Ibero-American News Digest
Outspoken Brazilian Science & Technology Minister Resigns
Brazil's outspoken Science and Technology Minister, Roberto Amaral, was the first to go in an overall Cabinet shuffle which President Lula da Silva planned to complete by Jan. 23, when he was to leave for a state visit to India.
As Minister, Amaral fiercely defended Brazil's right to develop all possible aspects of advanced technology. In his view, he told an international conference in Brazil in December 2003, developing nations should join together to assure the access of their citizens, "to the goods generated by science.... We have the right to have rights. We won't get out of the condition in which we find ourselves, if we do not invest massively in research and technology. We must develop, and science and technology is the path to this," he urged.
Amaral became the target of international fire, from day one, for his defense of Brazil's right to develop the full nuclear-fuel cycle. In an interview broadcast by BBC on Jan. 6, 2003, Amaral declared that Brazil must master "all scientific knowledge," including "the technology of the atomic bomb"not to build a bomb or weapons of mass destruction, he said, but to apply nuclear technology in all areas of scientific endeavor: medicine, combatting hunger, and energy, among others. Nuclear energy "is strategic" for the country, he said. As Minister, he pressed for the completion of Brazil's third nuclear plant, Angra 3, long stalled by opposition from the environmentalists.
Amaral was forced out of the government in the midst of an international campaign aimed at shutting down Brazil's program to produce commercial-scale uranium enrichment, scheduled to begin within a few months. The campaign by neo-conservative imperialists, joined by the the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), went into high gear in December, when the IAEA demanded Brazil grant even more intrusive inspection rights.
Replacing Amaral is Eduardo Campos, a 38-year-old economist and member of Congress. (He heads the Brazilian Socialist Party [PSB] faction in Congress.) Whatever scientific background he may have, is unknown to EIW at this time. Whether the shift will bring changes in Brazil's aggressive nuclear program, is also not known. As Campos himself pointed out, it is the President and the National Council of Science and Technology, and not he, who makes nuclear policy. Other institutions, including the military, the Foreign Ministry, and Brazil's broad-ranging scientific community, can also be expected to weigh in.
Morales Raises Specter of New Bolivia-Chile War
Following the lead of his buddy, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, George Soros's favorite Bolivian coca-producer, Congressman Evo Morales, told an Argentine radio station on Jan. 15 that there could be another war between Bolivia and Chile, and suggested Bolivia impose a trade embargo on Chile, until it agrees to give Bolivia an outlet to the sea. Morales was set to arrive in Chile on Jan. 16, but his ravings cost him his invitation. With Chilean left and ultra-right parties equally calling for him to be declared persona non grata, the environmentalist NGO, Oceana, retracted its invitation for Morales to attend their seminar.
Bolivian territory extended to the Pacific Ocean until Chile seized Bolivia's coastline in the 1870s, in the war known as the War of the Pacific. In that conflict, Chile waged war against Peru and Bolivia, on behalf of British interests. Regaining access to the sea remains a hot issue in Bolivia, and a cause of longstanding hostility toward Chile.
Synarchist agent Chavez sparked the latest flare-up of the border issue last November, with a speech given at the Ibero-American Heads of State summit in Bolivia, declaring Bolivia's right to the sea to be the key to securing justice for Bolivia. He wished to swim in the ocean off a Bolivian beach before he died, Chavez proclaimed melodramatically. As one high-level Bolivian military officer commented to this news service, Bolivia doesn't need a beach, it needs a porta perspective which opens possibilities for reaching some just solution. Left-wing elements within Bolivia's Mesa government, however, jumped onto Chavez's provocation, also declaring the border question the key to Bolivia's security and development todayan absurdity in the midst of the world economic blowout!
Bolivia's President Carlos Mesa and Chile's President Ricardo Lagos exchanged sharp words over the issue at the Monterrey American Heads of State summit. Several Ibero-American governments have gotten involved in the issue, offering to mediate, or making other diplomatic overtures. Chile's Foreign Minister Soledad Alvear asserted Jan. 20 that "there are no pending" issues to be resolved between Chile and Bolivia. The current borders were defined by the 1904 treaty between the two nations, and that will not change, she said.
Bolivia To Announce Suicidal Austerity Plan
Bolivia's government will announced a suicidal austerity program on Jan. 31, guaranteed to blow up the very precarious situation in that country. At the moment when border tensions are heating up between Bolivia and Chile (see above), the government of Carlos Mesa is preparing to announce a paquetazo, a number of austerity measures, intended to reduce the current budget deficit, which is close to 9% of GDP. This involves "severe" cutbacks in government spendingeliminating some Deputy Secretary positions, merging ministries, etc. Other measures include eliminating the subsidy for liquefied gas, which will hit the population very hard. Note that this is a measure recommended by the IMF in a study last year, to increase revenue.
There is talk of imposing more taxes on businesses, as well as an income tax on "large" salaries, which, in Bolivia, means anything above $520 monthly. Most ominous is a proposed "pension reform," about which there are few details, but which could well include some type of privatization scheme. Following the Jan. 16 meeting in Washington of the "Support Group" for Bolivia, in which multilateral lenders, the IMF, and representatives of 19 nations pledged no financial aid, Minister to the President Jose Galindo explained that the austerity program is the way that Bolivia is "doing its part"as if the impoverished population could tolerate any more such measures.
Already, labor, peasant, and other organizations are promising social protest, threatening to oust President Carlos Mesa for failing to change the previous government's policies. Juan Melendez, leader of the COB labor federation, based in El Alto, site of last October's violence, demanded that "the landowners, not the people, be punished." Business leaders are also angry, protesting that new taxes on them are unfair.
FARC Demands Captured Leader Be Freed in Prisoner Exchange
In a statement issued Jan. 13, the leading command body of Colombia's narcoterrorist FARC put out a statement acknowledging that the recently captured terrorist leader Ricado Palmera (a.k.a. "Simon Trinidad") was a high-level figure in their hierarchy, the Colombian daily El Tiempo reported Jan. 15. The statement also demanded that Palmera be included in ongoing negotiations with the government of President Uribe for an exchange of FARC terrorists currently in jail, for captive hostages of the FARC, some of whom have been held for years.
The FARC claimed that "Simon Trinidad" was in Ecuador at the time of his capture, to set up a meeting with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and French officials, to discuss the prisoner-exchange negotiations. Both the UN and the French have denied that any such meeting was in the works.
The FARC charged that "the action of U.S. and Colombian security agencies in this capture, in addition to representing an affront to Ecuadoran sovereignty, reveals the existence of a shadowy alliance between [Ecuadoran President] Lucio Gutierrez, the fascist Alvaro Uribe, and the White House ... against the revolutionary leaders of our two countries." On the contrary, responded Colombian Defense Minister Jorge Alberto Uribe: Trinidad was captured by the Ecuadoran police, and the FARC is merely seeking to "drive a wedge" between Colombia and Ecuador, a tactic which will not succeed, the Minister said.
Why Brazil's Debt Bubble Hasn't BlownYet
Brazil's country-risk rating fell to 4% in the second week of January, its lowest level since the October 1997 blowout of Asia's finances, the Financial Times reported Jan. 15. Country risk is a purely political fiction, set by the international creditors through JP Morgan, which determines how much over the price of U.S. Treasury bills a country has to pay to roll over its debts.
At its highest point, in the midst of the election in October 2002, Brazil's country risk had hit a phenomenal 24%, a rate so usurious that the government, de facto, could not roll over its debts. Terrified of the looming Argentine-style bankruptcy, the government of President Lula da Silva in its first year in office imposed an IMF program harsher than that of its predecessor. As a consequence, the average worker's inflation-adjusted wage fell 13% between November 2002 and November 2003, and retail sales fell every month, over the same 12 months.
Foreign financiers "rewarded" the Lula government by lowering the country-risk rating, and putting in more foreign capital. That lowered the exchange rate, which, in turn, lowered Brazil's debt load. Over 40% of its public debts were linked to the dollar, which meant that with every devaluation of the real, Brazil's debt would rise proportionally. Over the course of 2003, the government lowered the percentage of the total debt which is linked to the dollar, to "only" 23% today.
Brazil's total debt rose in 2003, however, reaching a new record, of US$343 billion (calculation by the Financial Times). In 2004, the government must pay US$37 billion in amortization. Any capital flight and jacking up of the country risk, and Brazil won't be able to finance its debts. The Financial Times warned Brazil that it got by in 2003 because foreign capital favored it, but "how many of Brazil's gains could unravel with a shift in investor sentiment?" Last year's cuts in social security benefits and brutal budget austerity helped "the sustainability of its debt. Yet to consolidate investor confidence, Brazil must implement further structural reforms to make the public and private sectors more competitive," the FT demanded.
Panamanian Gnostic Slanders LaRouche; Defends Drug Runners
On Jan. 11, the Panamanian daily La Prensa published a byzantine slander against U.S. Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, penned by one of the paper's leading columnists, the notorious anti-Semite, self-avowed gnostic, and long-time LaRouche-hater Guillermo Sanchez Borbon. This was not the first time Sanchez Borbon and La Prensa had slandered LaRouche. The daily is still stinging from the fact that EIR exposed the owner of the paper, Roberto Eisenmann, as being tied to a Florida drug-trafficking ring, in EIR's famous July 1986 Special Report, "White Paper on the Panama Crisis" (re-issued in expanded form in December 1987).
Ostensibly, Sanchez Borbon's latest rage fit was triggered by the fact that a leader of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) of Panama has submitted a copy of the aforementioned EIR report, as documentation in a corruption suit filed against the current Controller General of the country, Alvin Weeden. Weeden's ties to the same drug-trafficking ring as La Prensa, are documented in the EIR Special Report.
The only truthful statement made by Sanchez Borbon in what is otherwise a rehash of the usual tired slanders of LaRouche (he sees "conspiracies even in his soup," etc.), is that he (Sanchez Borbon) got a terrible headache when he tried to read LaRouche, because he was incapable of understanding anything.
The article does reveal that some very dirty Panamanian circles evidently feel upset enough at LaRouche's exploding influence, to publicly fulminate against it.
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