INTERPOL: Judge Orders Extradition And Arrest Of Former U.S. Treasury Undersecretary David Mulford

Daily Bail

Argentina hasn't forgotten Mulford's role in the 2001 crisis.

A judge in Argentina has ordered the arrest of CreditSuisse executive and former U.S. Treasury Undersecretary David Mulford because he failed to testify over a 2001 Argentine debt swap, the state news agency reported on Monday.

Federal Judge Marcelo Martinez de Giorgi will ask Interpol to issue an international arrest warrant seeking Mulford's extradition for questioning over the bond exchange carried out by the government in an unsuccessful bid to avoid default.

Mulford, who currently serves as vice chairman international of Credit Suisse Investment Bank, was seen as one of the debt swap's architects when he served as a senior official at Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB).

Argentina's government swapped about $30 billion in debt for new, longer-maturity issues in June 2001. But it stopped paying most of its debts six months later as the economy collapsed.

A local court has been investigating the swap for more than 10 years to see if Argentine officials committed any crime when they hired banks to carry out the swap. Former Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo and former Finance Secretary Daniel Marx have been charged in the case, which has yet to go to trial.

Mulford was first called to testify in the probe in 2002 but he has never done so, according to court documents cited by the Telam news agency.

Argentine officials have "made numerous attempts by all possible legal means to achieve David Mulford's compliance, in this country's territory as well as through U.S. authorities, and all of these have invariably failed," the documents stated.

Cavallo said that Mulford was one of the main engineers of the swap.

Mulford worked at the U.S. Treasury from 1984 to 1992 and was at the center of international economic negotiations under former U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

He later served as the U.S. ambassador to India.

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Here's Mulford on the 2008 crisis:

Debt-swap fraud is not forgiven in 3, 2, 1...

Paraguayan Senate impeaches leftist president, causing international uproar

RussiaToday



Thousands have been protesting the impeachment of leftist Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, many clashing with police. A number of Latin American countries called the impeachment illegitimate.

The the Senate of Paraguay voted to impeach President Fernando Lugo with 39 legislators in favor and four against. Lugo was immediately succeeded by his vice president, Federico Franco, who was sworn in in Congress.

News of Lugo’s impeachment sparked anger amongst thousands of his supporters who had gathered outside the Congress building in the country’s capital, Asuncion. Some of them reacted by tearing down fences, while police tried to disperse the crowd with tear gas and water cannons.
Lugo said he was submitting to Congress' decision, but added that the history of Paraguay and its democracy had been “wounded.”

“Today I retire as president, but not as Paraguayan citizen,” he stated.
Latin America's resounding reaction

Paraguay's neighbors responded by calling the motion illegitimate.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez responded by saying his country does not recognize Paraguay's new, “illegitimate government.” He told reporters that his ally Fernando Lugo "preferred the sacrifice" of stepping aside, and said the trial was a setup.

Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa also said his country would not recognize any government in Paraguay other than Lugo's.

"This goes beyond This goes beyond Fernando Lugo. It goes beyond Paraguay. It's about true democracy for all of our America," Correa said on television," Correa said on television.

Woman Receives Anonymous Threats after Opposing Monsanto

Natural Society
Michael Barrett

After losing a 3-day old daughter to kidney failure, a woman named Sofia Gatica from Argentina made a decision to spearhead an anti-Monsanto movement with other mothers of sick children. Monsanto is a biotechnology, agrochemical company which has been polluting the environment and human health with herbicides, pesticides, genetically modified foods, and other substances for decades. Numerous cases have been brought against Monsanto for biological damage and even death — such is the recent case in which farmers say the biotech giant’s creations spawned ‘devastating birth defects‘.

Near where Gatica lives, there are soybean fields covering the land where farmers spray loads of chemicals on the crops. The primary weed killer used on the fields is the one and only Roundup, the most popular herbicide used by farmers which contains the active ingredient glyphosate. Gatica didn’t initially connect the chemical exposure to her baby’s death until she noticed that many of her friends and neighbors were also experiencing health problems.

“I started seeing children with mouth covers, mothers with scarves wrapped around their heads to cover their baldness, due to chemotherapy…There are soybeans to the north, to the south, and to the east, and when they spray, they spray over the people because there’s no distance,” Gatica said to a Grist reporter.

In fact,  researchers found that people in her area had three to four agricultural chemicals in their blood, including one chemical, endosulfan, which is banned in over 80 countries. The researchers also found that 33 percent of the residents were struck with cancer. In other previous German findings, Monsanto’s Roundup was present in all urine samples tested at an amount of 5 to 20-fold the established limit for drinking water, showing how prevalent these chemicals really are.

In retaliation to Monsanto and their highly used chemical creations, Gatica worked to create an international movement against Monsanto with other activists. A few years ago, after co-founding a group called Mothers of Ituzaingó, she and her group initiated the first epidemiological study of the area which found high rates of neurological and respiratory disease, birth defects, infant mortality, and cancer rates more than 40 times the national average. She then continued to find researchers to study the links between pesticides, herbicides, and health problems, while engaging in protests voicing concerns over the issues.

Argentina Seizes Oil Company

Cuba split leaves summit without declaration

CARTAGENA, Colombia (AP) — A summit of nearly 30 Western Hemisphere leaders has ended without a joint declaration due to divisions over Cuba and Argentine claims to the Falkland Islands.

“There is no declaration because there is no consensus,” said Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos as the summit’s closing news conference.

Washington, backed by Canada, stood fast against widespread demands to include in the meeting’s final declaration language specifying that Cuba be included in future hemispheric summits.

They had also balked at backing Argentina’s claims to the British-held Falkland Islands.

“All the countries here in Latin American and the Caribbean want Cuba to be present. But the United States won’t accept,” President Evo Morales of Bolivia told reporters late Saturday. “It’s like a dictatorship.”

Morales and other leftist leaders have been insistent that this weekend’s meeting in this Caribbean colonial port, which wrapped up at midday yesterday, will be the last regional summit under Organisation of American States auspices unless Cuba is invited in the future.

But Santos said the leaders agreed to meet again in 2015 in Panama.

“Hopefully within three years we can have Cuba” at the summit, Santos said.

US President Barack Obama’s peers lectured him Saturday over his unflagging opposition to Cuban participation due to US objections to the communist-governed Caribbean island’s lack of democracy.

Explosive: Monsanto ‘Knowingly Poisoned Workers’ Causing Devastating Birth Defects

Natural Society
Anthony Gucciardi

In a developing news piece just unleashed by a courthouse news wire, Monsanto is being brought to court by dozens of  Argentinean tobacco farmers who say that the biotech giant knowingly poisoned them with herbicides and pesticides and subsequently caused ”devastating birth defects” in their children. The farmers are now suing not only Monsanto on behalf of their children, but many big tobacco giants as well. The birth defects that the farmers say occurred as a result are many, and include cerebral palsy, down syndrome, psychomotor retardation, missing fingers, and blindness.

The farmers come from small family-owned farms in Misiones Province and sell their tobacco to many United States distributors. The family farmers say that major tobacco companies like the Philip Morris company asked them to use Monsanto’s herbicides and pesticides, assuring them that the products were safe. Through asserting that the toxic chemicals were safe, the farmers state in their claim that the tobacco companies ”wrongfully caused the parental and infant plaintiffs to be exposed to those chemicals and substances which they both knew, or should have known, would cause the infant offspring of the parental plaintiffs to be born with devastating birth defects.”

The majority of the farmers in the area used Monsanto’s Roundup, an herbicide with the active ingredient glyphosate that has shown to be killing human kidney cells. What’s more, the farmers say that the tobacco companies pushed Monsanto’s Roundup on the farmers despite a lack of protective equipment. In other words, these farmers — many in dire economic conditions — were being directly exposed to Roundup in large concentrations without any protective gear (or even experience or skills in handling the substance). Still, the farmers say the tobacco giants required the struggling farmers to ‘purchase excessive quantities of Roundup and other pesticides’.

Most shocking, the farmers were ordered to discard leftover herbicides and pesticides in locations in which they leached directly into the water supply. With Monsanto’s Roundup already known to be contaminating the groundwater, this comes as a serious threat to pure water supplies.

The farmers end their landmark case with an explanation as to why the tobacco companies allowed Monsanto’s herbicides and pesticides to be unloaded on the small family farms in such vast quantities and purchased in excessive amounts. In their claim, the farmers state that the tobacco companies were ”motivated by a desire for unwarranted economic gain and profit,” with zero regard for the farmers and their infant children — many of which are now suffering from severe birth defects from Monsanto’s products.

Argentina: Depression, Revolt and Recovery Why President Fernandez Wins and Obama Loses

Global Research
James Petras

Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez

Introduction

On October 23rd of this year, President Cristina Fernandez won re-election receiving 54% of the vote, 37 percentage points higher than her nearest opponent. The President’s coalition also swept the Congressional, Senatorial, Gubernatorial elections as well as 135 of the 136 municipal councils of Greater Buenos Aires. In sharp contrast President Obama, according to recent polls is trailing leading Republican Presidential candidates and is likely to lose control of both houses of Congress in the upcoming 2012 election. What accounts for the monumental difference in voter preferences of incumbent presidents? A comparative historical discussion of socio-economic and foreign policies as well as responses to profound economic crises is at the center of any explanation of the divergent results.

Methodology

In comparing the performance of Fernandez and Obama it is necessary to locate them in an historical context. More specifically, both presidents and their immediate predecessors, George Bush in the US and Nestor Kirchner (deceased husband of Fernandez) in Argentina confronted major economic and social crises. What is telling, however, are the diametrically opposing responses to the crises and the divergent results. On the one hand sustained growth with equity in Argentina and deepening crises and failed policies in the US .

Historical Context: Argentina : Depression, Revolt and Recovery

Between 1998 – 2002, Argentina experienced the worse socio-economic crises in its history. The economy nose-dived from recession to full scale depression, culminating in double digit negative growth in 2001 – 2002. Unemployment reached over 25% and in many working class neighborhoods, over 50%. Tens of thousands of impoverished middle class professional lined up to receive bread and soup only blocks away from the Presidential palace. Hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers, ‘piqueteros’ (picketers), blocked major highways and some raided trains shipping cattle and grain overseas. Banks closed depriving millions of depositors of their savings. Millions of middle class protestors organized radical neighborhood councils and linked up with unemployed assemblies. The country was heavily indebted, the people deeply impoverished. The popular mood was moving toward a revolutionary uprising. Incumbent President Fernando De la Rua was overthrown (2001) scores of protestors were killed and wounded, as a popular rebellion threatened to seize the Presidential palace.

By the end of 2002, hundreds of bankrupt factories were ‘occupied’, taken over and run by workers. Argentina defaulted on its external debt. In early 2003, Nestor Kirchner was elected President, in the midst of this systemic crisis and proceeded to reject efforts to enforce debt payment or repress the popular movements. Instead he inaugurated a series of emergency public works programs. He authorized payments to unemployed workers (150 pesos per month) to meet the basic needs of nearly half the labor force.

The most popular slogan, of the multitudinous movements occupying the financial districts, factories, public buildings and the streets was “Que se vayan todos” (“All politicians get out’). The entire political class, parties and leaders, Congress and presidents were rejected outright. But while the movements were vast, militant and united in what they rejected, they had no coherent program for taking state power, nor national political leadership to lead them. After two years of turmoil, the populace turned to the ballot box and elected Kirchner with a mandate to produce or perish. Kirchner heard the message, at least the part which demanded growth with equity.

Context: The US under Bush-Obama

The last years of the Bush administration and the Obama presidency presided over the worse socio-economic crises since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Unemployment and underemployment rose to almost a third of the labor force by 2009. Millions of homes were foreclosed. Bankruptcies multiplied and banks were on the verge of collapse. Negative growth rates and a sharp decline in income, increased poverty and multiplied the number of food stamp recipients. Unlike Argentina, discontented citizens took to the ballot box. Attracted by the demagogic “change” rhetoric of Obama, they placed their hopes in the new president. The Democrats won the Presidency and a majority in both houses of Congress. The first priority of Obama and Congress was to pour trillions of dollars in bailing out the banks, even as unemployment deepened and the recession continued. Their second priority was to deepen and expand overseas imperial wars.

Greece and the Euro: Towards Financial Implosion

Global Research
By Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay

“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”

Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born theoretical physicist and professor, Nobel Prize 1921

“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd President of the United States (1801-09)

"Having seen the people of all other nations bowed down to the earth under the wars and prodigalities of their rulers, I have cherished their opposites, peace, economy, and riddance of public debt, believing that these were the high road to public as well as private prosperity and happiness."

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd President of the United States (1801-09)


On the 4th of July, the credit agency Standard & Poor called  Greece what it is, i.e. a country in de facto financial bankruptcy.  No slight of hand, no obfuscation, no debt reorganization and no “innovative” bailouts can hide the fact that the defective rules of the 17-member Eurozone have allowed some of its members to succumb to the siren calls of excessive and unproductive indebtedness, to be followed by a default on debt payments accompanied by crushingly higher borrowing costs.

Greece (11 million inhabitants), in fact, has abused the credibility that came with its membership in the Eurozone.  In 2004, for instance, the Greek Government embarked upon a massive spending spree to host the 2004 Summer Olympic Games, which cost 7 billion euros ($12.08 billion). Then, from 2005 to 2008, the same government decided to go on a spending spree, this time purchasing all types of armaments that it hardly needed from foreign suppliers. —Piling up a gross foreign debt to the tune of $533 billion (2010) seemed the easy way out. But sooner or later, the piper has to be paid and the debt burden cannot be hidden anymore.

Greece's current financial predicaments (and those of other European countries such as Spain, Portugal, Ireland and even Italy) are not dissimilar to the ones Argentina had to go through some ten years ago. In each case, an unhealthy membership in a monetary union of some sort led to excessive foreign indebtedness, followed by a capital flight and a crushing and ruinous debt deflation.

In the case of Argentina, the country had decided to adopt the U.S. dollar as its currency, even though productivity levels in Argentina were one third those in the United States. An artificially pegged exchange rate of one peso=one U.S. dollar held for close to ten years, before the inevitable collapse.

Indeed, membership in a monetary union and the adoption of a common currency for a group of countries can be a powerful instrument to stimulate economic and productivity growth, with low inflation, when such monetary unions are well designed structurally, but they can also turn into an economic nightmare when they are not.

Unfortunately for many poorer European members of the euro monetary union, the rules for a viable monetary union were not followed, and its unraveling in the coming years, although deplorable, should be of no great surprise to anyone knowledgeable in international finance.

What are these rules for a viable and stable monetary union with a common currency?

1- First and foremost, member countries should have economic structures and labor productivity levels that are comparable, in order for the common currency not to appear persistently overvalued or persistently undervalued depending on any particular member economy. An alternative is to have a high degree of labor mobility between regional economies so that unemployment levels do not remain unduly high in the least competitive regions.

2- Secondly, if either one of the two above conditions is not met (as is usually the case, since real life monetary unions are rarely “Optimum Currency Areas”), the monetary union must be headed by a strong political entity, possibly a federal system of government, that is capable of smoothly transferring fiscal funds from surplus economies to deficit economies through some form of centrally managed fiscal equalization payments.

This is to avoid the political strains and uncertainty when the standards of living rise in surplus regional economies and drop in regional deficit economies. Indeed, since the regional exchange rates cannot be adjusted upward or downward to redress each member country's balance of payments,  and since the law of one price applies all over the monetary zone, this leaves fluctuations in income levels and employment levels as the main mechanism of adjustment to external imbalances. —This can turn out to be a harsh remedy.

Indeed, such a system of income or quantity adjustment rather than price adjustment is somewhat reminiscent of the way the 19th century gold standard used to work, albeit with a deflationary bias, except that it was expected to have price and income inflation in surplus countries and price and income deflation in deficit countries, caused by money supply expansions in surplus economies and money supply contractions in deficit economies. In a more or less formal monetary union, we are left with income inflation and deflation while the central bank holds the rein on the overall price level.

3- A third condition for a smoothly functioning monetary union is to have free movements of financial and banking capital within the zone. This is to insure that interest rates are coherent within the monetary zone, adjusted for a risk factor, and that productive projects have access to finance wherever they take place.

In the U.S., for instance, the highly liquid federal funds market allows banks in temporary deficit in check clearing to borrow short-term funds from banks in a temporary surplus position. In Canada, large national banks have branches in all provinces and can easily transfer funds from surplus branches to deficit branches without affecting their credit or lending operations.

4- A fourth condition is to have a common central bank that can take account not only of inflation levels but also of real economic growth and employment levels in its monetary policy decisions. Such a central bank should be able to act as lender of last resort, not only to banks, but also to the governments of the zone.

Unfortunately for the Eurozone, it currently fails to meet some of the most fundamental conditions for a smoothly functioning monetary union.

Let's look at them one by one.

Global food crisis: China land deal causes unease in Argentina

The Guardian

A Chinese agribusiness firm is to buy a large swath of land in Patagonia. Critics fear it will bring heavy agrochemical use and ecological degradation, and strain the region's water resources

The attraction to the Chinese of access to an area of land in Patagonia larger than Cornwall is obvious. As China's economy grows and its population becomes more urbanised, diets are changing rapidly. People are eating more industrially produced meat and dairy products, and buying more processed foods.

Soya is the feedstock for this revolution, but demand for it can no longer be met within China. So the Chinese state-owned agribusiness company Beidahuang has joined the global scramble for land and water that has accelerated since food prices spiked in 2008.

Last year it was confirmed that the company had signed an agreement, with the government of Patagonia's Río Negro province, which provides the framework for it to acquire up to 320,000 hectares (790,000 acres) of privately owned farmland, along with irrigation rights and a concession on the San Antonio port.

Details of the deal, alleged to have been kept quiet, have been emerging in recent weeks as Chinese technicians have started work.

Beidahuang has also reported a 2008 deal on 200,000 ha in the Philippines, and says it plans to buy palm oil plantations and grain terminals this year as it pursues the Chinese government's policy of securing food supply lines from abroad.

Beidahuang, based in the north-eastern province of Heilongjiang, is the leading soya producer in China and one of the country's five largest soya processors. It also raises more than 600,000 cows, 1.3m pigs and more than 6m chickens at any one time.

The company believes its expertise in large-scale farming can be transferred to Argentina, according to Juan Manuel Accatino, the region's deputy secretary for agriculture in Río Negro, who was close to the deal. The arrangement made good economic sense, Accatino said. "We can foresee global shortages of land, water and energy, and Río Negro can offer all three."

Argentinian environmental groups and constitutional experts are outraged. Eduardo Barcesat is a top constitutional lawyer who has been helping the federal government of the Argentinian president, Cristina Kirchner, draft legislation that would restrict foreign ownership of Argentinian land. The laws would also provide, for the first time, a full register of all landholding so that authorities can keep track of who owns what.

"Chinese and Indian people have been coming to Argentina over the last five years and would be happy to buy all our land, whatever the price. American businesses have been buying access to our water," Barcesat said. "We need our own people to eat well first, and after that we can feed the rest of the world. We want more small and middle-sized owners, we don't like the excessive concentration, and we want farmers who will be careful with the land, not exploit it."

Research from the International Land Coalition, and Oxfam Novib, the Netherlands affiliate of Oxfam International, has identified more than 1,200 international land deals covering more than 80m hectares since 2000 – the vast majority of them after 2007. More than 60% of the land targeted was in Africa.
The Río Negro region is famous for its fruit orchards, which produce 70% of the country's apples and pears, exports eaten in northern Europe when the fruit season in that continent ends.

Environmentalists in Río Negro say the Chinese arrival will mean heavy use of agrochemicals, ecological degradation and severe strain on the region's water resources. Some of the land in question is virgin forest that would be deforested.

Dams have already cut the flow of the Negro river, they say, and Chinese plans to invest $20m (£12m) immediately to build irrigation infrastructure would strain resources further. The campaigners say that since soya cultivation is highly mechanised it will prompt unemployment in the area, as it has elsewhere in the country where many rural communities have seen an increase in deep poverty as jobs are lost.

Elvio Mendioroz, president of Uñopatún, an agro-ecoclogical group that opposes the Chinese deal, said the agreement had been kept secret. "China has run out of land to feed its people, and is suffering drought and soil erosion, so they come here.

"But it will create the same problems for us. There has been no consultation, yet it's already signed."
Accatino thinks the deal has been misunderstood. Río Negro's provincial government was merely acting as a facilitator for the Chinese, he said, who would have to negotiate with the private owners of land to buy sections. The port concession, reported as being for 50 years, would depend on an evaluation of its feasibility.

Accatino said: "We will take into account the environmental concern about further expansion of soya and dependency of this monoculture. We would never endanger the Negro river."

U.S. Air Force C17 transport caught smuggling arms and drugs into Argentina

Aletho News

Argentina’s foreign ministry has issued a press release stating that it will be making a formal protest over undeclared weapons and drugs brought into the nation at Ezeiza last Thursday.

A manifest provided by the US did not list war materiel and drugs which were seized by Argentine authorities.

Among the confiscated materiel were communications interception equipment , encrypted communications equipment, sophisticated GPS devices, high power rifles, a machine gun and narcotics as well as a full trunk of expired pharmaceuticals including stimulants. All boxes had the stamp of the 7th Army Airborne Brigade based in North Carolina.

The Argentine government estimates the value of the goods and the C17 transport expenses to exceed $2 million.

The unreported contents also included an odd brochure with the phrase “I am a United States soldier. Please report to my embassy I have been arrested by the country.” translated into fifteen languages.
US documents described the shipment as intended for an Argentine government approved Federal police training course.

Argentina reiterated that it does not wish for the internal security practices of Rio’s favelas or El Salvador’s gangs to be the model for the Argentine nation.

The Argentine government will be suspending the police training program.

Argentina’s ambassador to the US described the situation as “a shameful embarrassment” before returning the cargo to North Carolina.

It is noted that any Argentine, civilian or military, who attempted to smuggle weapons and drugs into the US would be arrested immediately.

AIPAC: 'Thou shalt not recognize Palestine State'

Palestinian Cry

Here is the latest case of the power of Israel Lobby (AIPAC). Last week the US lawmakers passed ‘unanimously’ Resolution 1765 – condemning unilateral measures to declare or recognize a Palestinian state. Incidently, the democratically elected Hamas government has not declared an ‘Islamic State of Palestine’, but Bolivia along with Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Venezuela has recognized Palestine as a “free and independent state within its pre-war (1967) geographical status”.

According to former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and intelligence adviser, Philip Giraldi PhD, Resolution 1765 was drafted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and sponsored by Congressman Howard Berman, currently Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. There were 53 co-sponsors.

Benji Netanyahu government is notorious in rubbing Ben Obama administration, from insulting Zionist Vice-presiden Joe Biden to telling Obama to shove-off his 20 F-35 stealth military planes and plus – in return for stopping illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank for 90 days. Obama’s top Middle East adviser, half-Jewish Dennis Ross, and certainly AIPAC and the Democratic campaign committee must be behind this new bribe or “pretty please, with a cherry on top” as MJ Rosenberg called.

“Why would the Palestinians agree to negotiations under these conditions? They can’t. Or maybe they would for $3.5 billion, which they can sure use but would never be offered. Thanks to the Anthony Weiners, Steny Hoyers, Ileana Ros-Lehtinens, Eliot Engels and Brad Shermans of the world, what we invariably offer the Palestinians is not $3.5 billion but, to use a wonderful Yiddish term, bupkes — absolutely nothing or so little as to be an insult,” says MJ Rosenberg, senior foreign policy fellow at Media Matter Actions.

“Israelis and Palestinians need an “honest broker,” but that is not the role the Obama administration has decided to play. (Check out any speech on the Middle East by Vice President Joseph Biden, who always says, over and over, that there must be “no daylight, no daylight” between US and Israeli positions. Some honest broker!)”, wrote Rosenberg.

“If Obama is Israel’s friend, he’ll tell AIPAC and its cutouts in Congress that he will do what’s right for Israel, which, not so incidentally, is what is right for the United States,” says Rosenberg. However, what’s right for the future generations of the Jews, Muslims and Christians living in the Middle East And United States, would be a single democratic State of Palestine.