In this issue:

Colombian Terrorists Blow Up Bus Full of Oxypet Oil Workers

World Bank Offers Chavez Millions To 'Stabilize' Venezuela's Economy

Paraguay Can't Make $40-Million Debt Payment

Dramatic Drop in Employment in Mexico's Maquiladoras

No Conclusive Evidence al-Qaeda Is Operating on Brazil, Argentine Borders

Brazilians Have a Right To Worry About Targetting of Tri-Border Region

From Volume 1, Issue Number 43 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Dec. 30, 2002

IBERO-AMERICAN NEWS DIGEST

Colombian Terrorists Blow Up Bus Full of Oxypet Oil Workers

In their drive to punish the foreign oil companies which to their mind "run Colombia," the ELN (National Liberations Army) terrorists on the night of Dec. 22 blew up a bus carrying 16 Colombian oil workers to the Cano Limon oilfield run by Occidental Petroleum.

Two workers were killed and 11 seriously wounded; three more escaped through bus windows and hid for hours before other workers arrived to rescue them. The 300 workers at the site declared a 48-hour work stoppage to protest the attack, and chapters of the United Oilworkers Union (USO) across Colombia held protests at the inadequate security at the site.

Workers at Cano Limon had protested last April when the FARC narcoterrorists declared all workers for foreign oil companies to be "military targets." The province of Arauca—along the border with Venezuela, where much oil is concentrated—has consistently been a target of terrorist attacks in the recent period, many of them against civilian locations, such as hotels and restaurants.

World Bank Offers Chavez Millions To 'Stabilize' Venezuela's Economy

In the midst of total political, social, and economic chaos in Venezuela, the World Bank has offered to give Venezuela's looney-tunes President Hugo Chavez anywhere from $100 million to $500 million a year to stick to an economic "reform" program that would allegedly help stabilize the country, which is in the grip of a devastating economic crisis.

According to a statement issued by the Bank, its people got together with Chavez's people and came up with a program that would, "if successfully implemented," supposedly lead to economic stability, economic diversification and competitiveness, sustained social and environmental development, and good government. The Bank added that if Chavez carries through the program, Venezuela would retrieve its good standing in the international financial community, and would receive the Bank's support in other critical sectors as a reward.

The statement added that while this aid strategy faces "serious risks of deepening political turmoil and civil unrest,... these risks are worth taking, however, given the rewards of increasing the Bank's engagement in Venezuela...." Chief among the rewards of engagement in Venezuela is, of course, access to the country's oil.

Paraguay Can't Make $40-Million Debt Payment

Paraguayan Finance Minister Alcides Jimenez told the Primero de Marzo radio station—according to O Estado de Sao Paulo Dec. 26—that after the recent disbursement of $75 million to pay state sector wages for November, there are no funds to make debt payments. "We have no way to pay arrears," he said.

Paraguay's total (unpayable) foreign debt stands at $2.2 billion. The International Monetary Fund is demanding that the country's Congress pass an austerity package as a condition for a standby loan, but Congress has so far refused to do this.

Dramatic Drop in Employment in Mexico's Maquiladoras

The drop in employment in Mexico's maquiladora "industry" has been dramatic throughout the country's northern region. In Baja California Sur, employment through October of this year declined by a whopping 43%, while in Sonora, the decline was 17.4%, compared to the same period of 2001. Big declines also occurred in Nuevo Leon, Chihuahua, Guanajuato, Puebla, Mexico State, and Zacatecas, all due to the cancellation of maquiladora "programs" which produce solely for export, and have nothing to do with Mexico's physical economy or domestic wellbeing. Textile and electronic assembly plants were particularly hard hit. Activity in plants that assemble electronic components dropped by 15.2% annually.

When the agricultural clauses of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) go into effect on Jan. 1, 2003, this picture of devastation for Mexico's labor force will worsen. According to the accords, tariffs on all but a handful of agricultural products the U.S. wants to export to Mexico will be lifted, making them cheaper than the same goods produced in Mexico. Fearing that they will be driven out of business by a flood of cheap agricultural imports, Mexican farmers have demanded that President Vicente Fox delay or postpone implementation of the accords for at least three years. But Fox announced Dec. 20 that there will be no delay in implementing the agricultural accords, arguing that "the solution lies in seeking competitiveness and [higher] productivity, and we're taking the relevant measures." The only thing Fox has done is to arrange for what is essentially a small monetary handout to farmers, which is insignificant in comparison to the huge threat they face.

Farmers are mobilizing for major demonstrations on Jan. 1, to block key border crossings and port access, to protest the government's refusal to act on their behalf. Fox is stepping up police and military deployments at border locations, airports, and other strategic points, in anticipation of the protests.

No Conclusive Evidence al-Qaeda Is Operating on Brazil, Argentine Borders

There is no conclusive evidence that al-Qaeda is operating in the tri-border region where the borders of Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina meet, according to the conclusion drawn at a Dec. 16-18 meeting in Buenos Aires, attended by representatives of those three nations, and the U.S. State Department's Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism, Cofer Black. Countering "analysis" recently put out by the Moonie-owned Washington Times and other utopian mouthpieces, to the effect that al-Qaeda and Hezbollah were using the tri-border region as a base to plan terrorist attacks in the Western Hemisphere, Argentina's Deputy Foreign Minister Martin Redrado said that the Buenos Aires meeting had detected no evidence of terrorist training in the region. In a Dec. 20 briefing in Washington, Black added, "There has been no concrete, detailed tactical information developed that there are [terrorist] sleeper cells or al-Qaeda operatives in the area."

But, Black indicated, there is concern that remittances from illicit money-laundering and contraband in the region could end up in terrorist hands. Other unnamed U.S. officials have charged that Hezbollah and Hamas use the region for raising money, and warn that these funds could eventually be transferred to al-Qaeda, or that al-Qaeda itself might eventually set up operations there. Representatives of the four countries have therefore agreed to establish a working group on financial intelligence, and the U.S. will provide $1 million for anti-terrorism financing initiatives.

But Antonino Mena Goncalvez, the Americas Director for Brazil's Foreign Ministry, urged caution. "There is suspicion, as there can be in any part of the world. But we have no confirmation of money transfers. We want concrete evidence." Brazil has been particularly resistant to the characterization of the tri-border region as a terrorist training ground—charges that have intensified since Sept. 11—fearing that this augurs stepped-up foreign intervention into a region largely inhabited by Arab immigrants, that would threaten its sovereignty.

Brazilians Have a Right To Worry About Targetting of Tri-Border Region

The New York Times' Larry Rohter warned in a Dec. 15 article that "Islamic extremists are also gravitating toward Sao Paulo," the huge Brazilian industrial city which granted Lyndon LaRouche honorary citizenship last June. The city has "the largest concentration of Brazil's estimated 1.5 million Muslims—an ideal hiding place for anyone intent on being overlooked," Rohter claims.

Should Sao Paulo fear an invasion of the hemispheric military force that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wants to set up, which also targets the slums of Rio de Janeiro as "ungoverned areas"? Rohter's article cited numerous unnamed intelligence sources charging that the tri-border region is a serious terrorist threat; he noted that it's largely Argentine and U.S. agents who assert this, while Brazilian and Paraguayan officials are more "ambivalent."

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