NGOs, assumed the post of Secretary of the Legal Amazon, in the Environmental Ministry.

Within this same thrust, the new president of the government's Brazilian Environment Institute (Ibama), Hamilton Casara, under the label of "integrated management," announced that Ibamba would establish a program of cooperation with the WWF, "so that Brazil can meet the international goal of 10% of national territory as protected areas." President Cardoso personally promised WWF-International President-emeritus Prince Philip, that he would achieve this goal, during his state visit to England in December 1997.

Casara emphasized that in the agreements with the WWF, special attention was given to the areas of the Cerrado and Mata Atlantica, "because they are [areas of] biomass considered internationally to be `hotspots.' " According to Ibama, this implies the mapping into biomass and eco-regions, "of 200 million hectares of savannah, which occupy one-fourth of national territory and embrace the richest biodiversity in the world." This "union of effort, and the integration of programs and projects developed separately by federal, state, and municipal governments, by companies and NGOs, is exactly what the International Convention on Bio-Diversity recommends."

The nature of these agreements with Ibama is best seen in two studies that the WWF released in early February, in which the intention of sterilizing any development efforts in the region of the Cerrado, is clearly enunciated. In the first of these, entitled "Agricultural Expansion and Lost Biodiversity of the Cerrado," the "WWF associates the [environmental] devastation with the increase in agricultural and fishing activities in the area," O Estado de São Paulo reported on Feb. 9. According to the WWF study, "The Brazilian Cerrado has already lost 80% of the 226 million hectares of its original covering of vegetation, which could compromise one of the most important freshwater reserves on the planet."

The study does not hide its concern that development of the Cerrado would allow the Brazilian nation to exercise sovereign dominion over the Amazon region, by bringing human population to the region. "Another concern of the WWF regarding the region is related to the construction of the export corridors outlined in the federal government's Advance Brazil program, as a means of cheapening the cost of grain transport."

One of the most crucial of such projects, is the development of the Paraguay-Paraná waterway, which would provide a huge leap toward achieving the interconnection of the La Plata and Amazon river basins, opening up the possibility of developing the very "heart" of South America and placing the enormous natural resources, which the Anglo-American oligarchy covets so, at the disposal of the people of the continent. For precisely this reason, the oligarchy is determined to prevent this enormous waterway integration effort at all cost, under the same logic by which British geopolitics used two world wars to prevent Eurasian integration.

This same objective can be seen in another WWF study, "Portrait of the Navigation of the Upper Paraguay River." According to Diario de Cuiaba of Feb. 8, this study attempts to demonstrate that the barges used to transport agricultural products from the Cerrado are causing irreparable damage to the natural environment along the banks of the Paraguay River. "If the same course is maintained, a future waterway would cause irreparable damage to the ecosystem of the swamp." The WWF charges that "the navigation companies which operate on the Paraguay River have been using much larger barge fleets than recommended."

According to Diario de Cuiaba, "in ten years, this is the third time that the NGO has financed a study focussed on the Paraguay-Paraná waterway and its effects.... The first was `The Paraguay-Paraná Waterway: Who Pays The Bill?' in 1994, which sought to prove, apart from the socio-environmental ramifications of the project, that it was economically unviable. Especially for Brazil. In 1999, in response to the release of official studies on the environmental impact of the waterway, the WWF-Brazil published `Reality or Fiction: A Review of the Official Studies,' which once again questioned the project."

Why the Cerrado

Clearly, one of the main concerns of the Anglo-American oligarchy is to block the physical integration of the Ibero-American continent, because this would awaken a sleeping giant with an extraordinary economic potential for development, especially with regard to the potential production of food, which could easily destabilize the Anglo-American cartel's control of food surpluses. In a speech to the recent Davos Forum in Switzerland, Agriculture Minister Pratini de Morais identified the tremendous potential of Brazil, alone:

"With an area of 8.5 million square kilometers, Brazil finds itself in the position of being the fifth-largest country in the world. In terms of population, recent census results showed that we are the sixth-largest population in the world, with 170 million inhabitants. In a territory of 850 million hectares, of which 350 make up the Amazon jungle, total cultivated area--both permanent and temporary--is only 50 million hectares, while 220 million hectares are used for grazing animals.

"To illustrate the potential of Brazilian agriculture, I would like to emphasize the fact that Brazil still has 90 million hectares of land available for the production of grains, in the vast central area and in the prairies of the north, which could be developed without damaging the environment. To give you an idea of what this could represent in terms of the supply of agricultural products on the world market, this still unexplored area is almost the equivalent of the total area currently planted with corn, soy, and wheat in the United States."

It is clear, that the full development of this region, should be taken up as one of Brazil's principal missions, so that, together with the nations of South America, it can become a future granary for the world. A mission, for which the development of great infrastructure projects is fundamental. These will not only make possible future economic development and increase the economy's general productivity, but will also serve as the motor force for a great employment plan, capable of alleviating the enormous social problems which the country faces. To fail to do so, is to play with the danger of an internal conflagration.

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