welcoming Obama in Argentina
(profits for local kleptocrats and multinationals, that is…)
(no transcript so far, but check)
(Operation Condor)
“Condor’s key members were the governments in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil. The United States government provided technical support and supplied military aid to the participants until at least 1978, and again after Republican Ronald Reagan became President in 1981. Such support was frequently routed through the Central Intelligence Agency. Ecuador and Peru later joined the operation in more peripheral roles. These efforts, such as Operation Charly, (Argentina) supported the local juntas in their anti-communist repression.”
Well, more like billions in corporate ‘investment’. In January at Davos, Macri made a deal with Coca-Cola for a billion, and schmoozed with the reps of Dow Chemical, Mitsubishi and Shell. Macri submitted the nation to an IMF audit ahead of plans for increased austerity measures and neoliberal ‘reform’. (Telesur)
Matías Vernengo offers a look at Macri’s history and right-wing political leanings, his predatory free-market economic team, and plans to devalue the peso against the dollar in hopes that Argentina might be able to:
“…finalize an agreement with the so-called “vulture funds,” the holdout bondholders that did not agree to the rescheduling of debt after the last default.) And, if anything, Macri’s (unnecessary) promise to give in to all the vulture funds’ demands and rapprochement with the United States and International Monetary Fund (IMF) would resolve any short-run problems in financing the current account deficit”, which he reckons will hit working people’s bargaining power hard, and is a solution to a non-problem, in that the nations debt is relatively low.”
‘But wait a little while, then watch the next IML loan terms’, he predicts. He also sees the likelihood that Macri will try to re-privatize SS, a past epic failure that the Kircheners reversed.
See: ‘A debt expert from Jubilee USA Network says that a win for “vulture funds” in Argentina’s debt crisis will encourage more predatory holdouts’, telesur.net
Journalists at Bloomberg wrote that in Davos, Macri had announced that:
“Today, he added BP Plc to the list, saying they promised to invest in the Vaca Muerta formation, part of the world’s second-largest shale gas reserves. The investments come after Macri lifted capital controls that for several years limited the repatriation of dividends for the companies — all of which currently operate in Argentina. [snip]
Among the meetings in Davos which included top executives at Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Louis Dreyfus Holding BV, the Argentine leader met with U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden and discussed ways to improve relations including a potential visit from President Barack Obama this year, according to Macri.” (the video interview is great, by the by) ;-)
Ah, the “improved relations with the US” seemed to have included (Wiki)‘Leaked Diplomatic Cable Shows that Argentine Presidential Candidate Mauricio Macri Asked US Government for Help Against Kirchners’, Dan Beeton, cepr.net
“Washington, D.C. – A leaked diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy in Argentina states that current presidential candidate Mauricio Macri accused U.S. officials of being “too soft” on the government of Argentina.
Reporting on a meeting between the U.S. Ambassador and Macri in November 2009, the cable, published by WikiLeaks, and previously analyzed in the book “Argenleaks: Los cables de Wikileaks sobre la Argentina, de la A a la Z” by Santiago O’Donnell, states:
Macri reprised an earlier conversation with [the then Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, Thomas Shannon, the State Department’s top official for Latin America] regarding the need to set limits on the Kirchners’ misbehavior and the USG’s supposed “softness” on the Kirchners. He argued that the USG’s “silence” on the abusive mistreatment it suffered at the hands of the Kirchners (such as at the 2005 Mar del Plata Summit of the Americas) had encouraged more of the same.”
As we know, even when ‘Democracy’ NGOs are chased out of a nation, new ones pop up like weeds to fund right-wing candidates and their missions.
Brother Ali – ‘Uncle Sam Goddamn’ (the lyrics)
Welcome to the United Snakes
Land of the thief home of the slave
The grand imperial guard where the dollar is sacred and power is God
A late edition, my apologies; Macri’s Rule has snowballed far more than I’d known: ‘Newly elected Argentine president Mauricio Macri has inaugurated harsh austerity measures and quashed dissent’ by Adam Fabry at Jacobin
There are almost too many items to highlight. I’ll go with these, and note that as it turns out, his was a stealth candidacy for the wealthy and foreign investors, as it turns out, but for the Rabble Class:
“Along with its pro-business policies, the Macri government has begun to unveil a number of austerity measures, including drastic cuts to education and health care, and a whopping 300 percent increase in electricity prices (previously subsidized under the Kirchner government) effective last month.
The government is also firing public-sector workers en masse, as part of a wider crackdown on workers’ rights and dissenting views. At the time of publication, around 25,000 public-sector workers have received pink slips nationwide and according to the minister of modernization, Andrés Ibarra, the government intends to fire another 25,000 workers in the coming months.
The government’s austerity drive is rapidly spilling over into the private sector as well, with more than 75,000 private-sector workers (primarily in the construction, automobile, and mining industries) losing their jobs in the first two months of 2016 — a massive increase compared to the previous year. However, most ordinary Argentineans hear little of these events, since the National Radio — which recently hired a new, pro-government director — has prohibited its news programs from mentioning anything about the wave of dismissals spreading across the country.”
His paragraphs on Macri & Co’s policies on permitted dissent are chilling, and all too familiar.
