From Volume 6, Issue 19 of EIR Online, Published May 8, 2007

Ibero-American News Digest

Colombia, the Bering Strait Tunnel, and the Darien Gap

May 1 (EIRNS)—The following statement, under the above title, was released on April 27, by the president of the LaRouche Association in Colombia, Maximiliano Londono Penilla.

"President Alvaro Uribe should be informed that with the conference on 'A Eurasian-American Transcontinental Link via the Bering Strait,' held in Moscow on April 24, a new era for humanity has begun, in which the physical connection between continents, via great corridors of development and infrastructure, marks the beginning of a strategic discussion among the nations of the world on achieving a lasting peace.

"Colombia should immediately place on the world's agenda the plan to build a high-speed railway corridor that would cross the Darien Gap [the jungle area separating Colombia and Panama—ed.], thereby completing the physical integration between Eurasia and the Americas. The only two significant bottlenecks that have prevented a physical connection between the old and new continents have been the Bering Strait and the Darien Gap; if these are overcome, the Eurasian Landbridge becomes a World Landbridge, and Colombia, especially, will once again play a positive role among the nations of the world.

"Instead of insisting on a Free Trade Agreement with the United States, which would wipe out the incipient industrial and agricultural activity in our country, Colombia should seek instead to make the construction of a development and infrastructure corridor that would traverse the Darien Gap, a key part of the mega-construction project of a tunnel that would link Russia with Alaska across the Bering Strait. Therefore, Colombia should begin immediate negotiations with Russia and the United States in this regard.

"On the webpage of the Political Action Committee of U.S. statesman Lyndon LaRouche (www.larouchepac.com), one can find the details of this historic Moscow conference. For more than 20 years, LaRouche and his wife Helga Zepp-LaRouche have been in the forefront of promoting this great Eurasian Landbridge project. In parallel to this, LaRouche has advocated the creation of a new, just international monetary and financial system, to replace the old, usurious International Monetary Fund (IMF)."

Argentina's President Target of Assassination Attempt

May 2 (EIRNS)—On April 28, a hijacked truck, driven by one Jose Walter Mansilla, crashed only a few meters away from the residence of Argentine President Nestor Kirchner in the city of Rio Gallegos, in the province of Santa Cruz, following a crazed drive through several city blocks, during which he damaged ten cars and injured six people, one of them critically. Although Kirchner was not present at his residence at the time, other members of his family were, but fortunately were not harmed.

Countering claims by the President's political opponents that this was an "accident" carried out by a lone deranged individual, Interior Minister Anibal Fernandez told Radio America April 29 that police investigators who raided Mansilla's house following the crash, found drawings of Kirchner's residence. "This was no insane individual ... this was not an accident," the minister stated, reporting that during police interrogation, Mansilla himself had declared, "You know, there are two political bands, and 'that Nazi' [Kirchner] has to be eliminated." This was a premeditated attack, he emphasized, adding that authorities are also investigating whether more people were involved.

In an April 30 speech from the Presidential Palace in Buenos Aires, Kirchner also debunked the idea that the incident was accidental, locating it in a broader strategic context. "I am threatened daily ... all the time, for many reasons," he said. Why? "Because I delve into a lot of issues that no one has touched for a long time, and you know how those interests react when someone bothers them." For example, he said, "I know that when you talk about neoliberalism, or say you don't want concentration of wealth, or mention that there are some companies that are too strong and have a dominant position, and when you get tough with them, well, often there are interests that move in concert with each other."

Kirchner warned his audience "I am not afraid of anything, although I do naturally have the fears that all Christians have ... but I'm not afraid, because I know what responsibilities I took on when people gave me the mandate to be their President.... And I urge you to continue transforming Argentina, continue to build our industrial Argentina, to end indigence, poverty, and unemployment, continue expanding industry to all of Argentina, and continue with all our strength to achieve productive transformation, and build the country for everyone. Not just for some corporate sector, but for everyone, so that among us all we shall have the ability to carry out a permanent correction." The Argentine President told his audience that, "with all my limitations, I can guarantee you that I'm doing everything I can, day by day, hour by hour, and I feel truly happy."

Argentine LYM, Chilean Activists Slam Gore's Warming Hoax

May 5 (EIRNS)—Leading up to May 11, when Al Gore is scheduled to make appearances in both Argentina and Chile, to promote his global warming hoax, activists on both sides of the border have started educating people on the genocidal implications of what Al Gordo is preaching. Gore will address the First Biofuels Congress of the Americas in Buenos Aires on the morning of May 11, and then fly into Chile in time to give the keynote address at the "Global Warming and Climate Change: The Time To Act Is Now" conference in Santiago.

On May 3, six members of the LaRouche Youth Movement shook up the conference sponsored by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Buenos Aires, with a hard-hitting and creative intervention that not only reached the conference attendees, but hundreds more attending the 33rd annual Book Fair held nearby. One LYM member was dressed as a tree, decked with signs reading "I'm a tree that lives off CO2, just like you!" and "Don't miss the IPCC's scientific fraud: Global Warming due to CO2 is a lie!" Another member dressed as a nuclear cooling tower had signs reading "Building our nation's future is only possible with Nuclear Energy."

Staid Argentines, and the four main speakers, became nonplussed when confronted with the reality that the IPCC, and Al Gore, are telling developing nations they don't have the right to industrial or technological progress, condemning their populations to death by starvation and disease. LYM leader Emiliano Andino told the panel of speakers, "Given that population-reduction policies were demanded by Kissinger and Hitler, who is going to make up the list of the people who have to die?" When the moderator demanded a question, Andino replied that the LYM wasn't asking questions, but making a "moral intervention on behalf of the many young people who want a future. What you're proposing here is a crime against humanity. This is Nazism—openly and publicly— and it comes from the United Nations."

Across the border in Chile, activists have begun to circulate EIR material exposing the genocidal roots of Fat Al's global warming swindle and his nefarious ties to the Anglo-Dutch financial oligarchy. One Chilean trade union leader who is circulating the EIR material, collaborated with the LaRouche movement in 2006, to expose George Bush's Social Security privatization scheme as an exact replica of what the fascist Pinochet dictatorship rammed down the throats of the Chilean population in 1981. In fact, Sebastian Pinera, the brother of Jose Pinera, the man who privatized Chile's social security system, is responsible for inviting Gore to Chile, and guaranteeing his $200,000 honorarium!! The trade union leader told EIR on May 4, that inside Chile, most of the left-leaning and progressive sectors "see Gore as a defender of humanity," adding that she is distributing EIR's material "to set the record straight.... Had it not been for you, I would have thought the same." She reported that Gore's lying film "An Inconvenient Truth," is being widely circulated in Chile.

Lopez Obrador: IMF Policies for Mexico a 'Failure'

May 2 (EIRNS)—Mexico's legitimate President, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, or AMLO as he is known, issued a statement April 28 denouncing the IMF for dictating failed economic policies to Mexico. He also denounced the government of President Felipe Calderon for following those dictates "to the letter," as has every Mexican government "since the administration of Carlos Salinas de Gortari," PRI and PAN parties alike.

Proof of that failure, said AMLO, is "the growing unemployment, abandonment of productive activities, and the countryside, and the migration of approximately 500,000 nationals every year."

What good is it, he asked, "to occupy the fourth place in the world in number of multimillionaires, if there are still more than 70 million citizens in Mexico living in poverty and extreme poverty?"

In particular, AMLO slammed the government of "usurper" Felipe Calderon for promoting an IMF-dictated tax reform that would impose a value-added tax on previously untouchable food and medicines, a tax that will hit hardest at the poor. AMLO noted that the IMF's director had also recently publicly expressed his approval of Mexico's new social security "reform," and had urged Calderon to ram through energy and tax "reform" as quickly as possible.

All rights reserved © 2007 EIRNS