From Volume 37, Issue 15 of EIR Online, Published Apr. 16, 2010

Ibero-American News Digest

Come On, People! Haiti Is Not 'The Sims'!

WASHINGTON DC, April 8 (EIRNS)—The "can do" attitude toward every challenge thrown our way, has always been an emblem of great pride for the United States of America. It is an agonizing sign of the times, that the same "pragmatic" world view which has begotten the disintegration of the nation, and the entire global economy, commandeers today's discussion amongst the very policy makers responsible for, and, quite visibly impassioned with, the mission of helping the disaster-stricken nation of Haiti.

The U.S. government-sponsored United States Institute for Peace held an event this morning, on "What the Donor's Conference Means for Haiti's Future," to evaluate the recent United Nations international donors conference. The two events of the United States Institute of Peace's Haiti Working Group in which LaRouche PAC has participated, have involved the highest level of U.S. and international personnel at work on Haiti policy. Today's event, which hosted OAS Assistant Secretary General Albert Ramdin, State Department Senior Advisor to Counselor Cheryl Mills, Meghan Curtis, and others, displayed the deeply delusional state of mind and Harvard Business School economic models which Barack Obama's presidency have come to typify.

Viewing the up-tick in cocaine trafficking to the United States through Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake, is a reasonable, and actual risk. Talking about correcting the "distortionary" effects of U.S. aid money on prices, in a completely destroyed, and dysfunctional internal market system, is not.

Curtis captured this insanity in her speech outlining State Department policy toward Haiti. Quoting British genocidalist and Soros-flunky Paul Collier, she declared that one of our "guiding tenets is: we cannot chase the needs, we have to chase the opportunities."

Her elaboration? Haiti has great natural beauty, and, therefore, can depend on building up its already "thriving" tourism in the north; and, Haiti benefits from having the most liberal trade agreement in the hemisphere. Focused investment in Haiti's "comparative advantages," such as indigenous mango, avocado, and coffee cash crops, can "pump-prime" their economy for "sustainable growth." The United States is a part of an international consortium for aid, which must be adept to these opportunities, and the risks, posed by Haitian Disaster, and should "leverage the atmosphere" accordingly.

Cities such as Cap Haitien, St. Marc, and Les Cayes, are to become new, "geographic" development polls; prime spots to build up gentrified tourist resort towns, using Haitians to service wealthy travelers. And, as for the wealthy Haitian oligarchy, Haiti's economy would greatly benefit from their offers of, for the first time, paying taxes; and, increasing their own "private" investment into an economy over which they already have a strangle hold.

Turning Haiti into a new Dubai, or Rio de Janeiro, is the pipe dream of persons who think of the future as a constructed scenario in "The Sims"; it's not real—it never can be.

Cardinal Praises Narcoterrorist FARC

April 6 (EIRNS)—In an April 5 interview with Colombia's El Tiempo, Roman Catholic Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos broadcast that he intends to broker a power-sharing deal for South America's largest cocaine cartel, the narcoterrorist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in his native Colombia.

Castrillon's brazen interview signals that London is going for broke for the full legalization of the cocaine trade throughout the Americas, after a Colombian court ruled on Feb. 26 that Alvaro Uribe could not run for a third term in the May 30 Presidential election. Lyndon LaRouche had identified Uribe as a target of the British, because he was the only President in the Americas refusing to bow to drug legalization. With President Uribe now on his way out, and with Obama still in the White House, London is confident it can get away with bloody murder.

Cardinal Castrillón, long hostile to LaRouche's policies, has retired from any official post in the Vatican, but is still based in Rome. He told El Tiempo that "political space must be opened" to the FARC, citing his personal meetings and phone conversations with FARC leaders on such a deal in the recent period.

He declared it "not only dangerous, but odious and damaging" to label the murderous FARC (correctly) as "narcoterrorists," and announced that he'd been in their camps, and in their combat areas, and has pictures, including with Cano, going back at least 18 years to prove it. He spoke of "my friends, and I dare to call them that, in high levels of the armed leadership of the guerrillas. Some of them have been in my chapel here in Rome.... They know I do not profess a false friendship towards them," and spoke of the "good intentions to help the people" of a FARC leadership which has waged mass terror campaigns against their nation for decades.

Castrillon called refusal to negotiate with the FARC "hypocritical," because all of Colombia—leading families, businessmen, military and police—has been corrupted by the drug trade. He should know. The term "narco-alms" was coined after Castrillón met with drug kingpin Carlos Lehder, blessed his lodging in the earlier 1980s, and admitted he took money from the trafficker. Likewise, Castrillon confessed publicly in 1984 that he took money from Pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel—for a good cause, of course: to keep it from being used in illegal activities such as prostitution. And, he warned the donors that giving money would not save their souls.

Brazil's Political Bubble Will Pop, Too

WASHINGTON, April 7 (EIRNS)—A foretaste of the nasty shock Brazilian policymakers are in for when London's carry-trade bubble pops under them, was seen at the Woodrow Wilson Center's Brazil Institute forum today, on prospects for Brazil's October 2010 Presidential elections. Brazilian political analysts and leading U.S. Brazilianologists sat around discussing pre- and post-election trends, starting from the premise that Brazil's economic "success" ensures economic and political stability, no matter who wins the election. This, in an economy based, as EIR has documented, on the biggest speculative bubble around.

In this surreal environment, the most lunatic was Chris Garman, Latin America head of the so-called political risk consultancy, Eurasia Group. Garman reported that his firm's clients—hedge funds and institutional investors located in London, Wall Street and Boston—consider Brazil "the market darling," and believe that not much is at stake in the election, because the political class agrees that monetarist policies cannot be violated. Garman insisted that the issue in the elections, is the differences in how the two main contenders will "manage abundance."

It was left to EIR's Gretchen Small to drop "a stinkbomb" into the discussions, pointing out that the "abundance" they were yakking about is based entirely on the speculative carry trade, and the entire international financial system is blowing up! The Euro is at the point of disappearing. And what will that do to all their political projections for Brazil?

To which Garman fanatically insisted that none of that would hurt Brazil's great success story, while many nodded their agreement.

Brazilians Die in Mudslides: No Natural Disaster

April 13 (EIRNS)—Historic levels of rain fell in the state of Rio de Janeiro last week, but like the destruction wrecked by the January earthquake in Haiti, the rising death toll in Rio is not a result of rain, but a policy of throwing millions of people onto the garbage heaps—literally.

Mud and landslides crushed homes and people in "favelas" built precariously on steep slopes in and near the city of Rio de Janeiro this week, leaving a confirmed death toll at 239 by April 13, with dozens still missing; the homes of 11,000 people destroyed; while 60,000 fled homes that are at risk.

Rio's mudslides expose the ugly oligarchic culture which Lyndon LaRouche has identified as what London finds so congenial for such imperialist frauds as the so-called "BRIC" (Brazil, Russia, India, China forum). While rich elites live in their walled communities and armed fortresses, the majority of Brazil's people still live in slave-like conditions, or worse. A fifth or more of the city of Rio de Janeiro's people live piled on top of each other in the infamous favelas, the 500 or so slums covering its steep hillsides, in self-built shacks, with no public services. Most are under the control of drug gangs, and police dare not enter.

When the rains hit, the lack of drainage and haphazard construction turned these hillsides into time-bombs. The worst catastrophe occurred in Niteroi, across the harbor from Rio, where 154 people, so far, were buried in one hill alone, after a forty-foot wall of earth and garbage roared down its slopes. Morro do Bumba had been built on top of a garbage dump, with no drainage system, and the ferocity of the slide is believed to have been generated by an explosion of methane released by the rotting garbage.

At least 18 of Rio's favelas are built on garbage dumps, it is now reported.

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