Ibero-American News Digest

State Department Brokers Honduran Accord, Respecting Sovereignty

Oct. 30 (EIRNS)—Under the direction of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Acting Assistant Secretary of State Tom Shannon led a U.S. team to Honduras, and helped hammer out an agreement to cool out that political crisis. Since the June 28 ouster of President Manuel Zelaya, the British have used the festering conflict as a flashpoint for their dirty operations in the Americas.

The accord signed today between acting President Roberto Micheletti and Zelaya, lays the groundwork for national elections on Nov. 29, as scheduled; foreign aid to be restored to the starving country; and readmission to the Organization of American States.

Clinton called the "breakthrough" a big step forward for the Inter-American system, in a statement issued from Pakistan this morning. As agreed, Micheletti and Zelaya will form a unity cabinet of reconciliation. The National Congress will vote on whether Zelaya returns to power to finish out his term in office; there will be no change in the Constitution or attempt to call a Constituent Assembly (the immediate trigger for Zelaya's ouster last June).

More important than the details of the accord, however, is the fact that the State Department defended the principle of sovereignty as key to any lasting solution, against heavy pressure from the "democracy mafia" and several other regional governments, including Brazil. The Brazilians et al., had insisted that no solution were possible without Zelaya's unconditional return to power before the elections. Zelaya, a wealthy rancher who transformed himself into a radical in league with drug kingpin George Soros, was ousted for attempting to rip up the Constitution and impose a Jacobin dictatorship.

Briefing reporters last night, Shannon repeatedly emphasized that the international community will have to live with whatever the Hondurans decide. "Because at the end of the day, our point of view is the international community cannot argue with what Hondurans determine and decide themselves." "This wasn't about the OAS or the international community trying to impose a solution. We've seen that fail elsewhere. We know that solutions, to be enduring and peaceful have to be rooted, in this instance, in Honduran soil."

'Third World' Nations Thrown into 'Fourth World' Starvation

Oct. 18 (EIRNS)—Mexico and the Philippines are two of the latest victims of the British Empire's drive for global genocide and fascism, under conditions of international economic disintegration.

These formerly "Third World" nations, which at one point were close to being self-sufficient in food, and were even on national industrial growth trajectories—such as under the López Portillo administration in Mexico (1976-82), and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines—are now being butchered by British imperial policies.

In the Philippines, the Social Weather Station reports that hunger, which affected about 15% of the population during the 2004-08 period, as of June 2009, afflicts 20.3% of the population. In Mexico, "food poverty," which under López Portillo had fallen to only 8.5% of the population, today affects nearly 25% of the population. And that is about to become far worse, with the British-orchestrated liquidation on Oct. 9 of the state-run Luz y Fuerza del Centro (Central Light & Power) electricity company and firing of all of its 44,000 workers.

To get some idea of the magnitude of this latest British blow to the physical economy, note that there are currently only about 1.1 million productive manufacturing employees in Mexico, a figure that has steadily declined over the last three decades, after a high of 2.3 million in 1981 under López Portillo. So with the mass firing of 44,000 electrical workers—some of Mexico's most skilled, productive workers—the British Invisibles have just wiped out about 4% of the remaining productive workers in the country, with the stroke of a pen. This will have non-linear consequences in the ongoing disintegration of the Mexican economy, including a further sharp rise in extreme poverty—exactly as the British intend.

Ecuadorian Economist: 'The Worst of the Crisis Is Yet To Come'

Nov. 2 (EIRNS)—Ecuadorian economist Pedro Paez Pérez, the Correa government's main architect of the Bank of the South and a member of the Stiglitz UN Commission on International Financial Reform, gave an interview to Argentina's Página 12, published Nov. 1, under the headline: "The worst of the crisis is yet to come." It contains some useful comments along those lines, as well as the typical disorientation about so-called "regional solutions" that is widespread across Ibero-America, along with the mistaken idea that the U.S. is "managing" the crisis to target Europe and save itself.

"The line that 'the worst of the crisis is over' seems to be the result of a synchronized hypnosis of politicians, media, and some governments," Paez asserts. "It is very dangerous to have the delusion that it has been overcome, because what has happened to date, as corrective measures, has only exacerbated the conditions which led to the crisis." Paez goes on to note that "the trillions of dollars that the central banks transferred to the private sector did not go to create new jobs, but to speculation.... There is no relationship between what is happening in those [stock and other] markets, and the real economy.... New bubbles are being formed.... The conditions that are being generated are leading us to barbarism."

Paez then goes on to attack what has come out of the G20, although he ignores the fact that the first meeting was in London, and instead blames the U.S.: "What came out of that meeting? More regulations of the financial system, but in the hands of the U.S. and the institutions it controls, the World Bank and the IMF."

Ibero-America on the Road to Starvation

Oct. 19 (EIRNS)—Ibero-America's progress in combatting hunger over the past two decades has been completely "erased," according to a recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Between 1990 and 2004, the number of people classified as suffering from hunger in the Latin America/Caribbean region had dropped from 53 million to 45 million. But with the global financial breakdown causing food scarcity and prohibitively high prices, that figure moved back up to 47 million in 2008, and today it is once again at 53 million.

Haiti is in no better shape today than it was when food riots broke out in early 2008. An estimated 2 million people, out of a total population of 9 million, suffer from malnutrition. Of children under the age of five 23% suffer from malnutrition, and in the country's Central Plateau, the figure jumps to 33%.