Ibero-American News Digest

'How Many Haitians Need To Die Before Obama Is Impeached?'

June 3 (EIRNS)—Opening a United States Institute of Peace forum on Haiti this morning, Lt. Gen. P.K. Keen, the deputy commander of the U.S. Southern Command, stated that it will not take a hurricane to create a new disaster in Haiti. All it will take, he said, is five inches of rain falling in one 12-hour period.

At this moment, in Haiti, there are more, not fewer, people living in camps for displaced persons, as we enter the hurricane season, Keen said, with estimates running from 1.5 to 2 million people. He reported that he had walked through three of the larger camps in Port au Prince on his visit there this week, because he finds that it is in those camps where you get the "best feel" for the challenges still facing this nation. His assessment? Haiti is still in a very risky position.

The U.S. military's post-earthquake deployment into Haiti was ended on June 1, the first day of the official hurricane season. Only some 500 Louisiana National Guardsman are left to help prepare for the hurricanes to come. We're not even a week into the hurricane season, and the U.S. Southern Command has already been called upon to help Guatemala with relief efforts after Tropical Storm Agatha, Keen said. The U.S. military is preparing, already, to return to help Haiti when needed to provide life-saving support, he reported, because that support will be needed.

"Disaster," in Haiti's case, means mass death, again. Needless mass death.

Lyndon LaRouche issued an urgent call on Feb. 22 for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to help the Haitian government relocate the (at that time) 1 million homeless Haitians to secure sites, to be built outside coastal flood plains. LaRouche proposed that this be done under a proposed 25-year treaty agreement for national reconstruction by which Haiti could become a modern, industrialized nation. Around that time, a similar proposal was presented directly to the White House by other senior U.S. political figures. Like Nero turning his thumb down at the Roman Circus, Obama's White House rejected it out of hand, condemning hundreds of thousands of black Haitians to probable death.

LaRouche responded, that by refusing to permit the actions needed to save lives, Obama is imposing a policy of intentional British-dictated Malthusian genocide, for which he must be impeached, or forced to resign. And he posed the question still pending: "How many Haitians are going to have to die before it becomes obvious that Obama has to be impeached?"

A Tale of Argentina and Glass-Steagall

June 4 (EIRNS)—EIR overturned the chessboard at a roundtable discussion this morning on the Argentine economy, at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C. The presenters were three Argentine Mont Pelerinites from the "FIEL Foundation" in Buenos Aires (short for "FIEL to the British Crown"—fiel meaning faithful or loyal in Spanish). FIEL is one of the big think-tanks of the British-run opposition in Argentina, and these three droned on with statistical presentations on how the policies of the Fernández de Kirchner government are "unsustainable," and the good old days of unbridled neoliberalism must inevitably return.

The audience was made up of State, Treasury, and other U.S. government officials, as well as Argentine Embassy officials, and other policy wonks.

EIR asked the third question, stating that the speakers were describing a world which has ceased to exist, both internationally and domestically, since the "economy" which is unsustainable is the international financial system. The question became a several-minute briefing, including the fight over the euro and the global battle for a return to Glass-Steagall, and wiping out the financial debt. As for Argentina's domestic situation, EIR noted that LaRouche representatives in Buenos Aires had reported that the recent Bicentennial celebrations marked a change in the domestic dynamic, reviving the country's historic nationalist, scientific, and production-oriented outlook, and rejecting "the British monetarist axioms which underlie everything you just said."

A back-and-forth ensued with the technocrats, who were furious, but had no choice but to take the question seriously, insisting it is too late for Glass-Steagall. "It won't work," one said, repeating the British liberal mantra that FDR's New Deal didn't work either ("MIT says so"), etc.

Argentina Celebrates 60th Anniversary of Nuclear Energy Program

June 1 (EIRNS)—Speaking May 31 before an enthusiastic audience at the 60th anniversary celebration of the founding of Argentina's National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA), President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner expressed the nation's pride in CNEA's enormous scientific achievements, which have placed Argentina in the vanguard of nations which today produce nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

The Argentine President said that while people tend to think of nuclear energy as having "an aura of precision, or antiseptic science," it's important to remember that the production of "high technology and precise scientific products also require passion, and the heart to move forward—the same passion and heart that you all had to sustain [CNEA's] life."

It is fitting, she said, that in Argentina's Bicentennial year, "we are celebrating [CNEA's] 60 years," and have an opportunity to thank the dedicated scientists and engineers, who, in the dark days of 1990s neoliberalism, resisted, when financier interests wanted to privatize and dismember the program.

Speaking after the President, CNEA director Norma Boero confirmed that the continued development of nuclear energy and related technologies is today a policy of State. The current government has guaranteed the investments necessary to "consolidate the development of nuclear activity in Argentina," she said.

Over the next several years, Boero reported, CNEA's activities will include completion of the Atucha II reactor (2011), following by construction of a fourth and fifth reactor, in addition to extending the operational life of the existing Embalse reactor; ramping up production of uranium and heavy water, and completing the prototype CAREM reactor, built of entirely Argentine technology, which will be installed in Formosa province.

Indicative of Argentina's commitment to advancing its high-technology and scientific tradition, Defense Minister Nilda Garré announced June 3 that the government is planning to build a nuclear submarine, and is also considering installing small nuclear reactors on some ships. The nation has to "recover the capabilities that the country had in the scientific, technological, and industrial sectors, because Argentina cannot be left on the sidelines of that technology," she stated. Argentina has, for years, had plans to build nuclear subs, but the British had managed to sabotage them after the Malvinas War.