Ibero-American News Digest
Zedillo: Soros's Nazi Work Is Irrelevant to Push for Drug Legalization
WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 (EIRNS)Former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, co-chair of George Soros's Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy and director of Yale University's Center for the Study of Globalization, declared here today that Soros's unrepentant defense, to this day, of his working with the Nazi regime against his fellow Jews in Hungary, is "of total irrelevance to me," and to what he considers the urgency of forcing the United States to discuss radical changes in its anti-drug policies, in favor of legalization.
Zedillo made his shocking defense of Soros in answer to a question from EIR's Gretchen Small, during a Brookings Institution event releasing the report of its Partnership for the Americas Commission, titled "Rethinking U.S.-Latin American Relations; A Hemispheric Partnership for a Turbulent World."
The commission report does not name "legalization," but it spouts the "harm reduction" fraud which Soros pushes in his drive for dope legalization internationally. The two commission co-chairs, Zedillo and U.S. Amb. Thomas Pickering, made clear today that they, at least, are determined to place drug legalization on the hemispheric agenda of the Obama Administration, even if some members of the commission refused to go along with a return to the days of the British Empire's legal dope trade and opium dens.
EIR's Small noted Zedillo's role in chairing the Latin American Drugs and Democracy Commission, "which was created, financed, and is directed by George Soros, who is the leading financier of legalization internationally, and who has stated on the record, repeatedly, that his own outlook on life came from his early days working for the Nazis in Hungary against his fellow Jews."
Small then raised what no one else had dared touch: "the great elephant in the living room ... that the gigantic derivatives financial bubble has blown apart," and EIR founder Lyndon LaRouche's solution.
After Pickering and Zedillo denounced "protectionism" and argued for bailouts without end, Zedillo acknowledged angrily, that raising Soros's role in the drug debate could sink the entire project.
Zedillo complained that in the United States, "when we start talking about this issue, immediately some firewalls around this topic are built," and charged that EIR's comments were "a best example of that. You raised aspects of Mr. Soros's biography which I would say are of total irrelevance to me to discuss this issue." Here, the Drugs and Democracy group, "spearheaded by President Cardoso of Brazil, and President Gaviria of Colombia, and of which I am also a member," hasn't even issued its final report, and "that work is beginning to be disqualified, supposedly on the basis of an association with Mr. Soros. I think that if that's the level of discussion that we are going to have, then we are not going to get anywhere."
Dominicans Upset at Invitation To Soros
Nov. 28 (EIRNS)Dominicans were not happy with the participation of pro-Nazi megaspeculator George Soros at a forum Nov. 22-23 on the global financial crisis, sponsored jointly by Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernández and the Economic Commission on Latin America (ECLA). The event was entitled "The global financial order: A regional perspective," and its keynote speakers were Soros, former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz, and the IMF's Western Hemisphere director, Nicolas Eyzaguirre.
On Nov. 25, central committee member of the opposition PRD party Ramón Emilio Concepción raised cane over the presence of Soros, on the radio program "The Truth." How is it possible that Soros was brought here, even after former Democratic Party Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche had warned against doing so? If we're talking about a moral crisis, how is it possible that they brought here a man who openly promotes drug legalization; who is, as LaRouche said, a pawn of the British and a known megaspeculator, who has caused precisely the kinds of economic disasters we are seeing today? During the Second World War, he supported the Nazis and, to save his own skin, denounced other Jews. That meeting was disqualified by the presence of this person, Concepción concluded.
You reap what you sow. The day after the Dominican event, the IMF mission in the D.R. released a communique demanding a new fiscal adjustment, and calling for punishment of those who are stealing electricity, trying to make the population believe that it is not the privatized system that is responsible for the country's energy crisis, but rather Dominicans who are stealing electricity. The Fund mission also said the fall in oil and food prices posed a "great opportunity."
The Truth Behind the Dope-Run Financial Pyramids in Colombia
Nov. 26 (EIRNS)Maximiliano Londoño Penilla, president of the Lyndon LaRouche Association of Colombia, issued the following statement today:
"'There are white-collar pyramids, and there are others that are less elegant, but in the end, they are all equally bad. This crisis of the world economy is due to speculative money promoted by Wall Street, in effect a pyramid,' said Colombian President Alvaro Uribe on Nov. 15, just two days before declaring a state of economic emergency, to dismantle scores of financial pyramids, or Ponzi schemes that have infested the Colombian economy. In the past three years, 240 of these pyramid schemes have been set up in Colombia as legal entities. In the states of Putumayo, Narino, Huila, and Cauca, among others, these pyramids controlled 40-70% of all economic activity. According to preliminary reports, more than 2 million people got caught up in these pyramid schemes. These investment confidence scams eventually mobilized financial flows that ranged between 2-5% of Colombia's Gross Domestic Product.
"When the 28-year-old former baker from Colombia, David Murcia, was captured last week in Panama, authorities seized his private jet, three yachts, and a fleet of luxury cars. Now, this founder of the DMG empire, which attracted at least $435 million this year alone from investors who received 150-300% return on their investments in just six months, finds himself behind bars, accused of illegal accumulation of capital and asset laundering. Murcia was deported from Panama to Colombia, as he was about to flee to Costa Rica where there is no extradition treaty with Colombia.
"Murcia is the new icon of the several hundred pyramid schemes that have just been dismantled on the orders of the Uribe government. DMG has operated since 2003, and had branches in Ecuador, Venezuela, and Panama, and was in the process of establishing itself in Mexico and Brazil, as far as is known. The imprisonment of Murcia and of other pyramid schemers has triggered serious rioting in some 30 towns, and civic strikes are being mobilized at this time in defense of Murcia. There are even two Congressmen from the states involved who have come out in his defense, while members of Uribe's own political faction have voted against the possibility of Uribe's reelection in 2010 in a Congressional commissionall because of Murcia's influence.
"It is no accident that the pyramid schemes are particularly prevalent in the southern and eastern parts of the country, where the drug trade and terrorism have deep roots, for these pyramids have served as ideal instruments for laundering drug dollars while handing out narco-crumbs to win local support among the poor of these areas. This is one of the scenarios of the British Opium War that confessed Nazi collaborator George Soros hopes to emulate in imposing the legalization of illegal narcotics on the pretext of 'humanizing' the conflict, at the upcoming United Nations ten-year review of the war on drugs that will take place next March.
"Thus far, President Uribe is the only head of state in the region who has publiclyand directlyattacked the decriminalization of drugs and the establishment of a legal 'minimum dose,' which have served to increase drug consumption, especially among children."
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