All Systems Go for Brazil's A-Bomb

Brazil has refused to allow inspections that would reveal the
capacity, characteristics and scope of the equipment developed
by its navy to enrich uranium. These inspections would assist in
determining whether Brazil is seeking the enrichment of uranium
for peaceful purposes or is pursuing a weapons program.

Phil Brennan

The war on terror has preoccupied Washington policy-makers with the Middle East, even as America's own backyard festers in political crisis.

Since the days of FDR the U.S. has pursued America's "Good Neighbor policy," aimed at fostering close ties and friendship with the nations south of the Rio Grande.

But today that policy is in shambles as one major Latin country after another has fallen to anti-American leaders who admire Fidel Castro. Behind the growing anti-U.S. atmosphere is a carefully planned and executed drive to turn South America into a Marxist stronghold challenging the U.S. and eliminating every shred of its influence there.

This special report explores the Latino attitude towards the United States and how it is affecting U.S. policy on South and Central America.

Venezuela's Castro Wannabe

Nothing is more indicative of the growing surge to the extreme left south of the border than what happened at the end of the Summit of the Americas in Monterrey on Jan. 14, when Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez jetted off to Havana for one of his frequent chats with Fidel Castro. Communist-led Cuba was the only country in the Western Hemisphere not invited to the 34-nation meeting.

The summit of freely elected heads of state wrapped up its gathering the night before. Chavez was the only leader to sign the final declaration with reservations because of his opposition to free trade. He refused to attend the official dinner and called the gathering of regional leaders a "waste of time."

He said he missed one luncheon because he was on the phone with Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi planning a summit between Latin American and African nations.

Tensions have increased between the U.S. and Venezuela since Chavez called national security adviser Condoleezza Rice a "true illiterate" for noting he has not played a constructive role in Latin America.

Rice had said Chavez should show "that he believes in democratic processes" by allowing a recall referendum on his rule. He responded by saying that U.S. officials shouldn't "stick their noses" in Venezuelan affairs.

Argentina and Brazil

Relationships between the U.S. and Argentina have also soured.

Washington has yet to get a handle on Argentina's president, Nestor Kirchner. While the United States has praised his leadership it has also criticized him for not taking "difficult decisions" to deal with Argentina's staggering $81 billion debt. Moreover, Washington officials warn that Kirchner is a little too buddy-wuddy with Castro.

And while the White House feels all warm and cuddly about Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's economic policies, he is busy plunging his nation into communism and allying himself with Castro and Castro's puppet in Venezuela, Chavez.

Moreover, there is friction between the U.S. and Brazil over new U.S. security measures that include photographing and fingerprinting foreign visitors. Brazil has retaliated by imposing similar measures for U.S. travelers entering crime-ridden Brazil.

Angry About Iraq

Disagreement over the war in Iraq has added to the rift. Most Latin American nations refused to support the U.S.-led war, and Honduras has just decided to follow socialist Spain's cue and leave Iraq.

In the United Nations Security Council, Chile and Mexico opposed a resolution authorizing force in Iraq. Only seven out of the 33 Latin American and Caribbean nations supported U.S. military action in Iraq.

Throughout Latin America, there was strong and widespread resistance to an American strategy that Latinos viewed as unilateral and pre-emptive. That ill will has continued among nations whose support for U.S. actions have long been taken for granted.

Gabriel Marcella, a Latin America expert at the United States Army War College, told the New York Times that Latin Americans "were asked by the United States to support a preventive war."

"They did not," he said. "The ugly head of unilateralism seemed to reappear."

Peter Hakim, the president of Inter-American Dialogue, a forum for leaders in the hemisphere, told the Times: "I don't think you can overestimate the damage to the U.S.-Mexican relations. No relationship was more damaged, with the possible exception of France."

Colombia ran into trouble with the administration on the International Criminal Court. When Bogotá balked at signing an exemption from prosecution for American personnel, the administration withheld some aid and threatened to cut off $160 million more. Colombia, which gets more American aid than any other country except Israel and Egypt, eventually acceded.

Communist China, fast becoming a favorite trading partner, draws in airplanes from Brazil, soybeans from Argentina, thus boosting economies and leading to new political alliances. Brazil's exports to China surged 81 percent in the first 11 months of last year to $4.23 billion, Dr. Constantine C. Menges reports.

Brazil's Lula last year persuaded China to join a bloc of developing nations that forced the collapse of the World Trade Organization's talks by demanding that the United States and Europe abandon their farm subsidies.

"China is importing from others and selling to us," said David Malpass, chief global economist for Bear, Stearns in New York. "As in any commercial relationship, they are treated well as a customer. This raises China's importance relative to that of the U.S."

But these are merely symptoms of the turmoil in U.S. relations with its southern neighbors. The danger lies in the steady advance of a Latino version of the Soviet Union.

Already three major South American countries are infected with the Marxist virus: Venezuela, a major source of oil for the U.S.; Brazil; and Cuba, where Fidel Castro is acting as the midwife for communism's rebirth.

Danger in Brazil

Brazil is the locus of the newest Marxist threat to the region. Since "Lula" da Silva took office in January, 2003, Brazil has become a new staging area for communism in our hemisphere. It has toyed with becoming a nuclear threat.

Working behind the scenes is Lula's foreign policy adviser, Marco Aurélio Garcia, a notorious hard-line Marxist operative and founder and executive secretary of São Paulo Forum, a coalition of leftist parties and revolutionary movements dedicated, he admits, to "offsetting our losses in Eastern Europe with our victories in Latin America."

In an article he wrote about Marx's "The Communist Manifesto," he concluded: "The agenda is clear. If this new horizon which we search for is still called communism, it is time to re-constitute it."

In other words, rebuild shattered world communism in Latin America.

An investigation by NewsMax.com revealed that Garcia, as head of São Paulo Forum, controls and coordinates the activities of subversives and extremists from the Rio Grande to the southernmost tip of Argentina.

In a policy dictated by Havana, Garcia has shown special interest in the terrorist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Every year since 1990, Garcia has made it his priority to meet with murderous FARC. The meetings have not just taken place in Havana (with Castro himself always present), but also in Mexico, where Garcia traveled to meet with FARC member Marco Leo Calara on Dec. 5, 2000.

Brazilian-American Gerald Brant, a former candidate for federal deputy (Congress), wrote that in his native land, "a country of significant social inequalities, Marxism in Brazil has always been a force, but it has never been as close to realizing true power in this country as it is now. By abandoning the traditional Marxist strategy of launching an armed insurgency and revolution, Brazil's Workers' Party, known as the `PT,' has been able to effectively elaborate a `Gramscian' [inspired by renowned Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci, widely read in PT circles] strategy of penetrating the key institutions of civil society and democracy first, and then using the legitimate authority conferred by elections to abridge constitutional restraints to establish a Marxist state."

Look Who's Being Unilateralist

The Times reported that Brazil would resist a plan by the International Atomic Energy Agency that would allow for spot inspection of nuclear sites.

In addition, "Brazil has announced that by mid-2004 it expects to join the select group of nations producing enriched uranium and that within a decade it intends to begin exporting enriched uranium. But it is balking at giving international inspectors unimpeded access to the plant that will produce the nuclear fuel.

"Government officials say efforts to enrich uranium are entirely peaceful in purpose … as a peaceful nation, Brazil, which has the world's sixth-largest known deposits of uranium, should not be subject to the same regimen of unannounced spot inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran and Libya have recently accepted."

Brazil has refused to allow inspections that would reveal the capacity, characteristics and scope of the equipment developed by its navy to enrich uranium. These inspections, if allowed, would assist in determining whether Brazil is indeed seeking the enrichment of uranium for peaceful purposes or is pursuing a weapons program that many officials within the Brazilian government have occasionally alluded to in the past.

These are indicators of movements toward development of nuclear weapons.

Luiz Vieira, president of Nuclear Industries of Brazil, admits that the technology developed by the navy's São Paulo Technology Center could be used to build an atomic bomb.

Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com - http://www.newsmax.com, where ths article appeared originally. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web - http://www.pvbr.com - and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee, which won statehood for Alaska. He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers He can be reached at phil@newsmax.com.