Ibero-American News Digest

In Argentina, Colombian President Attacks Drug Decriminalization

Aug. 29 (EIRNS)-Just days after Argentina's Supreme Court ruled that possession of drugs for personal consumption is not illegal, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe attacked drug decriminalization, during his Aug. 28 visit to Argentina for the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) summit.

His message to Argentina, reported by La Nación, couldn't be missed. Countries that permit possession for personal consumption encourage "impunity," Uribe said, and "induce children to commit crimes." Rather than legalizing consumption, he added, there should be discussion on opposing it.

The Colombian leader recounted his ongoing efforts to reverse the decriminalization law that was approved in his country in 1994. How is it possible, he asked, that a country that has "shed so much blood" in combatting the drug mafias, "at the same time, is so permissive toward consumption?"

Some Chilean officials didn't welcome Uribe's message. In the aftermath of Argentina's Supreme Court ruling Aug. 25, the head of the National Drug Control Council (CONACE), María Teresa Chadwick, told EFE news that the Chilean government is studying a proposal to expand current legislation, which decriminalizes individual drug consumption in private, to include group consumption in private. Drug orgies anyone?

Argentine LYM Finds Strong Sentiment Against Decriminalization

Aug. 29 (EIRNS)—The LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) in Argentina reports that, as soon as the Supreme Court issued its Aug. 25 ruling decriminalizing drug possession for personal consumption, anti-drug groups took to the streets in front of the Supreme Court in protest.

Members of the "Life Without Drugs" group carried a huge banner than read, "No to Drugs!" and aggressively handed out leaflets to passers-by. In recent LYM deployments in downtown Buenos Aires, organizers found that the majority of people who stopped at the literature table were opposed to decriminalization.

LYM family members in such Patagonian provinces as Chubut and Neuquen report that media are covering widespread opposition to the ruling. Most people attribute growing insecurity and crime to increased drug consumption, which they say the Court ruling will only facilitate. Similar reports have come from several other provinces.

Demonstrating the impact of the LYM's high-profile intervention into the drug-legalization fight, and its exposé of the British Empire/George Soros role, the TV news program "Palabras Más, Palabras Menos" sent reporters to the LYM office to interview the three organizers. When the program was aired on Aug. 25, the same day as the Supreme Court ruling, the producers had invited a pothead from the pro-drug legalization THC magazine to debate someone from a drug-treatment center. Before the debate, the hosts showed an edited clip of the LYM intervention at the George Soros-sponsored Aug. 6 drug-legalization conference held in the Congress's Annex building.

However, the hosts didn't dare show any other than a few seconds of the in-depth interview with the three organizers.

The 'Times' Fronts for Nazi Protégé Soros—Again!

Aug. 27 (EIRNS)—True to its perverse history of defending George Soros's drug legalization policies—not to mention its defense of Adolf Hitler—the New York Times today waxed ecstatic over Mexico's and Argentina's decisions to embrace decriminalization.

Quoting the head of the Global Drug Policy Program at Soros's Open Society Institute, as well as the Drug Policy Alliance's Ethan Nadelmann (aka "Needleman"), the Times asserts that Mexico's new decriminalization law, and Argentina's Aug. 25 Supreme Court decision allowing drug possession for personal consumption, prove that there is an "urgent desire" in Ibero-America to "reject decades of American prescriptions for distinctly Latin American challenges."

Since when is drug-trafficking, and the destruction it wreaks, a "distinctly Latin American" challenge?

The Times also gives ample coverage to the "findings" of the Soros-sponsored and financed Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, which has been organizing for the past year on behalf of the British Empire's new Opium War against the Americas. The Commission, the Times reported, "urged countries to reject the U.S. prohibitionist policies."

Castro Defends Obamacare; Clueless on U.S. Mass Strike

Aug. 25 (EIRNS)—Wearing his Union Jack in public again, former Cuban President Fidel Castro used his Aug. 25 daily "Reflections" column in the daily Granma to defend U.S. President Barack Obama from attacks by the "powerful extreme right," which he complains is undermining the U.S. President.

Castro pointed to LaRouche PAC's poster of Obama with a Hitler mustache, and a young woman who, he said, "feeds the theory that the President would create death panels which would back euthanasia," as examples of actions by the "racist right." These, he says, are a threat to the lives of Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and their two children.

"The racist right will do everything possible to wear him down, blocking his program to get him out of the game, one way or the other, with the least political cost possible," writes Castro.

The wily synarchist Castro dedicated another column on Aug. 27 to a defense of the British-steered "Bolivarian" movement, whose leader is the unstable Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. On the eve of the Aug. 28 summit of Presidents of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), whose top agenda item was Colombia's decision to allow U.S. military personnel to operate inside the country on its bases, Castro charged that the only purpose of this decision is to "liquidate" the "revolutionary" Bolivarian movement.

Nuclear Energy Advances in Ibero-America

Aug. 28 (EIRNS)—Ecuador's government signed an accord last week to cooperate with Russia on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

For a government that is heavily committed to green axioms, this is an important step in the direction of reality. Russia will provide technical and legal advice on the use of, and research in, nuclear technology, through the state agency Rosatom, which will train Ecuadorians in nuclear physics, and help identify projects to get started. Specifically, for the moment, the focus will be on application of radioactive techniques for industry, medicine, and agriculture.

It appears that Ecuador will be starting its program from scratch, as news reports emphasized that Russia will help it draft the legislation required under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) criteria to work in this areas. President Rafael Correa will visit Russia in October.

Elsewhere in Ibero-America, Chile's National Energy Commission has just issued a report saying that this nation could build five 1,100 MW nuclear reactors over the next 26 years. Speaking at an Aug. 27 seminar at Adolfo Ibañez University, Energy Minister Marcelo Tokman emphasized that it would be "irresponsible" to rule out the nuclear energy option, given its benefits.

Another key component in the debate was the July 9 release of the "Program for Chile's Nuclear Reactor Development—2009-2030," prepared by the Nuclear Energy Commission of the College of Engineers. This report proposes that Chile begin construction of a first reactor by 2015, to be completed by 2020, with three more to be built by 2030. Fernando Sierpe, coordinator of the Nuclear Energy Commission, stated, in presenting the report, that the only thing preventing Chile from moving forward in this area is a political decision.