Ibero-American News Digest
LaRouche Movement Leader Exposes Chickenhawk War-Drive on Mexican National Radio
LaRouche associate Marivilia Carrasco, the leader of the MSIA (Movimiento Solidaridad Ibero Americano) in Mexico, was interviewed for the second time in a month on national radio station, Radio Red, on Feb. 14. The hour-long live interview, which exposed the U.S. Chickenhawk drive for war for the first time on Mexican national radio, was to be rebroadcast on Feb. 16, to give it maximum exposure. The MSIA is the organization of Lyndon LaRouche in Ibero-America.
Carrasco emphasized U.S. Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche's message that the war against Iraq is preventable, and presented a tutorial on the forces behind the U.S. Chickenhawks, like Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, et al.
Interviewer Ramon Pieza asked what could serve as a counterweight to this militarist offensive, which gave Carrasco the opportunity to explain the importance of the LaRouche proposal of a Eurasian Land-Bridge, and the Paris-Berlin-Moscow alliance which China and India have now joined.
Brazil Joins 'Old Europe,' Moscow, vs. War in Iraq
Brazil will do "everything in its power to bring about a peaceful solution" to the Iraq crisis, Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov when they met in Moscow on Feb. 17, a spokesman for Itamaraty announced afterwards. Amorim told reporters that Brazil opposes any new UN Security Council resolution, because it would only serve to justify military action against Iraq. Estado de Sao Paulo of Feb. 18 notes that Amorim has made it clear that Brazil is aligned with the French-Russian-German opposition: He spoke with French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin on Feb. 13, and he was to meet German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer in Berlin on Feb. 18.
Sources in Planalto, the Presidential seat, are putting out the word that Brazil could organize South American resistance to the war, Estado added.
Argentine President Eduardo Duhalde, for his part, stated on Feb. 17 that Argentina would not participate in any unilateral U.S. attack on Iraq. War will not solve any problem, Duhalde stated.
Mexico Under Enormous U.S. Pressure To Support Iraq War
President Vicente Fox has emphasized that Mexicocurrently a member of the Security Councilbelieves that only the UN can authorize war, and that Mexico prefers a peaceful solution. But how they will vote, remains a battleground.
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza threatened, in a Feb. 20 interview with U.S. reporters, that while there would be no "direct reprisals" if Mexico did not support the U.S. in the Security Council on Iraq, many U.S. Congressmen would stop supporting Mexico on even "relatively straightforward issues related to Mexico." Garza's embassy in Mexico City had organized a videoconference Feb. 13 for former Defense Department official Kenneth Pollack, in which the latter threatened that, while the U.S.-Mexican relationship is important, the Bush Administration would "want to punish any country which does not want to go along with us, as a way of saying to other countries: 'If you don't cooperate with the U.S. in its most important matter, you will pay a price.'" Mexico is vulnerable, and al-Qaeda could hit there too, Pollack added.
The next day, Deputy Defense Secretary for International Security Policy Jack Crouch used an interview with Mexico's Reforma daily to pitch the need for improved Mexican-U.S. cooperation in fighting "terrorism." Praising the creation of the Northern Command, Crouch stressed that North America should be viewed as "a geostrategic whole."
Mexico's National Federation of Chambers of Commerce (Concanaco) issued a cowardly statement Feb. 12, pleading for Mexico to support the war, for economic reasons.
As of Feb. 16, the Fox government was still undecided on what to do on Iraq. Said President Fox's spokesman Rodolfo Elizondo on Feb. 16: "Mexico doesn't want to risk too much, but we don't want it to seem that we are aligned with the U.S. .... We must be careful."
FARC Seizure of U.S. Hostages Could Fuel Chickenhawk War Drive
The seizure by Colombia's narcoterrorist FARC of three American hostgages has created a potential new flashpoint for war-seeking U.S. Chickenhawks. One hundred U.S. Special Forces troops are currently deployed in the jungles of Colombia, alongside thousands of Colombian Army troops, in a search for three Americans taken hostage by the FARC after their plane crash-landed Feb. 13 in the southern province of Caqueta during drug-surveillance operations for the U.S. Defense Department. Another American who had been on the plane was executed by the terrorists, as was a Colombian military intelligence officer accompanying the Americans. The hostages remain unidentified by U.S. authorities, who have only confirmed that the Americans are not Drug Enforcement Administration agents.
Three U.S. CongressmenThomas Davis (R-Va.), James Moran (D-Va.), and Mark Souder (R-Ind.)spent two days in Colombia last week, where they met with U.S. embassy and Colombian officials, and gave a press conference urging a "dramatic response" from the Bush Administration to the kidnapping. "I don't think rescue by itself is a sufficient response," said Moran, who said U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Anne Patterson had sent a recommendation to President Bush which calls for "major and appropriate" action, as yet undefined. A "military response" has not been ruled out, said an unidentified U.S. official cited by the New York Times.
Chavez Political Police Seize Opposition Leader
Venezuela's political police, who are under the control of Jacobin President Hugo Chavez, arrested Carlos Fernandez, head of the country's national business association, Fedecamaras, at gunpoint, at 1 a.m. on Feb. 20, while he was dining with a group of businessmen in a restaurant in Caracas. Charges against him include civilian rebellion, sabotage, treason, incitement of crime, and other unspecified charges related to the general strikes and coup attempt against Chavez in April and December 2002. An arrest warrant was also issued for the head of the Venezuelan Labor Federation (CTV), Carlos Ortega.
Coming on top of the Feb. 17 discovery of the bodies of three dissident soldiers and a girl who had been kidnapped on Feb. 15, the Chavez regime's provocations are playing into the hands of the neoconservative radical faction in the opposition movement, who launched an organizing drive Feb. 3 for a Pinochet-style military "solution" to the Chavez problem. The Chavez police admit that the four who were found dead had been bound, gagged, and tortured before being executed, but they rule out any "political motive" behind the killings.
The backdrop to this is an economic crisis worsened by Chavez's use of exchange and price controls against the opposition business sector, which could shut down crucial food-processing companies, resulting in more layoffs and severe food shortages. Dollars have been unavailable to the private sector since Jan. 22, and Central Bank officials reported last week that none will be available until the beginning of March, at the earliest. Hospitals, clinics, and cancer programs are warning that the supply of many imported medicines which must be paid for with dollars, will run out before March.
Argentine President Duhalde Says IMF Wrecked Bolivia
As one Ibero-American nation after another falls into economic collapse and ungovernability, Argentine President Eduardo Duhalde, in a Feb. 14 speech, laid the blame for the latest victim, Bolivia, squarely on the doorstep of the International Monetary Fund: "The IMF forced them to lower salaries by some 12%, and it resulted in people in the street, brothers confronting brothers, and a government only months old which is reeling." And he added: "This is the same thing that happened here."
The death toll from nearly 48 hours of riots and looting provoked Feb. 12-13 by the IMF's demand that the Bolivian government impose a 12.5% income tax across the board, has now risen to 32, with at least 134 wounded. President Sanchez de Lozada had to be spirited out of the Presidential Palace in an ambulance, in the midst of the upheaval. While he now says he has a retooled budget "not devised by the IMF," and has backed off from some of the harsher IMF austerity dictates, he wants to downsize the government, in an attempt to reduce the budget deficit from 8.6% of GDP to 5.5%
Total economic collapse is looming. There was a run on the banks on Feb. 12, as rumors swept the country that the government would freeze bank deposits (a "corralito," à la Argentina)which the government adamantly denied. The government planned to send its Finance and Social Development Ministers up to Washington immediately, with emergency requests for more aid.
The most prominent leader of the opposition to the government is the Jacobin head of the coca-growers, Congressman Evo Morales, whose demand that President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada resign, has been echoed by several political parties, as well.
The White House issued a statement of "deep concern" over the crisis, and affirmed its "strong support" for the President; the State Department issued a statement urging "all Bolivians to respect the constitutionally elected government." The cause of the problem, however, is precisely what President Duhalde said: the IMF policies which the Bush Administration has insisted be maintained.
Duhalde Denounces Privatization of State Banks as 'Treason'
Privatizing Argentina's state banks would be tantamount "to treason against the Fatherland," declared President Eduardo Duhalde, as reported in La Nacion Feb. 18. "Argentina cannot privatize its [state] banks." Referring to both legislation approved in Congress, and to the call for "restructuring" public-sector banks included in the recently signed letter-of-intent with the IMF, Duhalde said, "I think Argentina won't permit the privatization of its public banks." Earlier attempts to privatize the state-run Banco de la Nacion were met with nationwide opposition, even from free-market advocates.
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