Ibero-American News Digest

Only Obama's Ouster Can Turn the Tide on Drug Takeover of Mexico

April 4 (EIRNS)—Only the ouster of U.S. President Barack Obama would bring about the changes in the present government of Mexico that are needed to bring about a turn against the rising tide of drug-trafficking inside that country. The facts of the present situation in Mexico can be noted as follows:

The U.S. Justice Department's 2010 National Drug Threat Assessment (NDTA) reports that, in 2009—on President Obama's watch—"the prevalence of four of the five major drugs—heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana, and MDMA—was widespread and increasing in some areas" of the United States. The source of most of that increased supply was Mexico, where Obama, with a wink and a nod, has encouraged the drive for drug legalization on both sides of the border, and helped hand Mexico entirely over to the local cartels deployed by London's "Dope, Inc." apparatus—just as he has done with the opium trade in Afghanistan.

Mexican heroin production more than doubled in 2008, which translated into "increased heroin availability evidenced by higher purity, lower prices, and elevated numbers of heroin-related overdoses" in the U.S., the NDTA reports. "Methamphetamine availability increased as the result of higher production in Mexico," and "marijuana production increased in Mexico, resulting in increased flow of the drug across the Southwest Border," the NDTA adds. On top of that, "Mexican drug-trafficking organizations continue to represent the single greatest drug-trafficking threat to the United States."

Within Mexico, the Dope, Inc. cartels operate with such impunity that they have begun to attack military bases, as occurred on March 28, with heavily armed attacks on bases in the border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros.

'Bolha' Brazil: What, Me Bubble?

March 29 (EIRNS)—EIR is circulating a Portuguese-language press release reporting on Lyndon LaRouche's March 13 international webcast, including his sharp warning that the Brazilian carry trade, run by the Rothschild Inter-Alpha Group, is about to pop:

"Brazil represents a gambling center, in world currencies, which is bankrupt, and ready to blow! If any part of this system blows, and it can blow at any time, the entire, present world monetary-financial system will not collapse, it will disintegrate!—in a fashion much like the great dark age of Europe's 14th Century," the release quotes LaRouche saying.

On March 21, the head of Brazil's Central Bank, Henrique Meirelles, defensively told a financial conference in Cancun, Mexico, that no speculative bubble would develop in Brazil, because he and other authorities had handled the global financial crisis intelligently. The IMF Director for the Western Hemisphere likewise assured the audience that Brazil is not in the midst of a bubble—but that it is necessary to take precautions, because foreign funds are "inundating" the country.

The Brazilian blogosphere has ignored Meirelles, instead picking up and circulating EIR's March 5 exposé, "London's Brazil Carry Trade: Smoke, Mirrors—and Genocide," after the Alerta Total blog published a Portuguese translation of the article, along with its accompanying box citing LaRouche's Feb. 16 remark, that "Most of Brazil's people are virtual slaves."

Alerta Total posted its translation, duly identifying the authors and EIR, on March 25, four days after EIR issued its press release on LaRouche's March 13 warning that the gambling center of world currencies represented by Brazil is ready to blow. The Alerta Total translation has been posted on at least three other blogs, with links to the article on upwards of 12 other sites, so far.

Soros Cabal Steps Up Drug Legalization Drive in Mexico

March 23 (EIRNS)—On the eve of the Merida U.S.-Mexico High-Level Consultative Group meeting that began this afternoon in Mexico City, to discuss anti-drug cooperation between the two nations, two prominent Mexicans have joined the George Soros cabal's call for legalizing the drug trade—supposedly as a way to stem drug-related violence in Mexico.

By doing so, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and business tycoon and multimillionaire head of the Salinas Group, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, line up with the British Empire's strategy of using the choice between "silver" and "lead" to transform Mexico into a wholly owned subsidiary of Dope, Inc.

A high-powered U.S. delegation to the meeting of the Consultative Group, led by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, includes Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Muller, as well as Treasury, Drug Enforcement Administration, and immigration officials. They will meet with their Mexican counterparts to discuss revisions to the $1.3 billion Merida Initiative, in the wake of escalating violence along the U.S.-Mexico border, reflected in the March 13 murders of three employees of the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juárez.

In the period leading up to these murders, and to today's prescheduled Consultative meeting, Dope, Inc. agent Soros stepped up the drug-legalization drive—the "silver" part of the British strategy—through a number of conferences specifically targetting Mexico.

Soros toady Jorge Castañeda, former Mexican foreign minister, and César Gaviria, former Colombian President, were the celebrity speakers at a Feb. 23-24 conference in Mexico City that brought together most of Soros's South American assets to lobby for drug legalization in Mexico and the United States. Another drug legalization advocate, former Mexican President Vicente Fox, not only hosted a pro-legalization event at his own Fox Center on Feb. 26, but then went on a speaking tour in southern California and south Texas to promote legalization in the United States as well.

McCaffrey: Mexico Should Be a Higher Priority than Afghanistan

March 25 (EIRNS)—The amount of U.S. aid to Mexico is "inadequate and insufficient," stated Gen. Barry McCaffrey (ret.), former Clinton Administration anti-drug czar, and former head of the U.S. Southern Command.

One day before the March 23 meeting in Mexico City of the Merida U.S.-Mexico High-Level Consultative Group, involving cabinet members of the U.S. and Mexican governments, the daily El Universal published an interview with McCaffrey, in which he warned that drug-related violence in Mexico constitutes an enormous threat to the U.S., and to Mexico's very existence as well. Yet the amount of U.S. financial and military aid to that country is paltry.

"The U.S. spends $5.6 billion a month in Afghanistan, and at the height of the Iraq War, it spent $12 billion a month," McCaffrey recalled. But in Mexico, the violence in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, for example, "is vastly more dangerous than Baghdad or Kabul." Yet only $1.3 billion over three years has been allocated through the Merida Initiative to help Mexico combat the drug cartels.

"In my view," he said, "the United States must give serious levels of support to Mexican security institutions—and not three helicopters. The Mexican Army has confronted the cartels, but often the police have been scared or bought off." McCaffrey called for joint action, to deal both with U.S. weapons trafficking into Mexico, and with the drug money laundering that occurs on both sides of the border.

A week earlier, following the March 13 assassinations of three employees of the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juárez, McCaffrey countered FBI reports that the murders were a case of "mistaken identity." "This was a direct, organized attack of intimidation on the consulate," he said. "We don't know the exact motive, but we can be sure that when two groups that left the same party were assassinated within ten minutes of each other, this was a coordinated action."

Chávez Jails Opposition Leader—for Telling the Truth about Drugs

March 25 (EIRNS)—Oswaldo Alvarez Paz, a former Venezuelan Presidential candidate and opposition leader, on March 8 told Globovisión TV that Venezuela has become a drug-trafficking center and that "there are relations of the Venezuelan regime with structures that serve the drug trade, such as those of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) and others that exist in the continent," including the Spain-based ETA. Alvarez was arrested March 22, and, for good measure, so was the head of Globovisión on March 25.