In this issue:

Planned Mexico City Airport Sabotaged by 'Anti-Globalist' Violence

'Genocide' Charges Open Witchhunt vs. Mexican Presidency, Army

MSIA Charges Hearings Aim at Destabilization of Nation-State

Paraguay Declares State of Emergency in Face of Nationwide Protests

Budget Cuts Threaten Brazil's Military Force

Soros Agent in Argentina Flips Over LaRouche Influence

Scientific Breakthrough Brings Some Optimism to Argentina

From the Vol.1,No.20 issue of Electronic Intelligence Weekly

IBERO-AMERICAN NEWS DIGEST

Planned Mexico City Airport Sabotaged by 'Anti-Globalist' Violence

Protests against the Vicente Fox government's plan to build a new international airport, located 25 miles northeast of Mexico City, exploded into violence in the town of San Salvador Atenco on July 12, as protesters burned police cars, hurled Molotov cocktails, barricaded highways, and seized 19 policemen and local officials as hostages. The protesters threatened to tie the hostages to gasoline trucks and set them on fire, unless protesters arrested by the police were freed.

As the bestiality of the protesters' tactics testifies, this is no simple matter of peasants seeking to stop the expropriation of their land, as initial media reports claimed. Some Mexican journalists report that everyone from the Zapatistas to members of Peru's resurgent Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) terrorists were active in the mélée.

The proposed new airport "has become the central battleground for the leftist and anti-globalization movements" that had been supporting the Zapatistas, an Associated Press wire announced July 13. "This is now the center of the fight against globalization and the multinationals. Chiapas was the center, but by sheer activity, the movement is here now," an activist told AP. After the latest battle, San Salvador Atenco has won the support of the anti-globalization movement worldwide, another anarchist said.

On July 15, President Vicente Fox yielded to the protesters' demands, and released those arrested. In a national television address, he suggested negotiations are possible, and the government might consider moving the site of the proposed airport elsewhere.

'Genocide' Charges Open Witchhunt vs. Mexican Presidency, Army

"Genocide" charges against former Mexican President Luis Echeverria opened a witchhunt, aimed at destabilizing the institution of the Presidency, and compromising the nation's security apparatus, even as a new terrorist movement is being put together near Mexico City itself (see previous item).

On July 2, the second anniversary of Project Democracy's President Vicente Fox taking office, Echeverria was ordered to testify before the so-called "Special Prosecutor on Past Political and Social Movements," better known as the "Dirty War" prosecutor. Echeverria was subpoenaed, in a suit filed last January by former 1960s student leaders that accused Echeverria, other government officials, and the Mexican Army, of responsibility for "genocide" during bloody conflicts between security forces and student protesters on Oct. 2, 1968 and June 10, 1971.

The campaign against the alleged "dirty war" in the 1960s and 1970s, has the full support of the international human-rights mafia, and is expected to be followed by similar suits which would target Echeverria's successor, Lyndon LaRouche's friend Jose Lopez Portillo.

A July 9 New York Times article made clear that the project also aims to take apart Mexico's Army, demanding that "foreign investors" will judge Fox's government on how the Army is reformed. (The Mexican military earlier distinguished itself by printing 5,000 copies of EIR's book, The Plot To Annihilate the Armed Forces and Nations of Ibero-America, for its officer corps in 1994.)

Echeverria's lawyers came to the conclusion after the July 2 hearing, that the Fox government "wants to jail Echeverria, any way it can," and "the fix is in" to achieve that, El Milenio reported July 11—which concurs with EIR's evaluation of the case. Likewise, the head of the PRD Party caucus in the Chamber of Deputies, Marti Batres, hailed the suit against Echeverria as sufficient to jail the former President, and to open the way to jailing other officials.

MSIA Charges Hearings Aim at Destabilization of Nation-State

The Ibero-American Solidarity Movement (MSIA) has charged that President Vicente Fox's globalist Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda, plus plans to subordinate Mexico to President George W. Bush's Northern Command, are behind the hearings on the events of 1968 and 1971 (see previous item).

The MSIA statement issued July 13 by MSIA chairman Marivilia Carrasco, asserts that the events of 1968 and 1971 "do, in fact, merit a serious 'truth commission' inquiry." An inquiry "capable of confirming, for example, that on Oct. 2, [1968] soldiers not only did not receive orders to shoot at the demonstrators, but that they themselves were the victims of sniper fire, which led the soldiers to believe that the students were shooting at them, at the same time that the students believed that the soldiers were firing at them, thereby creating the conditions for the bloody provocation, in which the victims—including soldiers—numbered in the dozens, and not in the hundreds or thousands that the 'black legend' about 1968 proclaims."

The trial does not seek the truth, however, but "to put the nation-state itself in the dock of the accused, using methods of psychological and political warfare that have been conceived and designed by the globalist Anglo-American intelligence apparatus bent on putting an end to the very concept of the sovereign nation-state itself," as part of its drive for imperial rule and a global Clash of Civilizations. "The means of achieving such objectives may please certain anti-government elements of the 'left' and 'right,' but they obey a higher and malevolent global strategy in which these right/left forces are mere puppets."

Mexico's Secretary of Foreign Relations Jorge Castaneda exhibits "dog-like submission" to the Anglo-American imperial policy, arguing that Mexico must bow before "the 'indisputable hegemony' of the United States in the new world order." Carrasco cites his statement that Mexico's courts must accept the "obligatory jurisdiction" of the International Criminal Court—which the Fox government has signed, but the majority of the Senate of the Republic still opposes.

The MSIA statement names Project Democracy agents such as Mariclaire Acosta and Sergio Aguayo, whose networks operate under the patronage of George Soros, as part of this operation.

Paraguay Declares State of Emergency in Face of Nationwide Protests

The Paraguayan government declared a state of emergency July 15, in response to nationwide protests demanding President Luis Gonzalez Macchi resign. Demonstrators blocked highways at several locations around the country, and they began to spread. Two people were killed, and over 60 people were wounded in violent clashes with anti-riot police.

The government charges the protests were organized by former General Lino Cesar Oviedo, who was forced out of Paraguay by the Project Democracy apparatus in March 1999, arrested in Brazil shortly thereafter, and then released. Presidential elections are scheduled for April 2003, and Oviedo, who founded the National Union of Ethical Citizens (UNACE) Party, is running first in the polls.

The driving force behind the protests, however, is the complete devastation of the economy, which has been walloped by the crisis in Brazil, on which it depends for sale of its exports. Vice President Julio Cesar Franco, from the opposition Liberal Party, has supported the demonstrators and urged his followers to join them, as have leaders of farmers' organizations, the transport workers, and other unions. The President lifted the state of emergency on July 18, before the Congress, where he faces strong opposition, could debate its legality, but new protests are expected.

Budget Cuts Threaten Brazil's Military Force

The economic team of President Cardoso imposed a second round of budget cuts against Brazil's military forces this year, bringing the total to 41% in 2002. With unrest spreading, the commands of the Army and Navy made public the memos to the President outlining the drastic cuts in functioning which they are being forced to adopt.

The Army is being forced to send 44,000 men back home on July 31, dismissing 90% of those who began their year of obligatory military service in 2002, after only four months—the first time in Brazil's history such an action has been taken. The Army also postponed the scheduled induction of another 18,000 men, for at least 60 days. The Navy announced cuts in the number of men entering service by 80%. These are only the most drastic of various measures being taken.

Accumulated budget reductions over recent years, have now forced the Army to consider deactivation of several units, pending further cuts. The Navy warned that such vital functions as training for the protection of Brazil's off-shore oil platforms, will be compromised, and valuable technological capabilities for the construction of Navy ships, lost. (They estimate that for every year such construction is halted, two years are required to rebuild productive capabilties.) Among the disasters looming, is the "quasi-paralysis" of the Navy's nuclear program, whose critical technology-driver contribution to the national economy, the Navy pointed out, was just seen in the uranium-enrichment technology breakthrough announced just this spring.

Soros Agent in Argentina Flips Over LaRouche Influence

The Argentine daily Pagina 12's featured columnist, Horacio Verbitsky, went ballistic over Lyndon LaRouche's rapidly growing influence in Ibero-America, publishing a lurid slander of LaRouche July 14. As a service to its readers, EIR posted a cautionary note on its website, on just what kind of critter Verbitsky is. Read it at www.larouchepub.com: "Caution: Beware Frantic Soros Hack in Argentina."

Scientific Breakthrough Brings Some Optimism to Argentina

Last week the Argentine Air Force announced an important scientific breakthrough, the latest in a long history of achievements in the field of aeronautics and aeronautical engineering. Aeronautical engineer Carlos Labala, after 15 years of work, has invented a new turbine, the GFL 2000, an ultra-compact, ultra-light and resistant motor, weighing 55 kilos, with 200 horsepower, and 5,000 hours of useful life.

The Bariloche Atomic Center perfected the turbine, which is no larger than a pressure cooker, in its laboratories. It is five times lighter than the motor of an ordinary small plane, occupies less than a fourth of its space, uses fuel that is three times cheaper, and lasts much longer. It has gone through 2,000 hours of testing at the Bariloche Center, and hundreds of hours in flight, in two different kinds of aircraft, with no problems.

The simplicity of the turbine's construction, makes it less expensive to build, and although it is now being produced individually, it is already being exported to Mexico and the United States at one-fifth the cost of the only two small turbines now available on the world market (the Lycoming 250 and the Turbomeca Arrius). The price will drop further, when it goes on the production assembly line.

The beauty of the new turbine is that it has many non-aeronautical applications, one of which is electricity production (3 MW), which is especially important for use in isolated rural areas. It can also be used in agricultural regions to dry grain. Pablo Florido, who was involved in developing Argentina's uranium-enrichment technology, has been looking for a powerful and ultra-compact turbine, and learned of Labala's invention, which has only 33 parts. Today, a version of that turbine is used in the Sigma Uranium Enrichment Project.

Labala says: "What future can my invention have here in Argentina? If I can get it mass-produced, [I can] hire skilled labor, export it, and change the country's profile a little." Labala has received enticing offers from the U.S. to reside and produce the turbine there, but he says, "I prefer it to be produced here, and give work to skilled [workers]."

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