Ibero-American News Digest

Club of Rome Launches Malthusian Offensive in Ibero-America

June 4 (EIRNS)—To the delight of the financial oligarchs of Wall Street and the City of London, representatives of Ibero-American chapters of the genocidal Club of Rome gathered in Buenos Aires on April 14 to map out a continental "action plan" of green fascism—"sustainable" [zero] growth, "renewable" [not nuclear] energy, and an eco-fascist dictatorship designed to "punish" nations that don't line up with these killers.

The Buenos Aires gathering emitted the same stink as that of the WBGU, the green fascist outfit run by Germany's Hans Joaquim Schellnhuber. That Argentina was chosen as the site for this meeting is also no accident, given its strong history and tradition of scientific achievement and firm commitment to nuclear energy. One of the leading members of Argentina's Club of Rome chapter, Supreme Court President Ricardo Lorenzetti, has already demanded that his country follow Germany's example and abandon nuclear energy.

The Club of Rome clearly has Argentina in its crosshairs. On May 31, Argentine Club members and their hangers-on met in Buenos Aires to officially launch the Expoterra Foundation, dedicated to imposing the Club's Malthusian goals under the guise of "cultural change." Lorenzetti, who spoke at this meeting, warned that Argentines had to choose between "development or environment," adding that opting for development was tantamount to "suicide."

Attending the April 14 meeting were Alberto Peccei, a Club of Rome International executive committee member, and son of its founder, Aurelio Peccei. Alfredo Daverede, president of the Argentine chapter, wrote in an op-ed published April 16 in the daily Clarín that, despite the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth tract having been discredited years ago, the grave environmental crisis the world now faces has caused people to once again "turn toward the forecasts made by The Limits to Growth. At last, the Club of Rome has been proven right," Daverede gushed.

These genocidalists announced that one of the meeting's goals was to create a "Latin American community" within the Club, whose mission would be to "consolidate regional thinking" in line with the Club of Rome's original agenda of zero growth and population reduction. The national chapters delegated to carry out this task are those of Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil, the only three Ibero-American countries possessing nuclear energy and related advanced technology. Using the anti-nuclear hysteria that its allies have generated in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan, the Club is committed to taking down nuclear energy in Ibero-America altogether, replacing it with wind, solar, and biofuels.

Cholera on the March in the Americas

June 5 (EIRNS)—With the rainy season now in full force, the number of new cholera cases continues to climb in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, with the death count in the latter country now at 34 and 1,431 infected. The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) NGO has characterized the resurgence of cholera in Haiti, particularly in the capital of Port-au-Prince, as "alarming."

Romain Gitenet, head of MSF's Haiti mission, reported that during just one week since May 29, MSF treated close to 2,000 cholera patients in the capital. According to the British NGO Oxfam, clinics just in the Carrefour section of Port-au-Prince are seeing more than 300 new cases a day, triple the number seen last Fall. Cases are also mounting in several other regions of the country, notably the West and Southeast departments.

Despite a modicum of preparation for the upsurge, Haiti is, in reality, no better prepared to deal with this than it was for last October's outbreak. No sanitation or water infrastructure has been built; the public health system is fragile at best, and living conditions continue to be subhuman. The spread of cholera to the Dominican Republic which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, was a given. Moreover, there are now reports of suspected cholera cases in several countries of Central and South America, as well as in Mexico and in the U.S. state of Florida.

One U.S. public health expert recently noted that the 01 Ogawa strain of cholera in Haiti and the Dominican Republic "is clearly dangerous, highly infectious, and is a likely pandemic agent." This expert underscored the potential for the spread of this strain "to other Caribbean and Latin American nations this year, if human movements are the key vector of 01 Ogawa's spread."

Last February, at the 2011 International Meeting on Emerging Diseases and Surveillance in Vienna, Austria, Jessica Malaty, a senior analyst at the Division of Integrated Biodefense at Georgetown University Medical Center, reported on the findings of a just-concluded study which predicts that, given the mobility of the cholera pathogen throughout the Americas, an estimated 200,000 cases could arise in the Caribbean region alone over the 18 months beginning February 2011.

Rim of Fire: Earthquakes, Volcanic Eruption and Solar Storms

June 6 (EIRNS)—An earthquake hit south-central Chile in the early morning of June 5, measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale. Some 2,000 people were immediately evacuated from coastal zones as a precaution, although they later returned to their homes. The quake's epicenter was in Maule, 280 km southeast of Santiago. Five regions felt the quake, most strongly near the city of Constitución.

Meanwhile, a sharp gust of solar wind hit Earth's magnetic field at approximately 20:30 GMT on June 4, sparking a G2-class geomagnetic storm. The storm is subsiding now, albeit slowly.

And the 17,886-foot Popocatepetl volcano, overlooking Mexico City, shook for several minutes and then shot a blast of ash about two miles above its crater, while there was a 6.3 level earthquake registered on Macquarie Island, which lies between New Zealand and Antarctica.

In Chile, there is great concern over the relationship between the June 5 quake and the June 4 eruption of the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle volcano complex, and what this might portend for the future. The eruption coincided with several small earthquakes which at one point numbered an average of 230 an hour, 12 of which had a magnitude of more than 4.0. The Puyehue-Cordón Caulle last erupted on May 24, 1960, 38 hours after a massive 9.5-magnitude earthquake struck the city of Valdivia.

Following the June 4 eruption, the government ordered the evacuation of 3,500 people living in the Los Rios and Los Lagos regions in the vicinity of the volcano in southeastern Chile. Today, local authorities ordered more evacuations, citing the danger of avalanches from the continuous flow of sediment moving down from the volcano. Plumes from the volcanic eruption extended six miles into the air, and volcanic ash continues to rain down on several cities and provinces in Argentina's Patagonia region, prompting authorities in that country to declare a state of emergency.

The Chilean Navy's oceanographic service, SHOA, ruled out any possibility of a tsunami, as a result of yesterday's quake. The head of the Chilean Seismological Service described this morning's quake as a "delayed and sporadic aftershock" of the February 2010 quake, which measured 8.8 on the Richter scale.

Argentine Satellite To Monitor Quake and Weather Precursors

June 2 (EIRNS)—While Nerobama is busy shutting down space satellites capable of monitoring and warning of dangerous weather events, on June 9, NASA will launch Argentina's fourth and most important satellite, the SAC-D Aquarius, from Vandenberg Air Force base in California. The SAC-D will play a vital role in helping to identify and issue early warnings for earthquakes, floods, and volcanic eruptions. The satellite is named for the instrument supplied by NASA which it will carry. Its mission will be to create a monthly world map of oceans' salinity, which is important to determine ocean density, which is the motor of temperature.

Conrado Varotto, executive director of the National Commission on Space Activities (CONAE), says he is "convinced that space technology will allow us to issue early warnings of natural events such as earthquakes, floods, and volcanic eruptions." Compared to the past, when the goal of a space mission was defined by the minds of scientists, Varroto said that today's "missions arise from the needs presented by users."

According to a June 1 press release issued by the Argentine Foreign Ministry, the satellite will also measure the effect of cosmic radiation on electronic components, using the Carmen, an instrument provided by France's space agency CNES, and will use the Rose, provided by Italy's space agency ASI, to produce profiles of atmospheric temperature.

The remaining five devices to be used are Argentine-built, and will "monitor marine ice that is a risk to navigation, and provide information to help in understanding such events as the El Niño and La Niña [currents], which affect cycles of rain and drought...." Measurement of rainfall, soil temperature, and the balance between energy and water will be very important for agronomists, the Foreign Ministry explained, and data from the SAC-D collected by CONAE will be available free of charge to anyone who requests it.

Although CONAE won NASA's bid to build the SAC-D, this is truly a multinational project. Aside from the agencies mentioned above, the Brazilian and Canadian space agencies also participated.