Kirchner, Latinamerican man of the year (Argentine Pres.)

[Say_What]

<clips>

Argentine President Nestor Kirchner was chosen Latinamerican Man of the Year by the influential Brazilian weekly magazine IstoE because, acting “without arrogance or chauvinism” he’s dedicated to recovering the economy and self esteem of Argentine and Brazilian citizens.

The magazine describes Mr. Kirchner as a man “with no political charisma” but who anyhow managed to establish the leadership Argentina was lacking to overcome its financial difficulties. IstoE not only praises Mr. Kirchner’s leadership but also recalls that in a recent interview with the magazine Brazilian president Lula da Silva said that bilateral relations with Argentina “have never been healthier”, since the former governor of Santa Cruz took office.

The magazine also points out to the fact that after the protests and recurrent crisis of the last two years when thousands of Argentines went to the streets demanding all Argentine politicians “get lost”, President Kirchner has approval ratings of over 80%. Mr. Kirchner and Mr. Lula da Silva have “a privileged relation, definitively burying a decade of errors because of the “carnal relations” with the United States policy that the former administration of President Carlos Menem was so proud of”.

http://www.falkland-malvinas.com/Detalle.asp?NUM=3007

[Ellen Forradalom]

1. Glad to hear it.

Argentina really deserves some good news.

[Judi Lynn]

2. You'd better believe it!

They need a chance to crawl out of the grave American interests dug for them.

Here's a refresher look at the Bush overinvolvement in Argentina, in a snippet referring to Bush's pushing Enron down their throats:

(snip) A few weeks after the U.S. presidential election in 1988, Terragno received a phone call from a failed Texas oilman named George W. Bush, who happened to be the son of the president-elect. "He told me he had recently returned from a campaign tour with his father," the Argentine minister recalls. The purpose of the call was clear: to push Terragno to accept the bid from Enron.

"He was taking a moment to call me because he knew that I was dealing with this," says Terragno, adding that Bush told him that he "viewed with some concern the slow pace of the Enron project." According to Terragno, the president-elect's son noted that a deal with Enron "would be very favorable for Argentina and its relations with the United States."

When a brief report on the attempt to influence the Argentine deal appeared in The Nation and the Texas Observer years later, the Bush team reacted angrily. His staff produced a copy of his day planner to show that Bush never placed the phone call, and a top-level adviser personally called reporters to dismiss the story as a fantasy by "some guy in Argentina." Bush's staff continues to deny his involvement, and no other media outlet ever reported on the episode, despite the high-ranking source.

More than a decade later, Terragno still recalls details of the phone call clearly -- as well as his outrage. "It looked bad and it surprised me," he says. "There was this political endorsement, apparently from the White House. I don't know if George Bush the father was aware of it, or if it was only a business contact by his son, who hoped that his family name would have some influence."

George W. wasn't the only Bush plying the family name in Argentina. His brother Neil had tried to funnel $900,000 in loans from Silverado Savings and Loan, where he served as a director, into a failed attempt to drill for oil in Argentina. The S&L eventually collapsed, costing taxpayers nearly $1 billion to bail out, and federal regulators banned Neil from certain banking activities.
(snip/...)

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2000/03/argentina.html

Anyone wanting to find out just what the heck this is all about can spend some quality time getting up to date doing a search on Bushes, Argentina, and Argentina's previous right-wing President, Carlos Menem, friend of the elder Bush:

(snip) Carlos Menem was president of Argentina for two terms during the nineties. Though he was popular with many during his first term, while money came flooding into the country from all the state industries that were being sold to private multinational firms, his popularity waned during his second term, which was plagued with rumours of corruption and other unsavory practices, and Argentina began its slide into the economic crisis it is currently engulfed in. Menem's "privatization" policies made Argentina the poster child of the IMF and World Bank but left it with a a 25% unemployment rate and virtually no industry of its own. Now, Argentines pay for the water that comes out of their taps; they pay export prices for their own oil; and they pay the highest telephone rates in the world.

Menem's fall from his golden boy status included a stint in jail on gunrunning charges during ex-president De La Rua's reign. But pressure from fellow Peronists on the Supreme Court, another unpopular institution, got him released several months ago, and his pricey $2,000 a night stays in holiday resorts outside Argentina made the news shortly thereafter. In the meantime, half of Argentina has slipped into poverty, twig-thin malnourished children have been showing up at hospitals in the provinces, the middle class has seen its savings disappear into banks that suddenly have "no money" to give back to them, and a lot of people are banging on pans and shouting at the politicians and the policies of the IMF whom they feel got them into this mess.(snip/...)

http://argentina.indymedia.org/news/2002/06/30389.php

[Say_What]

5. Georgie and Neil ---just chips of the old block --both otta be in prison

and old Bush sure does a lot of *fishing*. From the Mother Jones article:

...The involvement of George W. and Neil in Argentina has become something of an m.o. for the Bush brothers in foreign affairs. The sons of the former president have certainly not been shy about using their family name to enrich themselves and their friends. Jeb sold $74 million worth of water pumps to the Nigerian government in 1988. Marvin tried to sell electronic fences to the defense ministry of Kuwait two years after the Gulf War, while Neil sought contracts to provide oil-field antipollution equipment. And George W. lent his name to tiny Harken Energy to help secure a huge offshore drilling contract in Bahrain (see "Slick W.," page 48).

Undoubtedly, the family name will continue to open doors internationally if George W. is elected. Last November, an airplane with Houston registry numbers landed in Buenos Aires; on board was former President Bush, who had arrived to spend the night with his friend, President Menem, 10 days before the end of Menem's final term. The two men attended a dinner at the home of Argentine banker José Rohm, where they were joined by the vice president of Chase Manhattan Bank, the director of Credit Suisse First Boston, the president-elect of Argentina and the former president of Uruguay.

What was the purpose of President Bush's visit? "Fishing," says Michael Dannenhauer, a Bush spokesman. But when the Buenos Aires daily, Pagina 12, asked several of the dinner guests why the president was in town, they smiled and quietly replied, "Business." Bush's "real interest," they added, was to learn how the new government would deal with CEI, an Argentine media company whose former chief had fled the country under investigation for fraud. One of CEI's principal investors, the paper noted, is Tom Hicks, "one of the funders of the presidential campaign of Bush's son, George, the governor of Texas."

[Say_What]

3. Greg Palast on Argentina

<clips>

...The anti-Argentina

Argentina accepted the World Bank's four-step economic medicine with fatal glee. Not that it had much choice. I have obtained the secret June 2001 'Country Assistance Strategy' progress report of the World Bank, ordering Argentina to pull out of its economic depression by increasing 'labour force flexibility'. This meant cutting works programmes, smashing union rules and slicing real wages. Contrast that with Chávez's first act after defeating the coup: announcing a 20-per- cent increase in the minimum wage. Chávez's protection of the economy by increasing the purchasing power of the lower-paid workers, rather than cutting wages, is anathema to the globalizers.

His Venezuela is the anti-Argentina, taking a path exactly opposite to the guidance given, and ultimately imposed, on Argentina by the World Bank and IMF.

For example, in the June 2001 document, World Bank President James Wolfensohn expressed particular pride that Argentina's Government had made 'a $3 billion cut in primary expenditures'. Slicing government spending in the midst of a recession is economic suicide, killing demand when it's most needed. Who could have pushed the banks to demand such a berserk programme? The answer is hinted at in the document. That $3 billion cut will 'accommodat the increase in interest obligations' to pay off those foreign banks - Citibank, Chase Manhattan Bank, Bank of America, Credit Suisse, and Lloyds Bank - who, having bled the nation of capital, lent Argentina back its own money at rates that can only be called usury. Foreign banks working with the IMF had demanded that Argentina pay a whopping 16-per-cent risk premium above US Treasury lending rates.

Chávez would take Venezuela in the opposite direction. His plan is to pull out of a downturn threatened by a corporate embargo of investment in his nation by taxing the oil companies and spending - the 'Bricks and Milk' solution, old-style Keynesianism.

And while Chávez moved to renationalize oil and rejects the sale of water systems, Argentina sold off everything including the kitchen-sink tap. The World Bank beams: 'Almost all major utilities have been privatized.' That includes the sale of water systems to Enron of Texas and Vivendi of Paris, companies which immediately fired workers en masse, let the pipe systems fall apart and raised prices as much as 400 per cent. Wolfensohn, for some reason, is surprised to note that after these privatizations, the poor lack access to clean water.


http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=169&row=2

[Judi Lynn]

4. Sad, sad, sad. The privatizers simply will not check themselves.

(snip) In essence what one is presented with is conflicted at best. The present situation of waterworks in developing countries - specifically Argentina - leaves room for improvement. These countries currently have eroding infrastructures and insufficient funds to improve them, but the current alternatives are focused more on profit than the well-being of the people. While the introduction of multinational corporations and the expertise they bring present a logical solution to the existing problem, they also pose new threats and potentially more fatal dilemmas.(snip/...)

http://www.american.edu/TED/water-argentina.htm

Really screwed them up, but good, didn't they?

This article says one of the byproducts of the privatization is BROWN water flowing from the faucets in Argentina.