Ibero-American News Digest
Rumsfeld 'Regional Army' Scheme Shot Down Again in Quito
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld marched into the Defense Ministerial of the Americas meeting, in Quito, Ecuador Nov. 17-19, with a renewed push for his "Rumsfeld Corollary" to the Cheney doctrine of preventive war: A regional army is needed to intervene in "ungovernable" areas in Ibero-America. The U.S. aid-dependent Colombian government fronted for Rumsfeld's proposal, when Colombian Defense Minister Jorge Uribe asserted that "sooner or later, we in the Americas will have to form a group made up of different countries to defend ourselves from narco-terrorism, and to fight it mutually." This force, he explained, will be "made up of military personnel from different countries, who want to collaborate" in what he called "globalized security."
Various regional sources consulted confirm press reports that the proposal was sharply rejected. Rumsfeld's statement that "terrorists, drug traffickers, hostage takers and criminal gangs form an anti-social combination that increasingly seeks to destabilize civil societies," and "these enemies often find shelter in border regions and areas beyond the effective reach of governments," met with the reply: These problems are best fought by fighting the poverty which generates ungovernability.
Brazil's newly named Defense Minister (and Vice President) Jose Alencar told an interviewer, "The only way to fight terrorism is to increase democracy. The cause of terrorism is not just fundamentalism but misery and hunger. Developed countries must help less-developed countries." Chile's Defense Minister Jaime Ravinet said the United Nations "is the only forum with international legitimacy to act globally on security issues." Argentine Defense Minister Jose Pampurro insisted that his country's police and military would only cooperate in intelligence-sharing against terrorism, within the limits imposed by his country's laws.
The joint U.S.-Colombian proposal is part of an offensive that has been ongoing since at least 1995, at the first Defense Ministerial of the Americas in Williamsburg, Va., where the Ibero-American nations at the time proved reluctant to provide a consensus for the U.S. Defense Department's drive for a South American NATO. Lyndon LaRouche addressed this in his October 1995 paper entitled "The Blunder in U.S. National Security Policy," in which he warned that "the United States is presently in the process of shooting itself in the foot all over Central and South America."
Financial Predators Fail Again To Break Argentina
In a crass move to get more money for the financiers, the Bank of New York, which had been hired by Argentina's Kirchner government to manage the U.S. side of the official restructuring operation that was scheduled to begin on Nov. 29, suddenly withdrew on Nov. 19, supposedly for "technical" reasons. Simultaneously, Italy's Milan-based securities commission CONSOB announced it would delay the bond swap in that country as well, until some future, unspecified date. In response to this news, the Buenos Aires stock market, Merval, plunged by 4.9% on Nov. 22.
This threw the restructuring process into chaos, and disrupted the government's timetable to complete the operation before having to restart negotiations with the IMF in January. While scrambling to find a replacement for the Bank of New York, the government says it will proceed as planned. "We will continue negotiating the debt without giving an inch," Kirchner said on Nov. 23.
Finance Minister Roberto Lavagna has been very clear on one point: Behind this sabotage stand the vulture funds, which accuse Argentina of "cheating" by not offering to pay them more money. On Nov. 20, Lavagna warned that those who reject Argentina's debt restructuring "could find themselves in a default situation perhaps indefinitely." He named Charles Dallara of the Institute of International Finance (IIF), Citicorp's William Rhodes (also IIF Vice Chairman), and former IMF Managing Director Jacques De LaRosiere, as leading figures in the blatant attempt to force Argentina to pay more. The IIF is reportedly circulating a confidential memo among its 300 member banks, saying that Argentina really has a very large surplus, and could easily afford to pay more to bondholders.
The Argentine government opted instead to increase payments to its poor and retired. On Nov. 23, Cabinet Chief of Staff Alberto Fernandez announced that the government will give 3.3 million Argentine retirees a one-time, extra 200-peso bonus before Christmas, in addition to their regular pensions and half-year bonus. Another 2 million recipients of family subsidies for the poor and unemployed will receive an additional 75-peso payment at the same time, he said, while the government will increase by 50%, retroactive to Oct. 1, the subsidy granted to poor families for each child, including prenatal care and grants for disabled children.
"Argentina's behavior is setting dangerous precedents for future default situations," raved London's Financial Times in a Nov. 24 editorial. The country's "tough" stance has "succeeded in showing the world that sovereign borrowers are far from powerless in their dealings with private creditors.... Threatening indefinite default on debt owned by holdouts is unacceptable." The IMF must cut off Argentina should they not make a better offer, the Times demanded; if that leads to Argentina defaulting on its debt to the IMF next year, "so be it.... Emerging markets which play by the rules ... must see that their behavior does not put them at a disadvantage compared with the likes of Argentina."
Brazil Nuclear Enrichment Program To Commence in December
A joint statement issued by the Brazilian Ministries of Foreign Relations and Science and Technology announced on Nov. 24 that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has finally given its official approval that Brazil's plant in Resende, Rio de Janeiro, meets required international safeguards, and can go into operation.
The plant was ready to begin operations last April, but IAEA disputes with Brazil over conditions for inspection of their nationally developed enrichment technology, fed by the anti-nuclear lobby's international campaign against Brazil's independent program, held up production. The dispute ended, after the National Nuclear Energy Commission issued the final security license for the plant, expected by mid-December, when uranium gas will be pumped into the centrifuges, and enrichment will get underway, opening a new era of technological independence for Brazil. When fully operational, the plant will supply 60% of Brazil's enriched uranium needs.
Russian-Brazilian Space Accord Caps Putin Visit
"We are opening new horizons in our relations," Brazilian President Lula da Silva declared, at the conclusion of Russian President Vladimir Putin's Nov. 22 visit to Brazil, the first-ever by a Russian head of state. Talks between the two Presidents were called "frank and friendly" by the Foreign Ministry. The two governments share a "convergence of views" on international matters, most particularly that of Middle East peace, and each extended the other support for particular issues: Brazil's drive to join the UN Security Council; Russia's to join the World Trade Organization.
The most exciting outcome of the trip, by far, was the space cooperation accord, which Lula said gave Brazil "renewed optimism and determination" to pursue its national space plans. The accord establishes "the joint development, on the basis of Russian and Brazilian technologies, of a new family of launch vehicles" for geo-stationary satellites. Russia is also to help develop a more advanced variant of Brazil's VLS-1 launch vehicle, using liquid propellant. The VLS suffered a serious accident last year, and Russia provided help in investigating the accident. Russia will now provide Brazilian space personnel training, also, and each are to gain access to the other's respective land-based space facilities.
The final communiqué spoke of the cooperation in high-technology areas which the two countries should develop in other areas also. Discussions are ongoing on financing mechanisms for joint industrial development projects, and on developing joint ventures in oil and gas exploration and exploitation. In this line, Russia's National Oil Agency and the University of Sao Paulo have reached an agreement for the transfer of Russian technology in aerospace mapping of geological structures for potential new natural resource deposits in Brazil.
Putin's personal plug for Russia's offer to sell ten Sukhoi fighter jets to Brazil, however, met with the reply that no decision would be made this year. Nor did Russia lift the embargo on importing Brazilian beef imposed last October, due to hoof-and-mouth disease in the Amazon. Russia bought 17% of Brazil's beef exports this year before the embargo was imposed. There was talk that the two coveted contractsjets and beefwere linked.
Civilization Is Breaking Down in the Americas
The spreading collapse of civilization in the Americas is seen in the simultaneous reports of mob lynchings occurring in the capitals of Peru and Mexico, and mass hysteria along the Mexican-Guatemalan border and in the Dominican Republic over out-of-control crimes by the "maras," the criminal gangs spawned from Los Angeles.
Mob justice has become a daily occurrence in the poor neighborhoods of Lima, Peru, as people, abandoned by their government, have taken to catching and killing criminals themselves, if authorities do not intervene in time. There have been 1,993 attempted lynchings in Peru so far this year, leading to 19 deaths; 695 of the attempts took place in the capital, Lima.
Similarly, on Nov. 23, in a poor, outlying area of Mexico City, undercover policemen taking pictures of a school for a drug investigation were grabbed by angry parents believing them to be criminals, beaten for hours, then tied to a pole, and burnt to death. The day before, stores and 200 schools in the city of Tapachula, Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala, shut down tight after rumors that the bestial Mara Salvatrucha gang planned a mass attack upon the schools were broadcast by a radio station.
At the same time, Cardinal Lopez Rodriguez of the Dominican Republic, led a "March for Peace" in Santo Domingo, in an attempt to restore calm, as people panicked over the out-of-control crime wave hitting the country. Leading the crime wave are gangs formed by 24,000 criminals deported back to the Dominican Republic from the U.S. over the last six yearsexactly the phenomenon which created the "maras" (see Indepth, Nov. 22, 2004 EIR On-Line). The "maras" are reported directly involved in trafficking Dominican prostitutes into Europe.
Venezuelan Prosecutor Assassinated
Venezuelan Prosecutor Danilo Anderson was blown up in his SUV Nov. 18, when two bombs attached to the vehicle exploded. This is the first assassination of a major Chavez government officer in a terrorist attack. A spokesman announced that President Hugo Chavez was cancelling his trip to Costa Rica, where he was to attend the annual Ibero-American Summit of heads of state, due the domestic situation. Anderson was the prosecutor in charge of investigating the 48-hour coup of April 2002, and was about to indict a number of people who signed the decree by which the briefly named President Carmona Estanga cancelled the Bolivarian Constitution.
Right-Wing Mexican Cardinal Disagrees with Vatican
In clear disagreement with the Vatican's recently elaborated policy on morality, defined as economic development and the furtherance of the common good, and opposition to war (see Nov. 22 EIR Online), Mexico's Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez, who also serves as Archbishop of Guadalajara, applauded the re-election of President George W. Bush and the defeat of John Kerry. According to a Nov. 4 note in Mexico's El Sol, Sandoval said on a visit to the city of Aguascalientes: "I prefer Bush, because the other man [Kerry] is a partisan of immorality, a partisan of abortion, and of other similar things, and that's not good for anybody."
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