From Volume 8, Issue 6 of EIR Online, Published Feb. 10, 2009

Ibero-American News Digest

Inter-American Dialogue Dopers At It Again

Feb. 6 (EIRNS)—The Inter-American Dialogue is out to turn the Western Hemisphere over to Dope, Inc.

Its most recent call for drug legalization comes from the Dialogue's vice president for policy, Michael Shifter, and Andean program associate Dan Joyce. Writing on U.S.-Ibero-American relations in a Feb. 1 article in Current History, the duo proposes that "consultations on a high-level forum with hemispheric partners" might well change the decades-long U.S. anti-drug policy. Their argument is George Soros's usual "harm reduction" sophistry:

"Although U.S. drug policy has demonstrably failed both in the United States and in Latin America," they assert, "it has remained largely unchanged for decades, the prisoner of U.S. domestic politics.... Politically feasible options exist that would restore some U.S. credibility and answer charges of hypocrisy on the drug issue. These include higher-level attention and cooperation, shifting from eradication to serious alternative crop development, and a renewed emphasis on drug rehabilitation and harm reduction."

This banker-dominated U.S.-Ibero-American policy think tank, set up by George Shultz in 1982 to stop Lyndon LaRouche's revival of American System economics throughout the hemisphere, was the first Liberal Establishment body to officially put drug legalization on the agenda, in the 1980s. The Dialogue's April 1986 membership policy report announced that the time had come to break the taboo against discussing drug legalization. Their argument was lifted straight out of earlier British defenses of the opium trade: "Cash-strapped" Ibero-American nations need the dope trade to pay their foreign debts, they wrote.

The rapporteur who wrote up the conclusions of that 1986 Dialogue membership meeting was Ethan Nadelmann, who soon went on to head up Soros's drug legalization operations internationally.

Mexico Stunned by Drug Mafia Hit on Army General

Feb. 5 (EIRNS)—Drug mafias gunned down the highly decorated Brig. General Mauro Enrique Tello Quiñones on Feb. 2, in what was clearly a targetted assassination, as he traveled toward the resort city of Cancún, with his Army aide and a civilian. This was the highest-ranking military officer killed by the drug mafias, to date.

At the time of his murder, Tello Quiñones, who was retired, was working as a public security advisor to the mayor of Cancún, and was setting up an elite special forces unit to combat the paramilitary wing of the Gulf Cartel, known as the Zetas, which is increasingly active in the region.

In his capacity as commander of the Morelia military zone in the state of Michoacán, as well as in previous posts in Mexico City, Tello had successfully taken on organized crime families.

News of the mafia-style execution—the three victims were tied up and machine-gunned—stunned the country. Another retired general remarked that the killing was "extremely grave," because of the defiance it represented on the part of the drug mafias, and their lack of fear of the Army. Mexico's Defense Ministry described General Tello's death as an "irreparable loss."

But several Mexican legislators are using the murder to charge that President Felipe Calderón's use of the Army in the war on drugs is a "total failure" and "lost cause." On Feb. 3, deputies from the PRD and PRI parties called on the President to withdraw the Army from the anti-drug fight, and replace it with other law enforcement agencies. On the same day, the Social Pastoral Committee of the Catholic Church echoed the legislators, also calling for the Army to be taken out of the war on drugs.

Coinciding with this is the British Empire's line from various media outlets that the United States is preparing a military intervention into Mexico, on the grounds that the government and law-enforcement agencies are hopelessly corrupt, and incapable of defeating the drug cartels. After portraying the Mexican situation as an unwinnable disaster, the British publication Moneyweek asked, "so what's the next step by the States? Direct military action."

Argentina's High Court Is Warned Against Drug Decrim

Feb. 3 (EIRNS)—The Network of Mothers and Families of Drug Victims issued a harsh warning to Argentina's Supreme Court yesterday. The group warned that should the Court rule, as it is expected to this month, that the article in the national drug law which criminalizes drug possession for personal use, is unconstitutional, it will be guilty of genocide.

In a Feb. 2 meeting with a Supreme Court official, members of the Network demanded that the Court hold public hearings to allow for thorough debate on the proposal to decriminalize drugs, which is inspired by Nazi collaborator George Soros and promoted by his local allies. In its statement, the Network underscored, "If you rule for decriminalization, the public will know the first and last names of those who will be responsible for the genocide we know is not far off."

The statement took aim at the argument used by some Supreme Court judges, who justify decriminalization by citing the Argentine Constitution's article stating that any "private" action of individuals, which doesn't harm third parties or "offend public morals," cannot be considered illegal.

"[Drug] consumption is a practice which, whether private or public, individual or collective, in all cases affects third parties and society as a whole, as is more than obvious," the statement reads. "You need to explain what science you rely on, when you find that drug consumption is an action which doesn't affect third parties." Far from representing a solution, the statement concludes, decriminalization will "aggravate and facilitate an increased drug supply, based on an increase in demand."

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