IBERO-AMERICAN NEWS DIGEST
Venezuela Crisis Deepens as Chavez Proclaims Fascist Security Law
Venezuela careened toward ungovernability and civil war, at the end of the third week of the nationwide civic strike against the government of President Hugo Chavez. Against a backdrop of severe gasoline and food shortages, and continued street demonstrations and road blockages by the opposition, Chavez is taking steps to militarize the country, and establish a national police force to enforce his ruleall the while swearing "by the Baby Jesus and Jesus Christ that I will be with you until the last day of my life!"
On Dec. 18, the Supreme Court ruled against the Chavez-ordered Army takeover of the Caracas Metropolitan Police in early Novemberan attempt to squelch a source of anti-government sentiment organized around Caracas Mayor Alfredo Pena. Now, the executive branch has promulgated a fascist National Security Law through which madman Chavez will now attempt to stay in power.
The law authorizes the partial or total deployment of the Armed Forces to defend the country's "security," even when no state of emergency, or siege, has been declared. It states that the President may also use the military to guarantee the control and functioning of public services or basic industries of the State. The Executive is empowered to organize "a corps of uniformed national police," which would obviously supplant thein most casesanti-Chavez Metropolitan Police. Also ominous is the law's creation of special "security zones," to be governed by a special set of laws. The law stipulates that anyone who "organizes, sustains, or instigates activities within those zones, aimed at perturbing or affecting the organization and functioning of military installations, public services, basic industries, and companies or the economic and social life of the country, will be punished with five to ten years of prison." This would apply to most of the opposition strikers, and their leaders.
The Supreme Court also approved the demand made by PdVSA president Ali Rodriguez, by which the military may seize vehicles used for transportation of fuel or food. It then turned around and also ordered a halt in the strike, until it could rule on its legality. Thus far, the Supreme Court orders have been ignored.
One of Chavez's close collaborators, Gen. Raul Baduel, warned that violence could become "generalized," and might necessitate a broader deployment of the Armed Forces. "I hope we don't reach that extreme," he said in an interview with El Nacional published Dec. 19. "It wouldn't do the country any good." (See LATEST FROM LAROUCHE for a press release entitled "LaRouche: We Do Not Wish 'an Allende Solution' for the Chavez Problem in Venezuela.")
Diary of a Madman: Whose Voices is Crazy Hugo Chavez Hearing?
When the Chavez forces won 120 out of 130 seats for the Venezuelan Constituent Assembly in July 1999 (in an election in which 53% of the electorate did not vote), Chavez declared: "The victory of the patriots has been pulverizing! ... You are either with God or the devil, and we're with God because the voice of the people is the voice of God.... Now Chavez is not Chavez; Chavez is the people, and the people cannot be stopped! We'll win with God's favor and the people."
Similarly, Chavez declared to the nation during a five-hour edition of his "Hello President!" national television and radio program Dec. 15: "Chavez will leave only when God commands, because I am in the hands of Christ.... He is the commander, and when he speaks I obey, understood? And secondly, the peopleand I assume the voice of the people is the voice of God. I will not leave because of pressures from a group of businessmen, a group of coup-makers, a group of fascists." Chavez ordered Army troops to ignore any rulings by the courts, and to follow no orders but his own.
Before Chavez ever ran for President of Venezuela, Lyndon LaRouche identified the two years from 1992 to 1994 in which Chavez was jailed under horrendous conditions, as a critical period in turning Chavez from an ordinary fool, into a mental case, producing a "miraculous metamorphosis" in his opinions. The specific form of his insanity, became the text-book Romantic fascist dictum of Vox Populi, Vox Dei: "the Voice of the People [is] the Voice of God." Since assuming the Presidency in February 1999, at any point at which he has been challenged, Chavez has asserted that dictum, with increasing fervor, as justification for his decisions. He asserts that he is bound by no law or institution, because he represents the People, and thus, by derivation, his is the Voice of God.
As the crisis he faced grew, Chavez's assertion of "Vox Populi" took on increasingly "religious" tones, as the Venezuelan population, too, became increasingly overtaken by charismatic religious movements hearing differing "voices." In April-May 2000, Chavez attempted to force the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy to bow before him, arguing that "Christ was resurrected from the dead, to become the People," and since Chavez represents the People, he threatened to unleash "legitimate violence" against those in the Church who opposed him. More recently, he announced he was a born-again Protestant, only to retract the statement within a week.
Shrink: Chavez 'Prefers Dreams' to 'Harsh Realities of Life'
Hugo Chavez's bizarre behavior has not gone unnoticed by the U.S. establishment. The New Yorker magazine published a profile of Venezuelan President Chavez in its Sept. 10, 2001 issue, written by intelligence stringer journalist Jon Lee Anderson, which implied strongly that Chavez was a nutcase. The article opened with a report on Anderson's interview of Chavez's psychiatrist, Dr. Edmundo Chirinos, who explained that Chavez "prefers to embrace dreams that seem impossible to achieve, rather than confronting the harsh realities of life." Anderson summarized Chirinos's description of the President as "a hyperkinetic and imprudent man, unpunctual, someone who overreacts to criticism, harbors grudges, is politically astute and manipulative, and possesses tremendous physical stamina, never sleeping more than two or three hours a night."
Anderson interviewed officials at the Yare prison hell-hole, where Chavez was held for two years, including the secretary of the prison psychologist. "Every morning, he sat in a chair in the open-air caged yard that had been built specially for him outside his cell," they reported. "There was a plaster bust of Simon Bolivar there, and he would speak to it." He would turn the head around to face him for the conversations, they reported. Anderson also notes that Chavez's aides report that he is a "caffeine addict," who drank 26 cups of espresso a day, until his staff managed to wean him down to "only" 16.
PRONA Electoral Victories Certified in Brazil
The election victories Dr. Eneas Carneiro and five other Federal Congressional candidates of the Party for Rebuilding the National Order (PRONA) founded by Dr. Eneas, were officially certified on Dec. 19, as was the election of PRONA's Dr. Havanir Nimtz to the Sao Paulo State Assembly. The certification marks an important political victory, as international financier interests desperately attempt to prevent these friends of Lyndon LaRouche from assuming their elected posts.
Some of those efforts, are intended more as harassment and distraction: On Dec. 13, Brazilian newspapers reported that the Sao Paulo's Regional Electoral prosecutor has requested that the Regional Electoral Tribunal grant access to both banking and tax records, not only for Drs. Eneas and Havanir, but also for eight other PRONA members, all elected to the national Congress or to the Sao Paulo State Legislature.
Investigating prosecutors charge that Drs. Eneas and Havanir "hatched a plan" to get elected, violating the Electoral Law through "irregular fundraising"allegedly demanding funds from individuals in exchange for allowing them to run as candidates on the PRONA slate, or promising them positions. Prosecutors also say that the two leaders then illegally deposited these funds in their personal bank accounts. Although Eneas and Havanir garnered a combined total of 2.25 million votes, a record, with an absolute minimum of campaign spending, the charge being made against them is, that they were only able to get elected because of the financial resources they "illegally" raised, not because of any support they had from Brazilian voters or the strength of their political message.
The City Council of Sao Paulo, however, which had opened its own case against Dr. Havanir, announced Dec. 19 that the case against her has been closed, for lack of evidence.
CORRECTION
Last week's issue of EIW, No. 41, incorrectly identified Agencia Brasileira de Noticias (ABN) as Brazil's official news agency. ABN is in fact an agency which provides news, especially for newspapers in the interior of the country. Earlier this month, ABN put out a wire on Lyndon LaRouche's Dec. 5 statement charging that his friend, Dr. Eneas Carneiro, is under attack by "corrupt, foreign forces" which seek to control the incoming Administration of President Lula da Silva.
Argentine Journalist Wins Prize for Coverage of LaRouche
Argentine journalist Jorge Omar "Luli" Allende has won the prestigious "Golden Seagull" award, granted annually by the Argentine Society of Professional Artists, for his Sept. 6, 2002 interview with U.S. Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche. Allende, of Radio Cumbres in the Patagonian province of Neuquen, won in the category of economic reporting and interviews. In deciding on the winners of the award, the Society of Professional Artists considers all regional radio and Buenos Aires FM stationsthe major AM stations in Buenos Aires are excludedand they award eight different "Gaviotas de Oro" (Golden Seagull) awards for eight different categories.
Allende conducted a very broad-ranging interview with LaRouche, with well-thought-out questions on the international strategic crisis, danger of war with Iraq, the collapse of the world financial system, and the policies required to replace it with a New Bretton Woods. He told LaRouche that he wanted to have him on the program, because its purpose is to educate "the common man" about the key issues facing the nation and the world, and that LaRouche has unparalleled knowledge of such issues.
He also asked a number of specific questions about Argentina, but from the standpoint that the crisis in Argentina reflects the systemic global financial collapse. LaRouche went discussed in some detail what had happened in the region since 1982 and the publication of Operation Juarez, his program for Ibero-America, and also discussed what role Argentina can play in the framework of the European Land-Bridge, and what a real integration policy for the region would look like.
At least 150 media competed for the award, and 400 people attended the Dec. 16 awards ceremony in Mar del Plata, the oceanside resort in the province of Buenos Aires.
Mexican Congress Forced To Back Down on Anti-NAFTA Bill
U.S. embassy officials invaded the Mexican Senate Dec. 13 to ensure passage of the North American Free Trade Accord (NAFTA), especially the provisions for agriculture. A one-year moratorium on the implementation of the full NAFTA accords on agriculture, scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 2003, was passed by the Chamber of Deputies, and added to the Senate version of the same bill. The majority of the PRI and PRD factions were firmly committed to seeing the fight through, PRI Senate coordinator Enrique Jackson Ramirez stated Dec. 13. When the law went to the Senate for approval, however, the Senate backed down in the face of threats of "trade war" from the United States.
Under the NAFTA provisions, Mexico must lift all tariffs on the import of 45 agricultural products, come Jan. 1chicken, pork, eggs, milk, apples, rice, onions, among them. If this goes through, what remains of Mexico's agriculture will be wiped out, with the likely loss of 1 million jobs (see EIW No. 41, INDEPTH). The Congress proposed to declare the farm sector to be in "an emergency situation," and therefore maintain current tariffs for another year.
The U.S. agricultural attaché William Pratt, and two of his aides, the Under Secretary of Supply and Trade of Mexico's Economics Ministry, members of the National Farm Council (a group of the few farmers who benefitted from NAFTA), and the former spokesman of former (PRI) President Ernesto Zedillo, deployed as a team on the floor of the Senate to lobby against passage. Pratt threatened that there would be a "violent response by U.S. producers," should the measure go through. Rocio Ruiz, Mexico's Under Secretary of Interior Commerce, told everyone it "was very dangerous" to approve such a measure, because the U.S. would begin "a trade war" against Mexico, and take reprisals on Mexican exports. Foreign investments, which must be defended, would leave if it went ahead, he added.
The Senate backed down, accepting a "compromise" measure mandating the Executive to monitor U.S. imports closely, and activate safeguard measures permitted under NAFTA at the point that U.S. imports of any specific product became greater than those in 2002. The Senate is to form a commission to ensure all this occurs.
The fundamental flaw with the Senate's intent to defend Mexican agriculture, is that they started from the assumption that they would not challenge NAFTA as a whole, which is what is required. The PAN party leader who presides over the Senate Treasury Commission, Fauzi Hamdan Amad, said as much, commenting after the vote that the tariffs were not kept "for an obvious reason. The proposal violates NAFTA, which is an international treaty signed by Mexico.... Our intention was not to bring down NAFTA."
Utopians Hype 'Terror Threat' from Ibero-American Tri-Border Region
U.S. Utopians and their media outlets are attempting to whip up a frenzy about a "terror threat" from Ibero-America's tri-border region, where the borders of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil meet. The area has long been described as a "no-man's land" where contraband, money-laundering, drug-trafficking, and other illicit activities take place, including possible terrorist organizing by Hezbollah and other Mideast groups. But a recent spate of articles, including a feature in the Dec. 18 Washington Times, puts out the line that Hezbollah and al-Qaeda are now linking up and using the region to plan attacks on U.S. and Israeli targets in North and South America.
This is the region singled out by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as one of several "ungoverned" areas that would be targetted for intervention by the Ibero-American multinational military force he wants to organize. Brazil has asserted that there is no evidence that terrorist organizing or training is occurring among the region's largely immigrant Arab population.
The Washington Times Dec. 18 cited one Walter Purdy, Director of the Virginia-based Terrorism Research Center (TRC), who claims that al-Qaeda terrorists were moving freely in and out of the tri-border area, and that "the system is wired and in place." CNN put out a story Nov. 7 alleging that top terrorist operatives from Hezbollah and other groups sympathetic to Osama bin Laden, met recently in the area to plan attacks against U.S. and Israeli targets in the Western Hemisphere. At about the same time, the Argentine government put the country on "red alert," based on reports from the Israeli Mossad that al-Qaeda was planning attacks on "some country" in the region.
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