In this issue:

Integration Is the New Name for Peace In South America

Brazil Challenges Bush Regime Change Policy for Venezuela

Arab, South American Foreign Ministers Meet in Morocco

Arizona-Mexico Border: Flashpoint for 'Clash Of Civilizations' Scenarios

Likudnik Neocons Turn Their Sights on Ibero-America

Ibero-American News Digest

Integration Is the New Name for Peace In South America

The neocon Cheneyacs' drive for "regime change" in Venezuela as a detonator for war in South America was delivered a major set-back with the historic March 29 summit in Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela, of the Heads of State Colombia (Alvaro Uribe), Venezuela (Hugo Chavez), Brazil (Lula da Silva), and Spain (Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero).

Only last January, relations between Venezuela and Colombia were nearly broken, and the two countries were headed down a path which could have led to war. Asked to identify the importance of the summit at the press conference given by the four at the conclusion of their talks, Colombia's Uribe—supposedly the "hardline right-winger" aligned with George W. Bush—summed it up as integration. "Integration of infrastructure, integration of the economies. Integration in cooperation. Integration to advance in the eradication of poverty," he said, and noted also sincere statements of support for Colombia's battle against terrorism and drugs.

Venezuela's Chavez told the press conference that his government has "told the Colombian guerrilla ... that the moment you step on Venezuelan territory, you will be considered enemies of Venezuela," and Venezuela is fully prepared to fight the drug trade and terrorism.

So, too, when pressed by journalists for Colombia's response to Spain's (and others') selling ships and planes to Venezuela, Uribe declared that these arms purchases are not a threat, but rather could help Colombia, because they will be used by Venezuela to fight the drug trade.

During the summit, Uribe gave a map-briefing of the region, pointing out the rivers which must be joined, and the highways that must be paved, so that Brazil and Venezuela can have an outlet to the Pacific Ocean, through Colombia. Trade with Asia will be crucial, he said, and he reported that he had asked Chavez to represent Colombia, also, when Chavez visited China in December.

Lula, for his part, said that what they all wish is "to consolidate an infrastructure policy to consolidate the integration of South America," and we need to find mechanisms to finance this. We need to convince the rich countries which have technology, to come help us build this integration. "Neither can the United States, nor any other country see this as a bad thing."

Brazil Challenges Bush Regime Change Policy for Venezuela

"Venezuela has the right to be a sovereign country, and make its own decisions," Brazilian President Lula da Silva stated during the March 29 four-party summit in Ciudad Guayana. Lula left no doubt that his remarks were a direct answer to Donald Rumsfeld's brazen threats against Venezuela during his trip to Ibero-America the week before. "We have people speaking ill of us all over the world. I want to say to President Chavez, that ... we don't accept slanders against our 'companeros'.... You can be sure of our solidarity," Lula said. "We, of South America, are capable of taking care of our own affairs."

Within three days, Folha de Sao Paulo reported that Secretary of State Condi Rice will go to Brazil at the end of April, apparently to offer the 'tit for tat' that if Brazil wants a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, it must join the Bush regime's drive against Venezuela. The trip has reportedly been in the works since January, but was set only now, with Venezuela and the reform of the UN Security Council the two items on the agenda.

Arab, South American Foreign Ministers Meet in Morocco

Thirty-four Foreign Ministers from South America and the Arab nations met in Morocco March 24-25, to finalize preparations for the first ever Arab-South American Summit, to be held in Brasilia from May 8-11. The summit is President Lula da Silva's initiative, and his Foreign Minister, Celso Amorim, told the Foreign Ministers meeting in Morocco that the summit, before it even has taken place, is already a success, because it has brought these two vast regions of the developing sector closer together.

Economic relations—trade and investments—have already increased, helping create the needed "new world economic and trade geography," but more than economic matters have been strengthened, Amorim said. We have started "a dialogue of the future." He pointed to the centuries of contributions to Western civilization by Arab science and culture. We have to understand each other, and this should be seen not as a problem, but as a source of solutions, of construction, of creativity, he said. "Imagine an historian of the future who analyzes this effort which we are making.... [This summit] is not an earthquake, but more like a small seismic movement which will be registered by historians."

In an address to the Arab League summit three days before, Amorim stressed that the Brasilia summit, coming at this important moment in the Middle East, "will serve the cause of peace." The agenda of the summit ranges from such intriguing topics as "the reform of international financial institutions," to cooperation on solving the problems of developing semi-arid lands. South America hopes to interest the Arab nations in financing infrastructure projects in South America, and Colombia's El Tiempo reported March 24 that diplomatic sources in Brasilia are hoping that the establishment of an Arab-Brazilian, or Arab-South American bank will be announced at the summit.

Arizona-Mexico Border: Flashpoint for 'Clash Of Civilizations' Scenarios

More than 1,000 U.S. vigilantes—including 30 pilots and their private planes—began patrolling part of Arizona's border with Mexico on April 1, as part of the so-called "Minuteman Project" launched by the same fascist anti-immigrant movement that spawned Proposition 200, passed in Arizona on Nov. 2, 2004, which forces government officials to identify and turn in "undocumenteds" who seek public benefits like health care or education for their children; those who refuse, face fines or jail themselves.

The Minutemen are linked to a nest of other vigilante operations proliferating in Arizona, and elsewhere, including to the Evangelical Christian military ministry, "Operation Freedom," of Col. Jim Ammerman. Ammerman's role in the treasonous U.S. militia movement overall was exposed by EIR in its Aug. 22, 1997 blockbuster package on "Britain's 'Invisible' Empire Unleashes the Dogs of War." (See, "Who Is Wagging Your Neighbor's Tongue? The Militias and Pentacostalism," by Anton Chaitkin.)

Lyndon LaRouche warned on March 28, that as the Cheney crowd finds its domestic and foreign projects stymied (case in point: Wall Street's privatization of Social Security), the potential for something really nasty, along the lines of the Samuel Huntington scenario for a major terrorist eruption, coming out of Ibero-America, probably across the Mexican border, could be activated. LaRouche traced this operation back to the World War II era, when the Nazis had their Synarchist apparatus in place to run sabotage missions against the United States, particularly along the West Coast. The Synarchist offspring of those wartime Nazi operations are now active, in precisely the same areas.

That same day, the neocon Washington Times of Rev. Sun Myung Moon began propagandizing about a conflict along the Arizona border, between the vigilante groups and the Mara Salvatrucha 13—the violent transnational gang wreaking havoc from Panama to Canada—which the Minutemen say has deployed people into Arizona to pick a fight.

Likudnik Neocons Turn Their Sights on Ibero-America

Just as Lyndon LaRouche reiterated his warning that the Huntington/Cheney crowd are likely to use a Hispanic cover for another "Reichstag Fire" attack on the U.S., the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a virtual branch of the American Enterprise Institute, and an integral part of the neoconservative war party running the Bush Administration, sent out a bulletin (#479) on March 26, raving that "ideological killers are regrouping" in Central and South America, "with the aid of leftist governments and drug lords." JINSA not-so-subtly compares the region to "the original swamp of the terrorist swamp theory": the PLO terrorist training camps in Lebanon which "Israel put ... out of business" in 1982—by invading, they wrote. The U.S. is draining the Afghan swamp today, "but watch out for Central and South America." Among JINSA'S targets are the Brazilian, Uruguayan, and Venezuelan governments, "indigenous anti-American politicians," and the Chinese military, which has dared carry out state-to-state visits with Ibero-American nations. "All of which makes the region a swamp of potentially tragic proportions," they conclude.