Argentina's Kirchner Snubs Fiorina, IMF, for `Appeal'

[bemildred]

A number of interesting bits. Reading between the lines, one
can speculate that they are getting the long knives out for
Kirchner, not that they have given up on Chavez for the time
being.

Oct. 1 (Bloomberg) -- When Carly Fiorina,
Hewlett-Packard Co.'s chief executive officer, went
to Buenos Aires to visit Argentine President Nestor
Kirchner in July, he kept her waiting almost an hour.

---

The IMF withheld a loan payment to Argentina in August after the country failed to move forward on
negotiations with bondholders over $100 billion of defaulted debt. The government in June proposed paying
investors 25 cents per $1 of defaulted bonds. Kirchner says the offer isn't negotiable.

``The current offer is the only one we will make,'' Kirchner said in a Sept. 22 speech at the Council of the
Americas in New York. ``It's the offer that will go to the markets.''

---

`It's not a whim or an ideological position,'' Bancalari says. ``Adopting the IMF's recipes has led Argentina
into crisis. The president wants real and genuine investment, not speculative capital and vulture funds.''

Bloomberg(a good deal more)

[el_gato]

1. Good for Kirchner

[wasp in a wig]

2. I wasn't sure about Kirchner

Frankly, I still don't know that much about him. But, he does seem to be one of the few standing up to institutions like the IMF, and this display of independence is very encouraging.

[bemildred]

3. Anyone who annoys the people he annoys can't be all bad.

:-)

[bemildred]

4. Kirchner Maintains High Numbers In Argentina

---

Polling Data

Do you approve or disapprove of Nestor Kirchner’s performance as president?

Approve


73.0%

Disapprove


25.5%

Source: Analogías / El Clarín
Methodology: Interviews to 1,000 Argentine adults, conducted from Sept. 19 to Sept. 24, 2004. No margin of error was provided.

http://www.cpod.ubc.ca/polls/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewItem&itemID=4408

[AP]

5. I am by no means an expert on Argentian. However, I've read two...

...encouraging stories since Kirchner took over.

Early on I think I read a story that Kirchner was going to pass a law that would prevent foreign banks from seizing Argentinian real property in satisfaction of defaulted loans. That was pretty cool. I have no idea what came of that.

Just a week or two ago, Kirchner sais that he was not going to use the police to crack the heads of striking workers. Ie, the government wasn't going to side with capital in their dispute with labor. There'd be a level playing field, and if capital wants to stop the strikes, they can negotiate with the strikers.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Kirchner is so impressive.

He's a real model for leadership in Latin America. He basically told _Bush to stuff it when _Bush tried to bully him for his friendship toward Hugo Chavez.

He was also a prisoner who was tortured during the filthy "Dirty Wars" in Argentina. He's trying to illuminate those events for clarification now and probably to expose those involved.

Kirchner, who took office on May 25, is the first Argentine president to hold public ceremonies commemorating the destruction of Argentine democracy and the massive human rights violations that followed the military coup.

Under the military government, at least 9,000 people were detained by military and police task forces, brutally tortured and secretly executed. Many were dropped from planes into the ocean.

For years, the "full stop" and "due obedience" laws—amnesties introduced in 1986 and 1987—have blocked prosecutions for all crimes committed during the period of military rule, except the theft of babies born to mothers held in secret detention. However, in August, the Argentine Congress voted by large majorities to annul the amnesty laws, a proposal firmly backed by Kirchner.
(snip)

Argentina continues to roll back measures taken by earlier governments to prevent full accountability for the abuses. On March 19, federal judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral declared that pardons issued in 1989 by the government of Carlos Menem benefiting six army officers were unconstitutional. The only officer still alive and not already in detention, Gen. (Rtd.) Jorge Olivera Rovere, was arrested on the same day.
(snip/...)

http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2004/03/24/argent8213.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ex-President Carlos Menem is a personal friend of _{George H. W. Bush.} Who would find this unusual, by now?

Bush Friend Arrested for Illegal Arms Trafficking

JUNE 7, 2001. A long-time friend of former U.S. President George H. Bush was arrested today on charges of illegal arms trafficking. If found guilty, he could face a jail term of up to ten years. Only a phone call from the new Bush White House might spare him the indignity, he thinks. But the phones aren't ringing.

The friend in trouble is the former President of Argentina, Carlos Menem, a golfing partner and business benefactor of the elder Bush. He is suspected of having illegally sold 6,500 tons of arms to Croatia and Ecuador between 1991 and 1995, in violation of international arms embargoes. Menem, who was put under house arrest today by a Buenos Aires federal judge, said in his defense last weekend that the U.S. knew all about the arms sales.
(snip)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/SIM202A.html


Carlos Menem visits _Bush.

[AP]

6. Notice how this article argues that when you're doing things that are good

for the people, you're just trying to be popular, and that's bad. But when you're doing things that are good for captital, you're being a good leader.

Why is being popular among a handful bankers more important than being popular among the millions of people who are hurt by their policies? And isn't democracy all about being popular among a majority of the people? And isn't the only thing that gets in the way of that sort of strategy a lying media which makes the people stupidly turn against the people who are fighting for them?

When the shit hit the fan in VZ, there were stories exactly like this one in the papers: Chávez is bad because he's just trying to be popular among a majoirty of the voters in Venezuela. Democracy's a bitch, eh?

[aneerkoinos]

7. Now now

advocating mob rule? Where would the world go if poor people got to decide? ;)

[MisterP]

8. whee!

remember, the Asian Tigers soared by ignoring American advice--almost as if the advice was designed to foster dependence!