In this issue:

JP Morgan Chase Tells Toledo: Privatize, or You're Out

Argentina Blowing Apart: Who Pulled the Plug on Duhalde?

Seineldin Warns of Financial Interest Behind Coup

'Lula' Anti-Globalization Forces Back IMF

FARC Threatens Colombia Leadership; Pastrana Waffles

Colombian Economist Tells Uribe To Dump IMF

Oligarchy Pushing 'Regionalization' vs. Nation-States

From the Vol.1,No.17 issue of Electronic Intelligence Weekly

IBERO-AMERICAN NEWS DIGEST

No Calm on the Continent: Financial Explosions in Every Country

JP Morgan Chase Tells Toledo: Privatize, or You're Out

After the Peruvian government halted the privatization of two electricity companies June 19, because it could not control popular protests against the privatization, Wall Street sent Peru a message, in the form of a JP Morgan Chase downgrade of its recommendation for holding Peruvian debt. JP Morgan's statement announcing the decision (reported in Expreso of June 27) was an ultimatum. The postponement of the privatizations "was a negative surprise for the markets, but our hope is that in the short term, President Toledo and his Cabinet will correct what we could call a lapse." As long as Economics Minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (PPK) and Prime Minister Roberto Danino are in their posts, "we think ... a program of economic reforms, including asset sales, will be maintained."

Both men are still at their posts, and assuring Wall Street that privatizations have not been ended, but merely postponed. PPK denied he had any plans to leave the government, and told RPP Radio June 21 that the government would likely sell four electricity distributors in September. This week, PPK was up in Washington, meeting with officials of the multilateral banks, and unamed members of the Bush Administration. His message is, that the temporary halt in the privatizations is no violation of Peru's IMF accord (which requires that Peru raise $700 million from privatizations this year), because the privatizations will continue "with a new strategy."

Argentina Blowing Apart: Who Pulled the Plug on Duhalde?

EIW is asking: Did someone pull the plug on Argentine President Eduardo Duhalde, to blow Argentina apart? Marches and strikes are underway, demanding Duhalde resign in the wake of the deaths of two protesters on June 26, the worst incident since the riots and deaths which led to Fernando de la Rua's resignation as President last December.

What happened, exactly, is not clear. The protesters involved were "piqueteros," groups of unemployed whose primary modus operandi has been to block highways ("picketing"), demanding food, jobs, etc.. Their core leadership is terrorist Jacobin.

One of the groups involved in the most recent clash is the United Left (IU), which previously brought leaders of Colombia's FARC into Argentina. The protesters had shut down a key bridge into Buenos Aires, in what was clearly a well-prepared operation. A clash reportedly broke out between two groups of protesters, and in the resulting mélée between the groups, and security forces which moved in to clear the bridge and stop the fighting, two people were killed. There were even reports of machine-gun fire erupting at some point.

The "piqueteros" then called a march for June 27 in Buenos Aires, which was backed by the radical CTA trade union federation, whose strength lies in the teachers and public-sector workers. A march called by the same forces a week ago drew 10,000. To build for it, the CTA called a strike, and is calling for Duhalde's resignation.

On June 28, Clarin and La Nacion reported that the possibility that "a plot" was behind the June 26 violence "hasn't been ruled out," according to Cabinet Chief Alfredo Atanasof. Investigators are asking why it was only at one site, out of 11, that the violence occurred. "There are more than suspicions that events weren't entirely spontaneous," Atanasof said.

However, President Duhalde is blaming the police for the deaths, and is yelling that "repression" won't be tolerated in democratic Argentina. This is a foolish move, since evidence suggests that something more sophisticated was responsible.

Seineldin Warns of Financial Interest Behind Coup

In several radio interviews beginning June 25, Argentine patriot and political prisoner Col. Muhammed Seineldin warned that international financial interests are fomenting a coup option in Argentina. Seineldin, the imprisoned national leader, said that the enemies of Argentina had freed Domingo Cavallo (the former Economics Minister who ruined the country), while keeping him, Seineldin, in jail.

According to Brazil's Folha de Sao Paulo of June 25, Foreign Minister Carlos Ruckauf told a conference at the Air Force Superior War College last week, that he would support, "without hesitation," the deployment of the Armed Forces to repress violent protest. Currently in Argentina, the military is prohibited by law from having anything to do with "internal security," a prohibition stemming from the days of the 1970s war against terrorism. It's unlikely that military leadership would support such a proposal, given the situation in the country and mass poverty, and Folha reports that Ruckauf's discussion of the option was not at all well received by the audience.

In this light, it is noteworthy that after his release from jail, Cavallo met with Argentina's former President Carlos Menem, before Menem came up to the United States, for meetings in Washington, D.C., followed by a visit to the summer home of the elder George Bush, in Kennebunkport, Maine.

Then, the elder Bush's Iran-Contra operative Oliver North arrived in Argentina last Sunday (June 23), on a private airplane, which landed at a private airport. Media reports say he was there to meet with people from the "investigative" spook firm, Kroll Associates. EIR is also investigating another report that North was meeting with Jose Moreno Ocampo, the head of Transparency International in Argentina, who was the Federal prosecutor against Seineldin in the early 1990s, and in the recent period was hired by Cavallo to help get Cavallo out of jail.

'Lula' Anti-Globalization Forces Back IMF

During his recent trip to Brazil, American economist and 2004 Democratic Party Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche said: If you want to fight globalization, I'm your man. The rest are frauds.

That is the framework in which to see the developments at the "anti-globalization" Workers Party (PT) national convention in Brazil on June 22-23.

The PT promises that "everything that it is possible for the PT to do to calm the market, the PT will do," in the words of PT Congressman Aloizio Mercadante. Presidential candidate "Lula" Da Silva opened the PT national convention by reading a "Letter to the Brazilian People," in which he declared that the PT will be as "fiscally responsible" as required, in order to honor Brazil's contracts. The PT program promises to maintain the pillars of the disastrous, IMF-dictated economic policy of the current government: It will maintain a primary budget surplus (i.e., cut spending to ensure that a revenue surplus is available for debt service)—and, as a sign of good faith, its Congressmen will vote up the current government's decision to raise the primary budget surplus from 3.5% to to 3.75% of GNP. It will stick to the Fraga-IMF regime of keeping inflation within a certain band; maintain the floating exchange rate; etc.

The PT says it's necessary to change Brazil's economic policies—but only after the "markets" are stable. Lula told Argentina's Clarin: "Although I may not like it, we cannot avoid the IMF."

FARC Threatens Colombia Leadership; Pastrana Waffles

The narcoterrorist FARC has dramatically escalated its offensive against the Colombian nation. Flushed with their success at using death threats to force out of office or into hiding at least 100 mayors or other officials in 12 provinces, the FARC issued a general warning to the mayors, city councilmen, judges, inspectors, and prosecutors of cities in nine other departments, including Cundinamarca, where Bogota is located. "Those who do not comply with this order, can be captured or executed," says the FARC statement. The intent "is to not allow a single state representative to function in any municipality."

There is insufficient security to defend the threatened officials if they choose to stay in office, but the governors of their respective provinces are refusing to accept their resignations under pressure of death threats. Further, in southern provinces like Arauca and Caqueta, the paramilitaries are reportedly threatening mayors who yield to FARC death threats and resign! Large numbers of these mayors are planning to meet with the FARC, despite warnings from Defense Minister Gustavo Bell that they may be taken hostage and used to press for an exchange with imprisoned FARC terrorists.

However, on June 24, when the mayors of some of Colombia's largest cities, including the capital city Bogota, met with President Pastrana to demand measures to protect them from the FARC's death threats, they received nothing. Pastrana gave vague assurances that he would convoke an "investigating committee" (!) and issue an appeal for national and international solidarity with Colombia.

The enraged mayors of Medellin and Cali afterwards told the press that they were angry at Pastrana's refusal to declare an immediate state of siege, as provided for by Article 213 of the Colombian Constitution, and their outrage was seconded by the lead editorial of the daily El Tiempo, which said that the crisis is spreading, more elected officials are resigning or being forced to govern from afar, and so, "If this isn't the time, when is?" Article 213 can be invoked when institutional stability, the security of the state, or the citizens' welfare is threatened. Any one of these would suffice to declare a state of siege, says El Tiempo, and today we face all three conditions. Pastrana's answer was merely, "If a state of siege were the solution, it would have already been applied. We haven't rejected it."

Colombian Economist Tells Uribe To Dump IMF

Colombian economist and former government minister Carlos Lemos Simmonds penned an op-ed in the June 22 El Tiempo of Bogota, warning Colombia's President-elect Alvaro Uribe Velez that "if economic policy isn't changed, all else will fail." He was referring to the war against narcoterrorism that Uribe has pledged to wage, and which was the mandate behind the landslide victory that swept Uribe into office on a first-round vote in May.

Lemos Simmonds began by advising Uribe's newly chosen Finance Minister, former IMF employee Roberto Junguito, to re-read his own writings on the economy and that of his predecessors, "and then do exactly the opposite." Says Lemos, "If Dr. Junguito, like his predecessors, insists that the country can manage with the recessive and provably failed prescriptions of neo-liberalism and the IMF," we will fail. "Like Argentina, which we are looking more and more like every day, we will remain stuck in a swamp from which there is no escape."

Oligarchy Pushing 'Regionalization' vs. Nation-States

The Chilean and Argentine Patagonia region is targetted as an experiment in "regionalization" to break up Ibero-American nation-states.

Purchases by American ecology magnate Douglas Tomkins of vast tracts of land in both the Chilean and Argentine Patagonia region, purportedly to create national parks, are being investigated by elected officials in both countries, as a threat to the general welfare.

Argentine legislators in the province of Santa Cruz are currently investigating Tomkins' purchase of 140,000 hectares in that province, bordering Chile. Peronist deputy Monica Kuney warns against foreign purchases of "strategic areas for the security of both countries, because they are on the border."

Tomkins has been involved in Argentina for four years, through his Conservation Land Trust, and aside from the 140,000 hectares in Santa Cruz, has plans for three other projects requiring land purchase in the Patagonia. Land he bought in Santa Cruz is now being held in trust by the Fundacion Vida Silvestre, the Argentine affiliate of Prince Philip's Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).

In Chile, officials charge that Tomkins' outfit is not the non-profit organization it claims to be, and owes significant sums of money to local authorities. The Mayor of Chaiten, Jose Miguel Fritis, has called on the national government to buy, or expropriate, lands Tomkins bought. Senator Rodolfo Stange warns that Tomkins' "excessive and suspicious" land purchases have resulted in depopulation.

The intent behind operations like Tomkins is revealed in a June 20 article in Miami's El Nuevo Herald where Inter-American Dialogue toady Andres Oppenheimer says the Argentine "regionalization" scheme should be applied throughout Ibero-America.

Recall that a few years ago, Oppenheimer enthusiastically backed the nation-wrecking proposal put forward by Harvard-based Juan Enriquez Cabot (of the Boston Cabots), a "Mexican" who "predicted" that Ibero-American nation-states would fall apart in crises, and regroup into regions, with their borders erased. There were "too many flags" in Ibero-America, said Cabot.

Why should Argentina's rich Patagonian provinces finance the corrupt and indebted Buenos Aires province, Oppenheimer asks, suggesting that these provinces would be better off independent. Then they could make deals with Chile that would benefit them financially. He mentions Inter-American Development Bank studies which show that local governments "are better administrators of public funds than central governments," because citizens vigilantly watch how municipalities spend money on schools and hospitals.

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