From Volume 7, Issue 7 of EIR Online, Published Feb. 12, 2008

Ibero-American News Digest

Drive for Mussolini Corporativism Escalates in Mexico

Feb. 9 (EIRNS)—The world's richest man (on some days), Mexican fat-cat Carlos Slim, is taking the point on the globalist financier oligarchy's drive to impose Mussolini corporativism upon Mexico, so that NAFTA's Mexico can be destroyed together with the wished-for fascist Bloomberg government in the United States. Slim used the Jan. 27-30 National Civil Engineering Congress in Mexico City as the forum to propose that a centralized "PPP" (public-private partnership) be set up, to run the Mexican economy. Slim argued that an autonomous "national infrastructure commission" be established, with a multi-year budget, pooling private and public resources, to design, build, and operate infrastructure projects for Mexico. By "autonomous," he means that the financiers run the show, not the government.

Slim, with his $60 billion fortune made by the same policies that drove 100 million Mexicans into poverty and hunger, competes with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett for world's richest man on any given day (as stocks fluctuate). A man obsessed since youth by numbers (algebra and linear programming), he argues "the only way to judge if [economic policy] is wrong or right is to look at the prices," according to the Chicago Tribune Feb. 3.

FARC Bestiality Seen in Forced Recruitment of Children

Feb. 5 (EIR)—Reports prepared by the International Organization on Migration and by UNICEF document how Colombia's narco-terrorist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) kidnaps thousands of children, mostly from very poor communities, and presses them into service as sex slaves or "soldiers," who serve as cannon fodder on the front lines in combat situations.

Girls as young as nine are kidnapped to be used as prostitutes by the FARC's leadership. Those who contract diseases, such as HIV-AIDS, are "eliminated." International consultant Natalia Springer, who led an investigation, reported that girls were often tied to trees so they could be easily raped. Reports on these heinous abuses coming out of Colombia's Family Welfare Institute (IBF) are based on eyewitness reports of young girls who managed to escape the FARC, after multiple attempts, and are now in government-run protective programs.

In a Feb. 1 press conference in Bogota, Attorney General Edgardo Maya reported that guerrilla and paramilitary armies continue to kidnap and "recruit" youngsters in 250 municipalities in Colombia's 18 states. According to the study done by the International Organization on Migration, at least 20% of the ground troops of Colombia's irregular forces—mostly the FARC—are children. UNICEF and IBF estimate this figure to be between 10,000 and 13,000 children. At least 35% of the guerrillas' current adult members were "recruited" when they were young children.

Bloomberg Advisor Leads Vulture Fund Operation vs. Argentina

Feb. 6 (EIR)—New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's top foreign policy advisor, Nancy Soderberg, heads the hit squad set up by the speculative vulture funds against Argentina. A longtime asset of the Kennedy family, Soderberg does as she is told to do—you don't have to look any further for her motives.

Together with Robert Shapiro, a former Clinton-era Commerce Department assistant secretary, Soderberg runs the American Task Force Argentina (ATFA), which demands that the Fernández de Kirchner government pay the financial predators the total nominal value of the defaulted bonds they hold—they refused to participate in the government's 2005 debt restructuring which paid bondholders about 30 cents on the dollar—or be cut off from world finance.

The former UN ambassador is explicit as to what her backers want: that Argentina shift away from Venezuela, halt support for the "radical" Bank of the South, and abandon its "irresponsible" anti-IMF policies.

During a Jan. 31 conference in Miami, Fla., sponsored by the Wall Street-linked LatinFinance magazine, Soderberg warned Argentina to "clean up its financial situation" and change its foreign policy. It must embrace those countries "where its future lies: the U.S., Europe and the countries which are responsible within Latin America." In several published articles, Soderberg has identified those "responsible" Ibero-American nations as "pragmatic" Brazil, Chile, and Mexico.

In a Sept. 9, 2007 article in London's Financial Times, Soderberg warned Cristina Fernandez, then a Presidential candidate, that should she become President, she should "drop [Argentina's] support for the Bank of the South," and "clean up its investment climate so it can re-enter international capital markets." What's at stake, she argues, "is the integrity of the international credit markets," and by putting people and reality first, "Argentina isn't playing fair!" the Los Angeles Times reported Sept. 6, 2007.

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