Posted on 10/01/2002 1:57:47 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
o Third, the human factor. All of Latin America's Pacific rim presidents are fluent English speakers. Most have graduate degrees from Stanford, Chicago, Harvard or other U.S. universities.
They can hold conversations with President Bush without an interpreter.
By comparison neither Rodríguez Saá of Argentina nor da Silva of Brazil nor Venezuela President Hugo Chávez have studied abroad or are fluent in a foreign language.
Last week, I asked the top U.S. State Department official in charge of Latin American affairs, Otto Reich, about the possibility of an East-West division in the region's politics. Reich, while a conservative himself, says he does not buy the idea that Brazil or Argentina would turn against the United States.
''Look, in today's world, what's the point of being anti-American?'' Reich asked.
``It's a unipolar world. What would they gain from being anti-American? There was a time when you could play the United States against the Soviet Union, and maybe get some limited aid from the Soviet Union. But not anymore.''
LESS MONEY
''One of the results of the collapse of the financial markets in the world is that there is less money to invest in the world,'' Reich continued. ``Countries must be careful not to exclude themselves from the international financial flows. Venezuela is an example. There has been very little investment in Venezuela. Capital is a coward.''
Asked how the Bush administration would react to a wave of anti-American populism in Latin America, Reich said: ``A lot depends on how these governments do two things: handle their foreign relations, primarily with us, because we can only speak for us, and how they treat their own people, because we do care about human rights and democracy.''
``If they are friendly to the United States and they respect the rights of their citizens, we will do whatever we can to help them. If they align themselves with the enemies of the United States, if they go visit Saddam Hussein, or Moammar Gadhafi or Fidel Castro, we will have to presume that they find something in those regimes that they like. And that worries us, because those are terrorists and they are failed countries.''
(Excerpt) Read more at miami.com ...
Outside the southern African state's parliament, there was no sign of a planned protest march by pro-democracy activists after police warnings that the demonstration would be crushed. Mugabe said Zimbabwe, in the grips of its worst economic and political crisis since independence from Britain in 1980, was facing "considerable challenges" from what he called "British machinations" and a regional drought.
The economy is in its fourth year of recession with record high inflation and unemployment and a severe food shortage. "Our sovereignty is constantly under attack from the bullying states ... which seek to use their political and economic prowess to achieve global hegemony," Mugabe said. At 78, Mugabe is a left-winger who counts Cuba's Fidel Castro and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi among his foreign allies. Monday, the European Union extended a blacklist of Zimbabwean officials subjected to a visa ban and asset freeze. The move is aimed at piling more pressure on the country whose human rights record it says has deteriorated since Mugabe's re-election in March. ***
NOW KHADAFY CLOSING IN ON NUKE CAPABILITY: SHARON[Full Text] JERUSALEM - LIBYA'S Colonel Moammar Khadafy has been secretly developing nuclear-weapons capability and may acquire it before Iraq. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon disclosed this less-than-heartwarming news in interviews before last week's Rosh Hashanah holiday weekend. But he added, "Israel may be the best-prepared country in the world against the danger of a chemical or biological offensive." This was his message to Israeli citizens, who are already discussing on a daily basis the possibility that Saddam Hussein may launch warheads containing smallpox or anthrax at them as a last resort once the Bush administration moves to dethrone him.
But the threat of Libya is not well known - in part because Khadafy has tried hard to clean up his act. After being forced, by U.S.-led sanctions, to indirectly admit complicity in the Lockerbie airliner sabotage, the dictator in Tripoli denounced terrorism. He tried to hire a Washington lawyer to get Libya removed from the U.S. list of terror-sponsoring nations. He nearly succeeded - since the State Department during the Clinton administration conveyed discreet messages to then-Israeli-prime-minister Ehud Barak's government that Khadafy had "endorsed Yasser Arafat's peace process."
Khadafy tried so hard to convince the world he had stepped away from the axis of evil, 10 years ago, a Libyan chemical-weapons plant, operating with the illegal help of German firms and scientists, was shown blazing in flames. Intelligence reports indicated, however, that Khadafy removed the weapons and equipment before staging the fire. But in the last month, Western intelligence agencies gained details of Khadafy's latest adventure - his bid to join the Nuclear Club. At first, intelligence analysts suspected that Egypt was helping him in this project. But now it is certain that Iraqi scientists and engineers, who developed their expertise in the last 25 years under Khadafy, are leading the underground Libyan effort.
Sharon said a secret weapons effort "is taking place in Iraq, and a similar process is going on in Libya - which probably will turn out to be the first Arab state with weapons of mass destruction." Other countries are helping Khadafy, but the extent of the assistance is not clear, Sharon said. "It may be that there is assistance from Pakistan, as Iran had [in nuclear weapons development]," the prime minister warned. "But for sure, there is assistance from North Korea." [End]
December 2000 - Fidel, Saddam and Hugo --An improbable but growing friendship of three military revolutionaries*** The Castro-Hussein-Chávez connection is anti-American and anti-capitalistic, but not in an ideological way. What matters to the three is domestic power built upon a base of nationalism that they believe legitimizes their policies. In a way, this bizarre trio represents the rebirth, a half century later, of the kind of nationalist populism spawned by General Juan Perón in Argentina and Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt. Mr. Castro and Mr. Saddam gained power through armed revolutions; Mr. Chávez, a paratroopers' lieutenant colonel, was democratically elected in 1998, after serving time for trying to overthrow the government in 1992.
Mr. Chávez is the most intriguing new leader to emerge in Latin America since Mr. Castro - and he is the lynchpin between Mr. Castro and Mr. Saddam. Although Cuba had been sending doctors and health workers to Iraq for years, there had not been any major contacts between the two countries until Mr. Chávez appeared on the scene. This fall, Mr. Chávez became the first democratically elected foreign head of state to visit Iraq since the Gulf War, ostensibly to invite Mr. Saddam to a summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. But it also was an in-your face gesture toward the United States.***
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Drug gangs ordered schools and businesses shut down across large swaths of Rio de Janeiro yesterday in what officials said was an unprecedented show of force by criminals in an increasingly public war with Brazil's police.
From the ritzy shops in the city's famous Ipanema neighborhood to Rio's ghettos, business was brought to a virtual standstill in at least 10 neighborhoods. Schoolchildren were released from classes early or told not to come. Tourists at some hotels were warned to stay inside. Thousands of police officers spilled into the streets.
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