Ibero-American News Digest
State Dept. Neo-Con Provokes Int'l Incident with Argentina
Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega provoked a diplomatic incident with Argentina, with his charges Jan. 5, that President Nestor Kirchner's foreign policy has "apparently taken a turn to the left." In the same speech before the Council of the Americas in New York, in which he attacked Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez for destabilizing other Ibero-American countries, Noriega said he was "worried and disappointed" with Kirchner's foreign policy, as it had established a too-cozy relationship with Cuba. When Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa visited Cuba recently, Noriega said, he failed to meet with Cuban dissidents, and that was a mistake.
In a press conference following his speech, Noriega added that President George Bush would be discussing U.S. "concerns" when he meets with Kirchner, on the sidelines of the Americas Summit taking place in Monterrey, Mexico, Jan. 12-13. The White House requested the meeting Jan. 2, for the purpose of discussing Argentina's debt restructuring plan and its foreign policy.
Simultaneous with Noriega's offensive against Argentina, neo-conservative networks within the Bush Administration (of which right-wing Cuban emigre Noriega is a part) leaked to various news outlets, Robert Novak and Associated Press, among them, that the Administration is concerned about a Cuban-Chavez "axis" in the region. The word "evil" in the "axis of evil" propaganda being churned out for a year by the Hudson Institute, was left implicit.
Foreign Minister Bielsa, meeting with U.S. Ambassador to Argentina Lino Gutierrez, (another right-wing Cuban emigre), that same day to work out the details of the Bush-Kirchner meeting, told Gutierrez that he was "affected and offended" by Noriega's "biased" statements. "I find it striking, that in a democracy like the United States, which respects international law, an official such as Noriega so flagrantly attacks Argentina's right to self-determination." That evening, the Foreign Ministry formally communicated to the U.S. Ambassador the government's "profound displeasure" with Noriega's remarks.
President Kirchner personally responded, "No one need chastise Argentina, and much less challenge it," adding with bravado, that he would "win by a knockout" in his meeting with Bush, because Argentina is an "independent and dignified country." He added: "We're finished being a doormat." Cabinet Chief of Staff Alberto Fernandez added that the era of "carnal relations and automatic alignment"a reference to former President Carlos Menem's self-proclaimed foreign policyis over. Noriega's statements "strike me as frankly impertinent toward the President," he said. Fernandez told Radio Mitre that diplomatic ties with the U.S. "will only be strengthened through mutual respect, and the highest-level dialogue between the countries, but not through statements of this kind [made by Noriega]."
Synarchists Organize for Coup in Argentina
As neo-conservative loonies in the Bush Administration paint the Kirchner government in Argentina as leftist and anti-American, networks of the Argentine fascist Maritornes magazine, whose ties to European terrorist networks Lyndon LaRouche has exposed, are mobilizing for a military rebellion against the Kirchner government, charging it is allegedly full of Marxists and terrorists.
The broader threat of which the Maritornes synarchists are a part, is addressed in this week's EIW Editorial, and the InDepth section of last week's issue (Jan. 5, No. 1). Additional coverage can be found in the Aug. 22, 2003 EIR.
The pretext for the campaign, is that the Kirchner government has, indeed, adopted the human rights and anti-military agenda of drug-legalizer and speculator George Soros and the globalization hit-squad, Transparency International. President Nestor Kirchner has named several prominent Transparency and Soros operatives to his government, and to the Supreme Court, purged military officers who opposed these policies, and, in a real provocation, declared in his speech before the United Nations last September, that "we are all children of the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo," the latter a reference to the overtly-terrorist group of that name.
The two Maritornes figures leading the campaign for a coup, are Victor Eduardo Ordonez and his buddy, Antonio Caponnetto. Ordonez issued an open letter in December, circulated through his internet bulletin, "OtroSi," in which he accused President Kirchner with being an "apologist for organized crime," adding that groups "close to Kirchner" were responsible for the leftist terrorist assassinations of the 1970s. Ordonez also rhetorically asked the President: "Are you taking responsibility for what happened" at that time? If so, Ordonez warns, "you will lose the legitimacy of your mandate." Can you command the Armed Forces? He threatens: No one would feel any obligation to support the government of someone like Kirchner, who openly expresses solidarity with terrorists.
Likewise, on Jan. 6, Antonio Caponnetto issued a call to arms "in defense of God and the Fatherland" against the Kirchner government, allegedly for having nominated a Marxist to the Supreme Court, one Carmen Argibay. The nomination is "a new provocation by President Kirchner; an open and repeated offense against those of us who believe that this land of ours is not a dung heap which can be governed by the partisans of Bolshevism." Only the true "Soldiers of Christ," he says, who possess "the sufficient and irrevocable authority of those grafted onto the living branch of the Church from the baptismal font," are qualified to wage this battle. "Those of us who know that militant atheism must be confronted by militant Catholicism, and that intrinsic Marxist perversity cannot be combatted by the bureaucrats of clerical progressivism, but by heroes and saints. We repudiate the entirety of this government, with its mendacious and insidious nominee to the Court, its constant trampling on the rights of God..."
Ominously, Caponnetto's letter is being circulated among the Venezuelan opposition, by circles around opposition leader Alejandro Pena, who publicly associated himself a year ago with the new fascist international project of Spanish Francoite Blas Piñar, who also sits on the board of Maritornes. Pena is on the executive committee of the Democratic Block, which is organizing for a military coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Campaign Vs. Brazil Nuclear Program A Test Case for Global Nuclear Apartheid Scheme
The drumbeat against Brazil's commercial-scale uranium enrichment plant, set to go on-line in May 2004, is getting louder. It is now clear that Brazil is being singled out as a test case for a new drive to place the world's nuclear-energy industry under supranational control, by prohibiting all but a few privileged nations from building their own uranium-enrichment and fuel-reprocessing facilities.
We reported in last week's EIW Ibero-American Digest, that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is pressing Brazil to sign the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which would permit unannounced inspections, virtually anywhere. Some 40 foreign inspections, announced and not, already take place each year, under the terms of the two international treaties they have signed. Brazil fears accepting the new demands would open the door to "technological piracy," as their program employs a new centrifuge technology, developed in Brazil, which separates the uranium-235 isotope by spinning around a magnetic axis, rather than the mechanical axis used in other enrichment centrifuges, thus lowering wear and tear on the machine.
More than Brazil is at stake in this battle, however. IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei proposed, in The Economist magazine on Oct. 16, 2003, that all production of fuels through reprocessing and enrichment, worldwide, be restricted "exclusively to facilities under multinational control." Another proposal is being circulated by U.S. interests, which agrees that all but a few nations be prohibited from making their own fuel, but proposes instead that private cartels control production. The liberal imperialists at the New York Times weighed in on Jan. 4, with an editorial raving that "there is no legitimate reason for countries to develop such capacities.... Reactor fuel production should be limited to the few advanced countries that already have fully transparent nuclear-technology industries."
Now threats are being floated against Brazil. On Dec. 31, two U.S. thinktankers, former Clinton non-proliferation official James Goodby and the Atlantic Council's Kenneth Weisbrode, asked in the International Herald Tribune, "Should Brazil be on the short list for an updated axis of evil?" They proposed Brazil's enrichment program be made a test case for ElBaradei's "multilateralization" proposal, since "preventive war is not an option in this case."
Maybe not yet, but the neo-conservatives tied to the Cheney crowd are laying the groundwork for just such a disaster. On Jan. 5, Frank Gaffney's neo-con Center for Security Policy issued a release raving about the imminent danger of Brazil leading a nuclear-armed "axis of evil" in the Americas, and insisting "U.S. leaders should treat the recent development as a threat to national security."
Lula Imposes Drastic Cuts in Favor of Debt Payments
In its first year in office, Brazil's Lula government cut its spending on investments to less than a third of that invested by the Cardoso government in 2002, Floha de Sao Paulo reported Dec. 31. That is: in 2002, whereas the Cardoso government invested 10.1 billion reals in infrastructure and social programs, the Lula government invested only R$3 billion, an infinitesimal amount for a country the size of Brazil. The Planning Ministry has said it plans to increase investment in infrastructure and social areas to R$8 billion in 2004still less than 2002 levels.
The cuts were made, so that the government could generate a sufficiently high primary budget surplus, to make debt payments.
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