In this issue:

Soros Runs Evo Morales 'Vietnam' Strategy for Ibero-America

City of London Hails Andes Crisis as Pretext for Drug Legalization

Colombian Minister's Resignation a Blow to Battle vs. Narco-Terrorism

New Venezuelan 'Contras' Surface

Neo-Cons Push 'Wal-Mart Economics' on Ibero-America

Brazil Announces New IMF Agreement

Lula in Africa: 'Build Rail, Combat Aids, Develop Agriculture'

New South-South Infrastructure Financial Institution Proposed

LaRouche Youth Movement in Argentina Launches Website

From Volume 2, Issue Number 45 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Nov. 11, 2003

Ibero-American News Digest

Soros Runs Evo Morales 'Vietnam' Strategy for Ibero-America

U.S. Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche stated on Nov. 4 that he wanted it made known, that he considers the cocaleros operation in the Andes to be a strategic security threat to the United States, because of their ties to drug legalizer and mega-speculator George Soros. This is the same Soros who is moving to take over the Democratic Party. Soros's cocalero allies like Evo Morales pose a security risk for the entire Americas, and the Democratic Party is cohabiting with such security risks, LaRouche emphasized.

Soros, it could be said, is the real leader of the cocaleros. In July 2003, Soros's top drug man, Drug Policy Alliance Executive Director Ethan Nadelmann, called for "Latin America to start breaking with Washington over the war on drugs." Nadelmann's call, which featured a call for establishing an international trade in coca—the basic ingredient of cocaine—was published in the July/August 2003 issue of Carnegie Endowment's Foreign Policy magazine, and widely circulated by the legalizers in Ibero-America.

Nadelmann pointed out that the Presidents of various countries (he cited Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, and Uruguay) have called for, or hinted at legalizing drugs. The time's not yet right for that radical a program to fly, however, he cautioned. Instead, Ibero-America should pursue three strategies:

1. Adopt "harm reduction" as have Europe and Australia, which he elaborates as a "de facto regulation" of dope. through methadone and heroin maintenance programs, needle exchanges, cannabis "coffee shops," etc.

2. Re-legalize the sale of coca-based products, recreating the "thriving" coca market of a century ago. This is a campaign which the entire region should undertake.

3. Create a "coalition of the willing" who oppose the U.S.'s strategy of a war on drugs. Washington can bully Bolivia if it's alone, he wrote, but not the entire region, "and the U.S. would have a real problem were it to face an organized revolt involving a number of Latin American countries."

As LaRouche's Executive Intelligence Review documented in June 1998, Nadelmann and fellow legalizers designed the subterfuge of establishing an international trade in coca, as yet another flank in their drive to bring back the good old days of Britain's Opium Wars against China, when the global narcotics trade was legal. This is the centerpiece of Bolivian cocalero Evo Morales's program, who insists that any government which does not legalize the "industrialization" and export of coca, will be overthrown, just as Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada was just overthrown. In October 2002, Evo proposed the regional cocalero movement focus on leading "the liberation of all of Latin America." A year later, celebrating the cocaleros' success in driving out their first President, Evo Morales told a conference of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences, meeting in Havana, Cuba on Oct. 30, that if they work hard enough at achieving regional unity, "very soon we could celebrate in Latin America another Vietnam for the United States."

City of London Hails Andes Crisis as Pretext for Drug Legalization

The Financial Times, the paper of record of London's financiers, ran an editorial on Oct. 31 chortling that the political defeat delivered to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in the Oct. 25 referendum, coming after the resignation of Bolivia's Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, shows that Washington has to accept the financial oligarchy's long-standing demand that the narcotics trade be legalized. As the Financial Times put it, "a radical overhaul of existing drugs policy" must be considered. "The decriminalization of cocaine and heroin is still anathema to Washington. In the end, however, policymakers may need to examine these options, as well as other ways of regulating drugs use at the point of consumption, however unpalatable this now seems."

Colombian Minister's Resignation a Blow to Battle vs. Narco-Terrorism

Colombia's narco-terrorism fight took a hit, with the resignation of the powerful Interior/Justice Minister Fernando Londono on Nov. 6, after a series of scandals were mounted against him to force him out. Londono, who has made enemies among the corrupt narco-political class in Colombia since the 1970s, when he went after drug-money laundering by the Miguel Lopez Michelsen Administration and, more recently, when he denounced the myriad human rights NGOs plaguing Colombia as "agents of terrorism," served in the Administration primarily as the enforcer of Uribe's hardline anti-terrorism policies, particularly as the President's liaison to the wishy-washy Congress.

Londono was also an unfortunately loyal defender of Uribe's IMF-decreed austerity policies, and threatened to resign when Uribe's latest budget-slashing proposals were defeated in a plebiscite a week ago. When Londono held a private arm-twisting session with opposition Senators, his threats were leaked to the media, which gleefully served Londono's head on a platter to his enemies, including former Finance Minister and IMF/Soros agent Rudolf Hommes, who insisted in an op-ed last week that Londono had to go to restore Colombia's "international credit."

Londono has been replaced by the 14-year head of the National Business Federation, economist Sabas Pretelt de la Vega, who is expected to shepherd Uribe's new tax and other austerity measures through the Congress. Pretelt has a much different track record on narco-terrorism than Londono, having personally participated in negotiations with the narco-terrorists during the Andres Pastrana regime, travelling to Germany to meet with ELN, and visiting the FARC's headquarters in the Caguan. See In-Depth this week for background on the Colombian elections.

New Venezuelan 'Contras' Surface

E-mails from a self-proclaimed "Venezuelan Counter-Revolutionary Unit" are circulating, threatening that the politicians in the opposition movement pushing for an electoral solution to ousting Hugo Chavez, could become targets. Titled "Don't Complain Afterwards," the vicious note asserts that only military intervention will stop Chavez. "Communists and the Democratic Coordinator will pay for their errors, petty deals, treasons, and complicities. Everything has consequences. Don't complain later. With moral responsibility before God and Venezuela, we will wipe out Communism." Another opposition e-mail claims that the "Venezuelan Counter-Revolutionary Unit" has gained its first martyr, a businessman allegedly killed by police in a Chavez jail. "The blood of the Martyrs is the seed of new Christians, it was said in Rome during the persecutions at the beginning of the Church; the blood of the Martyrs is the seed of the new Counter-revolutionaries," the message raves.

Pure synarchism, whether the messages come from the Blas Pinar-connected "Democratic Bloc" grouping which has this line, or were put out by elements in the Chavez regime thus seeking to cover up dirty ops aimed at bumping off their opposition.

Neo-Cons Push 'Wal-Mart Economics' on Ibero-America

With every government in South America terrorified that they will be the next government overthrown by a narco-terrorist-led mass movement, Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega and Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere Otto Reich told dignitaries from around the continent at the annual Miami Herald Americas Conference Oct. 29, that they should stop moaning, give up "false nationalism," expand "property rights," send the U.S. cheap labor and cheap products, and they'll do just fine.

The roots of your problems "are political and institutional, rather than economic," Noriega told the Ibero-American officials and policymakers attending the conference. Your leaders haven't had "the political will" to adopt "the right fiscal, economic, and social policies"—such as enforcing "an effective property-rights system." Stop asking the U.S. for help. We already give you "immense" economic assistance: Your people work in the U.S. and send back home $32 billions a year in remittances; we import $240 billion of your products, and we've bought up all your companies [he called it "foreign investment"]. Together, that's 1,200 times more than total U.S. aid to the region, he said. If it doesn't reach the poor, "I simply say it should. And no amount of U.S. aid is going to help a country whose government is not prepared to help itself."

Otto Reich also asserted that the U.S. pulls its own weight, through "trade, remittances, and investment." But others have to pull their weight, too, and create the conditions in which "foreign investors are allowed to create wealth without fear." He said "there is too much false nationalism," the which he equates with corruption—"the single largest obstacle to development in the world."

Reich and Noriega announced that this is what President Bush will tell the other heads of state when they meet in an extraordinary Summit of the Americas in January, called to discuss the crisis of governability and poverty.

Brazil Announces New IMF Agreement

Standing in front of Freddie Krueger's mother, the IMF's No. 2 henchthing Anne, Finance Minister Antonio Palocci explained on Nov. 5, that the Lula government is seeking a one-year extension of the existing accord, which expires in December, to lay the basis for Brazil to leave the Fund behind—only "not abruptly." He protested mightily that the agreement is "preventive," and will prepare the country's "gradual" exit from a Fund program. The new $14 billion accord, $8 billion of which is an unused portion of the current agreement, will just be an "insurance policy" to help "balance the books." Instead of repaying $12 billion to the IMF in 2005, $8 billion in 2006, and $2.5 billion in 2007, the new deal allows Brazil to pay $6.5 billion in 2005, and $8 bn. for each year after that.

After all, Palocci said, Brazil can't walk away from the Fund just like that. "That would destabilize the country's relation with its creditors, and the management of the debt." Palocci assured Krueger that "we're not changing our objectives. We want to reaffirm them." Tough fiscal policies will remain in place, including the primary budget surplus of 4.25% of GDP. With the rescheduling of debt payments, this will supposedly allow for investment in areas requiring urgent investment, such as sanitation. But Kruger gushed over the government's commitment to maintain "healthy policies, adopted with such success this year," particularly pleased that "it intends to continue with its program of structural reforms in crucial areas."

Lula in Africa: 'Build Rail, Combat Aids, Develop Agriculture'

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva arrived in Sao Tome e Principe on Nov. 2, the first day of an eight-day, five-nation tour of Southern Africa, in which he will visit Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, and South Africa, as well. The tour is intended to strengthen agricultural relations in Africa, engage in high-level discussions on fighting AIDS, and developing rail and energy projects. Agreements were reached for Brazil to aid the development of Sao Tome e Principe's oil industry.

Strengthening relations with Africa is "a political, moral, and historical obligation for Brazil," Lula declared before leaving, calling Brazil the second-largest black nation in the world, after Nigeria. The visit marks Brazil's return to its policy of strategic engagement in Africa, developed by its Foreign Ministry (Itamaraty) in the 1970s and early 1980s. An Oct. 31 Itamaraty release announcing the trip located it within the efforts of Brazilian diplomacy to strengthen South-South cooperation generally.

In Mozambique, Lula announced Nov. 5 that Brazil will build a factory to manufacture HIV drugs in that country in the "near future," and in the meantime, it will supply Mozambique with AIDS medicine at a discounted rate. On his first stop, it was announced that Sao Tome e Principe will participate in the Brazilian Health Ministry's International Cooperation Program, which supplies anti-retroviral medicines for AIDS and trains local health professionals in the treatment of malaria, as well as AIDS.

New South-South Infrastructure Financial Institution Proposed

During his visit to Angola, Brazilian President Lula da Silva proposed that the nations of the South create their own multilateral financial institution, to finance infrastructure projects in South America and Africa. We can't depend only on the World Bank, he argued, suggesting that Brazil's national development bank BNDES could provide some of the capital for such projects, as it is doing in South America.

As interesting as the Brazilian initiatives in Africa are, they remain within the framework of the IMF system, with which the Lula government still thinks it can cut "a better deal."

LaRouche Youth Movement in Argentina Launches Website

The LaRouche Youth Movement launched its website at www.mjlbuenosaires.com.ar on Oct. 30. The opening page shows a beautiful color photo of Brunelleschi's Renaissance Dome on the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, Italy, under which appears "The LaRouche Youth Movement-Buenos Aires."

"It is time to awaken, to be reborn ... the time of resisting has ended, and the time to win the war is here and now," it states. "Just as Plato wrote in his 'Allegory of the Cave,' once man sees the Sun, he no longer wants to return to the darkness. The mission of pulling humanity from the cave, is in the hands of the international LaRouche Youth Movement, and of the people who haven't yet lost their common sense, which is, at least, fortunately, an important part of humanity."

The LYM in Argentina has already made its presence known on the streets of Buenos Aires, in local universities and high schools, through its weekly radio program, and through contacts with the LYM in other Ibero-American and international locals.

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