Ibero-American News Digest

Lessa: Brazil Should Do What Kirchner's Doing

Like Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, "we should tell the creditors how much we can pay, because this debt has already been paid," Carlos Lessa, former head of Brazil's National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES), told a group of leaders from the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, on Oct. 10. According to press accounts, the PMDB'ers "liked Lessa's war cry."

The Rio Grande do Sul meeting was the fourth of the 27 state meetings of the PMDB planned to discuss the proposed program of government drafted by a team under Lessa, for a PMDB candidate in the 2006 Presidential elections. Titled "To Change Brazil," the program is an audacious outline of how Brazil must take on the financiers, as a precondition to develop. While the major media keeps mum on Lessa's organizing, one nervous columnist in an "investment advice" website warned that there are people who like these ideas, such as the Vice President, Jose Alencar, and the sector of national business which supported Lessa when he headed up the BNDES.

Brazilian Governor Compares Fight Against Economic Liberalism, to Fight To Defeat Nazism

The PMDB must build a movement against financier liberalism's rule over Brazil, like the resistance which De Gaulle organized against the Nazi occupation of France, Roberto Requiao, Governor of the state of Parana and Carlos Lessa's close ally in organizing for "To Change Brazil," told anywhere from 3-5,000 PMDB members in Florianopolis, Santa Catarina on Oct. 2. Requiao, like Lessa, comes from the generation which fought in the Brazilian Democratic Movement back in the 1960s, when the MDB was founded to lead resistance to military government.

Requiao reminded his fired-up audience that when Charles De Gaulle arrived in London in 1940 to organize the resistance to Nazi occupation, reporters asked why he bothered, "since France was on its knees and had been subjugated. The General responded that he was there to organize the resistance, because he had a certain idea of France in his heart, which was not that France subjugated by the Nazis. The PMDB is meeting here in Santa Catarina, to say to Brazil: the old MDB of war, also has a certain idea of a nation in its heart which is not liberalism's idea," Requiao declared.

"Are we a nation, or a market? A nation and the market are totally different," he said. "In today's Brazil the Central Bank rules at the service of the bankers.... [In] the Brazil of the rentiers, of the bankers, of denationalization," we are to be only "a mediocre supplier of a labor force without guarantees and without rights. In the liberal's vision, Brazil should compete with Bangladesh, with Biafra, with India and China, offering... the slave labor of the Brazilian population."

The PMDB's task in the 2006 Presidential elections is not solidifying its party structure, but "reestablishing ourselves in Brazil, as a national political movement like that which De Gaulle organized for the reconstruction of France," bringing together all the constituent elements of the country to work for the good of the nation, he said.

Argentine General Backs Bush's Paraguay Operation

Retired Army Gen. Daniel Reimundes, a former defense attaché in Washington, lined up with the Washington Cheneyacs who intend to unleash permanent warfare in the Southern Cone, and get rid of Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, if they can. In remarks before the Fundacion Carta Politica in early October, Reimundes lied that the establishment of a U.S. military base in Paraguay is due to Argentina's "inaction in collaborating with Paraguay in combatting terrorism, drug-trafficking and contraband." This line, that Kirchner is a terrorist sympathizer, is the hobby-horse of the two leading Cheney/Bush allies running for Congress, Ricardo Lopez Murphy and Mauricio Macri. Reimundes is an adviser to Macri.

Reimundes has a history of conspiring with fascist leaders of powerful financial groups of the Mont Pelerinite ilk, tied politically to the corrupt former President Carlos Menem, whom Reimundes backed in the 2003 Presidential election against Kirchner. He often bragged that during his 2002 stint as Defense attache in Washington, he had access to "sensitive" sectors of the U.S. government. Notably, he is also an associate member of the Wall Street thinktank, Inter-American Dialogue.

It was due to such Reimundes's activities, including his insisting on a role for the military in quelling social protest, that Kirchner removed him as Secretary General of the Army, shortly after becoming President in May of 2003. Undeterred, a year later Reimundes helped organize the 70-person dinner at the Patricios Regiment in Buenos Aires in May of 2004, attended by military, political, and business figures linked to the synarchist financiers whose interests Kirchner threatened. Kirchner identified this dinner as a coup-plotting event, reflecting the permanent operations directed against his government by powerful economic groups.

Argentine Government Files Official Protest Against French Insult of Baby-Boomerism

The Argentine government sent a diplomatic note to the French Foreign Ministry, to protest the French Ambassador's statements in Buenos Aires that President Nestor Kirchner is "a populist and '68er.'" Ambassador Francis Lott made these remarks at a private gathering, complaining that Kirchner's policies were causing "difficulties for our companies," a reference to the French utility company Suez, which just announced that it is pulling out of the privatized Aguas Argentinas, in which it is a majority stockholder, because Kirchner refused to renegotiate their contract on the anti-national terms Suez demanded.

Lott was immediately called into the Foreign Ministry, and a note delivered to the French Foreign Ministry by Argentina's Ambassador in Paris, informing them that the remarks were "unacceptable." A tense Lott apologized for having used "mistaken terminology."

Responding to local chatter that the Kirchner government had over-reacted, Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa reminded people that "if you have no problems with any country, you end up saying yes to everyone. For a long time, we said yes to many things and ended up with December, 2001" (when Argentina defaulted on its debt). "This is a matter that has to do with national dignity, self-respect, and refusing to genuflect...."

Of course the Argentines had to take this "insult" seriously, Lyndon LaRouche commented: They had called the President a Baby-Boomer!"

As Guatemala Is Buried in Mud, Rumsfeld Demands Military Solutions

Donald Rumsfeld called a meeting of Central American Defense Ministers Oct. 13-14 in Florida, to push them to form a regional supranational "peacekeeping" force. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Pardo-Maurer argued there that such a force is necessary to address common problems like the Mara Salvatrucha gangs, and for responding to natural disasters. Rumsfeld was less subtle, essentially telling his counterparts that foreign investment depends on their wielding sufficient military force to guarantee "security" for Wall Street's Council of the Americas.

Rumsfeld stooped so low, as to cynically use the Hurricane Stan disaster, as an argument for his drive for supranational regional forces, on the grounds that only such a force can bring relief when disaster strikes.

What Guatemala needs to keep such disasters from repeating, is the infrastructure that has never been built. Lack of that infrastructure, is what turned the flooding provoked by Stan on Oct. 4, into murderous mudslides which buried entire villages and left nearly a dozen more incommunicado on Oct. 9-10. The country's few highways were flooded and became impassable, and many bridges were washed away, preventing access to areas affected by the storm. Official figures of 652 dead, 1400 disappeared, and 3.5 million "affected," are considered underestimates. Just two villages that were buried in mud are being described as "mass graves" for 1,400 people. Epidemics and starvation are now feared, due to the damage wrecked on domestic and export agriculture.

Bush to Ibero-America: Poverty Is Here To Stay!

The action plan that comes out of the November Summit of the Americas should not say "we will eliminate poverty," John Maisto, U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS) proclaimed Oct. 7. Following five days of negotiations in Washington with Ibero-American officials on the text of the summit's final Action Plan, this lunatic argued "the document shouldn't say 'we will eliminate poverty.' Please! We'll never do it." This is the time for "pragmatism and practicality." Some progress can be made, he said, "if we generate correct policies, such as Chile did" in reducing poverty—a bald-faced lie—"thanks to its economy dedicated to international trade." "Presidents can't create jobs," he ranted; they can only "encourage and seduce" foreign capital to invest.

'Diamond Pat' Robertson Is at It Again

On Oct. 9, Gen. Boykin-buddy Pat Robertson once again sought to fuel the environment in which Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez could be assassinated, this time ranting that Chavez is negotiating with Iran to obtain nuclear material, and gave $1.2 billion to Osama bin Laden right after Sept. 11. 2001. "One day we're going to be staring at nuclear weapons, and it won't be Katrina facing New Orleans, it's going to be a Venezuelan nuke," the Synarchist tool told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. Robertson could only say that he got this information from "sources that came to me."

Calling Robertson "crazy," Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel, who identified Robertson as George W. Bush's "spiritual advisor," called on the White House to repudiate Diamond Pat's latest remarks.