Ibero-American News Digest

Mexican Congress Wants PLHINO, Not Environmental Sham

May 12 (EIRNS)—The schemes of Prince Philip's WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) to quietly torpedo construction of Mexico's Northwest Hydraulic Plan (PLHINO) in the, "environmental" hoaxes, have run into trouble, before they even got off the ground. Construction of the PLHINO, which Lyndon LaRouche has supported for decades, is the fastest route to stopping social chaos in Mexico, by quickly gearing up food production and employment.

The WWF made its move last week, when Mexican President Felipe Calderón informed the "Pro-PLHINO of the 21st Century Committee"—the juggernaut in favor of the PLHINO, founded by the LaRouche movement in the state of Sonora—that all decisions and discussions around the PLHINO project would be handled by the director general of the National Water Commission (CONAGUA), José Luis Luege Tamargo, who is an outspoken agent of the WWF. Federal monies appropriated earlier this year by the Congress for a serious PLHINO feasibility study, are to be given to CONAGUA, the Calderón administration specified. Luege had already announced that the only feasibility study he would tolerate, would be a lengthy environmental impact study.

Informed by the Pro-PLHINO Committee on May 9 of the government's suicidal move to thus hand control over Mexico's water and agriculture to the British Crown's WWF, the president of the Mexican Congress's Rural Development Committee, Congressman Carlos Navarro López from Sonora, issued a warning to CONAGUA and its director: Congress appropriated millions of pesos for a technical study to demonstrate the feasibility of building the long-planned PLHINO project, not for environmental studies, he said. My committee, and the Hydraulic Resources Committee, which also approved the PLHINO appropriation, will hold Luege accountable to use that money as Congress so directed, Navarro stated.

The mood is getting hot in Sonora, against the WWF attempt to prevent Mexico from producing its own food, at a time of worldwide food shortage and starvation. Three Sonoran papers ran front-page stories on the Pro-PLHINO Committee's May 9 press conference denouncing the WWF's sabotage plans.

Pro-PLHINO Committee leader Alberto Vizcarra, well-known as LaRouche's key activist in the state, reports that students and agricultural producers, among others, across Sonora are gearing up for political war against these vampire-loving oligarchs who, as one participant put it at a Pro-PLHINO meeting last week, prefer to save Sonora's native lizards, to saving even one Mexican child.

WWF to Mexico: Let Them Eat Butterflies ... and Drink Blood

May 12 (EIRNS)—Leading hitman for Prince Philip's WWF in Mexico, National Water Commission (CONAGUA) director general José Luis Luege Tamargo, last week threatened Mexicans that they had better stop using so much water, and learn to consume water "responsibly." Visiting the drought-stricken state of Durango, Luege parroted the WWF's Malthusian mantra that "population growth"—that is, human beings—is putting water supplies at risk.

For years, the WWF—whose symbol is the blood-sucking vampire bat—in alliance with some of Mexico's richest plutocrats (e.g., the son of the sometime richest man in the world, Carlos Slim), has told Mexicans that they must adopt "a new water culture," to "save the country's water basins and bodies" from the "threats" arising from human activity: "excessive" irrigation for agriculture, dams and transfers for water management, etc. People must accept that water is scarce, and learn that only "available water" can be used, because desalination and water transfers threaten "The Environment."

These lunatics went so far as to amend Mexico's National Water Law in 2004, to recognize The Environment as "a user" of water, "and, as such be represented in participating bodies." The WWF-Mexico's 2004-07 Annual Report notes that they continue working to ensure that that policy be implemented effectively in relevant regulations and laws, as they succeeded in doing in 2006, through modifications of water laws in the state of Chihuahua. The WWF is conducting a campaign to keep the Great American Desert bone-dry and brown, in that state.

The only kind of economic activity that doesn't harm the environment, is "eco-tourism," these oligarchic bootlickers insist. Typical of their zealous efforts to shut down other kinds of production, is their "Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve," in the state of Michoacán. The WWF organized that state government to prohibit any economic activity in the reserve other than servicing tourists coming to watch butterflies a couple of months a year. That left 10,000 people who formerly supported themselves by logging, with no recourse but to live off housing subsidies provided by the WWF, with money from the Slim family's telecommunications cartel, Hewlett Packard, and others.

Much as then-Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources Luege Tamargo would complain that the WWF-organized prohibition on productive activity was being violated, local residents continued logging in the reserve, because, as one villager summed up their case: "We can't eat butterflies."

Colombian Minister Pushes British Line on Bank of the South

May 14 (EIRNS)—It would appear that Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos has never recovered his sanity, after getting his economics degrees from Harvard and the London School of Economics.

Santos came to Washington May 7 for the annual conference of the Rockefellers' Council of the Americas, where he laid out a "Strategic Vision for the Americas," which would sink Central and South America in war and social chaos, and pit one nation against the other—as per the British global gameplan. Although Santos never named Venezuela, it was obvious that he was issuing a call to arms against Colombia's neighbor.

Santos admitted in his speech that his vision had been packaged in London. His theatrics over "the specter looming" over the region, took aim at the potential that Ibero-American nations would join together to adopt protectionist, anti-free-trade American System policies, in the face of the collapse of the British liberal imperial system. Thus, Santos attacked the creation of the Bank of the South in South America—a project which Lyndon LaRouche has endorsed as beneficial for all the Americas—as a threat to the inter-American system. This is a gross lie, and a swipe at President Alvaro Uribe, who last year expressed interest in Colombia joining the project.

Given his own well-known Presidential ambitions, perhaps Santos might wish to reconsider tying himself so tightly to the mast of the sinking British empire.

Zepp-LaRouche Food Call Distributed at EU-Latin American Summit

May 16 (EIRNS)—The LaRouche movement introduced the only bit of reality to be found in the Fifth European Union-Latin America Summit which took over much of Peru's capital, Lima, for four days this past week. EIR Lima correspondent Sara Madueño distributed copies of Helga Zepp-LaRouche's "Double Food Production!" call to 300 of the 1,200 press swarming around the summit, as well as to the Italian foreign minister, a number of EU commissioners, and delegates from the 60 governments. Madueño also circulated an EIR article, citing Zepp-LaRouche, calling upon this summit to do something useful, and call for a New Bretton Woods meeting.

Peter Mandelson, British EU Commissioner for Trade, did not appreciate Madueño's question to him on biofuels as a crime against humanity. He cut her off during his press conference, snapping that "production of biofuels is not the cause of hunger," only to be questioned again by Central American journalists on biofuels and the rise in food prices.

The theater of the absurd atmosphere dominating the proceedings was evident in the response given to Madueño's question to the summit co-presidents, the foreign ministers of Slovenia and Peru, and to the Austrian EU commissioner, Benita Ferrero Waldmer, as to why no one had made any reference to the collapse of the international financial system, when any decision which they might make, if they ignored that collapse, would not be based in reality. Would this summit issue a call for a New Bretton Woods? Since no one else would touch the question, Peruvian Foreign Minister José Antonio García Belaunde made a fool of himself, stating that he didn't think this was a terminal crisis. The world has lived through many crises, he said, dismissing it as only a "U.S. mortgage problem." He added that, in any case, the country which is at the epicenter of the mortgage crisis is not a member of the summit.