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Showing posts with label Latin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Latin. Show all posts

Sunday, October 26, 2014

“Economic Genocide” in Latin America: The Unspoken Legacy of Wall Street and the IMF. President Cristina Fernandez

United Nations General Assembly, September 24, 2014: Argentina's President Fernandez de Kirchner Denounces Economic Terrorism

By Carla Stea


Argentina-New-York-Court-Bankruptcy

Dazzling and supremely erudite, Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner denounced as terrorism the economic policies that have been strangling the developing world during the past century, and are continuing these criminal actions today, the legacy of Milton Friedman’s Chicago Boys’ gangster economic policies. These policies, implemented by the infliction of “shock therapy,” institutionalizing torture, murder and disappearances of individuals, groups, and often heads of state who defy these barbaric economic models, are policies which are more accurately described as global economic theft, sanctioned by the theory that “might makes right.”

The IMF’s “conditionalities” were described, in sanitized language, as “structural adjustment programs,” demanding the obliteration of free national education and health care programs, causing the destitution of majorities of citizens in the developing countries, and resulting in the gross indebtedness of collaborating governments to parasitic interests of multinational corporations, banks, hedge funds, vulture funds and their ilk. The Milton Friedman Chicago Boys policies were described by one of Friedman’s most brilliant students, the German born economist Andre Gunder Frank, as “economic genocide.”

President Kirchner described her late husband, President Nestor Kirchner’s success in rebuilding Argentina, despite the total bankruptcy into which decades of the Chicago Boys policies had plunged a devastated Argentina. She described the earlier chaotic situation, in which Argentina had five presidents in one week during 2001, a disaster rivaled, perhaps, only by Bolivia, which, similarly hostage of the Chicago Boys, had three revolutions in one afternoon, finally resulting Bolivia’s progressive presidency of Juan Jose Torres in 1970. President Torres was overthrown, ten months later, by fascist General Hugo Banzer, with the blessing of Washington, and was then murdered in Argentina in 1975.

The earlier history of Argentina described by President Kirchner, a history common to almost all Latin America Southern Cone governments hostage to the Chicago Boys’ policy of economic genocide, is succinctly summed up by Professor John Dinges in his work “The Condor Years,” (Pages 154-155).

[By 1975], “Inside the U.S. embassy Legal Attache Robert Scherrer quickly developed information that the Torres murder was part of the new security forces cooperation among the military governments…the bloody reality of mounting repression and the assassination of three prominent figures – the Uruguayan Senators Michelini, Gutierrez and Bolivian President Torres who had sought protection in Argentina… .Slowly, among those reading the most secret intelligence traffic about Latin America – in the embassies, in the CIA, in the Defense Intelligence Agency, the FBI and the State Department there was an awakening to a flow of hard evidence that was soon to become a flood: that by 1975 the government of Argentina was committing human rights violations on a massive scale never before seen in Latin America, and the six military governments of the Southern Cone were cooperating to assassinate one another’s opponents.”

This was the Argentina in which Presidents Cristina and Nestor Kirchner spent their earliest years. This was the environment in which the Chicago Boys’ murderous economic policies were forced down the throats of the majority of Argentina’s citizens, utilizing torture, murder and “disappearances” to facilitate the “privatization” of the country’s resources in the organized theft of the nation’s patrimony. This theft was engineered by one of history’s most deadly mobs of criminals, the Chicago Boys, trained by the sociopath Milton Friedman, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics in a decision grossly discrediting the legitimacy of the Nobel Committee.

President Kirchner described the economic and social recovery steered by her husband, President Nestor Kirchner, a program of social and economic inclusiveness which made education widely available to Argentina’s majority, which decreased unemployment while establishing social safety nets, a program in which Argentina’s economy began to thrive, as Nestor Kirchner weaned Argentina’s economy from the IMF ‘debt trap’ (the title of the superb book by economist Cheryl Payer), and made arrangements to pay off the astronomical debts amassed during the previous period of economic domination by the Chicago Boys, (debts for which Nestor Kirchner’s government was in no way responsible). President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner spoke with legitimate pride of Argentina’s success in reducing widespread poverty, despite the financial disaster engineered by the thugs of the international financial system who are currently still attempting to hold Argentina hostage.

President Kirchner voiced the concerns of the greater part of the developing world, which voted on September 9, 2014, for the United Nations General Assembly resolution: “Toward the Establishment of a Multilateral Legal Framework for Sovereign Debt Restructuring Process.” Argentina’s Foreign Minister, Hector Timerman (whose father, the great journalist and human rights advocate, Jacobo Timerman, had been imprisoned and tortured for two years in Argentina during that same “dirty war” of 1976 described earlier) introduced that resolution, “establishing an ethical political and legal pathway to end unbridled speculation.” The resolution was adopted, with 124 nations supporting it, eleven nations opposing it, and forty one abstentions…The scandalous profits made by parasitic “vulture funds” are funneled into campaign and lobbying to prevent change in the current viciously unjust economic architecture. The Cuban delegate stated the appalling fact that “Developing countries had paid many times the amounts originally received as loans and that devoured resources essential for development.” The distinguished American economist Joseph Stiglitz has repeatedly emphasized precisely this same fact.

President Kirchner denounced U.S. Federal Judge Thomas Griesa, whose currently strangling injunctions, prohibiting Argentina’s repayment of 92.4 percent of the debt until the “vulture funds” are paid in full, would force the return of Argentina’s economy to destitution, totally destroying the new economic and social programs which are empowering Argentina’s majority, and would quickly restore the earlier squalor of the economically colonized Argentina into which Milton Friedman’s thugs and the IMF had forced Argentina to subsist for decades of Kirchner’s earlier life.

In her masterpiece, “The Shock Doctrine,” exposing the criminal thuggery of Friedman’s Chicago Boys, Naomi Klein states:

“In the early nineties, the Argentine state sold off the riches of the country so rapidly and so completely that the project far surpassed what had taken place in Chile a decade earlier. By 1994, 90 percent of all state enterprises had been sold to private companies, including Citibank, Bank Boston, France’s Suez and Vivendi, Spain’s Repsol and Telefonica. Before making the sales, (former President) Menem and (former Finance Minister) Cavallo had generously performed a valuable service for the new owners: they had fired roughly 700,000 of their workers, according to Cavallo’s own estimates; some put the number much higher. The oil company alone lost 27,000 workers during the Menem years, An admirer of Jeffrey Sachs, Cavallo called this process “shock Therapy.” Menem had an even more brutal phrase for it: in a country still traumatized by mass torture, he called it “major surgery without anesthetic.”*

“* In January 2006, long after Cavallo and Menem were out of office, Argentines received some surprising news. It turned out that the Cavallo Plan wasn’t Cavallo’s at all, nor was it the IMF’s: Argentina’s entire early-nineties shock therapy program was written in secret by JP Morgan and Citibank, two of Argentina’s largest private creditors. In the course of a lawsuit against the Argentine government, the noted historian Alejandro Olmos Gaona uncovered a jaw-dropping 1,400 page document written by the two U.S. banks for Cavallo in which “the policies carried out by the government from ’92 on are drawn up…the privatization of utilities, the labour law reform, the privatization of the pension system. It is all laid out with great attention to detail

….Everyone believes that the economic plan pursued since 1992 was Domingo Cavallos’s creation, but that’s not the way it is.” In the long term, Cavallo’s program in its entirety would prove disastrous for Argentina.

…So many jobs were lost that well over half the country would eventually be pushed below the poverty line.”

As President Fernandez Kirchner charges, today it is obvious that U.S. Federal Judge Griesa’s ruling is an attempt to destabilize Argentina, using a new imperialist tactic devised by the current gangsters of international capitalism who thrive by devouring the lives and patrimony of the majority of citizens of the developing world, and, indeed, impose these tactics upon the “99%” percent of citizens within the countries of the developed world.

President Fernandez Kirchner explicitly denounced as economic terrorists the “vulture funds” which, supported by the United States’ judicial system, are attempting to destabilize and ultimately overthrow her government. She stated: “Not only those who place bombs are terrorists, but also those who destabilize the economy of countries, and cause hunger, misery and poverty from the sin of speculation.”

Judge Griesa is attempting, in fact, to fine Argentina $50,000 per day for not complying with his ruling, and declaring Argentina in contempt of court.” In response to his brutal arrogance, President Kirchner cited a quote from former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who described such “creditors” as immoral, preventing countries from tackling problems of education, health and poverty.

Argentina’s president spoke fiercely of such engineered poverty and destitution as creating fertile breeding ground for terrorist leaders recruiting among those who have lost all hope of lives affording them options for fulfillment and dignity, and her voice echoed, 35 years later, the speech delivered on August 27, 1980 at the United Nations Eleventh Special Session on Economic Development: “Toward a New International Economic Order”: Joaquim Chissano, then Foreign Minister of Mozambique addressed the General Assembly, decades ago, and stated:

“The existing economic order is profoundly unjust. It runs counter to the basic interests of the developing countries…we see the perpetuation of underdevelopment in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The peoples of those continents are forced to face hunger, starvation, poverty, nakedness, disease and illiteracy increasingly. We denounce any kind of economic prosperity or independence for part of mankind built on the dependence, domination and exploitation of the rest of mankind…the developing countries have warned the world about the need to take measures to eliminate the main obstacles to emancipation and progress of the peoples struggling for a proper standard of living which would meet the basic needs of life.

…During the colonial period we were branded as rebels and insurgents when we demanded the restitution of our status as human beings. When we demanded independence we tried to talk peaceably with our masters, but no one would listen. The dialogue of force was imposed upon us. We took up arms. Much blood was spilt. But only in that way were we able to win.”

Twenty-nine years later, at the 64 Session of the United Nations General Assembly, on September 24, 2008, Stjepan Mesic, President of the Republic of Croatia, and the last President of Yugoslavia stated:

“Our world is finally still dominated by an economic model which is self-evidently exhausted and has now reached a stage where it is itself generating crises, causing hardship to thousands and hundreds of thousands of people. If one attempts to save this already obsolete model at any cost, if one stubbornly defends a system based on greed and devoid of any social note worthy of mention, the result can be only one: social unrest harboring the potential to erupt into social insurgence on a global scale.”

Cristina Fernandez Kirchner, President of Argentina today raises her powerful voice in, once again, the noble call for economic and social justice. Those who are guilty of perpetuating the injustices she and so many other world leaders abhor walked out of the hall as she spoke. And those are the ones who may ultimately pay the fatal price for ignoring her warning.

October 25, 2014

The Centre for Research on Globalization

Friday, October 24, 2014

The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) calls for the protection of migrants’ rights

CELAC calls for protection of migrants’ rights







QUITO.— With a call to protect the rights of migrant workers the Third Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) Meeting on Migration began in the city of Azogues, southern Ecuador.

"Migrant workers can no longer be viewed solely as labor, we must ensure their rights," stated Ecuadorian deputy minister for Human Mobility, María Landázuri, at the opening of the two-day event.

According to the deputy minister, the search for safe migration facilities for citizens must involve both the governments of the origin and destination countries and the people in general.

Landázuri commented that the CELAC meeting - in which representatives from 33 member countries of the regional bloc are participating - aims to share experience and find points of agreement.

"There are more similarities than differences, and our ultimate aim is to create spaces of peace," she stated, adding that the agreements established in the meeting will be presented to the UN and CELAC leadership, reported PL.

According to the Ecuadorian minister, one of the main challenges CELAC experts will face will be developing a action plan to protect migrants and provide them with greater resources, in addition to addressing the issues of unaccompanied minors and reuniting families.


According to the agenda, they will also analyze sub-regional protection and response mechanisms, migration and development, and the advances and prospects in this area between the European Union and CELAC. (PL)

October 23, 2014

Monday, July 14, 2014

Latin America: Fertile ground for Russian President Vladimir Putin's foray

LatAm: Fertile ground for Putin's foray


By Christian Molinari
Business News Americas:


Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to step foot in Latin America on a tour of a region that seems to be getting cozier with the Kremlin's courting.

The approach is in stark contrast to US President Barack Obama's lukewarm advances, as Washington has disregarded its southern neighbors in favor of the Asia Pacific and Middle East regions.

Add to that US secretary of state John Kerry's end-2013 announcement that "the era of the Monroe Doctrine is over" and you have a forsaken emerging market region, parts of which may be ripe for Putin's picking.

The Russian leader's serenades may largely fall on deaf ears in Latin America's western countries grouped under the Pacific Alliance, which remain fairly aligned with the US, but other traditionally left-leaning nations are eager for attention.

First stop on Putin's itinerary, unsurprisingly, will be Cuba – a staunch ally with whom the relationship has just been sweetened by the Russian parliament's agreeing to write off 90% of the US$35bn in Cuban debt, which was racked up in Soviet-era times. (All the more magnanimous considering that Russia's government is looking to tighten its belt to offset Western sanctions as a result of the Ukraine crisis.)

The debt forgiveness will speak volumes in the next stop on Putin's tour: Argentina, where President Cristina Fernández is currently measuring her options in whether to negotiate with bond holdouts or face another debt default.

Putin will then end his tour in Brazil to participate in the BRICS summit to be held there, while at the same time President Dilma Rousseff will hand-off World Cup hosting responsibilities to the leader of Russia, home of the 2018 tournament.

The tour comes on the heels of news proclaimed by Russia's defense minister, Sergei Shogu, that Moscow is looking to build military bases in a number of countries, including Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Testing the waters, so to speak, a Russian warship docked at a Havana naval base a few days after the February announcement.

What's clear is that for better or worse, US influence is waning in Latin America.

With a single focus on its strategic economic interests in the region, China has stepped in to fill part of that vacuum. The Asian giant, however, is facing an economic slowdown of its own – and slower Chinese growth will have significant implications for Latin America.

Coming into its own with a vast emerging middle class, regional giant Brazil is also taking a historic place on the Latin American stage. But the country has been plagued by high inflation and low growth.

And struggling for position, the Kremlin is eager to take advantage of economic opportunities in the region. Russia's big oil and gas companies want a piece of the Latin American pie, getting involved in Venezuela but also looking into the famous Vaca Muerta shale play.

Perhaps he will fall short in his goals of restoring the defunct Soviet Union's reach and glory, but Putin's actions will at least serve as a thorny, troublesome bush in 'Washington's backyard'.

July 08, 2014


Wednesday, April 9, 2014

USAID Subversion in Latin America Not Limited to Cuba

By Dan Beeton- CEPR


A new investigation by the Associated Press into a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) project to create a Twitter-style social media network in Cuba has received a lot of attention this week, with the news trending on the actual Twitter for much of the day yesterday when the story broke, and eliciting comment from various members of Congress and other policy makers. The “ZunZuneo” project, which AP reports was “aimed at undermining Cuba's communist government,” was overseen by USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI). AP describes OTI as “a division that was created after the fall of the Soviet Union to promote U.S. interests in quickly changing political environments — without the usual red tape.” Its efforts to undermine the Cuban government are not unusual, however, considering the organization’s track record in other countries in the region.

As CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot described in an interview with radio station KPFA’s “Letters and Politics” yesterday, USAID and OTI in particular have engaged in various efforts to undermine the democratically-elected governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Haiti, among others, and such “open societies” could be more likely to be impacted by such activities than Cuba. Declassified U.S. government documents show that USAID’s OTI in Venezuela played a central role in funding and working with groups and individuals following the short-lived 2002 coup d’etat against Hugo Chávez. A key contractor for USAID/OTI in that effort has been Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI).

More recent State Department cables made public by Wikileaks reveal that USAID/OTI subversion in Venezuela extended into the Obama administration era (until 2010, when funding for OTI in Venezuela appears to have ended), and DAI continued to play an important role. A State Department cable from November 2006 explains the U.S. embassy’s strategy in Venezuela and how USAID/OTI “activities support [the] strategy”:

(S) In August of 2004, Ambassador outlined the country team's 5 point strategy to guide embassy activities in Venezuela for the period 2004 ) 2006 (specifically, from the referendum to the 2006 presidential elections). The strategy's focus is: 1) Strengthening Democratic Institutions, 2) Penetrating Chavez' Political Base, 3) Dividing Chavismo, 4) Protecting Vital US business, and 5) Isolating Chavez internationally.

Among the ways in which USAID/OTI have supported the strategy is through the funding and training of protest groups. This August 2009 cable cites the head of USAID/OTI contractor DAI’s Venezuela office Eduardo Fernandez as saying, during 2009 protests, that all the protest organizers are DAI grantees:

¶5. (S) Fernandez told DCM Caulfield that he believed the [the Scientific, Penal and Criminal Investigations Corps'] dual objective is to obtain information regarding DAI's grantees and to cut off their funding. Fernandez said that "the streets are hot," referring to growing protests against Chavez's efforts to consolidate power, and "all these people (organizing the protests) are our grantees." Fernandez has been leading non-partisan training and grant programs since 2004 for DAI in Venezuela."

The November 2006 cable describes an example of USAID/OTI partners in Venezuela "shut[ting] down [a] city":

11. (S) CECAVID: This project supported an NGO working with women in the informal sectors of Barquisimeto, the 5th largest city in Venezuela. The training helped them negotiate with city government to provide better working conditions. After initially agreeing to the women's conditions, the city government reneged and the women shut down the city for 2 days forcing the mayor to return to the bargaining table. This project is now being replicated in another area of Venezuela.

The implications for the current situation in Venezuela are obvious, unless we are to assume that such activities have ended despite the tens of millions of dollars in USAID funds designated for Venezuela, some of it going through organizations such as Freedom House, and the International Republican Institute, some of which also funded groups involved in the 2002 coup (which prominent IRI staff publicly applauded at the time).

The same November 2006 cable notes that one OTI program goal is to bolster international support for the opposition:

…DAI has brought dozens of international leaders to Venezuela, university professors, NGO members, and political leaders to participate in workshops and seminars, who then return to their countries with a better understanding of the Venezuelan reality and as stronger advocates for the Venezuelan opposition.

Many of the thousands of cables originating from the U.S. embassy in Caracas that have been made available by Wikileaks describe regular communication and coordination with prominent opposition leaders and groups. One particular favorite has been the NGO Súmate and its leader María Corina Machado, who has made headlines over the past two months for her role in the protest movement. The cables show that Machado historically has taken more extreme positions than some other opposition leaders, and the embassy has at least privately questioned Súmate’s strategy of discrediting Venezuela’s electoral system which in turn has contributed to opposition defeats at the polls (most notably in 2005 when an opposition boycott led to complete Chavista domination of the National Assembly). The current protests are no different; Machado and Leopoldo López launched “La Salida” campaign at the end of January with its stated goal of forcing president Nicolás Maduro from office, and vowing to “create chaos in the streets.”

USAID support for destabilization is no secret to the targeted governments. In September 2008, in the midst of a violent, racist and pro-secessionist campaign against the democratically-elected government of Evo Morales in Bolivia, Morales expelled the U.S. Ambassador, and Venezuela followed suit “in solidarity.” Bolivia would later end all USAID involvement in Bolivia after the agency refused to disclose whom it was funding in the country (Freedom of Information Act requests had been independently filed but were not answered).  The U.S. embassy in Bolivia had previously been caught asking Peace Corps volunteers and Fulbright scholars in the country to engage in espionage.

Commenting on the failed USAID/OTI ZunZuneo program in Cuba, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) commented that, "That is not what USAID should be doing[.] USAID is flying the American flag and should be recognized around the globe as an honest broker of doing good. If they start participating in covert, subversive activities, the credibility of the United States is diminished."

But USAID’s track record of engaging in subversive activities is a long one, and U.S. credibility as an “honest broker” was lost many years ago.

Source: CEPR

April 08, 2014

venezuelanalysis

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Latin America and the Caribbean moving forward

By Laura Bécquer Paseiro:




With the foundation three years ago of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the dreams of a region, which for years had been deferred, re-emerged. Great challenges and great hopes are both a reality for the new regional organization. Its success depends on the degree to which the 33 member countries, all south of the Río Bravo, are able to focus on the search for unity, despite their differences.

Time has shown that only by following the route of unity emphasized by our forefathers, without denying the rich diversity which differentiates us, will the reality of Latin America and the Caribbean be changed and our true, definitive independence secured.

When, in 2008, regional leaders sat down to discuss unity and draft the first outline of what CELAC would become, they did so committed to change the face of the planet’s most unequal region, which paradoxically possesses the world’s greatest reserves of natural resources - the object of foreign powers’ voracious appetite, leading to centuries of struggle. They did so to change the present and future of the 600 million who inhabit the region’s 20 million square kilometers.

Cuba’s national hero, José Martí, said in 1891, "The peoples who don’t know each other must hastily do so, like those who will be fighting together." This fight is no longer against colonists who came across the Atlantic in droves, to impose their way of life, but rather against the inequalities which hold us back, against a common enemy always looking for opportunities to again subject us to domination and dependence. CELAC’s 33 nations are committed to emphasizing what we have in common, to move toward the creation of a structure of our own.

Many accomplishments have been achieved in the social and economic arenas as a result of policies implemented by governments devoted to improving citizens’ living conditions and the positive experiences of regional alliances such as ALBA, Petrocaribe, Mercosur, Unasur and Caricom, which have made an important contribution to the development of collaborative solidarity and complementary economic policies across the region.

Nevertheless, there is much work to do in Latin America and the Caribbean to rise above our dependent, neoliberal past. CELAC has, therefore, proposed action plans directed toward establishing Latin American and Caribbean sovereign control of resources, to ensure that sustainable development is achieved.
This region which possesses the world’s third largest economy, a fifth of the planet’s oil reserves and the greatest biological diversity, is also the most unequal, with 164 million persons living in poverty, including 68 million in extreme poverty.

The launching of CELAC in December 2011 changed forever the geopolitical map of the region. An organization now existed, focused on strengthening international relations through a multilateral system which respects national sovereignty and self-determination.

The Community has made a commitment to respect the equality of states; to reject threats and the use of force; to abide by international law; to promote human rights and democracy, while moving forward with a shared regional agenda within international forums. The organization was founded with the intention of respecting currently existent integration efforts, not replacing them, as all are working toward a common objective.

Cuba, as CELAC pro tempore president, has undertaken the group’s work respecting each and every one of the principles established in the Declaration of Caracas, fully conscious that the organization is precisely the instrument the region needs to resolve differences, just as President Raúl Castro said at the 2011 founding summit in Venezuela.

The emergence of CELAC is recognized as the most important institutional event in Latin America and the Caribbean over the last century, the realization of the dreams of unity, justice and sovereignty held by the great men and women of these lands.

The fact that the region has its own voice, and this voice is gaining attention on the complex world stage, is, in and of itself, a great step forward.

As the Community of 33 nations is preparing for the Havana Summit, January 28-29, the strengths developed over the last few years are evident. Also evident are the enormous challenges which must be faced, many of them inherited from the past. The shared commitment to meet these challenges reflects the new times in Our America. To paraphrase a great leader, the peoples of Latin America have said, "Enough" and begun to move.

January 22, 2014