Comments on: The Paradoxes of Latin American Development http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/07/the-paradoxes-of-latin-american-development/ a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:21:18 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Louis von Wetzler http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/07/the-paradoxes-of-latin-american-development/#comment-23320 Louis von Wetzler Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:43:26 +0000 http://www.dissidentvoice.org/?p=2278#comment-23320 Your comments about Argentina’s current ordeal are completely inaccurate. First of all you are putting in the same bag all the rural sector, which includes the huge pools, and the biggest landowners which control a 40% of the land, the medium size and small farmers, which represent now a 60% of the farmland exploited directly by their owners. You cannot say that all of them are right wing sympathizers because amongst the small farmers, most of them had voted for the Peronist Party or the Socialists. Furthermore, those who are more active against the confiscatory export taxes (for soya today will be 50% of the revenues of any farmer) are the small ones like Eduardo Buzzi from Santa Fe a well-known Peronist and Alfredo de Angelis a socialist from Entre Rios. What had united all farmers and cattle breeders are the open violations to international treaties, like the Asuncion Treaty, which has been the origin of the MERCOSUR, which forbids all export taxes for products exported within the Southern Cone market. But what this extremely corrupted government is doing, is openly violating the Argentine Constitution, which in Articles 4, 75 and 103, forbids the Executive Branch to impose Export Taxes, which are a right of the Congress. But the same Constitution and the Supreme Court since 1922 to 2004 had decided that any tax which goes beyond a third of the revenue of any tax payer is confiscatory. Violates the Federal system, which instructs the sharing of all federal taxes with the provinces and in this case the Executive decides what they want to do without any consultation with the Provinces. The Argentine Constitution is based in the American one, our founding fathers like Juan Bautista Alberdi who was the most outstanding academician and Dean of the School of Law in the 1850’s. Alberdi had in mind that all taxes, with the exception of a few ones should be shared by the Federal Government and the Provinces in a proportion in relation with the size of the territory of each one and the population. The current crisis in Argentina, which is worsening day by day as a consequence of the autocratic regime of the Kirchners who are the only feudal lords of this country, may end if the Government recognizes that they had acted illegally and had violated our Constitution, there is no doubt amongst academicians and the vast majority of the neutral observers that they are acting in a terrible authoritarian way, denying all checks and balances, ordering both chambers of the Congress to follow their orders. They said that the only solution will be if the farmers “surrender completely” to the Kirchners and their clique, as if the whole agriculture sector would be an enemy of the Nation. The Kirchners had ruled their province with a total contempt for their own democratic institutions, they had closed newspapers and television stations that were against them, and some people were murdered by political and economic reasons. They never gave a truthful explanation why they are not bringing back some 2 billion Dollars deposited in Switzerland, which are provincial funds of Santa Cruz and sent to Zurich when Menem was the president and Domingo Cavallo the Minister of Economy, was this later who gave advice to the Kirchners how to manage the money of their province coming from oil revenues and the selling of shares of Repsol YPF the oil company. Regarding the fishing industry, highly concentrated in the Patagonia and in Santa Cruz, according with FAO some 60% of the fishing leaves the country without paying any taxes. Puerto Deseado is the main port and many of the companies are controlled by friends of the Government. The same we can say about mining, most companies from Canada, Australia and the USA had paid enormous bribes to the Government in times of Menem and still continue paying to the Kircherns and their court. Argentina according with Transparency International is one of the most corrupted countries in the Americas. The level of education had dropped from the first place in the late 1960’s amongst the Spanish speaking countries to the seventh place right now. This means that there is a cynic and criminal policy of these governments, when more uneducated are the people, they are easier to be handled. By the way, the concentration of people in Rosario organized by the rural organizations with the support of many politicians, gathered some 400,000 people according with The Times, Le Monde and El Pais de Madrid. The Kirchners paid to anyone who goes to May Square and in spite of this fact the last raid organized by the Kirchner’s clique was a total fiasco. As a well known Argentina psychiatrist had recently said the problem with this government goes beyond any ideology it is a real and dangerous pathology, just a bunch of mad and perverse people running the country, like Hitler and Stalin were for Germany and Russian and the whole Europe 70 years ago. Your comments about Argentina’s current ordeal are completely inaccurate. First of all you are putting in the same bag all the rural sector, which includes the huge pools, and the biggest landowners which control a 40% of the land, the medium size and small farmers, which represent now a 60% of the farmland exploited directly by their owners. You cannot say that all of them are right wing sympathizers because amongst the small farmers, most of them had voted for the Peronist Party or the Socialists. Furthermore, those who are more active against the confiscatory export taxes (for soya today will be 50% of the revenues of any farmer) are the small ones like Eduardo Buzzi from Santa Fe a well-known Peronist and Alfredo de Angelis a socialist from Entre Rios. What had united all farmers and cattle breeders are the open violations to international treaties, like the Asuncion Treaty, which has been the origin of the MERCOSUR, which forbids all export taxes for products exported within the Southern Cone market. But what this extremely corrupted government is doing, is openly violating the Argentine Constitution, which in Articles 4, 75 and 103, forbids the Executive Branch to impose Export Taxes, which are a right of the Congress. But the same Constitution and the Supreme Court since 1922 to 2004 had decided that any tax which goes beyond a third of the revenue of any tax payer is confiscatory. Violates the Federal system, which instructs the sharing of all federal taxes with the provinces and in this case the Executive decides what they want to do without any consultation with the Provinces. The Argentine Constitution is based in the American one, our founding fathers like Juan Bautista Alberdi who was the most outstanding academician and Dean of the School of Law in the 1850’s. Alberdi had in mind that all taxes, with the exception of a few ones should be shared by the Federal Government and the Provinces in a proportion in relation with the size of the territory of each one and the population. The current crisis in Argentina, which is worsening day by day as a consequence of the autocratic regime of the Kirchners who are the only feudal lords of this country, may end if the Government recognizes that they had acted illegally and had violated our Constitution, there is no doubt amongst academicians and the vast majority of the neutral observers that they are acting in a terrible authoritarian way, denying all checks and balances, ordering both chambers of the Congress to follow their orders. They said that the only solution will be if the farmers “surrender completely” to the Kirchners and their clique, as if the whole agriculture sector would be an enemy of the Nation. The Kirchners had ruled their province with a total contempt for their own democratic institutions, they had closed newspapers and television stations that were against them, and some people were murdered by political and economic reasons. They never gave a truthful explanation why they are not bringing back some 2 billion Dollars deposited in Switzerland, which are provincial funds of Santa Cruz and sent to Zurich when Menem was the president and Domingo Cavallo the Minister of Economy, was this later who gave advice to the Kirchners how to manage the money of their province coming from oil revenues and the selling of shares of Repsol YPF the oil company. Regarding the fishing industry, highly concentrated in the Patagonia and in Santa Cruz, according with FAO some 60% of the fishing leaves the country without paying any taxes. Puerto Deseado is the main port and many of the companies are controlled by friends of the Government. The same we can say about mining, most companies from Canada, Australia and the USA had paid enormous bribes to the Government in times of Menem and still continue paying to the Kircherns and their court. Argentina according with Transparency International is one of the most corrupted countries in the Americas. The level of education had dropped from the first place in the late 1960’s amongst the Spanish speaking countries to the seventh place right now. This means that there is a cynic and criminal policy of these governments, when more uneducated are the people, they are easier to be handled. By the way, the concentration of people in Rosario organized by the rural organizations with the support of many politicians, gathered some 400,000 people according with The Times, Le Monde and El Pais de Madrid. The Kirchners paid to anyone who goes to May Square and in spite of this fact the last raid organized by the Kirchner’s clique was a total fiasco. As a well known Argentina psychiatrist had recently said the problem with this government goes beyond any ideology it is a real and dangerous pathology, just a bunch of mad and perverse people running the country, like Hitler and Stalin were for Germany and Russian and the whole Europe 70 years ago.

]]> By: HR http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/07/the-paradoxes-of-latin-american-development/#comment-23306 HR Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:11:03 +0000 http://www.dissidentvoice.org/?p=2278#comment-23306 With little modification, the article could describe the rightist-theocratist shift we've experienced here in the U.S. since the end of the 20th Century's world war. I see that the great promoter of hope and change, Barack Obama, has now come out in favor of continuing to give tax money to religious charities, further demonstrating that he is nothing more than another "moderate" repugnantcan. Of course, USans will lap that up and beg for another bowl, given their record of voting for Christofascist corporatists for the past 40 years. It's clear that the yuppie scum here, who form a substantial segment of those who vote, have been blinded by the glare from the hoods of their beemers for so long that their eyesight is too deteriorated to see reality. Or, maybe Erich Fromm was right in his speculation that humans may find it easier to turn to totalitarianism and the false security and order it offers rather than exert the effort required to have, and keep, freedom. You get what you deserve, in government and in most other things. Please don't whine about not having choices. They exist and they always have. You have simply rejected them in favor of a right-wing police state with a large dose of Christofascism thrown in ... now wallow in it. With little modification, the article could describe the rightist-theocratist shift we’ve experienced here in the U.S. since the end of the 20th Century’s world war.

I see that the great promoter of hope and change, Barack Obama, has now come out in favor of continuing to give tax money to religious charities, further demonstrating that he is nothing more than another “moderate” repugnantcan. Of course, USans will lap that up and beg for another bowl, given their record of voting for Christofascist corporatists for the past 40 years.

It’s clear that the yuppie scum here, who form a substantial segment of those who vote, have been blinded by the glare from the hoods of their beemers for so long that their eyesight is too deteriorated to see reality. Or, maybe Erich Fromm was right in his speculation that humans may find it easier to turn to totalitarianism and the false security and order it offers rather than exert the effort required to have, and keep, freedom.

You get what you deserve, in government and in most other things. Please don’t whine about not having choices. They exist and they always have. You have simply rejected them in favor of a right-wing police state with a large dose of Christofascism thrown in … now wallow in it.

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