From Volume 7, Issue 15 of EIR Online, Published Apr. 8, 2008

Ibero-American News Digest

What, Really, Is Inside the FARC's Computers?

April 2 (EIRNS)—Maximiliano Londoño Penilla, president of the Lyndon LaRouche Association of Colombia, issued the following statement yesterday:

"Amidst all the posturing, from each side, on the subject of Colombia's March 1 military operation in which Raúl Reyes and a score of his companions were killed in a FARC camp on Ecuadorian territory, and on the content of the hard drives of the FARC computers seized in the operation, there has been a deafening silence on the most fundamental aspect of the whole incident. Those computers contain certain information which neither the FARC, nor Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, nor Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, nor Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, nor Wall Street, nor the City of London, nor the Congressmen and leaders of the political parties of the region, never mind George Bush's government in the United States, want to be made public.

"What's really on those hard drives?

"The FARC, of course, deny that the original computers survived the attack, and say the revelations being circulated are apocryphal. However, with information from these computers, the Costa Rican police were able to raid a residence in which they found a strongbox containing a half-million dollars. But what is interesting about the case, is that the information on this FARC stash dates from 1997. That means that it is very likely that the hard drives also have information from June 1999, regarding an extremely embarrassing meeting which Reyes held with Richard Grasso, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.

"In that meeting, held in the Colombian jungle of Caguan, Reyes and Grasso joined in the now famous 'Grasso abrazo' ('Grasso embrace'), and discussed mutual 'investments' and a future Reyes tour of New York's financial district. The full story on this meeting and its sequel can be found in EIR's July 16, 1999 issue, or at www.larouchepub.com/spanish.

"There, it is proven that Wall Street and the City of London's bosses not only flirted with, but established an intimate relationship with the FARC narcoterrorists, founded upon their centuries of promotion of free trade and the drug trade, as supposed 'licit' economic activity. Grasso and Reyes's infamous embrace represents the deep and lasting relationship, which continues to this day, of the Anglo-Dutch financial networks which plotted this new Opium War the FARC is waging against the United States, the nations of the America, and the entire world.

"In the face of the patent reluctance of the region's actors, all victims of this British manipulation, to speak frankly about the Grasso Abrazo, U.S. statesman Lyndon LaRouche recommends that everything be brought to light, so that the truth be known. 'It is like vomiting,' LaRouche commented; 'one feels better afterwards.'"

Bolivia on Chopping Block for National Disintegration

April 4 (EIRNS)—Global inflation in food prices is fueling the British drive to break apart Bolivia, as only the first domino to fall in South America.

Separatists in the gas- and agricultural-export-rich department of Santa Cruz have scheduled a referendum on "autonomy" from the Federal government for May 4, which the separatists promise to hold, no matter who declares it illegal.

Santa Cruz's extensive soy cultivation supplies much of the cooking oil used nationally. With the price having risen 35% in the recent period, President Evo Morales ordered exports of cooking oil suspended temporarily on March 26, until supplies for the domestic market were assured. The separatist Civic Committee (its head, Branko Marinkovic, is one of the biggest cooking oil producers), mobilized a protest of 300,000 people on April 2 against the export ban, and for regional autonomy. The governor of the department, Rubén Costas, ranted there that the export ban doesn't matter, because after the May 4 referendum, the department will be able to make its own laws. "We're making the real revolution."

The foreign ministers of Brazil and Argentina, along with the vice foreign minister of Colombia, are in Bolivia now, attempting to mediate between the government and the separatists, to head off the vote. The Santa Cruz leaders dismissed them as friends of the Morales government, and representing "their multinationals"—as opposed to those who own the Santa Cruz leaders.

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