Ibero-American News Digest
LaRouche Speaks on How To Handle Chavez, Castro
In an interview with Ambrose Lane of Pacifica Radio's Washington, D.C. affiliate, WPFW on Nov. 12, Lyndon LaRouche rejected out of hand any proposals that the U.S. should be involved in "regime change" in the Western Hemisphere.
Asked to comment on Venezuela and Hugo Chavez, LaRouche called the situation "complex, because [Venezuela] is of course, an oil stateand that has two implications: it's a state of mind, as well as a nation. Chavez, essentially, comes from a background which is the same background that fascism came from in former times, that tradition. He also represents a peculiar left-wing spin on that; he's very close in some respects to Fidel Castro. And from a standpoint, as a figure myself of some political influence and whatnot internationally, what I try to do is, I try to deal practically with these kinds of phenomena.
"I don't believe, for example, that the United States has any business going in to orchestrate regime change in countries, by military force. That's a wrong policy. I think we have to deal with countrieswe're past the point we should be going to aggressive war anywaybut we have to deal with these countries with a certain amount of understanding, and sometimes, a sense of humor, even about very bad situations. Because, rather than kill somebody, or go in to kill somebody, why not try to find a way of causing the situation to evolve," he continued.
"My approach is, what we should have done a long time ago: Reverse the effects of 1971-72 and '82, and go back to helping these countries below our borders come into a kind of new system where they can reindustrialize, redevelop their agriculture, strength; and let the benefits of economic and related progress, induce these countries to decide, themselves internally, to evolve their systems in a better direction."
Asked about Castro's early-November decision to stop the use of the U.S. dollar inside Cuba, LaRouche answered that, "Castro is a guy I should meet and talk to. Because he is a problem, but we don't make him a problem. If we wanted to have an arrangement with Cuba, a rational arrangement, and I would in charge of getting it, I guarantee you, I could get a decent arrangement. You can forget about all the problems we have with Castro personally. Forget them. We need peace and stability in the Western Hemisphere."
As for what the change in the rules on the dollar use inside Cuba, LaRouche said: "Nothing wrong with it. He has to do what he has to do. And we have nothing to complain about, because we don't have a constructive relationship with him."
Will Bush Send Troops To 'Protect' Mexican Oil Facilities?
On the eve of last week's Binational Meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Homeland Security's Tom Ridge, and President Vicente Fox and Interior Secretary Santiago Creel, Mexican political and media circles were in an uproar over a "casual" reference made Nov. 5 by Energy Secretary Fernando Elizondo, to the effect that, "In coordination with their counterparts in the United States, the Mexican Armed Forces are patrolling air and sea space" against the possibility of terrorist attacks on Mexican oil fields and Pemex facilities. He added, "Remember, 80% of our energy exports are to the U.S., so, if they hit us, they hit them." The word "coordination" is what set off a flurry of protests.
Although Elizondo made the comments twiceonce to the Chamber of Commerce and once before reportershe later denied that he had ever used the words "Armed Forces," but insisted that "there are patrols of the Gulf of Mexico," where Mexico has numerous offshore oil rigs. A similar denial was issued by the Office of the Presidency, the Foreign Ministry, and the Interior Ministry, with the last insisting that, "Clearly, there is an exchange of information on security, as is obvious, but there is no presence of foreign troops in our country."
A few days earlier, on Nov. 1, El Universal had dedicated its lead editorial to warning that the Mexican Navy, which has the task of patrolling the Gulf of Mexico, was so financially constrained, that it was unable to carry out its mission. The editorial warned that the budget cutbacks are "a false savings," which would be paid for with "losses of sovereignty." In a later commentary by El Universal analyst Felix Fuentes, it is suggested that Elizondo may have slipped up and "betrayed his chief, President Fox, by revealing a state secret."
The real story behind Elizondo's "slip" was exposed by Alfredo Jalife, a teacher and oft-cited "expert in geopolitics," who is quoted in the Mexican media demanding that the Fox government clarify whether Mexico is or is not a part of the U.S. Northern Command, created by Bush in April 2002 to defend U.S. territory in the aftermath of Sept. 11. An official Pemex spokesman insisted that if any security agreement between the U.S. and Mexico existed, Pemex was "unaware of its contents."
Mexican Congress Defies Fox, Puts People Before the Debt
Mexican President Vicente Fox displayed his greatest incompetence yet, when he interrupted national television broadcasting on the night of Nov. 18, to announce that he intends to sue the Mexican Congress, over its draft 2005 budget! With this, Fox has turned a major political fight into a constitutional showdown as wellbetween two of the three branches of government.
The day before, his spokesman, several Congressmen from his PAN Party, and high-level officials from five cabinet offices, called a press conference to threaten that Fox might veto the 2005 budget which the Mexican Congress approved last week. The original budget proposal submitted to Congress by the Finance Ministry had been substantially re-written by the lower house of Congress, raising spending 10% over the government proposal, and reallocating billions away from bank bail-out funds and Fox's "pet projects," such as the Attorney General's office, and into education and agriculture.
In response to the PAN's warnings of the "dire consequences," should Congress hold firm, the opposition PRI party fraction in the Congress issued a feisty press release on Nov. 17, which stated: "We PRI Congressmen reject the PAN's attempts to fool public opinion with lies. Mexicans do not deserve to continue under two more years of Fox, with growing unemployment. That is why the PRI sees the need to participate in economic policy from the Congress. The President must acknowledge his failures and stop blaming others. We remind the PAN party that they have sent 3 million Mexicans onto the streets, that they are the ones who denied job possibilities to the youth, that they are the ones who have systematically refused to increase resources to science and technology, condemning the country to underdevelopment. We demand that the PAN tell the truth!"
After issuing the threat to veto the budget, someone in the Fox administration discovered that the President can only veto laws, and the budget is not a law but a decree. Thus, the President's decision to sue, instead.
Financiers Score Big with Ouster of BNDES Team
On Nov. 18, President Lula da Silva fired the outspoken president and vice president of the National Economic and Social Development Bank (BNDES), Carlos Lessa and Darc Costa, thus satisfying international financiers who had demanded the heads of this dirigist team at the BNDES.
Lessa's latest attack on the financier faction, the ostensible pretext for his ouster, was his Nov. 13 interview with Folha de Sao Paulo, in which he called the reign of former top FleetBoston executive Henrique Meirelles at the Central Bank "a nightmare," because of his interest-rate policy. Lessa charged that Meirelles "is giving out all kinds of signals that growth at this time is a sin."
The financiers' decision that Lessa and team had to be removed, to ensure their control when the full global crisis hits, was sealed last June, when Darc Costa announced that the BNDES had returned to a policy of state intervention, based on long-term "strategic planning of the economy." The model adopted by BNDES in the 1990s of "the invisible hand which does all," without state intervention, will be replaced by the concept which guided the bank before that: that it would be again "an active instrument of development, and that long-term planning of the economy is something important." An overall "mapping" of the economy to identify priority areas of investment was to have been completed by the end of 2004.
The assault on BNDES's institutional role in the economy was signalled by the report that Finance Minister Antonio Palocci had promised the visiting IMF mission on Nov. 9, that the Lula government would gradually do away with low-interest, directed credit over the course of 2005/2006.
Were the Palocci/Meirelles proposal to be implemented, "it would mean the end of BNDES" and of the only source of long-term credit for investment, "both for industry and agriculture," Ivoncy Ioschpe, president of Brazil's Iedi statistical agency, had immediately warned. Low-interest credit lines currently make up 36% of the country's total; of that, 10.7% goes to agriculture, 5.2% to low-income housing construction, and 19.8% is reserved for loans issued by BNDES.
One day after Palocci's announcement, Meirelles lied at a seminar in Brasilia that these low-interest credit lines were responsible for the high cost of credit overall. "By allowing interest rates for certain activities, lower than those freely agreed to by the market, the [Central Bank] is forced to raise rates on other operations," Meirelles claimed. Answering Meirelles at the same seminar, Paulo Skaf, president of the powerful Sao Paulo Industrialists Federation (FIESP), defended the low-interest credits, even suggesting rates be lowered more to further encourage investment.
Bolivian Finance Minister Packs Up, Goes Home to IMF
Shortly after announcing there would be no wage increase in 2005, Bolivian Finance Minister Javier Cuevas resigned, and made plans to take a job at the International Monetary Fund. Cuevas had clashed with President Carlos Mesa both over economic policy and the hydrocarbons law.
The government's inability to get a hydrocarbons law approved by Congress remains another source of great instability. A more radical version of the draft originally submitted to Congress by Mesa, which increases the royalties foreign energy firms would have to pay, makes delay in approval inevitable. Separatist forces in Santa Cruz and Tarija, where most of the country's oil and natural gas reserves are located, charge that the law is "confiscatory," and will discourage foreign investment. Foreign Minister Juan Ignacio Siles made a similar charge from Spain last week, after which he was publicly censured by the Lower House of Congress.
Mesa's situation is complicated by the fact that the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional the decree he issued to fill several vacancies in the courts and government bureaucracy. Coca-producers' leader Evo Morales immediately denounced the court's ruling as part of a conspiracy to destabilize the country. Although Morales disagrees with Mesa on the content of the hydrocarbons law, he said he was forming a strategic alliance with the President to defend the country from upheaval. But separatists see Morales' action as proof the country is being taken over by radicals, and justification for splitting their region off from the rest of the country.
Haiti Still Being Left To Die
Haiti "will disappear" unless the international financial agencies and industrialized nations immediately act to get it necessary funds for reconstruction, warned Brazilian Marco Aurelio Garcia, a top aide to President Lula da Silva. "The situation is appalling. Port au Prince is like a giant favela [slum]," Garcia told Ansa on Nov. 11, during a visit to the country. Although $1 billion in donations have been approved, and despite the gravity of the situation, "the Haitian government has no money," he underscored. "Not one dollar of the promised aid" has reached the country. Garcia reported that a European ambassador told him that it could take as long as 24 months for some projects to be approved for financing. "I told him that at that rate, Haiti will cease to exist as we know it."
Meanwhile, the financiers' career toady, Luigi Einaudi, now Acting Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), still insists that the top priority for Haiti is elections.
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