Filed under: Barack Obama, bolivar, Caribbean, chavez, Chile, CIA, Colonialism, Coup, Cuba, declaration of war, destabilization, Economic Collapse, economic war, Economy, Empire, future war, gas prices, george soros, Honduras, Hugo Chavez, hyperinflation, Inflation, latin america, manipulated market, market manipulation, military base, Military Industrial Complex, NGOs, obama, obama deception, obamas war, Oil, resource war, secret war, South America, USAID, Venezuela, war provocation, White House, zelaya | Tags: ALBA, Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, CITGO, Curaçao, national endowment for democracy, NED
Obama authorizes covert economic war against Venezuela
Wayne Madsen
Online Journal
January 21, 2010
WMR’s intelligence sources have reported that the Obama administration has authorized an economic war against Venezuela in order to destabilize the government of President Hugo Chavez.
After a successful coup against Chavez ally, President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, and the very thin 51-49 percent electoral win by Chile’s billionaire right-winger Sebastian Pinera on January 17, a buoyed Obama White House has given a green light for political operatives in Venezuela, many of whom operate under the cover of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), to set the stage for massive street demonstrations to protest Chavez’s devaluation of the bolivar, Venezuela’s currency.
Chavez devalued the bolivar by 50 percent to make Venezuelan oil exports less expensive, thus boosting revenue for his country. However, the devaluation has also seen price rises and inflation in Venezuela and the CIA and its subservient NGOs have wasted little time in putting out stories about consumers rushing to the stories ahead of an increase in consumer products, with imported flat-screen televisions being the favorite consumer item being hyped by the corporate media as seeing a huge price increase and long lines at shopping malls favored by the Venezuelan elites.
The state has exempted certain consumer goods such as food, medicines, school supplies, and industrial machinery from being affected by the bolivar’s devaluation through a different exchange rate and price controls, but it is the price increases on televisions, tobacco, alcohol, cell phones, and computers that has the anti-Chavez forces in Venezuela and abroad hyping the ill-effects on the Venezuelan consumer.
To battle against businessmen who are trying to capitalize on the devaluation of the bolivar, Chavez has threatened to close and possibly seize any business that gouges the consumer by inordinately raising prices. The first target of a temporary closure was a Caracas store owned by the French firm Exito.
International investment analysts praised Chavez’s decision to devalue the bolivar and said the decision was overdue considering the fall of oil prices worldwide. However, the CIA and NGOs, many aligned with George Soros’s Open Society Institute and the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy are planning large street demonstrations against Chavez’s handling of the economy.
National Assembly elections are scheduled for September but the Obama administration has decided that if Chavez can be removed now, his allies in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and some Caribbean island states will quickly abandon Chavez’s alternative to American-led Western Hemisphere financial contrivances and free trade pacts, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA).
The Obama planners then see Cuba, once again, being isolated in the hemisphere and ripe for increased U.S. political pressure. Cuba was placed on the list of 14 countries requiring additional airline passenger screening as part of the policy to pressure and isolate Cuba. There is a possibility that with the outbreak of U.S.-inspired violence in the streets of Venezuela, that nation could join Cuba on the list as the 15th country.
The Obama administration’s assault is two-fold: economic and political. Pressure is being applied against the gasoline chain Citgo, which is owned by the Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA, and Venezuelan investment favorability ratings. Politically, the U.S. is overtly and covertly funneling money to anti-Chavez groups through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and groups affiliated with George Soros.
There is also a small military component to Obama’s strategy of undermining Chavez. U.S., P-3 Orion overflights of Venezuelan airspace from bases in Aruba and Curacao are designed to intimidate Chavez and activate Venezuelan radar and command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I) systems to gather electronic and signals intelligence data that would be used by the United States to jam Venezuelan military networks in the event of a U.S.-inspired uprising against Chavez by U.S. loyalists embedded in the Venezuelan military, police, PDVSA, and media. The U.S. is also stoking cross-border incursions into Venezuela by Colombian paramilitaries to gauge Venezuela’s border defenses. Last November, Colombian right-wing paramilitary units killed two Venezuelan National Guardsmen inside Venezuela in Tachira state. Weapons caches maintained by Colombians inside Venezuela have been seized by Venezuelan authorities. Venezuela has also arrested a number of Colombian DAS intelligence agents inside Venezuela.
Obama signed a military agreement with Colombia that allows the United States to establish seven air and naval bases in Colombia. An additional agreement by Obama with Panama will see the U.S. military return to that nation to set up two military bases.
It is estimated that some 25 percent of Venezuelans are likely Fifth Columnists who would take part in a revolt against Chavez. Many of them based in the Venezuelan oil-producing state of Zulia and the capital of Maracaibo, where successive U.S. ambassadors in Caracas have stoked secessionist embers and where the CIA and U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency have concentrated much of their efforts. In November, Venezuelan police arrested in Maracaibo, Magaly Janeth Moreno Vega, also known as “The Pearl,” the leader of the right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), which has been directly linked to Colombia’s pro-U.S. President Alvaro Uribe and members of his government, including former Colombian Attorney General Luis Camilo Osorio Isaza, appointed by Uribe as Colombia’s ambassador to Mexico.
Filed under: 2-party system, 4th reich, Afghanistan, airstrikes, Bill Clinton, bin laden, blackops, Britian, bush, Chile, CIA, civilian casualties, Congress, Coup, Dictatorship, economic sanctions, El Salvador, Empire, Eugenics, False Flag, Fascism, gaza, Genocide, George Bush, Globalism, guatemala, Hitler, inside job, Iran, Iran Contra, Iraq, kuwait, Lebanon, Mi6, Military, military coup, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, Mohammed Mossadeq, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, morales, Nazi, New World Order, Nicaragua, NWO, occupation, Oil, operation ajax, osama bin laden, pahlavi, panama, Preemptive Strike, preemptive war, proxy war, Reza Pahlavi, Saddam Hussein, Sanctions, shah dictatorship, shah of iran, Shock and Awe, Soviet Union, State Sponsored Terrorism, sudan, Taliban, terrorist funding, UN, united nations, Vietnam, war casualties, war on drugs, War On Terror, White House, WW3, ww4 | Tags: Lebanon, salvador allendem, u.s. history
U.S. History They Won’t Teach In Schools
Filed under: 2-party system, 9/11 Truth, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, black operations, blackops, central america, Chile, CIA, cocaine, Colin Powell, colombia, Colonialism, Communism, Congress, corporatism, Costa Rica, Coup, Detainee, Dick Cheney, Dictatorship, El Salvador, Empire, eric holder, Fascism, George Bush, global police force, Guantanamo, haiti, Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton, Honduras, Hugo Chavez, imf, Iran Contra, John Bolton, John Negroponte, kidnapping, left right paradigm, lobbyists, manuel zelaya, Military, military base, Nazi, Nicaragua, obama, PNAC, privatization, project for the new american century, roman empire, slavery, socialism, sovereignty, staged coup, Torture, Troops, truth movement, u.s air base, u.s. military, UN, war on drugs, War On Terror, war on terrorism, world police force | Tags: corporatocracy, Council for National Policy, honduran coup, Jacobo Arbenz, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Lanny Davis
Chavez Says The U.S. Toppled The Honduran President, Taking Him To A U.S. Air Base
Hugo Chavez
aangrifan
August 20, 2009
It looks like it was the CIA that toppled Manuel Zelaya, the president of Honduras, on 28 June 2009.
Diana Barahona, at Global Research, 18 August 2009, tells us that Zelaya was taken to a U.S. air base during the kidnapping.
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez has revealed that Honduran President Manuel Zelaya told him that the military who kidnapped him transferred him by plane to a U.S. military base, in Honduran territory.
According to Chavez: “They put Zelaya in the plane and landed at Palmerola with the president a prisoner and the Yankee officials appeared and knew that the president was there, they had a discussion with the Honduran officials.
“Then the Yankee military took the decision there to send him to Costa Rica.
“That is a very serious matter, the the president of Honduras was in a Yankee military base…
“The Yankees overthrew Zelaya…
“From the Yankee base, which is at a place called Palmerola, they carried out all of the operations and the dirty war and the terrorism against Sandinista Nicaragua, against El Salvador.
“It wasn’t long ago that the Yankees turned Honduras into a platform to attack its neighbors.”
“What we are asking is that he (Obama) withdraw the Palmerola base, that he withdraw the Guantanamo base where they torture…”
Chavez also said that Venezuela rejects Obama’s policy of setting up U.S. military bases in Colombia.
Honduras: Military Coup Engineered By Two US Companies?
John Perkins
Information Clearing House
I recently visited Central America. Everyone I talked with there was convinced that the military coup that had overthrown the democratically-elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, had been engineered by two US companies, with CIA support. And that the US and its new president were not standing up for democracy.
Earlier in the year Chiquita Brands International Inc. (formerly United Fruit) and Dole Food Co had severely criticized Zelaya for advocating an increase of 60% in Honduras’s minimum wage, claiming that the policy would cut into corporate profits. They were joined by a coalition of textile manufacturers and exporters, companies that rely on cheap labor to work in their sweatshops.
Democracy Now! covers the Honduran coup.
Memories are short in the US, but not in Central America. I kept hearing people who claimed that it was a matter of record that Chiquita (United Fruit) and the CIA had toppled Guatemala’s democratically-elected president Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and that International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT), Henry Kissinger, and the CIA had brought down Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973. These people were certain that Haiti’s president Jean-Bertrand Aristide had been ousted by the CIA in 2004 because he proposed a minimum wage increase, like Zelaya’s.
I was told by a Panamanian bank vice president, “Every multinational knows that if Honduras raises its hourly rate, the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean will have to follow. Haiti and Honduras have always set the bottom line for minimum wages. The big companies are determined to stop what they call a ‘leftist revolt’ in this hemisphere. In throwing out Zelaya they are sending frightening messages to all the other presidents who are trying to raise the living standards of their people.”
It did not take much imagination to envision the turmoil sweeping through every Latin American capital. There had been a collective sign of relief at Barack Obama’s election in the U.S., a sense of hope that the empire in the North would finally exhibit compassion toward its southern neighbors, that the unfair trade agreements, privatizations, draconian IMF Structural Adjustment Programs, and threats of military intervention would slow down and perhaps even fade away. Now, that optimism was turning sour.
The cozy relationship between Honduras’s military coup leaders and the corporatocracy were confirmed a couple of days after my arrival in Panama. England’s The Guardian ran an article announcing that “two of the Honduran coup government’s top advisers have close ties to the US secretary of state. One is Lanny Davis, an influential lobbyist who was a personal lawyer for President Bill Clinton and also campaigned for Hillary. . . The other hired gun for the coup government that has deep Clinton ties is (lobbyist) Bennett Ratcliff.” (1)
DemocracyNow! broke the news that Chiquita was represented by a powerful Washington law firm, Covington & Burling LLP, and its consultant, McLarty Associates (2). President Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder had been a Covington partner and a defender of Chiquita when the company was accused of hiring “assassination squads” in Colombia (Chiquita was found guilty, admitting that it had paid organizations listed by the US government as terrorist groups “for protection” and agreeing in 2004 to a $25 million fine). (3) George W. Bush’s UN Ambassador, John Bolton, a former Covington lawyer, had fiercely opposed Latin American leaders who fought for their peoples’ rights to larger shares of the profits derived from their resources; after leaving the government in 2006, Bolton became involved with the Project for the New American Century, the Council for National Policy, and a number of other programs that promote corporate hegemony in Honduras and elsewhere.
McLarty Vice Chairman John Negroponte was U.S. Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985, former Deputy Secretary of State, Director of National Intelligence, and U.S. Representative to the United Nations; he played a major role in the U.S.-backed Contra’s secret war against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and has consistently opposed the policies of the democratically-elected pro-reform Latin American presidents. (4) These three men symbolize the insidious power of the corporatocracy, its bipartisan composition, and the fact that the Obama Administration has been sucked in.
The Los Angeles Times went to the heart of this matter when it concluded:
What happened in Honduras is a classic Latin American coup in another sense: Gen. Romeo Vasquez, who led it, is an alumnus of the United States’ School of the Americas (renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). The school is best known for producing Latin American officers who have committed major human rights abuses, including military coups. (5)
All of this leads us once again to the inevitable conclusion: you and I must change the system. The president – whether Democrat or Republican – needs us to speak out.
Chiquita, Dole and all your representatives need to hear from you. Zelaya must be reinstated.
Filed under: bailout, Bank of America, bear sterns, bernanke, Big Banks, Chile, Dictatorship, Empire, Fascism, FDIC, Federal Reserve, George Bush, Goldman Sachs, henry paulson, housing market, Lehman Brothers, liquidation, Merrill Lynch, middle class, morgan stanley, mortgage, mortgage companies, mortgage lenders, nationalization, neocons, New York, Paulson, qui bono, real estate, socialism, subprime, subprime lending, Taxpayers, US Treasury, White House, writedown | Tags: conflict of interest, run on banks
Paulson’s former firm to be among largest beneficiaries of bailout
John Bryne
Raw Story
September 23, 2008
It certainly pays to be Treasury Secretary if your former firm is a brokerage house, a new study says.
Goldman Sachs Group — formerly run by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and Morgan Stanley, stand to be among the biggest beneficiaries of a $700 billion US bailout.
“Its benefits, in its current form, will be largely limited to investment banks and other banks that have aggressively written down the value of their holdings and have already recognized the attendant capital impairment,” Jeffrey Rosenberg, Bank of America’s head of credit strategy research, wrote in a report obtained by Bloomberg News yesterday.
Paulson was the head of Goldman Sach’s investment banking division from 1990 to 1994. He later became chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman, and left his post to join the Bush Administration.
According to the study, the bailout benefits Paulson’s former firm more because banks haven’t had to write down as many troubled mortage assets under accounting rules. This means that participating in the program would cause them to actually lose capital, as opposed to investment banks, which stand to gain.
Paulson $700 billion program is designed to remove “bad assets” from the US financial markets to prevent credit for businesses from drying up, which would send the economy into a further tailspin. Many businesses rely on credit to fund their daily operations.
Lawmakers are debating the plan today.
“While Goldman and Morgan Stanley, both based in New York, were yesterday granted permission to transform themselves into bank holding companies, the companies so far have operated mostly under investment-bank accounting rules, logging almost $21 billion of asset writedowns and credit losses,” Bloomberg News notes.
Goldman made sizable profits in 2007 from the subprime mortgage sector. It, along with Morgan Stanley, has fared better than investment houses Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, because it has held a more conservative capital base.
Paulson has admirers: during his Goldman tenure the firm donated 680,000 acres of land in Chile, and he has personally given away $100 million of his fortune to charitable groups.
According to estimates conducted by Open Secrets, Paulson is the richest cabinet member of the Bush Administration.
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/22/paulson-goldman-bailout/
Filed under: 9/11, 9/11 Truth, Chile, CIA, Coup, empire dictatorship, global elite, global government, Globalism, Henry Kissinger, internationalist, internationalists, Military, New World Order, nixon, socialism | Tags: Richard Helms, Salvador Allende
Kissinger’s Role In Chilean Coup
Huffington Post
September 14, 2008
When Henry Kissinger began secretly taping all of his phone conversations in 1969, little did he know that he was giving history the gift that keeps on giving. Now, on the 35th anniversary of the September 11, 1973, CIA-backed military coup in Chile, phone transcripts that Kissinger made of his talks with President Nixon and the CIA chief among other top government officials reveal in the most candid of language the imperial mindset of the Nixon administration as it began plotting to overthrow President Salvador Allende, the world’s first democratically elected Socialist. “We will not let Chile go down the drain,” Kissinger told CIA director Richard Helms in a phone call following Allende’s narrow election on September 4, 1970, according to a recently declassified transcript. “I am with you,” Helms responded.
Filed under: Argentina, big pharma, Britain, Child Abuse, Chile, deadly vaccine, Eugenics, Europe, european union, Fascism, flu vaccine, Genocide, GlaxoSmithKline, Globalism, health and environment, Human Experiments, innoculation, medical Experiments, medical industrial complex, Nazi, panama, polio vaccine, Population Control, Uncategorized, United Kingdom, Vaccine | Tags: DPT vaccine, experimental vaccine, glaxo-smith kline, GSK, infant death, synoflorix
85-day-old child dies hours after vaccination
Tamil Nadu
The Hindu
August 16, 2008
An 85-day old boy died hours after he received the second dose of oral polio vaccine and DPT vaccine at the Alangulam Primary Health Centre on Wednesday.
According to Anantharaj and Vasantha of Kidaarakulam, they took their son A.P. Selvam to the PHC, where the vaccine was administered at 11.30 a.m. as per the records. The boy, after being vaccinated, developed breathing trouble, and they took him to the PHC again. As per PHC records, the child was brought in at 1:40 p.m. frothing at the mouth. The PHC doctors referred the boy to the Tirunelveli Medical College Hospital. He died in the evening.
Deputy Director (Health Services), Sankarankovil, Shanmugasundaram said though 54 other children were administered the DPT vaccine on Wednesday, only Selvam developed breathing trouble. Nine other children had received their shots from the same vial that was used on Selvam. The body has been sent for post-mortem.
Director of Public Health S. Elango said it was unlikely that death was caused due to vaccination, considering that no other child was affected. The post-mortem results would reveal the cause of death. Dr. Shanmugasundaram said he suspected that the baby was fed in a wrong position by the mother since milk was flowing from his nose even as he was rushed to the hospital. “Milk aspiration” could have caused the death.
GlaxoSmithKline’s experimental vaccine may have killed 14 children
UK Mail
August 18, 2008
Authorities in Argentina are investigating whether there is a link between the deaths of 14 children and an experimental vaccine.
The children took Synflorix as part of a clinical trial run by the British pharmaceutical company Glaxo-SmithKline.
It has been developed to fight pneumonia, ear infections and several other pneumococcal diseases.
Dr Marchesse said some illiterate parents were not told that the vaccine given to their children was experimental (posed by model)
Argentina’s National Medicine, Food and Medical Technology Administration is examining whether there the vaccine is connected in any way with the youngsters’ deaths.
A U. S. spokesman for GSK, Sarah Alspach, said the company did not believe the deaths were linked to the vaccine.
Synflorix is also being tested in Panama, Chile and some European countries, but it is not being tested in Britain.
Miss Alspach said that an independent board monitoring participants’ safety recommended that the Latin American trials be temporarily suspended, but then gave its approval for tests to resume.
’We rely on their safety review,’ she said. ’Safety is our primary concern, always, with the development of any new treatment.’
More than 19,000 babies have received at least one dose of Synflorix, which GSK plans to test on a total of 24,000 infants, she said.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Argentina, Arizona, Barack Obama, bernanke, Bill Clinton, Bolivia, brazil, Britain, CAFTA, Canada, Central Banks, CFR, Chile, colombia, Euro, Europe, european union, FARC, Federal Reserve, George Bush, global elite, global government, Globalism, Hugo Chavez, i-69, John McCain, Mexico, Military, NAFTA, NAFTA Superhighway, NAU, New World Order, North American Union, paraguay, Peru, Real ID, Ronald Reagan, single currency, South America, South American Union, SPP, trans texas corridor, TTC, United Kingdom, uruguay, us sovereignty, Venezuela | Tags: Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
South American Union To Have Single Currency
Natural News
June 21, 2008
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva recently revealed that the South American countries are planning for a common currency as part of the integration of the individual countries into the Union of South American Nations. This integration is patterned after the formation of the European Union, and parallels the plan for the North American Union.
The union of South American nations would create a trade block designed to be competitive with the European and North American trade blocks. Central to the formation of the union is the creation of a central bank to oversee the new common currency that would replace the currencies of the individual countries in the block. In a recent broadcast, President Lula stated that he sees the implementation of this plan as not being a fast one.
In his message, the president stressed the need to help the countries of South America that are economically weak, such as Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia. “We have to help them because the stronger the countries in South America economically are, the more tranquility, peace, democracy, trade, companies, jobs, incomes and development”, he is quoted at ((http://www.nuwireinvestor.com/articles/…) .
Another unfolding feature of the South American Union similar to that of the North American Union is its dependence on newly created infrastructure. The South American alliance will promote the cross-nation construction of railroads, highways, bridges and transmission lines that will connect the entire region resulting in smooth interaction and movement within the trading block. The NAFTA and CAFTA Superhighways epitomize the infrastructural development of the North American Union trading block.
The union plan also calls for a regional defense council, apparently the beginning of the imposition of a regional government. This council would resolve regional conflicts, promote military cooperation and allow for the regional coordination of weapons production, much as the military integration of Canada and the U.S. initiates the unification of governments in the North American Countries.
The plan to establish a new common currency for the Union of South American Nations is the latest development in the initiation of common currencies representative of multi-country trading blocks. The euro was the first trade block currency, established as part of the European Union. The amero is the name of what may be the North American Union’s counterpart to the euro, debuting after economic integration and homogenization of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada have been completed, at exchange rates that represent the lowered standard of living of the Americans and the Canadians.
Critics of the Union of South American Nations’ efforts to establish a common currency see it as playing right into the hands of the world banking cartel. The clustering and assimilation of currencies facilitates the eventual merger into a one world currency promoted by the Council on Foreign Relations and its political puppets. They see the move toward the South American Union with its single currency as easily fitting with the European Union and current efforts to establish the North American Union. Once the formation of these major trading blocks is completed, the next step would be the unification of the blocks into a one world government.
This one world government is sometimes referred to as the New World Order. The Council on Foreign Relations has openly stated that its intentions are to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty of the national independence of the U.S. with the aim of creating a one world government. The Council, referred to as CFR, has influence in all vital areas of American life and around the world. Members have run or are running the major media outlets including NBC, CBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and many other publications.
CFR members dominate the political world. U.S. presidents since Franklin Roosevelt have been CFR members, with the exception of Ronald Reagan. CFR members also dominate the academic world, top corporations, unions and the military. They are on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve. Barack Obama and John McCain are CFR members, as well as the Bushes and the Clintons. There are many corporate members of the CFR. CFR plans are not subject to the scrutiny, debate, or vote of the people. Discussion of the plans has been conspicuously absent from the endless debating of the presidential candidates.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7417896.stm
Arizona Governor Approves Prohibition on Real ID
http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Feature-Article.htm?InfoNo=034608
Bill C-51 Codex & The SPP
http://intelstrike.com/?p=277
SuperCorridor Defeat? Don’t Bet On It
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2008/06/supercorridor-defeat-dont-bet-on-it.html
Comments At 4th Annual North America Forum
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/06/13/02404.html
North American Union agenda whether Canadians want it, or not, is a top priority for elite interests
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/06/13/02404.html
Filed under: Argentina, Bolivia, brazil, Britain, Central Banks, Chile, colombia, Europe, european union, FARC, global elite, Globalism, Hugo Chavez, NAU, New World Order, North American Union, paraguay, Peru, single currency, South American Union, United Kingdom, uruguay, Venezuela | Tags: Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
South American Union Formed
BBC
May 24, 2008
The leaders of 12 South American nations have formed a regional body aimed at boosting economic and political integration in the region.
At a summit in Brazil, they signed a treaty which created the Union of South American Nations (Unasur).
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the move showed that South America was becoming a “global player”.
But tensions between several members will make it difficult for the group to achieve its goals, observers say.
Mr Lula said at the summit in Brasilia that the differences between some Unasur governments were a sign of vitality in the region.
“The instability some want to see in our continent is a sign of life, especially political life,” Mr Lula said.
“There’s no democracy without people [protesting] in the streets,” he added.
The treaty envisages that Unasur will have a revolving presidency and bi-annual meetings of foreign ministers.
Prior to the Brasilia summit, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez described the “empire” of the United States as Unasur’s “number one enemy”.
Mr Chavez is embroiled in a bitter diplomatic row with his Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe – a staunch US ally – over Colombian claims that Venezuela has been helping to finance the activities of the Colombian Farc rebels.
The Unasur members are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.
South America considers single common currency
Gulf Times
May 28, 2008
BRASILIA: South America is thinking of creating a common currency and a central bank along the lines of those in the European Union’s eurozone, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said yesterday.
The idea is a logical next step following the signing last Friday of a treaty creating a Union of South American States that aims to promote joint regional customs and defense policies, Lula said during his weekly radio broadcast.
“Many things still haven’t been realised. We are now going to create a Bank of South America. We are going to move forward so in the future we’ll have a single central bank, a common currency,” he said.
But, he added: “This is a process. It won’t be something that happens quickly.”
Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela all signed up to the Unasur treaty creating the regional union during a ceremony in Brasilia last Friday.
The entity’s goal is to bring together two trade blocs within South America, Mercosur and the Andean Community, and to integrate the region.
Brazil is also pushing for a regional defence council that could be used as a forum to settle inter-regional disputes as well as formulate joint policies.
Lula said the creation of Unasur was “the realisation of a dream,” and evidence of remarkable economic and political progress South American nations have made in recent decades.
noworldsystem.com 